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Nice edgy comment, but what evidence do you have that ICANN was paid off?

Can you still call it "getting paid off" when the bribery is part of a contract?

The Best Internet Addresses Will Cost a Cool .Million

If teeth is a cosmetic product, then it is going to work in EU - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/business/global/eu-to-ban-cosmetics-with-animal-tested-ingredients.html . But unfortunately, it is not cosmetic except for insurance purposes. So the mice will have to endure this humans digging for tooth.

Ugly George?

[...] and any economist will tell you its the used car market that seriously hurts our fossil fuel numbers, currently the USA averages 14MPG and that is because of all the poor folks in used cars on the road.

Where do you get your numbers from?
I found a NY Times article that said this:
"The average on-road fuel economy of all vehicles in 1923 was 14 m.p.g., the report said, compared with 17.4 m.p.g. as recently as 2008."

Now, the only reason for low fuel economy averages are large trucks/SUVs.
They drag the averages down for everyone, though the new 6-cylinder models have lessened that effect.

> It's the obnoxious, intrusive and privacy-stealing
> ads that are the problem.

Which is to say, most of them. :-)

My rationale for blocking ads: Most ads come from ad networks. These networks can be hacked to serve malicious ads (or maybe people just pay for malicious ads and they don't get caught by QC -- don't know, don't care.) The fucking New York Times fell victim to this so it's not a minor problem. I block ads as a security measure.

They hide anything and everything that might threaten their place in power.

And this is distinctive from America how? In America, the State Secrets Doctrine has its roots in a wrongful death suit by the widows of some RCA engineers who were working for the US Air Force when they died in a plane crash in 1948. During discovery, the widows sought the accident report. The Air Force said that it contained information vital to national security and would not turn it over. Eventually, the case got to the Supreme Court, and without actually looking at the document, ruled that it could be kept secret. 40 some years later, it was declassified. It contained nothing in it beyond what was publicly known about the project, but it also revealed that the Air Force had negligently failed to install manufacturer recommended heat shields in the engines, among other issues with the plane, and that the engines caught fire leading to the crash.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/383/origin-story?act=2#play

So you tell me, is our State Secrets doctrine, the one that Obama has used to prevent people from suing for unlawful detention, unlawful torture, unlawful wiretapping, and unlawful execution, based in anything but an attempt to avoid embarrassment and liability? How is it that we are morally superior to the Chinese government on this issue?

Examples:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/us/10torture.html?_r=0
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/10/obama-administration-invokes-state-secrets-privilegeagain/
http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0811/Obama_admin_asserts_state_secrets_privilege_to_dismiss_Muslims_suit.html
http://www.salon.com/2010/09/25/secrecy_7/

I think it's fair to say that Yale's research lead on that project, Charles Morgan III, may not be what we call a 'quick study' or a 'good learner from experience'...

His research specialty is stress and PTSD, so he has worked with the SERE program for quite a while. Back in 2007 he was oh-so-horribly-shocked to discover that we were using methods we had previously associated with the forces of commie aggression. Now, in 2013, he is seeking “someone they can’t necessarily identify with” in order to provide better practice for special forces interrogators? Is this guy the clueless optimist that keeps hopeful nigerian scammers clogging up our inboxes year after year?

You may have heard the aphorism: The plural of anecdote is not data. .

You know what they say - "Aphorism is better than none." This is more than just random observation, though, For example this NY Times article says that the percentage of kids who walk to school was 41% in 1969 and is 13% in 2001. The main reason given is fear of child abduction, even though that is rare, and getting more so.

Kids who live far enough north will have to walk to school in the dark no matter what happens to daylight savings time. Kids are not gremlins, they can be fed/bathed after dark or before light.

Additionally, pensions funds are typically invested in private institutions as well. What do you think CALPERS does with all of that money they collect - just sit on their hands? They invest pretty much every dime they collect. So in effect, the government is *already* investing in private institutions.

Of course, that doesn't seem to protect them from rapacious private institutions any more than it does us: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/business/21street.html?_r=0

So yeah, everyone should get converted to 401(k)s (or 403s) in place of pensions.

I'd rather have something like a beefed up Social Security. It's clear that putting money into banks isn't a good idea; they're crooks. And businesses don't want to be involved; it's a headache for them, and they're crooks.

