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Encrypted messages sent by pigeon carriers worked in the past!

....and the future.

That's only western variety antivax movement though. There are other reasons some people worldwide might be opposed to it. For instance, the good old CIA using it. If people are paranoid about the doctors giving the shot, it's going to have problems. Witness the paranoia about HIV treatments. That IS happening to some degree in Africa.

Encrypted messages sent by pigeon carriers worked in the past!

Spend time in any African country and you realise that the ignorance about medical issues is an inbred thing - I was in South Africa in 2011 and saw lots of billboards all over the country with the Health Ministers image on it and the quote "avoid AIDS, get circumcised"

Circumcising African men may cut their risk of catching AIDS in half, the National Institutes of Health said today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/health/13cnd-hiv.html?_r=0

So, the NIH are a bunch of ignorant Africans now?

Actually in Muslim countries extremists are telling people that the polio vaccine is a way for the west to get your DNA so they can track you down and kill you later. Or that it causes AIDs or that it is a plot to sterilize Muslim girls. They also say that is how the US found Bin Laden. None of it is true and there have even been murders of the people trying to give the vaccines. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/world/africa/in-nigeria-polio-vaccine-workers-are-killed-by-gunmen.html?_r=0
And please do not get off on an anti-muslim or anti-religion rant. This is pure politics and if you do not think that atheists in power have not done the same types of things I suggest you read up on the history of the USSR, China and North Korea.

It was five years ago I read about this, where they weakened a virus by actually re-coding in with the 'most pessimal' version of its genome. Same proteins, but reproduces three orders of magnitude slower.

And I haven't heard anything since. Does anyone know what's been going on with that? I suppose re-coding a whole single-celled organism might be more difficult/expensive than a virus, but still... the problem with point-mutations weaking a disease is that point-mutations can be reversed. Eventually someone's going to get sick from the vaccine itself. (Still, if the vaccine's effective it's a better bet, but if you can eliminate that chance...)

Clearly the operator of Lavabit received a national security letter or warrant which he objected to. ... I suspect that the request was not just something mild ("This sleazebag's mail account") but something broader, given the reaction was to close down the service completely.

As I read this article in the NY Times today I thought, "Hmm, how can the NSA search the contents of all e-mail leaving the U.S.? What about e-mail from one gmail user to another? Or messages sent between servers using SMTP with SSL? Surely NSA can't decipher those just by cloning the transmission links." Well, this may be the answer -- force the e-mail providers to hand over copies of any messages sent to or from machines with foreign IP address, or written or read via webmail on a foreign machine.

But don't worry, FISA will prevent NSA from obtaining copies of purely domestic e-mail or keeping copies of these messages for more than a few seconds.

Somehow I'd rather have a public discussion of what NSA can and cannot request, rather than relying on a secret court to protect our constitutional rights.

Obummer is good! Obummer is great! We surrender our souls as of this date!

You seem to be having a lot of fun bashing on Obama but you should cast your net wide. It's a concerted effort between a handful of large players in the power structure.

Obummer is good! Obummer is great! We surrender our souls as of this date!

You seem to be having a lot of fun bashing on Obama but you should cast your net wide. It's a concerted effort between a handful of large players in the power structure.

The U.S. supported Pol Pot.

Cold-war anti-Communism worked against the interests of the U.S. The U.S. is worse off because of it.

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/17/world/death-of-pol-pot-the-diplomacy-pol-pot-s-end-won-t-stop-us-pursuit-of-his-circle.html
DEATH OF POL POT: THE DIPLOMACY; Pol Pot's End Won't Stop U.S. Pursuit of His Circle
By ELIZABETH BECKER
Published: April 17, 1998

In one of the cold war's proxy battles, the United States took China's side against the Soviet Union, which meant accepting the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate Government of Cambodia in opposition to the Vietnamese-imposed regime in Phnom Penh. Previously, the United States had sided with China to punish the Soviet Union for its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/how-thatcher-helped-pol-pot/5330873
How Thatcher helped Pol Pot
By John Pilger
Global Research, April 11, 2013

Declassified United States government documents leave little doubt that the secret and illegal bombing of then neutral Cambodia by President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger between 1969 and 1973 caused such widespread death and devastation that it was critical in Pol Pot’s drive for power.

