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North Korea announced that it had put a "satellite" into "orbit," accomplishing two goals: artificially inflating national pride and telling the world "we're actually just practicing building rockets that may one day deliver nuclear weapons to your cities." Iran plays the same games with its own people and the world, so it's logical that they had to craft a similar announcement, whether it's true or not. The day North Korea announced the "success" of its satellite, you can bet Ahmadinejad called his advisors and said, "I need a space program milestone announcement ASAP!" Ahmadinejad doesn't want his people, or the world, to think he's not keeping up with poor Kim Jong-un.

In both cases, you have countries that can barely afford to take care of their citizens, yet they are claiming to be building a full-fledged space program. Iran is a far more resource-wealthy country and its GDP is more than 10 times North Korea's, but its economy is suffering badly because of the international sanctions for its nuclear program, and the health of its people is suffering even worse. So the only reason they would make such an announcement would be to artificially inflate national pride and try to scare the rest of the world.

Of course, Iran's people are not cut off from news from the outside world as effectively as North Korea's (despite police ripping satellite dishes off rooftops and a plan to unplug the country from the Internet), so this could backfire when the people protest about resources being spent on keeping monkeys breathing in space when there isn't enough air to breathe on the ground in Tehran.

Not quite what you asked, but here's a great deal on a smartphone---sms, talk, Internet---plan. 19USD all-you-can-eat-no-nagging-powerusers plan from Republic.

AN Android smartphone with unlimited calls, unlimited texting, unlimited data and no contract, all for $19 a month? Really?

When I first saw this offer from Republic Wireless, I rubbed my eyes and looked for an asterisk leading to fine print that detailed a huge catch. But Republic, a division of a telecom company called Bandwidth.com, delivers exactly what it advertises. It can do so because the handset technology is a curious hybrid: it uses Wi-Fi when the customer is in a Wi-Fi area and Sprint Nextelâ(TM)s 3G network when it is not.

The concept brings together the best of two worlds: the low cost of voice calls carried over the Internet and the convenience of making calls to any phone number using a major carrierâ(TM)s cellular network when Wi-Fi isnâ(TM)t available.

You need their $250 Motorola DEFY XT dual wi-fi/talk purchase to partake. However, they say they're working on a luxe smartphone offering!

Since everyone sees fit to purposely misinterpret my posts I'm going to preface this. I BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION. I BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION. I ALSO BELIEVE IN GRAVITY. BUT Our understanding of gravity is actually extremely flawed. Everyone on here knows this. Sure we know it's a thing, but there are a lot of grey areas. Dark matter and WIMPs ring a bell? And that's just scratching the surface. At a quantum level gravity is still extremely unknown. Also with evolution there are some somewhat serious questions. The only really "interesting" question is the timescale issue. When dating something carbon-14 dating produces a result that sometimes wildly varies from uranium:thorium ratios. Apparently it can be as far off as 3500 years: http://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/31/us/errors-are-feared-in-carbon-dating.html. I think uranium's decay rate is something ridiculous, and there are a bunch of different ones to use. I don't have the patience to wade through all the fundamentalist garbage to find more valid sources and problems. Anyways I'm just saying even things are practically scientific law have a little mystery left in them. That's the cool thing about science! You find out something is a little bit broken, you tweak it a little, check out the results, rinse, repeat. While pursuing those questions we (the human race I'm not a scientist) tend to stumble across really weird things that lead to more questions or discoveries. Like cellphones being a result of black hole research. Even the most esoteric seemingly asinine questions can have dramatic far-reaching consequences.

It was so groundbreaking that Apple got a patent infringement suit from it.

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/20/business/apple-is-said-to-settle-suit.html

Shew, that's a relief. I think we can all rest easier now now the Jules has settled this matter for us.

I'll say.

IAEA Releases New Report on Iran’s Nuclear Program
Iran’s Top Atomic Official Says Nation Issued False Nuclear Data to Fool Spies
China Leader Warns Iran Not to Make Nuclear Arms

Shew, that's a relief. I think we can all rest easier now now the Jules has settled this matter for us.

I'll say.

IAEA Releases New Report on Iran’s Nuclear Program
Iran’s Top Atomic Official Says Nation Issued False Nuclear Data to Fool Spies
China Leader Warns Iran Not to Make Nuclear Arms

The California Legislative Accounting Office says we're looking at a $1.9 billion deficit this year - not a surplus. Who to believe? Well, historically the LAO is much more accurate than the Governor's office...