So, as with health care, let it be a government function, so that maybe we can try to watch out for one another (at least there's a little bit more we can do about the crooks), and run it with a largely pay as you go system.

Immunity, unless they stop being prostitutes, then they would get it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/03/us/a-new-aids-mystery-prostitutes-who-have-remained-immune.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1539443/

I couldn't find any link indicating anyone has trued to get copyright protection on their genes.

What is an emergency?
What is combat?

As examples of this administration's loose practices with the dictionary, consider the following:

This administration defines militant to be any boy or man killed by a drone, irrespective of the dead's actual beliefs.
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/

This administration claimed that the Libyan war was not a war to avoid getting Congressional approval.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16powers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

So exactly how is this administration going to define "emergency" and "combat?" We already have a hint from the leaked memo that "imminent" (*) does get its ordinary dictionary definition. If the same is true of the other terms, Holder's reassurance amounts to nothing but empty words to make the discussion go away.

(*) http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/04/16843014-justice-department-memo-reveals-legal-case-for-drone-strikes-on-americans?lite

From the memo: "The condition that an operational leader present an 'imminent' threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,"

What we get for our money: U.S. life expectancy is the lowest of any first world country (40th) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy ditto for U.S. infant mortality rates (34th) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate The U.S. is number 1 in health care spending as a percentage of gdp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_(PPP)_per_capita One of several reasons for the high cost of U.S. health care is that the U.S. pays it's doctors more as a percentage of GDP than any other country http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/how-much-do-doctors-in-other-countries-make/ Basically, we get crap but we pay through the nose. Unfortunately we may need societal failure to change anything, bring on the guillotines!

The U.S. has already formally requested folks stay at least 75 meters (246 ft) from the site.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/science/space/a-push-for-historic-preservation-on-the-moon.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranquility_Base

If you recall, Google News got a judgement against it for exactly that in Europe. Right now Europeans are planning to charge Google for using snippets from online sources. This whole issue is far from being settled.

Ssshhhh they're listening. Disneyland is after all a direct competitor to NK's reputation as a world class resort for 1st world tourists. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/world/asia/04nkorea.html?pagewanted=all

Many think they have the same agenda anyway lol. Disney and NK that is...

The propsal to ban pornography already passed in 1997, according to the first link in the summary.

Pornography is the "canary in the coal mine" for Internet rights (freedom of expression, right to privacy, international commerce, et al). If/when conditions change in a way that becomes hazardous to those rights, pornography will die first. And when it does, it's a sign that those rights are in danger.

Interestingly enough, after 75 years of regular use Britain banned the use of canaries in coal mines in 1986 because it had digital tools that could detect the threat of carbon monoxide. However, we have yet to devise a comparable "digital tool" that can detect threats to Internet rights, despite thousands of years of regular use. Therefore, regardless of an individual's personal feelings about pornography, it must stay because there are more important things at stake.

The statement said North Korea "strongly warns the U.N. Security Council not to make another big blunder like the one in the past when it earned the inveterate grudge of the Korean nation by acting as a war servant for the U.S. in 1950."

It's their standard MO and I hope it doesn't affect the UN's resolution. Another quote from North Korea:

"Since the United States is about to ignite a nuclear war, we will be exercising our right to a preemptive nuclear attack against the headquarters of the aggressor in order to protect our supreme interest," said the statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

More details from reuters on what the new sanctions mean as well as South Korea's push back.

And I'm pretty much done with any Slashdot discussion on this since the apologists and "MAD is good" folks have been mighty thick on these past few news stories. We have entered into the era of "Hey everybody, we have nuclear weapons now do what we say or we will nuke you!" Like a teenage gang member who found his first handgun ...

It's redditors fault. They're such dickhead hipster fucks that he killed himself out of grief at what they turned his beloved site into

http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/19pwgc/i_dont_tip/c8qbpec

Then upvote it. then shut the fuck up, cunt.

I'm getting damn sick of people saying "this comment is best" or "I came here to say this" to try to karma whore. get fucked. No one gives a shit who said it, stop trying to jump on the upvotes train by pretending you came up with the exact same clever thing. Upvote what the other person said and get over it.

