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Right, it has nothing to do with Israel's desire to annex as much of the Palestinian's territory as possible with as few non-Jews as possible. As far as the intellectual quality of the boycott, I guess Stephen Hawking hasn't sat around and thought about it as deeply as you have.

All Google needs to do is offer a commercial licence, for a small fee, to all Android OEM's that indemnifies them. This way if Microsoft has an issue with Android or Linux they can take on Google directly. But, we all know that would never happen because Microsoft clearly knows that Google would single handily invalidate all of their obvious, worthless and prior art ridden patents one by one.

That will not happen because Google can't protect itself(i.e the Motorola it bought which loses billions every year by the way because of making crap phones), how can it protect its partners? It's about to get bitchslapped for trying to abuse FRAND standard patents on H.264 and WiFi for extortion.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/06/eu-rules-googles-motorola-abused-patents-in-seeking-injunction-against-apple
http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/26/4271432/does-anyone-know-why-google-bought-motorola
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/technology/07iht-google07.html?_r=0
http://www.zdnet.com/in-microsoft-patent-spat-ruling-hints-that-google-grossly-overpaid-for-motorola-7000014582/
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-29/motorola-buy-delivers-google-more-heartbreak-than-help.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-slapped-google-around-in-court-and-its-becoming-clear-google-overpaid-for-motorola-2013-4

Damn straight they did. And every communist lived in peace with their neighbors.

It's nice that people can still believe fairytales, but not so nice when they involve the "peaceful" nature of communism. There is a little history you left out, such as:

The Soviet suppression of the workers strike in East Germany in 1953, the Soviet invasion to put down the Hungarian revolution in 1956, the Soviet led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush the "Prague Spring - Socialism with a Human Face," and the Soviet invasion of communist Afghanistan.

The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

On December 27, 1979, under cover of an ongoing Soviet military buildup, heavily-armed elements of a Soviet airborne brigade were airlifted into Kabul, Afghanistan, to violently overthrow the regime of President Hafizollah Amin. Within hours after the beginning of this Trojan Horse-type operation, Soviet troops had overwhelmed the elite presidential guard, captured Amin, executed him along with several members of his family for crimes against the people and seized control of the capital.

Within days Soviet armor columns were fanning out across Afghani stan to occupy major population centers, airbases and strategic lines of com munication.

Uprising in East Germany, 1953 ; In Eastern Germany, 1953 Uprising Is Remembered
The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents
Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968

Added bonus: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

The Chinese-Soviet border war of 1969 very neary went nuclear:

The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict, 1969: U.S. Reactions and Diplomatic Maneuvers

A State Department memorandum of conversation, published here for the first time, recounts one of the more extraordinary moments in Cold War history--a KGB officer's query about the U.S. reaction to a hypothetical Soviet attack on Chinese nuclear weapons facilities.

USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969

The Soviet Union was on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against China in 1969 and only backed down after the US told Moscow such a move would start World War Three, according to a Chinese historian.

The extraordinary assertion, made in a publication sanctioned by China's ruling Communist Party, suggests that the world came perilously close to nuclear war just seven years after the Cuban missile crisis.

Liu Chenshan, the author of a series of articles that chronicle the five times China has faced a nuclear threat since 1949, wrote that the most serious threat came in 1969 at the height of a bitter border dispute between Moscow and Beijing that left more than one thousand people dead on both sides.

He said Soviet diplomats warned Washington of Moscow's plans "to wipe out the Chinese threat and get rid of this modern adventurer," with a nuclear strike, asking the US to remain neutral.

But, he says, Washington told Moscow the United States would not stand idly by but launch its own nuclear attack against the Soviet Union if it attacked China, loosing nuclear missiles at 130 Soviet cities. The threat worked, he added, and made Moscow think twice, while forcing the two countries to regulate their border dispute at the negotiating table

Wouldn't it be less ambiguous to say they cracked the system instead of hacked it? When will we show our respect to the guys who call themselves hackers for creating free operating system kernels?

You're completely incorrect about consumer behavior and market regulation, and your example of Nader is a fabulous example.

The Nader-inspired passenger safety craze is directly responsible for the horrendously low average MPG in the USA and all the attendant environmental and political problems. It's also responsible for increased pedestrian and cyclist fatalities (known as early as Pelzman's 1975 study) and may even make drivers less safe.

48 years after his book, despite all the tremendous advances in engineering and materials science, instead of the average vehicle on US roads being sub-1000 lbs and getting 200MPG (very feasible to do considerably better than this for 1-2 passenger cars, c.f. the decade-old VW 1L prototype), the average vehicle is >4000 lb and gets worse than 20MPG, little better than in 1965.

The reason is a curb weight arms race caused by our absurd safety standards. The main way to meet crash test standards when faced with heavy vehicles is to increase your vehicle's weight.