Not according to the California Legislative Accounting Office (the California equivalent of the CBO). They say a $1.9 billion deficit.

I have zero sympathy for this kind of hacker, but that's a lot of time for a DDOS that apparently they didn't even execute

It is just a lesson that PayPal and others have purchased (lobbied) from our government.

These hackers should have gone into money laundering (e.g. HSBC - Too Big to Indict) instead.

Andrews found a significant correlation between depressed affect and individual performance on the intelligence test, at least once the subjects were distracted from their pain: lower moods were associated with higher scores. “The results were clear,” Andrews says. “Depressed affect made people think better.”

Interesting, this comment lead me to this article
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/health/20docs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
and dick cheney who had a HeartMate II device fitted in 2010 and lived without a pulse for 15 months , he now has had a heart transplant and might get another 10 years out of that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney#Health_problems

He had his first heart attack in 1978 at the age of 37 followed by others in 84, 88, 2000 and 2010 he will have his 72nd birthday in about 6 days time.

I personally had a heart attack a few years ago and at the time learned a few interesting statistics.
such as 30% of people having a first heart attack die from it , for a 2nd heart attack it is 50% and the death rate is about 50% after 10 years in this source. (at the time i found 6 and 8 years for 50%)
http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/6324/1/Cardiovascular-Disease-The-Facts.html

Another interesting bit was your first year was a 25% chance of death followed by a 3% chance for the following years (without a heart attack it's about 1.5% chance of death in general). Rapid treatment is essential your heart can survive 20-30 minutes without the blood flow to the heart muscle after that the muscle starts to die and if you live you will have scar tissue where the muscle died. I have a heart which is 55% efficient a healthy heart is 60% efficient so i am still relatively unharmed. Maybe the most bizarre question was being asked if i wanted to be injected with heprin, it should clear the blockage but there is a 5% chance of a bleed on the brain. Given the choice of 5% risk or the unspoken alternative (~100% chance of death) i took the risk.

Being diabetic I might have avoided heart attack with a simple dose of 75mg of asprin daily, I had been diagnosed diabetic 2 years previously. You are what you eat, most processed food is pretty poor for your body and most profitable for the supermarkets. It's probably better to buy raw ingredients meat and vegetables and fruit. Farm produce is better for you than factory produce. Exercise helps, a healthy body weight helps.

Dick Cheney is an interesting case he may well live into his eighties with his new heart, thou in 1978 Stents were a new technology (introduced in 1975 I believe) so he has been incredibly lucky in that the technology has developed at a rate fast enough to be in place to keep him from dying.

Tech could just as easily extend middle class jobs, if we chose productivity over cost efficiency.

I'm going to need you to explain this.

Middle class jobs have been disappearing because technology has allowed workers to become more efficient, thus allowing less workers to do the same or more work.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/sunday-review/americas-productivity-climbs-but-wages-stagnate.html
Here's a lovely graph courtesy of the NY Times

Some economists say it is wrong to look at just wages because other aspects of employee compensation, notably health costs, have risen. But overall employee compensation -- including health and retirement benefits -- has also slipped badly, falling to its lowest share of national income in more than 50 years while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share over that time.

Conservative and liberal economists agree on many of the forces that have driven the wage share down. Corporate America's push to outsource jobs -- whether call-center jobs to India or factory jobs to China -- has fattened corporate earnings, while holding down wages at home. New technologies have raised productivity and profits, while enabling companies to shed workers and slice payroll. Computers have replaced workers who tabulated numbers; robots have pushed aside many factory workers.

From 1973 to 2011, worker productivity grew 80 percent, while median hourly compensation, after inflation, grew by just one-eighth that amount, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group. And since 2000, productivity has risen 23 percent while real hourly pay has essentially stagnated.

We wouldn't need a more progressive tax structure if middle class wages were increasing alongside corporate profits.

Tech could just as easily extend middle class jobs, if we chose productivity over cost efficiency.

I'm going to need you to explain this.

Middle class jobs have been disappearing because technology has allowed workers to become more efficient, thus allowing less workers to do the same or more work.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/sunday-review/americas-productivity-climbs-but-wages-stagnate.html
Here's a lovely graph courtesy of the NY Times

Some economists say it is wrong to look at just wages because other aspects of employee compensation, notably health costs, have risen. But overall employee compensation -- including health and retirement benefits -- has also slipped badly, falling to its lowest share of national income in more than 50 years while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share over that time.