“They are using damage caused by B52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda,” the CIA director of operations reported on 2 May 1973. “This approach has resulted in the successful recruitment of young men. Residents say the propaganda campaign has been effective with refugees in areas that have been subject to B52 strikes.”

http://articles.latimes.com/1997-06-24/local/me-6271_1_pol-pot
In the Dock With Pol Pot: Uncle Sam
An immoral connivance between China and the U.S. allowed killing fields to flourish.
June 24, 1997
Robert Scheer

Pol Pot's major war crimes were committed between 1975 and 1979 and the U.S. government knew the full extent of that horror during all the ensuing years in which it tried to bring him back to power as part of the U.S.-China sponsored coalition

President Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski has admitted, "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. . . . Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him but China could." But the U.S. did support Pol Pot covertly, including whitewashing his crimes. As Ben Kiernan points out in an indispensable Yale University Law School monograph entitled "Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia," the CIA in May of 1980 "denied that there had been any executions in the last two years of the Pol Pot regime." In fact, half a million innocent people were killed during that period. Even well after the "killing fields" were unearthed, the U.S. continued to legitimize the Khmer Rouge, voting at the U.N. Geneva Conference in 1981 to defeat an ASEAN proposal that the Khmer Rouge be disarmed.

Actually, Hayden knows exactly what he's talking about.

And by all means, no one is thinking about ways to defeat the US.

but so has gun ownership.

Has it? As a percentage of households, yes. However, you need to account for population growth over the same time period. If you do you'll see the number (not percentage) of households with firearms has stayed fairly steady over the decades.

Bahahaha. So, you are saying that through some sort of magic action-at-a-distance, the presence of more net guns holds down the desire/ability to commit crimes, even though there are demonstrably more people around to both be criminals, and to be criminalized.

The net number of swashbuckling pirates has dropped, too. Is that to blame for global warming?

but so has gun ownership.

Has it? As a percentage of households, yes. However, you need to account for population growth over the same time period. If you do you'll see the number (not percentage) of households with firearms has stayed fairly steady over the decades.

Without taking a position on the issue of guns vs. crime itself, comparing rates is exactly what should be done statistically.
i.e. the "rate" (fraction) of gun ownership (number of guns per household) should be compared with the crime rate (e.g. murders per 10,000 people per year.)

However, it may be debatable whether the appropriate number for guns is guns/household or percentage of people who own guns.
(The mean and median number of people per household is probably changing.)

but so has gun ownership.

Has it? As a percentage of households, yes. However, you need to account for population growth over the same time period. If you do you'll see the number (not percentage) of households with firearms has stayed fairly steady over the decades.

The amusing thing is that the increase of bullets (i.e. people owning guns) has also contributed to drops in crime rates...

Actually, violent crime in the United States has dropped significantly since the 1980s and early 1990s, but so has gun ownership.

This was interesting:

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/campaign-finance

According to the site, Obama actually raised more money than Romney, but spent less.

According to the NYT it was passed by the regulatory agencies despite violating the regulations. That's not passing, that's failing in secret.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/opinion/fukushima-could-have-been-prevented.html

Sorry, thought it was pretty well known.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/opinion/fukushima-could-have-been-prevented.html

Nobody cares enough about Africa to listen in on them. The only thing Africa has is resources, and China already is buying them. Is the infrastructure subject to surveillance? Sure, but every infrastructure is, even heterogeneous ones like the US.

So, nothing to see in Africa? Just move along? I don't think so.

Just like Europe, South America, and Asia, Africa is an entire continent of nations, some of which have drawn considerable attention in the last couple of years. I assume you've heard of Libya? Egypt? Algeria? South Africa? There is a lot going on in Africa, and the Chinese are heavily involved. There are plenty of things they might want to listen to.

Africa has more mobile phone users than the U.S. or E.U.
How mobile phones are making cash obsolete in Africa
European Rocket Launches 2 African Satellites

China and Africa: What the U.S. doesn't understand

Seven out of the world's 10 fastest growing economies are African. According to a 2010 report by consulting firm McKinsey & Company, the rate of return on foreign investments in Africa was, in the first decade of this century, higher than in any other region. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected that Africa is now growing faster than Asia.