Passenger collision safety involves tradeoffs- among other things, tradeoffs with performance, efficiency, cost, and the safety of others on the road. Nader refused to recognize these tradeoffs. Our current safety laws ignore these tradeoffs, and even if they took them into account, overriding consumers' preferences regarding these tradeoffs will lead to inefficient market outcomes.

If someone wants to purchase a more efficient, less expensive vehicle, the government shouldn't stop them just because it does slightly less well in collision tests. Consumers are perfectly capable of rationally choosing how much they're willing to trade guarantees of their own safety for other desiderata and vice versa.

Regulating externalities, on the other hand, is often OK. Vehicle safety requirements should be based ONLY on the damage caused in collisions to other road users (other drivers, pedestrians, cyclists) and their property. Heavier vehicles perform WORSE in such tests; we might consider having a weight-based Pigovian vehicle tax to offset the safety and pollution externalities for those heavier cars we're still willing to allow on the roads.

Providing consumers with more information is a good idea. I'm fine with performing tests and requiring companies to provide prospective buyers with that information. But requiring disclosure without regulating/prohibiting the sale of the product still allows for what I think most would call a "truly free market."

If using MS's software may brick your neighbor's PC, go ahead and hold MS to the fire. If using MS's software may brick your own computer, require testing and a warning label. But the kind of guarantees the OP seems to want to require would override consumer preferences in a way that would cripple the software industry.

Responsibility takes weird turns when using Microsoft products.

You know this is a common misinterpretation, right?

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/17/nyregion/l-kill-the-lawyers-a-line-misinterpreted-599990.html

Basically the rebellion knows that lawyers maintain order in society and in order to throw it into chaos they need to get rid of the lawyers.

Also,

"The first thing we do," said the character in Shakespeare's Henry VI, is "kill all the lawyers." Contrary to popular belief, the proposal was not designed to restore sanity to commercial life. Rather, it was intended to eliminate those who might stand in the way of a contemplated revolution -- thus underscoring the important role that lawyers can play in society.

http://www.spectacle.org/797/finkel.html

It has been already revealed some time ago :

29C3 - Enemies of the State - William Binney about Bluffdale's capabilities

29C3 Panel: Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Drake, William Binney on whistleblowing and surveillance

The Program - Video - The New York Times
"The filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data."

Room 641A

NarusInsight - System specification and capabilities

NSA Spying - EFF

Where to start.

First of all, using the term 'assault weapon' or 'assault rifle' is a red flag. This term has been miss-used so much it has lost any meaning. The military doesn't consider the AR-15 a 'assault rifle' because it is only semi auto (i.e. does not have select fire). Some people consider anything scary looking an "Military style assault rifle", use term at your own risk.

Fortunately for all of us, you don't get to dictate what somebody can 'reasonably' have in their house. An AR15 is no more of an 'accident waiting to happen' then any other firearm. The AR15 is a perfectly acceptable home defense weapon, some times more then one bad guy shows up. According to police statistics, one in every three too four rounds hit (here is one of many links discussing it: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/nyregion/08nypd.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0). Despite what the movies tell you, it typically takes several shots to disable/kill. So, assuming two hits to disable (low according to statistics) + three 'bad guys' = 18 to 24 rounds expended. And these are numbers for people who are required to train and qualify with their weapons. I will gladly take my 30 round standard capacity mags, thank you! Personally, I do prefer a pistol for home defense. I like my .45 "military style assault pistol" for this purpose. It also has "assault clips", FTW!

Lets also not forget that they are many sporting and competetion uses for an AR15.

It also gladdens my heart that the AR15 is currently (and has for quite some time now) been selling in record numbers, by far larger numbers then any other single firearm. Magpul, which makes 30 round (standard capacity) magazines, is well over a million magazines on back order. Last I heard they estimated 3+ million AR15s in the hands of US citizens.

"...one possibility is you expect to fight the military, in which case you are hopelessly outgunned anyway..."
Not really a fan of history are you? Wars have been fought and won by a bunch of out-gunned untrained peasants for centuries.

"The second amendment does not say you have a right to buy the biggest gun ever made just so you can imagine something else was that big, I'm sure if they knew what an effective killing tool firearms would turn into they would've been a bit more restrictive even then."
Our founding fathers were smart men, I am sure (some of them being inventors and tinkerers themselves) that they knew that better weapons would be invented in short order. They didn't put any restrictions on the state of the art in 1787, why would they put any restrictions on future weapons? I am sure glad they didn't.

"The Constitution was never intended to be unalterable, that's why they created a process to allow changes to be made to it, it's only supposed to need a majority vote. And unlike the first amendment, that could realistically happen with the second."
Of course it can be changed, it is very very hard to change the constitution (by design). The US Senate cannot even pass a bill (with few restrictions), how do you expect an amendment (with a much larger % of yes votes) to pass? Pure fantasy.