This entire website and it's stupid memetic "[FIXED]" posts and the "I see your X and raise you Y," are fucking retarded. Not to mention the whole fuckload of stupid shit where people post this "faith in humanity restored" hippie-dip-bleeding-heart bull shit. This isn't Facebook, I come here to read interesting content, not sit through endless fuckhead attention whores posting "LIKE IF YOU CARE ABOUT CANCER, IF YOU DON'T LIKE I'LL COMMIT SUICIDE" go fucking commit suicide then. Stupid bunch of whiny teenage girls cutting themselves on tumblr, hit an artery and bleed to death. No one will give a shit.

Goddamn it fat people and whiny teenage girls and stupid "feels" people are ruining this goddamn website. People upvote total cunt shit, inane bullshit inspirational posts and whatever other bullshit they can find, including ass-tarded memes. AskReddit has begun to circle, Funny has turned into "cute pictures of mushrooms that look like smiley faces that no one gives a dead horse's last shit about", and politics is 1,000,000 users sucking Barack Obama's dick and making fun of Repubicans. Yeah we get the point. What a bunch of dumbass cunts. or dumb ass-cunts. I really don't care. Romney and Obama were both shit.

No wonder the guy who invented this website shot himself, he had to watch his dream overrun and destroyed by 5 million whiny left-wing-eurofags (oh dont even get me started on the "merica" bullshit. you cunts think we're all fat? cool story, have fun sucking your uppity pussies and running out of money because you can't compete in the global economy anymore). I don't blame him in the least; spending time on this website makes me want to commit suicide too. The stupid upvotes-suck-my-circlejerk-ass-liberal-cunt-woman-feminazi-friendzone-cute-bullshit-sympathy-emo-vagina-dickass-gore posts need to fucking STOP. I believe in free speech but honestly I wish this website would be taken down by the government. You're all fucking abominations to society.

It's all true too. It reminds me of Weev's quote on bloggers

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

I first met Weev in an online chat room that I visited while staying at Fortuny's house. "I hack, I ruin, I make piles of money," he boasted. "I make people afraid for their lives." On the phone that night, Weev displayed a misanthropy far harsher than Fortuny's. "Trolling is basically Internet eugenics," he said, his voice pitching up like a jet engine on the runway. "I want everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed. Blogging gives the illusion of participation to a bunch of retards. . . . We need to put these people in the oven!"

(Someone else's) Programming Will Make You a Better Doctor

Taubes on Salt - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/we-only-think-we-know-the-truth-about-salt.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

While, back then, the evidence merely failed to demonstrate that salt was harmful, the evidence from studies published over the past two years actually suggests that restricting how much salt we eat can increase our likelihood of dying prematurely. Put simply, the possibility has been raised that if we were to eat as little salt as the U.S.D.A. and the C.D.C. recommend, weâ(TM)d be harming rather than helping ourselves.

I see your story and raise you a survey. And another, from closer to the same time period as your story.

And then some a little bit more up to date.

What about when the opposite happens; when the majority of state voters decide to not allow same sex marriage but the unelected judiciary orders it allowed anyway? Is that a failure of democracy?

Well, more Americans favour gay marriage than oppose it. And one of the jobs of the judiciary is to throw out unconstitutional laws. I'm pretty sure the USA constitution has words to the effect that all people are equal.

Are you sure about that?

People that vote "Present" on controversial issues to avoid taking a potentially unpopular stand should be melted.

Hang on there's a couple of guys in dark suits and mirror shades at the door. I better go and see what they want

There's an entire business model based on operating a business with no boss -- it's called a worker cooperative. As a founder and member of one, and a friend of dozens more, I'm here to say that it works.

The existence of one bossless model makes it easy to believe that others could exist. The presence of an authority figure, or of any kind of hierarchy, is not a requirement for business success. This isn't speculation -- there's proof in black and white.

WW I was based on the assassination of a single individual.

Not to mention the war for Jenkins's ear, when England went to war because a Spanish captain was accused of cutting off the ear of an English captain something like a decade earlier...

Or the Napoleonic wars, which destroyed several countries in the name of bringing freedom to people living under dictatorships...

Or al-Qaeda's war in Mali, which Europe financed (second source)...

Or the ongoing war against the Jews, which Europe is funding (as is the US)....

Europeans might say that it's not really war if they are paying someone else to fight a war in another country outside of Europe, but that does not explain Europe's support for the war against the Serbs in Yugoslavia, in which NATO helpfully bombed the forces of secular Yugoslavia -- including those of the liberal Muslim co-governor of Bosnia -- on behalf of an alliance of Croatia's Nazi party and a Muslim force organized by Osama bin Laden... and then they did it again in Kosovo, which had been majority-Serb since medieval times and is now down to about 10% Serb due to the war.