Sino-African trade volumes have grown accordingly. Negligible in 2000, trade hit $198.5 billion in 2012. By comparison, U.S.-Africa trade volume was $108.9 billon, and is slated to fall further behind: Research from Standard Chartered estimates that trade between China and Africa will hit $385 billion by 2015

MAP: Here Are All Of The Big Chinese Investments In Africa Since 2010
China’s Increasing Interest in Africa: Benign but Hardly Altruistic

South Africa Could Have a Spaceport

The Republic of South Africa has considered using Israel's Shavit space booster to send a satellite to orbit. The South Africans have tested the Israeli Jericho 2 intermediate-range ballistic missile which converts to the Shavit space rocket.

International Effort Seeks to Counter Jihadists in Africa

China To Establish A Naval Base Around Somalia

As the threat of piracy continues. And as Somali pirates continue with their awkward trade to kidnap foreign ships, a Chinese Admiral has revealed China’s proposal to establish a naval base in the region in its commitment to thwart piracy and finally end this tragedy in the gulf of Eden. The lazy pirates who have no intentions to pursue an education or employment see piracy as an easy way to make money. About 75% of piracy in the region is being masterminded by terror groups to finance their illegal activities.

Rear Admiral Yin Zhou’s, a senior Chinese naval officer has suggested that China will establish a permanent base in the Gulf of Aden to aid its anti-piracy operations. The proposal was posted on China’s Defence ministry website. The Admiral went on to say that supplying and maintaining the fleet off Somalia was challenging without such a base, and said other nations were unlikely to object. The Chinese navy curr

Hands free technologies are not less distracting; in some cases, they're the worst. The cell phone lobby is desperately trying to focus on "hands free" stuff to sidetrack the issue.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR2010012900053.html

http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/12/autos/aaa-voice-to-text/index.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/even-hands-free-you-shouldnt-talk-or-text-while-driving/2013/07/29/4d7214ec-f3d0-11e2-aa2e-4088616498b4_story.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/opinion/hands-free-distractions.html?_r=0 ...and on and on, if you just google things like "hands free driving distracting"

Having your hands on the wheel simply increases your control of the car. It does not do ANYTHING about your brain being more preoccupied with the conversation or task.

Your job in your car is to DRIVE. Not to eat, not to put on makeup or comb your hair, not to text, not to read, not to talk to someone who isn't in the car. You're piloting 2-3 tons of metal that can and do injure, maim, and kill. People driving cars kill 30,000+ a year in the US alone. Take the responsibility seriously and stop faffing about trying to carry on your life in your car. If you need to get things done while traveling, RIDE THE BUS.

Don't forget it took the Democrats to pass Nixon's healthcare plan (minus the liberal parts):

citations:

GOP-centric:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/03/16/ellen-ratner-obama-health-care-nixon-republicans-liberal/

DNC-centric:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/opinion/31krugman.html?_r=1&

Medical-Industry-centric:
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2009/September/03/nixon-proposal.aspx

Or hanging out in a Moscow airport waiting for the President to offer the appropriate bribe to Vladimir Putin to have your ass sent back to the United States for the crime of causing the Surveillance State a little trouble.

A few year ago I would have been inclined to agree, but in this case it is Russia that is worried about returning a 'political asylum seeker' to their country of origin which would likely result in their torture and death. Authentic or not in this case Russia may actually be the morally higher ground. Another sad day for the US.

FCC doesn't care about the people. The government is supposed to regulate business so the businesses don't screw us so hard. The opposite is true now. Businesses buy off politicians so they can screw us twice as hard. I'll just leave this here.

If Apple is that better they would STOP letting their contractor abusing the workers a long time ago

Back in 2010-2011, another contractor, Wintek, caused deaths and injuries to several of its workers due to n-hexane exposure - including one engineer who dropped dead while working

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/technology/23apple.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Anyone can come up with any kind of policy, and what Apple is doing is merely giving lip service to their "policy"

Especially after the death and injuries that had occurred in Wintek last time, Apple ought to have wised up and ensure that their so-called "policy" be strictly followed

First of all, do you know what hard-hitting journalistic work the NYT had to do to find out about that incident? They had to look into Apple's 2011 report. That's the source they give, and they obviously didn't know about it before. Wintek used n-hexane for all products for all customers - but only apple reported the incident, and only Apple required Wintek to stop using n-hexane and to provide evidence that they had removed the chemical from their production lines.