Bun and bullet registry is a poor idea, for so many reasons. Canada tried it, spend 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars on it, they are now the process of dismantling it. Their own words: “The Harper Government has always been clear; by eliminating the wasteful and ineffective long-gun registry, we can instead focus our efforts on measures that actually tackle crime and make our streets and communities safe,”. It sounds like they still have a registry for handguns, I am curious how long that lasts.

Good day.

From what I've read, the legal argument against this being an illegal search is that the entire dataset isn't searched, it is stored. They store the communications. When they want access to the data on a particular person they get a search warrant to access the stored data. I don't agree with that, but that seems to be the theory.

Here is a short video on an NSA whistleblower about the Utah datacenter and the types of things they can do with that much data.

From the NY Times last Thursday, a fun article about VCs. It won't answer all (or maybe any) of your questions but it might give you a sense of what you're thinking of getting into.

Yeah, and kid$ like you have been $aying this $ince '98, too. *Yawn*

To be fair it must be pointed out that M$ ran an $18 billion loss in 1998. Subsequently they may have gone over to Enron-style accounting to shuffle the numbers. Now even with all the voodoo economics, M$ is running a loss. Things would be even more bleak without tricks like deferred sales.

So if it were up to just the numbers, they would have been long gone.

Rule of thumb for "anti-Zionists" - Watch them - too few can stop themselves from crossing the line into either effective or outright anti-Semitism.

The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews

Today, a sizable section of the European left has been reluctant to take a clear stand when anti-Zionism spills over into anti-Semitism. Beginning in the 1990s, many on the European left began to view the growing Muslim minorities in their countries as a new proletariat and the Palestinian cause as a recruiting mechanism. The issue of Palestine was particularly seductive for the children of immigrants, marooned between identities.

Capitalism was depicted as undermining a perfect Islamic society while cultural imperialism corrupted Islam. The tactic has a distinguished revolutionary pedigree. Indeed, the cry, “Long live Soviet power, long live the Shariah,” was heard in Central Asia during the 1920s after Lenin tried to cultivate Muslim nationalists in the Soviet East once his attempt to spread revolution to Europe had failed. But the question remains: why do today’s European socialists identify with Islamists whose worldview is light-years removed from their own? . . . more

The view of the Times is too timid - anti-Semitism is becoming a disease of the left.

Rule of thumb for "anti-Zionists" - Watch them - too few can stop themselves from crossing the line into either effective or outright anti-Semitism.

The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews

Today, a sizable section of the European left has been reluctant to take a clear stand when anti-Zionism spills over into anti-Semitism. Beginning in the 1990s, many on the European left began to view the growing Muslim minorities in their countries as a new proletariat and the Palestinian cause as a recruiting mechanism. The issue of Palestine was particularly seductive for the children of immigrants, marooned between identities.

Capitalism was depicted as undermining a perfect Islamic society while cultural imperialism corrupted Islam. The tactic has a distinguished revolutionary pedigree. Indeed, the cry, “Long live Soviet power, long live the Shariah,” was heard in Central Asia during the 1920s after Lenin tried to cultivate Muslim nationalists in the Soviet East once his attempt to spread revolution to Europe had failed. But the question remains: why do today’s European socialists identify with Islamists whose worldview is light-years removed from their own? . . . more

The view of the Times is too timid - anti-Semitism is becoming a disease of the left.

Yeah, because the Chinese have bases in countries all over the world...

The People's Republic of China, A.K.A. communist China, has a growing number of military bases and access to facilities around the world. The Chinese fleet has been participating in anti-piracy actions around Somalia, giving them experience in extended naval deployments. The Chinese navy is planning to build something like four aircraft carriers and is currently flying aircraft off their first one that they are bringing into operation now after learning much from the Brazilian navy. Chinese special forces have been training the military in Venezuela. The Chinese are active in Africa.

The Chinese have also been bullying many of their neighbors, laying claim to distant islands and extensive land areas. Why don't you ask the Indians what they think of China's behavior, they are forming several new airborne infantry units to help deal with the threat? Or the Japanese, who are suffering a growing number of incursions by Chinese aircraft and sea vessels? Of perhaps the Philippines, which is seeing Chinese territory grabs on their doorstep?

No, it's the Chinese who are spending themselves into oblivion on weapons of war... Oh, wait, that's us again.

US military spending has recently generally been between 4% to 5% of GDP, well below historic levels. The army and navy and rumps of what they were at the end of the Cold War. Spending on social welfare programs is several times the military budget and is continuing to grow, and will grow for decades to come. It is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, now joined by Obamacare which really starts kicking in this year, that will bankrupt the US, not the military spending.

I'm afraid you don't know what you are talking about there.

We spend more on our military than the next 13 nations combined

A large part of that is personnel costs. The US has an all volunteer military that pays its members a salary competitive with the civilian sector unlike many other major nations that use conscription to fill their armies. An American corporal in the Army or Marines makes about what a Chinese general makes per month. I'm sure you can figure the impact of that out. Same thing applies to weapons purchases. Maybe you've heard that Chinese engineering staff and factory labor is cheaper than American?