Conservative and liberal economists agree on many of the forces that have driven the wage share down. Corporate America's push to outsource jobs -- whether call-center jobs to India or factory jobs to China -- has fattened corporate earnings, while holding down wages at home. New technologies have raised productivity and profits, while enabling companies to shed workers and slice payroll. Computers have replaced workers who tabulated numbers; robots have pushed aside many factory workers.

From 1973 to 2011, worker productivity grew 80 percent, while median hourly compensation, after inflation, grew by just one-eighth that amount, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group. And since 2000, productivity has risen 23 percent while real hourly pay has essentially stagnated.

We wouldn't need a more progressive tax structure if middle class wages were increasing alongside corporate profits.

I know of nobody that voted for National Health Care Law, it was decided after an election, which it wasn't a campaign platform for anyone.

Bullshit. Here is the section of the 2008 Democratic Party Platform relevant to Obamacare (source: NYT):

Health Care

All Americans should have coverage they can afford. Families and individuals should have the option of keeping the coverage they have or choosing from a wide array of health insurance plans, including many private health insurance options and a public plan. Coverage should be made affordable for all Americans with subsidies provided through tax credits and other means. Insurance should be portable from job to job.

Medicare and Medicaid

Strengthen Medicare by cutting costs and protecting seniors from fraud. Fix Medicare’s prescription drug program: "Repeal the prohibition on negotiating prescription drug prices, ban drug companies from paying generic producers to refrain from entering drug markets, and eliminate drug company interference with generic competition." Phase-out the cap on Medicaid funding and phase-in equal participation in other federal health care assistance programs. Provide Medicaid to more low-income HIV-positive Americans.

Specifics of the health care plan were discussed at length during the 2008 election campaign, it was one of the cornerstones of Obama's campaign. Stop revising history to support your arguments.

Indeed, the powers that be in the states seem to be obsessed with imprisoning their fellow citizens.

Still it seems like collecting data for no obvious reason, just to know that some one came into the store who spent time in the Shoes department 6 weeks ago.

It's all about analytics. It's how stores like Target (which sell practically everything) spend lots of money hiring statisticians looking for signs that said shopper might be pregnant. Because the average shopper who goes into Target for something quick then runs out probably doesn't know what other things Target sells.

Turns out expecting families have time pressure so knowing when they are pregnant lets Target send coupons for baby essentials, then later, for everything else in the store knowing that they'd be far more inclined to shop in one place than all over the mall to their favorite stores. Pregnancy is one of the few triggers that can effect change in such shopping habits, too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Of course, the side effect of such analytics can lead to accidental reveals - the article mentions a father who was upset when Target sent his daughter coupons for baby essentials, only to find out later she really was pregnant.

And such analytics could be useful when tied to a loyalty card - while Target relies on purchaes to figure it out, knowing which aisles someone hangs out on could lead to potential future sales by offering coupons for products in said aisles, or even more analytical data.

I suppose for now the only good thing is such analytics are considered extremely valuable that stores aren't willing to share any of tha tinformation with anyone else.

Don't blame the prosecutor when the public demands stupid laws

Have you heard of the Responsible Corporate Officer doctrine? In a nutshell, if a company does something bad, their executives can be held criminally accountable, even if they didn't know what was going on, because it's their duty to know.

And yet when Forest Laboratories was marketing drugs to children when they were approved only for adults, what did Carmen Ortiz do? She could have held the executives responsible for the criminal actions of the company...and yet she chose not to. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/health/16drug.html?_r=0

I blame the prosecutor. The law says she could hold the executives accountable, and yet she used her discretion with Forest Laboratories to avoid sentencing anyone to any time in prison. Why not with Aaron Swartz?

And how many fucking centuries did the Pope claim Galileo was wrong? It was only in 1992 that the Catholic church admitted he was right.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/31/world/after-350-years-vatican-says-galileo-was-right-it-moves.html

The difference is that at lest for the last few centuries, the Vatican didn't say you should kill over it. This cleric did, and it was recent.