And talking about deaths: Samsung has been poisoning their workers for years so they die of cancer - and they don't clean up their act. http://stopsamsung.wordpress.com/

Graphs are very helpful in really conveying what is going on. What we need more in discussions of politics is facts and many facts are about numbers. When discussing who has the right model of the US economy you really need to think of it scientifically. Each model is a hypothesis that needs to be tested. Economics is about aggregate behavior and so it's really a statistical statement. Yes the models are equations and those are nice to show too. But you need to show graphs. Folks who are not innumerate often prefer for example what Nate Silver put on fivethirtyeight.com to talking heads on TV who use neither equations or graphs. Many folks I know prefer Krugman's blog http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/ to what makes it into his columns in the Times.
If you can't show pictures of aggregate behavior you can only tell stories. Those stories can tug at heart strings and motivate people to feel strongly about an issue without really understanding the whole picture. That's one of the problems with our political discourse.

Some of the factors involved:

1. anti-trust laws and specific legislation prevent hospitals and doctors for sharing price information (aka Sherman Anti Trust Act)

2. The government demands a discount from hospitals for services.

3. The insurance companies, not to be outdone by Uncle Sam, also demand discounts. (8th paragraph )

4. Different geographic locations have different pricing indexes.

5. Local competition, despite #1 above, can influence prices

6. Different patients have wildly varying medical histories and co-morbidities.

7. Most complex cases (esp surgery and other procedural based care) fall into a class of billing called the DRG (diagnostic related group), which is kind of a set rate for a package of care....so if I take out your gallbladder and you leave in 1 day or 3, the hospital gets paid the same (see side note below)

Taken all together, the hospital is basically free to charge what ever they want....not that they ever get it.

Most insurance companies pay a "regionally adjusted payment", and that's what gets paid....with a few exceptions. Those without insurance, usually get some kind of compassionate coverage from Medicaid (state funded, not Medicare). Those who do not are often eligible for charity care where part or all of the bill is reduced. So why not just bill the uninsured a lower upfront cost? Rule #2. Uncle Sammy wants his discount

The interesting side story....patients who have an exceptionally difficult problem can fall into a group called the outliers (imaginative name, but better I suppose than the untouchables....). These are pts who fall outside of the DRG....as such the hospital may submit a bill for outlier payment. This is typically $0.10 on the dollar of hospital billing. Well that sucks for the hospital....but a less-than-scrupulous Mega-Health-Care-Corp came up with the idea of inflating their outlier billing to be 10x what they had been billing.....the end result is $ for $ reimbursement. This was all well and good for them, for a couple of years....then Uncle Sammy caught on.....10 years later and they still haven't gotten rid of the shit smell after the government came down on them and beat the living shit out of them financially and punitively.

In a country where insulting the king carries a 10 year penalty, as far as the king is concerned, the concept of Rule of Law essentially means: I rule, you follow the law.

But Apple's image and brand is of a better, more responsible company -- that's part of the justification for the higher price. "Everyone else does it" might be true, but the statement was "we thought you were better"

Apple ARE better.
http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/accountability.html [apple.com]

If Apple is that better they would STOP letting their contractor abusing the workers a long time ago

Back in 2010-2011, another contractor, Wintek, caused deaths and injuries to several of its workers due to n-hexane exposure - including one engineer who dropped dead while working

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/technology/23apple.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Anyone can come up with any kind of policy, and what Apple is doing is merely giving lip service to their "policy"

Especially after the death and injuries that had occurred in Wintek last time, Apple ought to have wised up and ensure that their so-called "policy" be strictly followed

Sure there are lots of scary looking methods of splicing DNA, but those are all done experimentally for research purposes. Those don't ever make it to your dinner plate.