On the other hand pretty much all European countries allied with the United States spend less than they should by treaty goals. As a result they had a hard time with the intervention in Libya without American assistance.

If it makes you feel better the Chinese are upping their military budget by 10.7% this year.

(but we can't afford to educate our children... bright.)

The US throws large amounts of money at education. The problem isn't with how much money, but what it is spent on, like growing numbers of administrators. There are also social factors that come into play that the education budget itself can't fix. The teachers unions don't help much either.

You don't really have this right either.

I dunno, perhaps if we moved from offense to defense, these things wouldn't be issues?

If platitudes could solve things they wouldn't be issues either.

The US has huge institutionalized race problems.

Yep.

In an excellent primer, the Center for American Progress explains the stats behind the disparity:

        According to the latest data, which was collected from schools nationwide during the 2009-2010 academic year, black students were three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white classmates. What’s more, African Americans made up 46 percent of those students who were suspended more than once. During the 2009-2010 school year, 39 percent of all expulsions were of black students (in Polk county, FL that would be 3 times the percentage of the black population) even though they represented only 18 percent of enrolled students at sampled schools. These racial disparities in suspension and expulsion rates cannot be explained, as some contend, by socioeconomic status or by higher rates of misbehavior among students of color. Multiple studies confirm that students of color receive harsher consequences than their white peers for committing the same offenses.

Smoke that you SlashDotterers

The US has huge institutionalized race problems.

Yep.

In an excellent primer, the Center for American Progress explains the stats behind the disparity:

        According to the latest data, which was collected from schools nationwide during the 2009-2010 academic year, black students were three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white classmates. What’s more, African Americans made up 46 percent of those students who were suspended more than once. During the 2009-2010 school year, 39 percent of all expulsions were of black students (in Polk county, FL that would be 3 times the percentage of the black population) even though they represented only 18 percent of enrolled students at sampled schools. These racial disparities in suspension and expulsion rates cannot be explained, as some contend, by socioeconomic status or by higher rates of misbehavior among students of color. Multiple studies confirm that students of color receive harsher consequences than their white peers for committing the same offenses.

Smoke that you SlashDotterers

The US has huge institutionalized race problems.

Yep.

In an excellent primer, the Center for American Progress explains the stats behind the disparity:

        According to the latest data, which was collected from schools nationwide during the 2009-2010 academic year, black students were three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white classmates. What’s more, African Americans made up 46 percent of those students who were suspended more than once. During the 2009-2010 school year, 39 percent of all expulsions were of black students (in Polk county, FL that would be 3 times the percentage of the black population) even though they represented only 18 percent of enrolled students at sampled schools. These racial disparities in suspension and expulsion rates cannot be explained, as some contend, by socioeconomic status or by higher rates of misbehavior among students of color. Multiple studies confirm that students of color receive harsher consequences than their white peers for committing the same offenses.

Smoke that you SlashDotterers

Pulverized horse poop is orders of magnitude worse than anything that can come out of a car.

[citation needed]

You are either an idiot or a troll. Burning gasoline produces large quantities of very fine soot which are a major carcinogen. Also, unburned gasoline comes out of the tailpipe of every gasoline car at startup, and that is much worse than anything which can come out of a horse.

Here is one citation

Here is another

Perhaps you prefer the new york times

Other sources are easy to find

Like it or not, the car was the solution for one of the worst pollution problems in cities.

The interesting thing, is that it turns out that not only is it discrimination against men as parents, but it is discrimination against women as professionals. The more time men are allowed to take off when they have kids, the less women fall behind them in the rat race.

The New York Times had a good article several years ago about this, explaining why Sweden switched to a system where the two parents get a combined total of 13 months of paid leave during the first 8 years of a child's life. By not allowing any one parent to take more than 9 of those months, they essentially encourage men to take a good portion of that leave and prevent women from taking too much.

Alas, I can only dream of that -- I'll take off a total of 8 weeks of unpaid leave this year for my child while he's under the age of one, since I won't be allowed to in later years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-sweden.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=all

This is in no small part because the South is the only part of the country that really has black people everywhere. Look at this or this (for the second one, you'll need to select View More Maps and choose Black Population). Outside the South, black people live in cities. In the South, they live in small towns, in rural areas, and yes, in cities, but there's just a lot more interaction between whites and blacks, and they are inhabiting distinct cultures (if you don't believe me, compare the Real Housewives of Atlanta to those of anywhere else - maybe Orange County.

Humans are wired to be racist the same way we're wired to be tribal - it takes a sustained, conscious effort to overcome. The Czechs and the Slovaks decided to part ways, and they are so ethnically similar that they speak mutually intelligible languages. The fact that we have taken an incredibly toxic environment of mutual distrust and hatred and turned it into a mere dozen instances of "nigger" in the span of fifty years is an incredible accomplishment. Racism is a lot less common in the North, but so are the actual black people with whom a white person might have a negative interaction that would serve to justify (in their mind) a racist belief.