Europe is far from innocent, including modern Europe.

You're welcome. Thanks for the kind words. I appreciate the time you gave to reading what I wrote and responding about it.

BTW, I'm sure some part of it is indeed bullshit -- just not sure which parts or I would fix them. :-) See:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/researcher-responds-to-arguments-over-his-theory-of-arguing/
"The main idea of the "argumentative theory of reasoning," put forward by Dan Sperber and myself is that the function of human reasoning -- why it evolved -- is to improve communication by allowing people to debate with each other: to produce and evaluate arguments during a discussion. This contrasts with the standard view of reasoning -- apparently shared by quite a few of the readers -- that reasoning evolved in order to further individual reasoning: to make better decisions, to plan ahead, to get better beliefs, etc. We have gathered a lot of evidence in support of our theory. The interested reader may enjoy a short summary, and the bravest may read the main academic article (use the "One-Click Download" link on the summary Web page). For those who don't have the time or the inclination, let me simply try to correct an important but common misconception.
We do not claim that reasoning has nothing to do with the truth. We claim that reasoning did not evolve to allow the lone reasoner to find the truth. We think it evolved to argue. But arguing is not only about trying to convince other people; it's also about listening to their arguments. So reasoning is two-sided. On the one hand, it is used to produce arguments. Here its goal is to convince people. Accordingly, it displays a strong confirmation bias -- what people see as the "rhetoric" side of reasoning. On the other hand, reasoning is also used to evaluate arguments. Here its goal is to tease out good arguments from bad ones so as to accept warranted conclusions and, if things go well, get better beliefs and make better decisions in the end."

A diversity of ideas exchanged with each other can make us all smarter, even if one person had 90% of the ideas an someone else 10%, like Scott E. Page writes about here:
http://www.amazon.com/Difference-Diversity-Creates-Schools-Societies/dp/0691128383
"In this landmark book, Scott Page redefines the way we understand ourselves in relation to one another. The Difference is about how we think in groups--and how our collective wisdom exceeds the sum of its parts. Why can teams of people find better solutions than brilliant individuals working alone? And why are the best group decisions and predictions those that draw upon the very qualities that make each of us unique? The answers lie in diversity--not what we look like outside, but what we look like within, our distinct tools and abilities.
The Difference reveals that progress and innovation may depend less on lone thinkers with enormous IQs than on diverse people working together and capitalizing on their individuality. Page shows how groups that display a range of perspectives outperform groups of like-minded experts. Diversity yields superior outcomes, and Page proves it using his own cutting-edge research. Moving beyond the politics that cloud standard debates about diversity, he explains why difference beats out homogeneity, whether you're talking about citizens in a democracy or scientists in the laboratory. He examines practical ways to apply diversity's logic to a host of problems, and along the way offers fascinating and surprising examples, from the redesign of the Chicago "El" to the truth about where we store our ketchup.
Page changes the way we understand diversity--how to harness its untapped potential, how to understand and avoid its traps, and how we can leverage our differences for the benefit of all."

Regarding yo

What the hell, Soulskill?! After reading the lengthy self-aggrandizing pitch, I hovered over the links, half-expecting them to offer me cheap Nikes o handbags:

http://www.propublica.org/about/
http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter= propublica
http://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/our-news-app-tech
http://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/propublicas-news-app-guides
http://www.propublica.org/tools/
http://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/how-to-edit-52000-stories-at-once
http://rubyonrails.org/
https://www.djangoproject.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/us/cnn-and-foxs-supreme-court-mistake.html

ProPublica is a non-profit corporation, and is exempt from taxes under Section 501(c)(3).

Their public-awareness tactics sure don't look like it.

Do they pay for the content they download? If not, in 20 years, when those 20 somethings are 40 somethings, who is going to generate the content?

China will. It's already producing censored news in the U.S. and "giving away" dispatches to struggling stations in Africa. When the local media disappear, China steps in with a friendly, wealthy hand.

Do they pay for the content they download? If not, in 20 years, when those 20 somethings are 40 somethings, who is going to generate the content?