You know the human body contains 3 complete genomes from viruses and about a hundred thousand or so incomplete ones. One of these virus genomes includes genetic material that transcribes to create a critical reproductive function that we could not live without today, and it came from some other animal. So indeed, humans themselves carry DNA from some other animal, and in fact depend on it. In fact, 8% of our genome comes from foreign sources.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/science/12paleo.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/14/we-are-viral-from-the-beginning/
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/10/the-lurker-how-a-virus-hid-in-our-genome-for-six-million-years/

GMO has the potential to reduce the need for farmland, which if I were an environmentalist I would be ecstatic for because that means tearing down less forest land to create farms to feed people and end world hunger. In addition, it will make food much less expensive which means your bargaining power goes up, which means less poor people.

In commercially sold GMO, all they do is modify a very tiny number of codons to make the plant resistant to glyphosate. That's it. During natural reproduction, plants go through thousands of mutations, mutations much larger than this one, and we haven't the slightest clue what these mutations do. Yet making a small tiny change where we know exactly what it does has people like you raging? Why? Especially given that the chemical composition of the food that ends up on your plate is not chemically distinct from non-GMO based foods.

I don't know what GMO did to ruin your life, but having a vendetta against it because you're ideologically opposed to it doesn't do anybody else any favors. In fact, it does the world a disservice akin to the new rise of smallpox due to the FUD campaign against vaccines. In fact I'd say it's equally destructive.

Please stop spreading FUD about GMO. Thank you.

With Mayor Bloomberg (morn extraordinaire) claiming NYC's crime increase is due to iPads and iPhones ( http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/crime-is-up-and-bloomberg-blames-iphone-thieves/?_r=0 ) I predict a massive wave of crime as kids get beat up or killed for their fondle-slab. What a waste of resources. Perhaps they might consider getting rid of the teacher's union which is driving their state broke instead... http://reason.com/archives/2013/03/29/union-greed-drives-california-bankruptcy

"Hollywood revisionism is to blame for a lot of the misconceptions about the American role in the war".

By the way, it was the Eastern Front, which claimed 80 percent of all German military casualties in the war. So basically, it was one evil empire against other and the winning one got away with its crimes. That is the reality. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/21/arts/a-job-for-rewrite-stalin-s-war.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Nokia's mistake was to not invest resources to expand their platform, to do what other companies were doing in acquiring the expertise and business relationships to product integrated chipset solutions. This was especially critical as they were about to lose their fab partner Texas Instruments.

Looks like Activision was almost bankrupt back in 1990:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/business/bobby-kotick-of-activision-drawing-praise-and-wrath.html

India has more than nuclear weapons. It has nuclear armed neighbors (Pakistan, China) with designs on its territory. One of those neighbors, Pakistan, has fought several wars against India, and has been both a host and sponsor of terrorism against India. Pakistan is riddled with terrorists and faces an insurgency by Islamists of the Taliban flavor for control of the country, and ultimately its nuclear weapons. India is not far from Afghanistan, long a hot bed of extremist Islam and terrorists. India has fought skirmishes against the Chinese army in the past, and Chinese troops have occupied territory claimed by India. India also has an insurgency in part of the country by Maoist guerillas. (That would be Mao as in Chairman Mao, former leader of the People's Republic of China.) There is little distance separating India from Iran. Iran is a major sponsor of Islamist extremists, and terrorism world wide. Iran also has long range missiles, and has been found to have developed plans for a nuclear warhead that would fit their missiles. Iran is currently refining uranium on a growing number of centrifuges. Another neighbor is Myanmar nee Burma, which was reported to be developing nuclear weapons with cooperation from North Korea (which also isn't that far away).

Now India as well as China has long range ballistic missiles: Signs of an Asian Arms Buildup in India’s Missile Test. Pakistan has medium and intermediate range missiles.

India is developing a missile defense system: India to have shield from missiles of 5,000 km range

India, as well as China, is buying and building aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines.

Nearly all European nations resist nuclear weapons. Many Europeans and Americans resist missile defense. Europe's defenses have been shrinking massively since the end of the Cold War. The next century may be very interesting indeed. Some may find it humbling.

Not sure I agree with sam_vilain's claim that it's "worth reading" (seems more like a string of poorly-reasoned ad-hominem to me), but here you go:

Following his request for asylum in Russia, it's become pretty clear that Edward Snowden is officially the most naïveperson in the room.