In Europe it's pretty much Vodafone and T-Mobile which also makes the EU a duopoly. There was a recent auction in the Netherlands that turned into an all out bidding war which actually sent the stocks of the telcos there down sharply. The price of the auction is just passed down to consumers through prices increases, reduction of services, or added fees. So while the treasury may lose $12 billion that amount wont be passed on the consumer so it's a wash. It's probably better for everyone to limit AT&T and Verizon and make sure there's more competition.

"No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems - of which getting elected and re-elected are number and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind." -- Thomas Sowell

With that in mind: "President Obama is expected on Wednesday to nominate Tom Wheeler, a venture capital investor and fund-raiser in Mr. Obama’s presidential campaigns, as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, two administration officials said Tuesday."

Getting an agency chairmanship is probably quite an expensive proposition, but ultimately very, very good for the bank account. More expensive than an ambassadorship.

People's perceptions of how good they are at mental activities generally rely on complete ignorance about how the brain actually works. And they nearly always overestimate their own abilities.

For example, the fact that small changes in physical sensation can alter how you react to a stranger.

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/heart-warming-news-on-coffee/?ei=5070&emc=eta1

And then there's the MRI scans showing that decisions are largely made before we're aware of them:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision

Correlations don't prove much, especially causality. There are other major variables here including the Varroa destructor, climate change, bee nutrition issues and the fact that there are places using neonicitinoids (say Australia) that aren't suffering from bee colony declines.

France (for 10 years), Italy and Germany have already tried various bans on neonicitinoids and didn't find bee population improvements.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22339191

It's an unsettled scientific problem.

âoeIf you want those perfect European apples, with no marks or bugs on them, Iâ(TM)m afraid farmers will have to spray something,â Mr. Neumann said, âoeand many of the older pesticides are even worse than the neonicotinoids.â

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/business/global/hoping-to-save-bees-europe-to-vote-on-pesticide-ban.html?pagewanted=all

This chart indicates productivity has increased, but the gains have gone to the 1% at the top:

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html?ref=sunday

Which is basically that everyone bought into the myth that the only person who matters is the person at the top. They demand it, we give it to them. Non-executive workers get told that they have no value, can be replaced by foreigners, should work longer/smarter/harder - and cheaper. And do.

This chart indicates productivity has increased, but the gains have gone to the 1% at the top:

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html?ref=sunday

Weather and research satellites are going to be having trouble from budget shortfalls even without considering orbital debris problems.

Thats the culprit. A bad meme that goes deep into our culture. Somewhat (tales, histories, songs, movies that we learn since childhood) we expect that the people that behave well get successful, and the evil ones get punished. But when is becoming too evident that it don't happen at all (bankers, corporations, and politicians in general, get richer, or even get honored for what they did), you only hope against depression is to believe that they will go to hell as they will never be punished here.

You are now safe from the threat we created for you.

But still not safe.

America will gladly take the tattered bits of the constitution and pulp them over what is realistically a tiny threat. But when lax zoning laws coupled with almost zero oversight (e.g. holding 1350x as much ammonium nitrate onsite and not reporting it or being inspected) lead to an industrial disaster (*) in which more people were injured and killed almost concurrently with Boston .... the owners might face some kind lawsuit, but you don't hear the public clambering for a police state nor do you hear politicians gladly acquiescing.

Or pick any random refinery explosion, which often kill workers and are often due to aged equipment not being replaced (**).

Now, I don't think industrial accidents should warrant pulping the constitution, but the response we take in such instances should at least be instructive -- there is the potential for criminal and civil charges all of which will take place in the context of a trial conducted under the normal rules of evidence and procedure pertinent to the type of proceeding.

But when many fewer people are hurt or injured by a bomb, we go on a self-destructive freeforall.

(*) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/us/texas-fertilizer-plant-fell-through-cracks-of-regulatory-oversight.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
(**) http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=9717

Your little anecdote sounds like it's just an example of someone who is basically criminally negligent with regards to gun safety. For starters, you should never have a round chambered in a stored gun. You shouldn't even be storing a gun loaded, unless it's specifically for self-defense purposes. Second, you shouldn't be having a 5-year-old handling a gun like a shotgun at all, and certainly not if that gun is loaded. Third, it's never too early to start training kids about gun safety, especially if you have firearms around the house. But you don't start with true firearms at that age, you start with airguns.

Now that being said, it's always possible that the stupid gun owner thought he emptied the gun before he stored it, but accidentally left a round in the chamber. Fatal accidents happen every day, and they don't require firearms.
http://hollywoodlife.com/2012/04/03/boy-drowns-washing-machine/
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/16/nyregion/girl-dies-from-neck-injury-after-fall-down-stairs-at-school.html

I don't know, he claimed to be cash broke during a divorce 3 years ago. Maybe coughing up $50K is harder than you would think.