China will. It's already producing censored news in the U.S. and "giving away" dispatches to struggling stations in Africa. When the local media disappear, China steps in with a friendly, wealthy hand.

Just fyi, the scientist whose budgets are being cut agree with you. We cannot adequately fund science, education, and social services while gratuitously financing gratuitous military spending and asinine wars on drugs, brown people, etc.

We should first cut it all by 10% per year for a few years, make all those federal contractors show declining profits despite their lobbyists efforts. We should then evaluate which government financed industries tightened their belts but still did the work and which just pocketed the same amount while cutting real work. Any industries in the second category should continue getting cut.

Unfortunately, as long as this attitude prevails, our budget problems will continue to get worse. This mindset was correct in the 1950s and 1960s, when defense spending was over 10% of GDP and peaked at nearly 15%. It is not true today, with defense spending closer to 4.5% despite two wars. Defense is actually the one budget item which has seen the biggest decrease (as percent of GDP and percent of the budget) over the last three decades.

The bulk of the increases in federal spending have been due to entitlements. Primarily Medicare, but to a lesser extent Medicaid and Social Security. As long as people insist on blaming the red herring of defense spending and ignoring the real white elephant in the room, the budget problems will continue to get worse. This is not to say that defense spending can't be cut some more - I'm sure there's lots of cuts we can make, and even programs the military doesn't want but some Senator forced it on them so a contractor in his state could make money.

But the fact remains that even if you reduced defense spending to zero, we'd still be running a deficit because of growth in the entitlement programs. To balance the budget, you have to rein in the growth of entitlements.

Nice revisionist history there. The temporary payroll tax reduction act was allowed to expire by the dysfunctional house of representatives. They used it as a bargaining chip in their attempt to renew the temporary tax relief package that directly benefits the top 1% of income earners.

The temporary payroll tax reduction was intended as a stimulus, nothing more. The items paid for by payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) are the fastest-growing items in the budget, and are in fact the root cause of our budget woes.

Those programs are considered mandatory spending (i.e. shielded from sequestration cuts) because they are ostensibly paid for by payroll taxes. If you don't increase payroll taxes to keep pace with growth in the cost of those programs, you undercut the argument for classifying them as mandatory programs. Ergo either you have to raise payroll taxes, or you have to open up SS, Medicare/Medicaid to automatic budget cuts. You can't argue for reduced payroll taxes while simultaneously arguing that SS and M/M can't be cut. Temporarily reducing payroll taxes was a truly emergency stimulus measure to try to get more money into the hands of consumers. It was not something which was intended to be renewed over and over in perpetuity.

Wrong. Genetic factors play into every disease. The biggest thing affecting your ability to slough off an infection is your immune system, and its functioning is almost always genetic. There are people who are genetically immune to HIV. The same with non-infecttuous diseases like cancer and heart disease. Ever wonder why one guy can smoke two packs a day for sixty years and die at 92 (like my great-uncle) while a nonsmoker will get lung cancer at 40? Ever notice that half the members of some families have heart attacks in their forties?

The fact is, if half your grandparents died or cancer at age fifty and the other half died of heart disease at age forty, don't count too much on collecting Social Security.

It seems like every day I see articles like this.

That's the typical reaction from progressives: anyone who posts numbers seem to defy math gets asked to post evidence otherwise they get accused of being rich and playing tricks with their money like Mitt Romney. No, I'm not privileged; and I absolutely refuse under any circumstances to prove even one bit that I am indeed not. But you're apparently so privileged and pampered that you think that spending $1000/month amounts to poverty, and worse, you had THE NERVE to ask me to post my expenses and income to prove it! I don't have to prove anything you insolent little shit! I AM RIGHT ENTIRELY BECAUSE I SAY I AM!

Well gee thar buddy, if that's the way you want to play it, go right ahead. ;p
But you know like Mitt Romney, you could've cleared this one up really quickly, especially since you don't have such a good track record with how you've been dodging things I've been saying. Like how the Tax Calculator was supposedly off on payroll taxes...but no, please proceed.

Everybody gets a free high school education, and if you have even a minimal aptitude, you can attend college. In addition, the Internet provides a vast library and a huge number of online courses. How is anybody denied the ability to get a good education?