And how many fucking centuries did the Pope claim Galileo was wrong? It was only in 1992 that the Catholic church admitted he was right.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/31/world/after-350-years-vatican-says-galileo-was-right-it-moves.html

The ode,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Qb0tCgNzbjk

The reason:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=9-UyhdNxv-4

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/technology/how-mit-ensnared-a-hacker-bucking-a-freewheeling-culture.html

one of the neatest recent developments in treating traumatic brain injuries is the finding that the human hormone progesterone dramatically improves the survival chances and outcomes of humans who sustain a traumatic brain injury. As someone who doesn't remember a 2-week period following a concussion/near drowning at the lake some 13 years ago, I wonder what my experience would have been like had my doctors known about this use for Progesterone USP.

Progesterone is the body's most important steroid hormone, because the body transforms it into the other steroids (cortisol, aldosterone, testosterone, estrogen) through the process of steroidogenesis. Birth control uses fake progesterone to help shut down women's hormonal cycling (and ovulation), which always results in progesterone deficiency (the chemicals in birth control do NOT fit into the steroid cycle).

Trials are an extremely important part of the American legal system. The right to a fair trial by a jury of your peers is the bedrock of the American legal system. I'm not convinced the practice of plea bargaining, which is deliberately intended to short circuit this system, was ever a good idea.

Even if a plea bargain is a good idea in some cases, the way its used these days to create "Trial by Prosecutor" is absolutely ghastly. In other words, the prosecutor uses certain flaws of our legal system that are unrelated to Constitutional requirements (the costs, for example, that will bankrupt an ordinary person, and the fact that public defenders are often unqualified and routinely mishandle cases) to dispense with Trial by Jury altogether, even if the option still technically exists (violating the spirit of the law if not the letter of the law).

Plea bargains have been common for more than a century, but lately they have begun to put the trial system out of business in some courtrooms. By one count, fewer than one in 40 felony cases now make it to trial, according to data from nine states that have published such records since the 1970s, when the ratio was about one in 12. The decline has been even steeper in federal district courts. -- Sentencing Shift Gives New Leverage to Prosecutors

Besides this, we now have a similar situation in Civil Trials, where binding arbitration agreements are forced on parties as soon as they try to get involved in any commercial transaction.

What all this ends up being is an end run around the Constitution. If the Constitution had intended Trial by Jury to be rare, and most cases to be decided by a single appointed official, they would have set up the Constitution that way. In fact, many of the people involved in setting up the United States had bad memories of the Court of Star Chamber, in which no one was allowed to argue their cases and arbitrary rulings were the norm.

If one thing should come out of the Aaron Swartz case, and one thing only, it is this: The rules for civil disobedience in this country have changed. With juries out of the picture, stunts like what Swartz pulled at MIT are far more difficult ways to create legal precedent. Which is important because Civil Disobedience against unjust laws has a long history of moving change in this country when the legislative process was moving slowly or not at all (or in the wrong direction, as it is now).

Now, there were other periods in history where civil disobedience was extremely dangerous, which led to more extreme forms of civil disobedience than peaceful protests. The political movements in previous centuries knew what kind of justice awaited them in the courts, so they used the gun or the bomb to make their points, rather than sit ins or other forms of peaceful protest. Returning to those bad old days is honestly not something I'm looking forward to.

sure, if you want to pay American workers, I'll just ask $20 for that salad, thanks.

Wrong

Given today's multi-gigahertz processors with gigahertz memory access, I would think it would be difficult, if not impossible to effectively separate the CPU and the memory by very much. Similarly, it gets pretty complicated with high speed DMA I/O when you move it away from the memory it is accessing. I'm sure it could be done, but the performance is going to suffer just from the physical distances. Add in connector resistance and noise and you have ample justification for putting the CPU, chipset and RAM in a very small module that then plugs into the rest of the computer for I/O.

If they were just moving the CPU to a card then yes, but apparently they aren't:

Intel, another key member of the Open Compute Project, announced it would release to the group a silicon-based optical system that enables the data and computing elements in a rack of computer servers to communicate at 100 gigabits a second.
More important, it means that elements of memory and processing that now must be fixed closely together can be separated within a rack, and used as needed for different kinds of tasks.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/facebooks-other-big-disruption/

Yes, I guess Morris Berman is saying the USA is worse than China in that regard, and much worse than parts of Europe: "How, then, can excess be curbed in a free democratic system? For we can be sure that the intelligent frogs, who are really quite exceptional, are not going to be listened to, and certainly have no power to enforce their insights. True, there are certain countries -- the Scandanavian nations come to mind -- where for some reason the concentration of intelligent frogs is unusually high, resulting in decisions designed to protect the commons. But on a world scale, this is not very typical. More typical, and (sad to say) a model for many other countries, is the United States, where proposed "changes" are in fact cosmetic, and where the reality is business as usual. In the context of 315 million highly addicted frogs, the voices of the smart ones -- Bateson, Frank, Posner, Hardin, et al. -- aren't going to have much impact or, truth be told, even get heard."