Not only is he surrounded by members of Russia's Foreign Security Service (FSB) — the successor to the KGB — but he's loudly trumpeting the moral superiority of the Putin government, one of the most repressive, cutthroat regimes in modern history.

David Francis' Fiscal Times write-updigs into Snowden for his "mind boggling naiveté":

He is asking for asylum in a country that continues to openly squash dissent, often using violent tactics. Putin runs the country with an iron fist, has jailed people who oppose him, and has chased others out of the country. Opponents have been known to meet early deaths, often under suspicious circumstances.

Francis notes theuntimely,often gruesomedeathsof several political opponents to Putin over the years.

Snowden's statements about Russia's sterling Human Rights image come within days of the imprisonment of high-profile political opposition leader Alexei Navalny,on what some call trumped-up embezzlement charges.

Snowden himself acknowledged his potential for naivetyto Bart Gellman of the Washington Post: “Perhaps I am naïve, but I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.”

To make matters worse, the person seemingly speaking for Snowden now —Russian attorney Anatoly Kucherena — also happens to be the head of public relations for the FSB.

Freelance reporter and intelligence expert Joshua Foust writes:"The involvement of known FSB operatives at his asylum acceptance ... suggests this was a textbook intelligence operation, andnota brave plea for asylum from political persecution."

"The Russians are very good at what they do," wrote Foust, referring to their simultaneous control of the "principal" — Snowden — and the public message.

Putin — a former lieutenantcolonelin the KGB — drew laughs from Finland students when he said regarding Snowden, "If you want to stay, please, but you have to stop your political activities. We have a certain relationship with the U.S., and we don’t want you with your political activities damaging our relationship with the U.S."

The Russian president just as deftly shifted the blame to the U.S., a foreseeable consequence of the State Department's decision to revoke Snowden's passport.

It seems in all of this, Snowden is not the super-intelligent super spy he makes himself out to be, but just an analyst who is in over his head.

Looking at his statement that he could be "petting a phoenix, in a palace" in China, indicates that he expected to be gree

Sorry but Mexico patterned their system of capitalist democracy off of ours (USA). Corruption is rampant.

if the US places sanctions on China

When Chinese dumping interferes with a political agenda the US doesn't hesitate to slap tariffs on stuff.

Things that aren't politically suitable for photo-ops, however, get the "oh noes tradewar" treatment if someone has the temerity to suggest tariffs.

One thing I have noticed is that while leadership position searches should be focused on things like high level reasoning, ability to motivate and coordinate a team, and 360 degree communications, all of which take years or decades to cultivate, the search strategy looks for specific knowledge of specific frameworks, which usually takes weeks or at most months to acquire. I didn't see anything specific about your company or your search strategy, but for those searching and not finding, perhaps the fault lays in the search strategy?

Google seems to be coming to this realization. From the article: "We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how that person ultimately performed in their job. We found zero relationship".

Ammendment IV of the constitution: "Every subject has a right to be secure from all unreasonable searches, and seizures of his person, his houses, his papers, and all his possessions."

Blanket storage of metadata easily falls under this by any honest interpretation of its meaning. Therefore cannot be authorized by anything, not even an act of congress. These people have betrayed us, along with everyone who follows their illegal commands.

Then it should be challenged in court (the Patriot Act). Another commenter posted that the ACLU is challenging the NSA over its interpretation of the Patriot Act, but no one is challenging the activity on constitutional grounds (largely because of a 1989 Supreme Court "finding that a minimal intrusion on privacy was justified by the government’s need to combat an overriding public danger.")
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/in-secret-court-vastly-broadens-powers-of-nsa.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1374778966-Bwk6gp9wV17MNPc2hI6YXg
Devils advocate for the NSA: Actually, this is from Gen. Alexander of the NSA directly when he spoke at an AFCEA conference I was attending: They are only collecting the data. In order to access or search it, they require a FISA court approval. (but which they almost always get)

"This proves, once and for all, that the Democrats are just as bad, if not worse, than the Republicans on matters related to privacy and civil liberties."