The Defense Department's proposed $526.6 billion base budget is a reduction of $3.9 billion, or 0.7 percent, from the enacted budget for 2012.
,,,
The administration's proposed budget provides $8.2 billion for the E.P.A., a decrease of $296 million, or 3.5 percent, from current spending.
...
The home health co-payments and premium surcharges would raise $3.6 billion from 2017 to 2023

Health Care and Military Spending Bear the Brunt of Proposed Cuts

This is all a big brouhaha over nothing. The Fifth Amendment has a remaining lifespan measured in years, not decades. There was already a call to give up on the Constitution, naming the document "downright evil". Now we have Bloomberg saying that the Boston bombing will have to change the way we 'interpret' the Constitution.

Well, isn't this the thing that the gun-nuts say that they need the guns for? Let's see if anyone of the have the balls to stand up against the government or if they will applaud the removal of freedom and privacy on the way to a police state.

"The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry," Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. "But we live in a complex world where you're going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change. Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. What we cant do is let the protection get in the way of us enjoying our freedoms. You still want to let people practice their religion, no matter what that religion is. And I think one of the great dangers here is going and categorizing anybody from one religion as a terrorist. That's not true ... That would let the terrorists win. That's what they want us to do."

Encryption keys? It's arguing about the wrong topic. These silly arguments about the Fifth Amendment will soon be about as relevant to our lives as the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Actually, that isn't a bad point at all.

The problem with it is that the folks who insisted on cutting the taxes that affect "wealth" (the capital gains tax and the inheritance taxes), and have even been trying to elimnate them entirely, are in fact Republicans. The rich coastal folks who benifit from those cuts? They are mostly in fact Republicans (among the few folks in those parts of the country who are Republicans). However, they bankroll the Republican Party in the rest of the country.

Its good that you've recognized the problem. You even have half the target right. However, those rich folks behind this are Republicans. If you aren't going to try to stop them, you should really quit doing their work for them.

Europe tends to have a more easy going attitude towards student protest than the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

It's really quite astonishing that you would point to that incident, for more than one reason.

It is beyond ludicrous and well into disingenuous to try depicting the events at Kent State as a typical response to student protests on campuses in the United States. In 1980 there were about 3,200 colleges in the US, and now there are about 4,500. Across all those years at all those schools probably all of them have seen protests of one sort or another: the Viet Nam war, the draft, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, nuclear winter, Pershing and Tomahawk missiles in Europe, the Iraq War, tuition hikes, unpopular speakers on campus, and many other issues. And yet you can point to one mass shooting by authorities on one day, producing a total of four dead, and yet that is somehow representative of the American experience in regards to protests by students? No, it isn't, not at all.

Then there is your false assertion that Europe is more easy going towards student protest. Really? There are a few cases that pop up to show Europe can be pretty harsh - certainly harsher than the United States. Say what you will about the United States, at least student protests there haven't resulted in mass arrests and a pogrom driving 20,000 Jews out of the country (Many Europeans still have a problem with Jews. ), or the use of an Army tank battalion and active snipers against a student occupation - killing 24.

Athens Polytechnic Uprising, Greece, 1973

When their strike on November 14, 1973 elicited no response, students from Athens Polytechnic barricaded themselves inside the university, . . .

. . . They paid a high price. In the morning of November 17, 25 tanks rolled onto the streets and set themselves up in front of the University. Students requested permission to evacuate, but before the allotted time was up, one of the tanks crashed right through the front gates.

Others tried to flee and were taken out by nervous military snipers on the rooftops. The death toll came to at least 24, with hundreds more suffering injuries, and as many as 1,000 people were arrested. . .

1968, Warsaw Poland

Student protests result in thousands of arrests and ultimately in an antisemitic campaign by the government that drove 20,000 Jews from Poland.

May 1968 Protests, France

On May 3, 1968, a student protest at the Sorbonne University nearly sparked a revolution. Protesting against the closure of the University of Paris at Nanterre and the planned expulsion of a number of Nanterre students, Sorbonne University students took to the streets en masse. . .

Over a period of several days, hundreds of students battled it out with police in Parisâ(TM)s Latin Quarter, setting up barricades, throwing rocks and braving tear gas. Discontentment with the political and economic conditions in France boiled to the surface, and what started out as a few student protests escalated into a month and a half of utter chaos, during which several people died and hundreds were injured.

There are certainly other events that could be mentioned.

Finally, the Wikipedia article doesn't really do justice to some imporant issues about Kent State.

New light shed o

, I don't even want to imagine what would have occured had the bailouts not been given.

- nothing, banks weren't even compromised.