So yes, Berman is saying the USA is worse than China in that sense (fascist in a corporatist sense, but more disorganized), but he is not the only one. For example here is something by Thomas L. Friedman in the NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/opinion/09friedman.html
"Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China's leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.
Our one-party democracy is worse. The fact is, on both the energy/climate legislation and health care legislation, only the Democrats are really playing. With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party is standing, arms folded and saying "no." Many of them just want President Obama to fail. Such a waste. Mr. Obama is not a socialist; he's a centrist. But if he's forced to depend entirely on his own party to pass legislation, he will be whipsawed by its different factions."

Of course, like people, every country has its unique mix of characteristics that can be strengths or weaknesses depending on the context... North Koreans, for example, may face less "pleasure trap" issues?
http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Sad to watch this all play out as so much of the USA suffers for crazy ideological reasons (such as justifies the denial of access of health care and vegetables to a lot of the population). Even sadder to be stuck in the middle of this crazy ideological bubble while it does... Not that I have not tried to help move things to a higher level of sense (as have many others):
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html

So little, so late... As Bucky Fuller said, wh

And almost every one of those is a case where the gun is being used as the manufacturer intended, not an accident.

Yes. About 2/3 of those uses are suicides, and the rest are almost all homicides with illegal guns. Gun control has no significant effect reducing either of these numbers. There is a small remainder of homicides committed with legally owned guns and accidents, but many legal products are far more dangerous. Furthermore, there is no justification for creating intrusive government regulation that prevents me from committing suicide with a gun.

Actually...

In the US, we have no real numbers on gun control and suicide rates, homicide rates, or pretty much anything else because the gun lobby has worked to destroy any public funding for such research, and to end careers of anyone who tries to independently study them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/us/26guns.html?pagewanted=all

In Australia, they had real, significant reductions in suicides when they implemented their gun controls. Also, they had previously had a number of mass shootings, and have had 0 since.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/opinion/australia-banned-assault-weapons-america-can-too.html

"The Australian Institute of Criminology found that gun-related murders and suicides fell sharply after 1996. The American Law and Economics Review found that our gun buyback scheme cut firearm suicides by 74 percent. In the 18 years before the 1996 reforms, Australia suffered 13 gun massacres — each with more than four victims — causing a total of 102 deaths. There has not been a single massacre in that category since 1996."

AU suicide stats: http://www.mindframe-media.info/for-media/reporting-suicide/facts-and-stats

And almost every one of those is a case where the gun is being used as the manufacturer intended, not an accident.

Yes. About 2/3 of those uses are suicides, and the rest are almost all homicides with illegal guns. Gun control has no significant effect reducing either of these numbers. There is a small remainder of homicides committed with legally owned guns and accidents, but many legal products are far more dangerous. Furthermore, there is no justification for creating intrusive government regulation that prevents me from committing suicide with a gun.

Actually...

In the US, we have no real numbers on gun control and suicide rates, homicide rates, or pretty much anything else because the gun lobby has worked to destroy any public funding for such research, and to end careers of anyone who tries to independently study them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/us/26guns.html?pagewanted=all

In Australia, they had real, significant reductions in suicides when they implemented their gun controls. Also, they had previously had a number of mass shootings, and have had 0 since.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/opinion/australia-banned-assault-weapons-america-can-too.html

"The Australian Institute of Criminology found that gun-related murders and suicides fell sharply after 1996. The American Law and Economics Review found that our gun buyback scheme cut firearm suicides by 74 percent. In the 18 years before the 1996 reforms, Australia suffered 13 gun massacres — each with more than four victims — causing a total of 102 deaths. There has not been a single massacre in that category since 1996."