Let's check the numbers:
Dems voting yes on the Amash amendment: 111/200 = 55.5%
GOP voting yes on the Amash amendment: 94/234 = 40.2%

Note that this is in the context of a Democratic White House furiously against the amendment and telling its members to vote no. Nonetheless, a majority of House Democrats voted "yes" and a majority of GOP voted "no". If only Democrats had been voting, then the amendment would have passed. Democrats are *pretty fucking bad* on privacy and civil liberties -- the White House leadership in particular has completely stabbed us in the back on these issues. However, the data argues for the opposite of the "bad, if not worse, than the Republicans" theory.

http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/house/1/412

It IS a start. I live in Kansas, a deeply red state. I called my representative on this, and he actually voted "Aye" to reduce the funding. I was shocked, but pleased. He is what you can do, as a lowly, unimportant citizen. Look at the list. http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/house/1/412 . If your representative voted "NO" then he voted that the NSA should continue to spy on everyone. Vote him out. He is probably deep in the pocket of the Corporations/Military or deeply believes that the NSA accumulation of all phone, postal mail, email, for-all-I-know bedroom data is a wonderful thing. Vote him/her out. Your vote is one thing they have not managed to neuter yet.

And let them know how you feel about it.
http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/house/1/412

I see your point, but that's not really practical.

Lawyers and the like need years of study for a certain field which the laws will almost certainly not translate to another country or even state.

Compared to science, where the Speed of light is constant, Water has two Hydrogen molecules, etc... no matter where you are in the world.

It is happening to some extent

India's legal system is also based on English Common Law - things like contracts and other legal subjects can be taken care of overseas. And unlike here, lawyers don't have the prestige; they're in cube farms like the rest of us and are paid much less than lawyers over here - even with the glut of JDs.

Some other troubling news: TEPCO reciently admitted that Fukushima has been leaking radioactive water into the sea for the last two years:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/11/world/asia/japanese-nuclear-plant-may-have-been-leaking-for-two-years.html?_r=0

"Until recently, Tokyo Electric, known as Tepco, flatly denied that any of that water was leaking into the ocean, even though various independent studies of radiation levels in the nearby ocean have suggested otherwise. In recent days, Tepco has retreated to saying that it was not sure whether there was a leak into the ocean.
Mr. Tanaka said that the evidence was overwhelming.
âoeWeâ(TM)ve seen for a fact that levels of radioactivity in the seawater remain high, and contamination continues â" I donâ(TM)t think anyone can deny that,â he said Wednesday at a briefing after a meeting of the authorityâ(TM)s top regulators. âoeWe must take action as soon as possible."

I notice you are too cowardly to point out sales number for ANY other PC maker over the same quarters by comparison...

Perhaps you should google it, and use it reinforce your point. Personally I'm made up with Googles 70Million tablet activations. For PC shipments International Data Corporation and Gartner, both industry analyst firms have figures out. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/lenovo-is-top-supplier-as-global-pc-sales-fall/?_r=0 "Apple’s Mac computers were third, with 1.8 million units sold, a drop of 0.5 percent. Lenovo had a sales increase of 19.6 percent, to 1.5 million units, I.D.C. said. The Gartner numbers were roughly similar, though Gartner recorded a sharper sales drop for Apple."

I assume you're familiar with this [phdcomics.com]?

I didn't even have to follow the link to see the comic ;-)

Still, a question I have is, not considering severe digestive issues, are there detrimental effects of the types and levels of artificial preservatives on nutrient absorption? [...] while i have little basis for telling others that they are "bad", I'm just as happy avoiding these additives when i can do so without too much hassle.

I'm not sure, but let's be honest here: isn't eating random herbs (natural 'additives') from all over the planet equally unwise? How odd would it be to tell people to avoid putting garlic/pepper/salt/oregano etc. in their food?
What evidence is there that the natural preservatives aren't ten times as 'dangerous' as synthetically produced preservatives?

Are there other mechanisms of nutrient loss beyond simple oxidation that are harder to control? For example, does cellular metabolism in plant material, which i believe continues long past harvest, lead to breakdown of nutrients even in the packaging, either directly or as a result of byproducts created in the process? This is, of course, all speculation at this point. Still, I intuitively believe that the blueberries I'm adding to my breakfast might be more nutritionally valuable than the freeze-dried ones in a box of cereal. I enjoy them more, at the very least.