Crowd sourcing is only good at some very important tasks, but was truly terrible and libelous in an information vacuum. Reddit deserves some credit for Thursday night successes of the forum, but ultimately old fashioned police work was key in this specific case.

The "witch hunt" summary is accurate for the Monday to Thursday 5PM time, when so much was said that was unprovable, and much more difficult to disprove, like the NY Post photos of innocent people accused of being the terrorists, taking too many days to be seen as extremely wrong.

FBI OFFICIAL PHOTOS
After the FBI released Official Suspect photos at about 5PM Thursday, April 18, 2013, Reddit (or rather Subreddit "findbostonbombers") had some commenters who were actually very useful, and had contributions which were well substantial and well ahead of the media.

DAVID GREEN PHOTO
The David Green photo from the corner of Fairfield Street and Boylston Street just after the bombing was there, less than 2 hours after the FBI official suspect photo release, and more than 3 hours before it was on NY Times 11:14 PM published website article, and apparently also the CNN Piers Morgan interview of David Green the same late night. The Monday photo showed Suspect #2, with the white hat, with the smoke from both bombs visible, walking around the corner of Fairfield Street directly toward MIT campus, foreshadowing events late Thursday night, including the murder of the MIT police officer.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/new-higher-resolution-image-of-boston-marathon-suspect-emerges/

SUSPECT HAT IDENTIFICATION
The crowd sourcing found the official web catalog photos of both hats make/model/catalog-photos used by the terrorists. This is a quickly verifiable task, that the subreddit did very well. I suspect that all such commodity product identifications can be done fastest with most accuracy, by a large crowd that cares, such as was the case on Reddit that night. Reddit found links to the official web catalog photos of these hats, under ideal circumstances.

This is not the first time either, a prior case was solved by a sharped eyed reddit user identified a Cadillac 1990 head light from a crime scene photo, helping resolve that case.

The hat ID was potentially extremely useful for several reasons; More witnesses could be asked about the clear photos of the hats, helping the FBI. Also, somewhat technical, but the FBI could use computational clarifying techniques, using these identified and purchasable hats, to calculate a clearer image from fuzzy source photos of the faces of the Subjects in the photos. Admittedly these computer image refinement techniques are more familiar to astronomers than crime fighting, more like the CSI type TV shows than real life law enforcement, but it would be possible.

OTHER PHOTOS ON REDDIT AFTER 5PM THURSDAY
At least two other photos of the official FBI Suspects, not then available, were found and shared on Reddit. I have not seen either of these photos in the press.

Photo link: before the bombing possibly Suspect #1 black hat from behind, headed east on Boylston from about the Starbucks, (next to her ring). Less likely but possibly Suspect #2 far left (under her elbow).
http://imgur.com/a/34wtj

Photos link: Potentially a very damning photo, possibly Suspect #2, with the backwards white cap on, a back pack on ground, and possible 8 year old victim still alive. (the younger Tsarnaev brother is accused of being Suspect #2), a back pack on the ground, behind possibly the 8 year old bombing victim who was killed by a bomb blast.
http://imgur.com/a/fEZhX

DETAIL FROM IMAGES
Although guessing who the terrorists were was something that Reddit utterly failed at, libeling many people Monday to Thursday 5PM, once the FBI re

A capitalist economy partly guards against oversupply. However, oversupply has resulted directly from Chinese policies: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/business/global/glut-of-solar-panels-is-a-new-test-for-china.html

Now both American and Chinese solar companies are failing. Further private investment in this oversupplied economy seems unwise; there is a distaste for subsidizing failed business models in the US (at least where green tech is concerned). Perhaps university research is the best alternative investment.

China is a wonderfully clean and healthy place, as long as you don't breathe.

That said, airlines are still private businesses serving the public

And recipients of massive amounts of public largess - both directly in the form of decades of bailouts and indirectly in the form of a million government services like pension take overs. At best they are pseudo-private organizations so in terms of being able to discriminate against customers I say they need to be held to the same standard as the federal government rather private business.

Two problems here.

(1) The article has nothing to do with Fukushima or TEPCO. It's about someone who sent anonymous death threats.

(2) Sherman and Mangano, the authors of the paper you linked to an article about, are kooks. Just google on their names together, and you'll find plenty of info discrediting their claims, e.g.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/12/20/researchers-trumpet-another-flawed-fukushima-death-study/

(3) The Open Journal of Pediatrics appears to be one of the many open-access journals these days that have no standards for publication. See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudo-academia.html for more about these journals. I support the concept of open-access journals, but many of them are junk journals.

(4) Sherman and Mangano's junk science didn't get blocked by evil governments or evil corporations. They put it on the internet and nobody interfered with them.

As an added bonus, "The United States attorney for the district of Massachusetts, Carmen Ortiz, said at the news conference that the authorities had invoked a public safety exception and delayed reading the Miranda warning to the arrested suspect." Whee. I guess the Boat Man* will become Swartz's ferry man too...