AU suicide stats: http://www.mindframe-media.info/for-media/reporting-suicide/facts-and-stats

What a bunch of crap. The system allowed for Mrs. Ortiz to not Charge Aaron at all if she so chose. Certainly, she didn't have to charge him with a dozen of felonies. http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/aaron-swartz-and-prosecutorial-discretion/

No, we have tons that we can't access due to environmental restriction. But we are gaining more access to oil as technology improves. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/business/energy-environment/report-sees-us-as-top-oil-producer-in-5-years.html?_r=0. This is partially due to shale reserves. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/american-oil-find-holds-oil-opec/story?id=17536852. We have even more if we can hydrofrack. In short, we will be fine energy-wise as long as people allow us to access it.

The IEA report[pdf] linked by the NY Times article says there's an abundance of gas, which I mentioned before, but does not provide scientific data or links to support the idea that the US can become petroleum independent never mind an oil export. And a lot of the gas being pumped now was made possible by fracking. Now the ABC report, which also says the IEA report does not provide data, does say shale oil can be recovered from the Green River Formation of Colorado and Utah. However it also says that large amounts of water required to recover the oil are needed. That presents another problem. The Colorado River is the major source of water for all 7 states in the Colorado River Compact. The compact was created in 1922 when the river's water level was above average, so the river is over tapped now. One of the states that gets water from the river is California, and the river does not flow through the state. Instead through a system of canals water is pumped to the Imperial Valley in Southern CA. And by treaty Mexico is supposed to get some of the water from the river, after all the river is supposed to drain into the Sea of Cortez or Gulf of California, which is Mexican.

And while CO2 emissions are lower burning natural gas than burning coal, oil, and gas, it still emits CO2. Also the IEA report brings up alternative energy sources saying renewable sources can provide one third of the US's electricity. That is half of what an article in SciAm said was possible in 2050. A Grand Solar Plansays Solar power alone can provide 69% of the electricity and 35% of the total energy needs of the US. Elsewhere a study, sorry I don't have a link right now, based on the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States concluded wind energy from the Rocky Mountains alone can provide all the electricity for the 48 contiguous states. And that's just from the Rockies. The atlas shows other places in the US with abundant wind energy as well.

As you say "we will be fine energy-wise as long as people allow us to access it" applies to geothermal, solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources. Unfortunately NIMBYs block solar and wind throughout the US. Along the East Coast from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod can provide significant amounts of energy. Using these sources, and increasing energy efficiency which the IEA report brings up, coal, nuclear, and petroleum can all be fazed out now. Not included here is natural gas fired power plants, that's because they are needed right now for baseline loads. Geothermal can be and is used for that also but can it supply all baseload needs? I don't know. And later storage technologies may enable mass energy to be stored economically.

Of course to bring all these electrical sources online requires the national electrical grid to be upgraded. While it will take Billions of Dollars, if not One Hundred Billion or more, US businesses lose about

No, we have tons that we can't access due to environmental restriction. But we are gaining more access to oil as technology improves. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/business/energy-environment/report-sees-us-as-top-oil-producer-in-5-years.html?_r=0. This is partially due to shale reserves. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/american-oil-find-holds-oil-opec/story?id=17536852. We have even more if we can hydrofrack. In short, we will be fine energy-wise as long as people allow us to access it.

Indeed, there are definitely uses. There are other community and '311' apps and platforms out there as well. Many that have been around longer, are more stable, and have more potential to work with local governments. Mostly it's just "mobile workforce/crowd-sourcing civic duty" with an MS logo on it. Given Microsoft's inability to release a proper Xbox app, I find it doubtful they will do much good here. Anyways, it seems pretty likely they stole this idea:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/technology/in-new-apps-tools-for-volunteering-after-hurricane-sandy.html

http://mashable.com/2012/10/29/google-crisis-map-hurricane-sandy/

Let's see if they patent it.

You're wrong, a prosecutor's job is to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.

Really? So was St. Jude's prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law?

“Medical device and pharmaceutical companies can use post-market studies legitimately to obtain information about how their products work in the field, but they cannot use those studies, and the honoraria associated with them, to induce physicians to select their products. Cardiologists and electrophysiologists should make their decisions on which pacemaker or defibrillator to implant in a patient based on their independent medical judgment, not based on how much the manufacturer is paying them to implant the device,” said Carmen Ortiz, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.

Was anyone found guilty of anything? "St. Jude officials said they weren’t admitting liability"

How about GlaxoSmithKline?