Just because everyone gets to go to school does not mean everyone learns there. Both the quality of the school AND the quality of the home life of millions of Americans living at or near the poverty line can create calamitous conditions which make it very difficult for children to stay involved and want to learn. Poverty is often a generational trap with one generation after another spreading dysfunctional behavior that without intervention of some kind will just continue on and on.

Almost anybody with low income has SNAP and a variety of additional state programs available to them.

SNAP is not always available to single individuals and the benefit is rarely enough to feed a family. The minimum benefit is around $200 a month, and not everyone has been personally taught or equipped with how to make that money last the most. Here's another example of the same principle at work with college.

When you grow up in those circumstances no one often tells you at all or makes all of the information available in the manner you might need to make sure you can even do things like get aid paperwork in on time. These situations breed people who are uniquely unaware of how to obtain the proper help even when it's available to them.

No, it is you who has failed to show that there is a problem at all; I don't care if six out of seven billion people on this earth were about to simultaneously commit suicide because they hated their existence. If I don't believe in it, it doesn't exist! What? You expected me to agree with your namby pamby feelings, and your "world peace" and your tree hugging and your goddamn Tax Calculator that is wrong because it makes my arguments inconvenient?! What kind of moron are you?

And even if that problem were to exist in some alternate reality based on empirical fact, you still haven't convinced me that this "problem" you postulate exists can be fixed by throwing more money and government regulation at it. We have been doing that for decades, and the problems have (according to progressives themselves) been getting worse. More and more Americans are dependent on the Federal Government.

Which is of course Asinine because you're treating all regulation and all expenses as equal when they are inherently not. Simple Econ 101 tells us that different investments have different money multiplier effects on the economy. You generate more wealth when you invest smartly, and in many cases the biggest investments are poverty programs like Food Stamps ($1.83 generated for every $

wow.. that's amazing. You had gmail before it even existed
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/technology/31CND-GOOGLE.html

Or you're full of shit.

Stuxnet, flame, stuxnet 0.5, etc
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&seid=auto&smid=tw-nytimespolitics&pagewanted=all&

Because historically, extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a few coincides with recession/depression and high levels of national debt.

That's far too broad a statement, and historical evidence doesn't support it. "Equal" North Korea or "unequal" Hong Kong - take your pick! If you want least material inequality, look to cavemen! You have to look at the cause of income inequality - it can happen as the result of cronyism and injustice, or it can happen in a perfectly ideal situation where some people simply create more value.

As civilization advances, income / wealth inequality will inevitably increase - some people will create technological breakthroughs that would boggle our contemporary minds, creating Trillions of dollars worth of value in the human economy, while others will smoke pot and watch lolcatvidz all day, accomplishing nothing. What rational people should be fighting for is not some artificial equality of outcomes, but the equality of negative Rights. The richest Tillionaire cannot touch a hair on the most wretched loser's head without his consent. Smoking pot and watching lolcatvidz all day is a lifestyle choice, and this universe is big enough for everyone to pursue happiness in their own way - just as long as they don't trespass or defraud or steal or initiate any other means of aggression.

Redistributing wealth to a smaller group of people means the larger group of people have less to spend.

Wealth shouldn't be forcefully "redistributed", one way or another. Voluntary redistribution of wealth, called philanthropy or charity, will likely become more and more popular in the future, as people become wealthier, more politically aware, and less faithful to the discredited idea that all things should come from the state.

The reason we had such a great economy in the 1950s was in part due to the low income inequality via high taxation on the rich. Capitalism worked beautifully then, lifting the standards of practically every American. One can argue the same is not true today.

There are many reasons why USA had a relatively good economy in the 1950s, including: increased productivity from the integration of post-WW2 technologies, balanced Federal budgets and low inflation, high exports to (and lack of competition from) bombed-out Europe and East Asia, emergence of car/TV-empowered consumer culture, veteran work ethic, reduced racial discrimination, and a baby boom. A few scary income tax brackets aside, Government spending (particularly non-defese) was much lower than today.

With the rest of the world in shambles, "the rich" of the 1950s had little choice but to bend over and take it from Uncle Sam. This certainly is no longer true today, as most nations are gaining in Economic Freedom while USA continues its decade-long slip. Russia went from being a cannibalistic commie madhouse to now having a 13% flat tax! High taxation is a huge economic handicap, but one that USA could get away with in the 1950s, like an athlete so superior in strength that he can show up drunk and still win. That is no longer true today. Brains and capital are increasingly mobile. Raise the tax rates high enough, and tax revenue will be zero - you cannot milk a missing cow!