*Hmm. Has Mega Man had a Boat Man to fight yet?

Higher premiums. Check. Isn't some of the super high tax on tobacco usually justified by health care cost as well?
Further: this and this.

Well, theoretically if you start teaching it in the schools at an early age, within a generation the majority of the populace will have went through the course, so you should have a lot fewer incidents like those you mention.

Another potential upside would be that, if the training were mandatory, perhaps future police officers would develop a higher accuracy rate than bad guys in action films.

Restore the vote by eliminating gerrymandering.

Restore the courts by eliminating plea bargains by prosecutors. (Defendants can still plead guilty and ask for mercy from the court, not from the prosecutors.)

Restore accountability in government by reducing government immunity from lawsuits. Those who enforce the law should not be immune from it. Police officers who lie under oath should be jailed. Destruction of evidence, including failure to collect exculpatory evidence, and the failure of prosecutors to reveal potentially exculpatory evidence as required by the Constitution, should also not be prevented by governmental immunity and should result in prison time for any detectives and prosecutors involved.

He's likely a Sunni muslim, but it's quite possible that isn't really a factor here

Source: "The older brother left a record on YouTube of his favorite clips, which included Russian rap videos, as well as testimonial from a young ethnic Russian man titled "How I accepted Islam and became a Shiite"

The problem of hiring female engineers happens because there are very few female applicants. I've interviewed one female applicant, ever, in 20 years as an engineer. ONE. I've worked for a number of engineering companies, small and large and I can count on ONE HAND the number of female engineering co-workers I have had, out of hundreds of engineers. They were all good at their jobs. I wouldn't hesitate to hire a woman engineer, if there was one available.

My sister is an engineer and my niece is in engineering school. They are the only two female engineers in my whole extended family, but there are dozens of male engineers, scientists and programmers.

I don't know why, but women, at least in the USA, almost universally lack interest in being engineers. No hiring policy can change that.

What's interesting is that toys like Lego aren't marketed to girls, at least not in the same way they're marketed to boys. When they are pitched to girls, the Lego sets are dumbed down things for making food or hanging out with friends -- Not building cool science and engineering stuff. Oh, I remember the old Lego commercials that had boys and girls playing together building houses and stuff... But nowadays the marketing is totally gender specific: Boys can build and engineer whatever they want with the cool toys -- set their minds free -- but girls can make one exact coffee house or daycare playset, and they don't get the same classic Lego people, girls get bigger, curvier, female avatars.

Not ONE single ten year old boy I've ever met was interested in dollhouses or fake babies that cry and wet themselves, yet some had actual baby siblings to help take care of and are keenly interested in helping out raising a real child. Some men become fathers. Yet we don't market baby raising shit to them as children, and men are stereotyped as being less nurturing than women (whether they actually are or not)... Guess why? You think popping a kid out makes you good at raising it? Hell no, it doesn't. My ex didn't even want to feed the little sucker, and HER TITS were the things making the milk -- She wouldn't even get out of bed or wake up so I just had to figure out how to breast feed a baby with a sleeping woman's breasts. How's that for gender roles? At the minimum we're teaching a bunch of needless bullshit to little girls and they're missing out on mind expanding activities, but IMO the guys are probably missing out on learning a bit of nurturing too -- And, it's for the same reason that there are less women engineers.

Men and women have the same brain structures. Hell, they have the same bodies initially while growing. That's why men have nonfunctional nipples. They have different hormone levels, but the minds aren't vastly different. My mom was in a slide-rule club in high-school. There are plenty of girls in the programming game-jams I attend, as well as the maker spaces & hacker spaces around town. They're not being dragged there unwillingly, they're having fun, and they're as good as anyone else at doing the same stuff. I'm not sure where this "girls hate math and science" BS comes from, but women don't automatically take a disinterest in arbitrary things, nor do men or women automatically like any thing as a general rule.

I mean, Pink used to be a masculine color.

"When colors were first introduced to the nursery in the early part of the 20th century, pink was considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, was thought to be dainty."

It's just as arbitrary decision to label a color as gender identifying as it is to do so with fields of work, yet folks do it all the time... Still, little girls "like" pink, and more little boys grow into engineers. Marketing is why little girls like pink stu

Yes except that's a complete lie given that there were a number of bombings that resulted in deaths and injuries where no warnings were given.

.

There were some. As far as I can remember these were aimed at military targets or other paramilitary groups. As I said the IRA were a nasty bunch, they certainly did not try to avoid random casualties when doing this. On occasions they even apologised when there were no warnings, claiming that timers malfunctioned. Were they terrorist? Yes. Was their aim to kill and amim at random? No - but they didn't mind if that was a secondary attack. I'm certainly not saying that this is in any way good, but it is a way to distinguish Muzzies attacks.

Don't try and pretend there's any difference simply because you're racist, terrorists are terrorists.

Really? What race am I discriminating against? What race am I? Go on tell