“We will not tolerate corporate attempts to profit at the expense of the ill and needy in our society -- or those who cut corners that result in potentially dangerous consequences to consumers,” Carmen M. Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney in Boston, said at yesterday’s news conference.

But hey, at least someone was found guilty this time. His name was SB Pharmco Puerto Rico Inc. I don't think he had to serve any time in prison, though.

Or Forest Laboratories?

“Forest Pharmaceuticals deliberately chose to pursue corporate profits over its obligations to the F.D.A. and the American public,” Carmen Ortiz, the United States attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said in a statement Wednesday.

Someone was found guilty this time, too. His name was Forest Laboratories. No time served in prison, although there was one felony count - lying to FDA officials.

You know, if I squint really hard, I think I can see the impression left by the book that Ortiz threw at Mr. Forest Laboratories and Mr. SB Pharmco Puerto Rico Inc.

Our Federal legal system has gottent out of control. The laws have become too complex and convoluted for a layman to understand and the penalties have become way too large. There is a reason that less than 1 in 40 Federal prosecutions even make it to a court. The prosecutors make it almost impossible not to take a plea deal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/us/tough-sentences-help-prosecutors-push-for-plea-bargains.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

I really can't fault Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann, their behavior is what the current system demands.

How about instead of having a database of lawful gun owners, we have a Free, Open and Searchable database of all people with mentally unstable, or have violent tendancies. It makes much more sense.

That was semi sarcastic, in that nobody is suggesting that anyone that has had a mental breakdown or violent episode be put in a national database.

Actually, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA did suggest we keep a National Database of the Mentally Ill. (see page 3 of the transcript at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/21/us/nra-news-conference-transcript.html). Here are two (admittedly oversimplified) reasons to why we should have a Gun Owners' database vs. a Mentally Ill Database.

1. Gun owners WANT to own a gun, and (theoretically) take on the rights and responsibilities of ownership.

2. People who have a mentally illness DON'T WANT IT. They have enough problems receiving help and dealing with the stigma as it is.

We have failed at our responsibility to safely possess firearms. We do not deserve them now.

Sorry son, you first.

Can you please tell me how much you will suffer?

Ohh, I don't know.. maybe because in New York I couldn't have my Springfield XDM? Looks like even though she tagged this guy with five rounds of .38 out of a revolver that she'd have been toast had there been accomplices. You might bleat 'anecdote', I will say 'do your own research; home invasions are getting nastier and are a trend'.

The protection of yourself and your family is your responsibility. Nobody else's.

The cops are not your friend. They are not there to protect you; they are there to clean up the mess. And yes, I'll use the cliche: the police are there in minutes when seconds count. In addition, I don't understand law enforcement needs full-auto variants of the AR-15 since many cops can't shoot worth a shit anyway, let alone handle full auto (which is largely used for suppressive fire in war). We used to out-shoot them all the time when I was in the military, and I laugh at them now at our local range. A couple of departments mandate a couple of hundred rounds a practice per year; the average in my crew is about 1000-2000 a month, minimum (some of these guys who have money are running through 6k a month).. of 'real' calibers (not counting .22 LR) and we're 'casual' handgunners.

As for shotguns (because you just know somebody's going to go there..).. let me see you clear corners with a shotgun like I can my semi-auto pistol. Just let me see a shotgun muzzle coming around a corner.. and if you do the 'come around then bring it up' trick you're already in my tritium 3-dot sights. Mozambique Drill in effect.

Bottom line is: whatever the average flatfoot has access to as a duty weapon, I should have access to. The criminals have access to EVERYTHING. My weapons are secure, but if you manage to break into my house while I'm not there and use a plasma cutter to open my gun safe, then the problem is you, not me.

Please note: I'm all for background checks, closing the gunshow loophole, and deveoping a mechanism that keeps the crazies away from firepower, as well as enchancing penalties for people who do not keep their weapons secured.

I don't know where you live in Texas, but wherever it is (unless it's Austin) just stay in the closet about your views on weaponry. It will save you serious emotional distress. I've lived in Texas and Arizona, and we'd have openly mocked you. Maybe even made fun of you. ;)

Especially when the "peaceful" police force in most American cities are now SWAT-capable, thanks to the funding secured when passing the Patriot Act and creation of Department of Homeland Security. If the peace force can access military-grade, I should be able to also. I face the same dangers they do, and the difference is, they have no duty to protect me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=0

And if violent crime rates have been declining for 25 years, regardless of gun bans or not, why does my local police need SWAT and automatic rifles?