They might very well not be, depending on when they were picked. See the frozen/fresh discussion.
Another question is how long the packaged goods are stored before you eat them. As far as I know, producers really don't like having unnecessary stockpiles and try to do JIT deliveries as much as possible. What would be more nutrient-rich, the quickly extensively packaged/frozen product or the 'fresh' product, given the same time from harvest to store?
(If the JIT delivery stuff isn't reality though, then it may very well be that month-old 'processed foods' have lost a lot of nutrients)

and the still poorly understood role of co-occuring chemicals may interact with nutrient absorption [bioperine.com]), and, again, lack of trust that manufacturers care about anything more than an FDA approval. So I conclude that it's likely that a pasteurized-and-refortified food is not nutritionally equivalent to its freshly-made counterpart, and one potential argument for eating foods that are,by some intuitive measure, more similar to the foods that we evolved to consume (but, yes, I know that modern crops are considerably different from their wild ancestors).

Talking about trust, that link is to a PDF trying to sell some kind of supplement.
I do kind of agree with the latter. I like (and follow for 70%) the 'primal' diet, but at the same time I am aware that during pretty much all our evolution we did not live past the age of 40. That could mean that our primal diet and digestive system were tuned for a live hard, die young existence.

An interesting question is: since preference is purely subjective, if I think I prefer one scotch over another, isn't it necessarily true?

Well, it's often said that there's no discussing taste, but I beg to differ. If your taste or distaste for something is mainly driven by some memory, feeling or state of mind, it is almost certainly less stable than a taste or distaste originating in your biological make-up. The latter is also something you can use when preparing food for others (as opposed to the other factors).

Very much related to this and the discussion in general is this article (Yoplait is mentioned): http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

If you haven't read it yet, you should (in its entirety). Like pretty much all things in

1 - Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.

Freedom of religion is violated by faith based initiatives.

Freedom of speech, like I said, is not much good if no one listens. And the list of prohibited speech just gets longer and longer. Oh, and let's not forget about "Free Speech zones".

Freedom of press? Tell that to the reporters arrested and beaten while covering Occupy.

Freedom of assembly? Just try assembling outside of a free speech zone e.g. during the conventions. Or just look at what happened to Occupy.

2 - Right to keep and bear arms in order to maintain a well regulated militia.

Try and keep a well regulated militia, and you'll end up like Ruby Ridge. You can have a gun for sport, but if you ever try to use it to justly defend yourself against the government, you'll end up like Cory Maye

3 - No quartering of soldiers.
Fair enough

4 - Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. (Yes, I acknowledge the controversy. Criminal justice still has to play by the usual rules.)

Unless the state has "secret evidence".

5 - Right to due process of law, freedom from self-incrimination, double jeopardy.

Drone strikes on citizens, Salinas vs Texas, three strikes laws.

6 - Rights of accused persons, e.g., right to a speedy and public trial.

Indefinite detention.

7 - Right of trial by jury in civil cases.

Plea bargaining.

8 - Freedom from excessive bail

Justin Carter

cruel and unusual punishments.

Someone should tell that to Joe Arpaio.

9 - Other rights of the people. ...

Which has been applied when exactly? In all of US history? If they gave one shit about the 9th amdenment, we wouldn't be imprisoning thousands of people for drugs.

And here's the real question. What recourse do we have when the government violates these rights? How do we actually hold them accountable? When we violate the law, we go to jail. When our leaders violate the highest law of the land, absolutely nothing happens to them. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that a rule that has no enforcement mechanism isn't a rule at all.

you missed the crucial final step, where amazon having vanquished foes starts raising prices. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/business/as-competition-wanes-amazon-cuts-back-its-discounts.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The difference is purely semantic. The difference is that dogs didn't evolve from wolves through natural selection, they evolved via human selection (which may still considered natural), but it's still an evolution.

I've seen a few articles, like this one that suggests wolves domesticated humans ... or this one that wolves/dogs domesticated themselves ... to co-exist.

At the very least they already collect the metadata for all postage communications.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&