--libman

that the New York Times didn't out the whole program like 8 months ago:
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Stuxnet was/is part of a program called 'Olympic Games' and Obama gave the order to continue developing the attacks that were begun during the Bush administration...

But they are thinking about transitioning away from building Nooks too:
Barnes & Noble Weighs Its E-Reader Investment

... and pretty soon you've got some trust-fund asshole in dreadlocks screaming that you must be a plant from Big Oil.

I don't know if Keith is owned by big oil, but he is president of Carbon Engineering which has ties to the oil industry on the green house gas side of the equation. As to whether that makes his opinion biased or not, that is up to the reader, but he has been an outspoken climate scientist for a long time and has the respect of the scientific community.

Some lessons are just best learned the hard way. I just wish they could be learned without wasting my tax dollars on more unrealistic schemes that are going to amount to little, if anything, useful in the end. I'd rather see at least some tax money going to tested technology, like nuclear, that really DOES have great unrealized potential.

It appears that you got your wish and a lot of your tax money is going to be going towards nuclear after all: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/underground-nuclear-tanks-leaking-in-washington-state.html

Turn it into a supplier. Let local bookstores name the stores what they want, run it as they want, and use B&N as the book supplier. Keep the B&N website and nook. Also make the nook more attractive to local bookstore owners like kobo. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/books/small-bookstores-say-theyre-thriving-even-without-big-hits.html?_r=0

There may not have been a failure of security on Sept. 11, but there were numerous security failures leading up to that point, as detailed in an October 2001 New York Times article:

In 1999, a 17-year-old boy dressed as a Hasid climbed over a fence, walked to a runway and boarded a plane bound for London. That same year, an investigation by The Boston Globe found 136 security violations at Logan in the preceding two years. Last week The Globe reported that in the last decade, Logan had one of the worst such records among the nation's major airports, especially when it came to tests in which federal agents tried to get fake bombs or guns past security. It was not clear from the federal data that the newspaper analyzed whether all airports were tested with equal frequency, or if Logan was scrutinized more rigorously than others.

I have little doubt security was one of the factors behind the hijackers' choice of Logan International, along with the availability of trans-national flights that would guarantee a full load of fuel.

How is Indonesia faring?
They're 86% Muslim and have a population of 248M.

Let's see:
There were riots in 1998 over suppressed freedom of speech. A protestor was shot dead by police in 2012 and that incited another riot. They also went crazy over that low-budget anti-Muslim film.

Your argument stands firm.

Er, it's never been South Korea? I've never once heard that.
Now, North Korea, that's frequently mentioned. I've never heard of any other nation, state, or organization having a sophisticated USD counterfeiting operation going..
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/magazine/23counterfeit.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

there's a link, it's been going on for a while.

So what's left? Ever hear the one about judging a book by its cover? Well, that's what the cover is for. It's an advertisement. It's got a pretty picture by somebody who may or may not have read the book but is more likely just working from a description of what the author and their publishing company agreed ought to be on there. Because seriously, that guy's an artist and he has to make a living. He doesn't have time to read fiction fergoshsakes. And there's the publisher-approved and paid-for blurbs describing how awesome the author is and how touching or exciting the story is. It's all a PR machine, every bit of it.

There are only a couple of things that are halfway reliable as indicators -- recommendations from PEOPLE YOU KNOW and the name of the author. Because if the author wrote another really good book you at least know that person is CAPABLE of writing a good book. But even that isn't so great. I've often read second and third books by authors who had previously done good work only to find their latest novel or installment in a series was utter shit.

How can you prepared Sabu to Aaron Swartz? Sabu is more comparable to Albert Gonzalez from the Shadowcrew. He was turned into a snitch too http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/magazine/14Hacker-t.html

It's really simple, if you believe in something enough to break the law in protest then you have to be prepared to take on the ultimate consequence of life in prison should that be the consequence. There should be no setting people up, no snitching on other who are on your side. If you're fighting for a cause you truly believe in with all of yourself then you cannot snitch, you cannot set other people up who believe in the same cause and fight you do, that is the ultimate traitor.