You do realize that home invasions aren't always a single person. Groups of 2 or 3 are quite common. 7 rounds to deal with 3 intruders is getting pretty darned dicey.

Even trained law-enforcement when shooting typically have between a 17% and a 40% hit rate (that's not a hit to a vital area - just a hit at all), varying somewhat between what department you're looking at and what they're shooting at. Which means that even if you take the upper number of 40% a trained LEO is only likely to get 2.8 hits out of 7 shots.

Of course, the law-makers realize the foolishness of that and give the cops more bullets because they need them, but apparently the average citizen defending their home isn't worth as much.

See the school shooting, he DITCHED the assault rifle and killed with pistols.

Um, no. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/gunman-kills-20-children-at-school-in-connecticut-28-dead-in-all.html?_r=0

Not true. They may get the jobs, but we also get the pollution. The planet is a living thing, and things that happen in China don't stay in China.

Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China, according to the Journal of Geophysical Research.

China dust storms travel to California

Read up on Bukit Merah, Malaysia where rare earth metals where processed slag from old tin mines.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/business/energy-environment/09rareside.html?_r=0
Thats the PR you have to face when you want to set up and "not harm the local environment"... in 201x
You wonder why press releases talk of not doing rare earth projects in Australia due to
power, water, chemical costs ...
for some reason they go back to 'other' parts of the world :)

Read the news. The Sequester hits the EPA budget pretty hard.

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/04/13/13greenwire-epa-budget-deal-slams-state-regional-programs-26003.html

Of course when you read the article all of a sudden you start wondering whether this was the right priority.

You're right, more gun laws would just turn America into a police state.

The NYT article linked from TFA clearly states that the tournament was broadcast live on the internet, and this fellow lost due to a rudimentary mistake in the last round when the organizers switched off the live broadcast, which lends some credence to the OP's suggestion. As another poster stated, a 1 or 2 move delay in the live broadcast would mitigate this issue.

Here's an interesting article on how EMRs may be contributing to overbilling. One of the claims it makes is that the ease with which EMRs permit physicians to enter procedures that were not done is a large part of the problem.

"The antivirus industry has a dirty little secret: its products are often not very good at stopping viruses."

(The linked New York Times story is a great read.)

The guy went against the law as a form of protest, he knew that what he was doing was illegal and wanted that to change.

Where did you got that he went against the law or even that he knew it and intentionally did it anyway? If what the defence expert witness says is even remotely true, I really don't see where the lawbreaking is supposed to be.

It is NOT the job of the prosecutor to weigh every communication on a silver platter to see if it might push someone over the edge.

If only!

State and federal authorities decided against indicting HSBC in a money-laundering case over concerns that criminal charges could jeopardize one of the worldâ(TM)s largest banks and ultimately destabilize the global financial system.

Alan Turing might not have killed himself. He was simply careless with a science experiment. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092 Vincent Van Gogh might not have killed himself. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/new-biography-argues-van-gogh-did-not-kill-himself/ Take away these famous cases and the link between genius and suicide disappears. It's actually very unusual for genius at his or her peak to commit suicide. The peak is the ultimate high.

I program better when I am in a quiet environment.

I have been amazed how hard it is to get work done in cube farms, especially when there are people nearby whose job it is to talk on the phone often.

A few gigs like that made me invest in these. They work as well as ear plugs but without the inconvenience of roll and stuff them:
http://tinyurl.com/cw33u3x

There is this popular article about research that shows that quiet and solitude boosts productivity, including for developers
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

If an org will not pay for real offices they should consider separating people with noisy jobs ( phone use ) from others and make some rules about noise levels

Currencies are only speculative if you are a currency speculator. Currencies are not supposed to be investments, which is why Bitcoin is not a good currency. Currencies are meant to facilitate exchange, not to store value. This is why currencies are designed to be slightly inflationary. We want to encourage people to go do useful things with their time, not sit at home on top of a pile of cash. Bitcoin is generally treated as a commodity rather than a currency. See, for example: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/golden-cyberfetters/

It is recovering, stop watching the media alarmist 'analysts'.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/the-mostly-solved-deficit-problem/