Sabu was the ultimate traitor. He claimed to believe in a set of beliefs he did not really believe in. He helped to entrap young and impressionable idealists. A lot of people call Adrian Lamo a snitch but what Adrian Lamo did wasn't snitching. Adrian Lamo never claimed to be the leader of Wikileaks, never asked Bradley Manning to contact him and give him classified materials, never even seemed like the type of person who you'd want to try that with. Sabu on the other hand seemed to be in with Wikileaks, seemed to truly believe in Antisec, was encouraging people to conduct illegal activities all while setting them up to be entrapped?

Sabu is the ultimate scumbag traitor. He didn't do it because he thought he was protecting other people as in the case with Adrian Lamo, he didn't do it out of some sort of selflessness or for any moral reason, he did it for pure selfishness. He did the crime but he didn't want to do the time and would rather entrap his comrades than serve his own punishment when caught. He was like Judas.

Social Security isn't bankrupt.

To quote Paul Krugman:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/opinion/16krugman.html

But neither of these potential problems is a clear and present danger. Social Security has been running surpluses for the last quarter-century, banking those surpluses in a special account, the so-called trust fund. The program won’t have to turn to Congress for help or cut benefits until or unless the trust fund is exhausted, which the program’s actuaries don’t expect to happen until 2037 — and there’s a significant chance, according to their estimates, that that day will never come. ...

What’s really going on here?

Whats really going on here is that trust fund you mentioned has no cash in it. It is entirely funded by "special" government bonds to social security. The result is that the cash is gone, and the government owes itself the money back. The crisis isn't that social security will go bankrupt, the crisis is that social security loaned the money to the US government as a whole, and it looks like the US government might not be willing to pay back those bonds. The US government wants to pretend those bonds wont really need to be repaid so that they can renege on the payment of the bonds. The thinking is this, if Social security is changed so that it does not pay out as much benefit to each individual, then there truly has been a surplus over the last half century. That being the case, then congress would not have to repay those bonds (because social security wouldn't need all of the money to pay its obligations). By not having to repay all of those bonds, congress could wipe that expense off the budget and as such would have more money to waste on craptastic jet fighters and tax breaks for people and companies making more money than Cuba. Its a giant game of smoke and mirrors, and its complicated enough that very few people have yet realized that the money is already gone. The rich stole it from us in the form of tax breaks for the very wealthy.

Paul Krugman has explained this, which he calls one of the "cockroach ideas" that keeps coming back no matter how many times you flush them down the toilet:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/about-the-social-security-trust-fund/

Social Security is a government program supported by a dedicated tax, like highway maintenance. Now you can say that assigning a particular tax to a particular program is merely a fiction, but in fact such assignments have both legal and political force. If Ronald Reagan had said, back in the 1980s, “Let’s increase a regressive tax that falls mainly on the working class, while cutting taxes that fall mainly on much richer people,” he would have faced a political firestorm. But because the increase in the regressive payroll tax was recommended by the Greenspan Commission to support Social Security, it was politically in a different box – you might even call it a lockbox – from Reagan’s tax cuts.

The date at which the trust fund will run out, according to Social Security Administration projections, has receded steadily into the future: 10 years ago it was 2029, now it’s 2042.

But the privatizers won’t take yes for an answer when it comes to the sustainability of Social Security. Their answer to the pretty good numbers is to say that the trust fund is meaningless, because it’s invested in U.S. government bonds.

Social Security isn't bankrupt.

To quote Paul Krugman:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/opinion/16krugman.html

But neither of these potential problems is a clear and present danger. Social Security has been running surpluses for the last quarter-century, banking those surpluses in a special account, the so-called trust fund. The program won’t have to turn to Congress for help or cut benefits until or unless the trust fund is exhausted, which the program’s actuaries don’t expect to happen until 2037 — and there’s a significant chance, according to their estimates, that that day will never come. ...

What’s really going on here? Conservatives hate Social Security for ideological reasons: its success undermines their claim that government is always the problem, never the solution. But they receive crucial support from Washington insiders, for whom a declared willingness to cut Social Security has long served as a badge of fiscal seriousness, never mind the arithmetic.

Uh, no.

Colorado's proposed legislation is limiting magazines to 15 for rifles, 8 for shotguns. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/us/gun-control-laws-clear-initial-hurdle-in-colorado.html?_r=0 Maybe it's you who needs to stop misrepresenting?

I'm referring to the proposed federal legislation. The various references to the President in this thread should have given you a clue.