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I don't think it requires assuming the poll was biased or that "internet sites" are posting un-vetted charges. A simpler explanation is that, even if the TSA does suck, most Americans either don't know or don't care. In particular, a significant percentage of Americans don't fly regularly, and they tend to support whatever air-security measures some official claims are necessary. To them, something that sounds like security is good, and who cares if someone's inconvenienced, because it's not them anyway. For example, a 2010 poll found that x-ray scanners and new pat-down procedures were more popular among non-fliers:

Among Americans who fly at least once a year, 58 percent support the new x-ray scanners, versus 70 percent of Americans who fly less often than that. Support for the new pat-down procedures is at 44 percent among fliers, meanwhile, versus 52 percent among those who do not fly regularly.

They have a Nevada license plate on at least one car, but they can legally drive elsewhere. One of the articles linked from the link in the OP (I know, I know - slashdotters won't read the article, so how could they read things that the article LINKS to???) mentioned that it is legal in California, because the human driver is present to correct any errors the computer may make. Indeed, they've been spotted many times in the SF bay area, although are usually just ignored.

In that sense, their car is not dissimilar to my Prius as far as the law is concerned - it has radar cruise control (so it can slow down with traffic), a video camera (so it can steer a little bit, or warn when leaving a lane), and can park itself. But in any condition, I am responsible for what the car does. Since they sold that car in all 50 states, I bet driving their autonomous car is fine in all 50 too.

I'm not sure what the Nevada plate entitles them to. Perhaps full autonomous operation, without a driver? I can't imagine they'd be comfortable doing that yet though.

Thing is, I'm actually rather against Islam myself (or really anti-religion in general, just seeing Islam as the most dangerous and aggressive of the bunch at the moment)

How strong is that dislike for religion?
Do you agree with churches having an active voice in society (see link 1 below)?
Do you agree with the legally-enforced marginalization of Christian viewpoints on family values (see links 2-6)?
Do you believe in conspiracy theories involving Jews or Opus Dei?
Does Mitt Romney's or Rick Santorum's religion bother you?
Do you support the right of a valedictorian to pray?

I found your comments well-balanced, except for this one. I would like to know your opinion on this matter.

If you find 6 links to be too much, please read at least links 1 and 2. I guarantee you will find them informative.

==Links==
===Church-state balance===
1. "Why Church and State Must Be Separate" by Benedict XVI, http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/ratzinger2.html

===Legally-enforced marginalization of Christianity===
2. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-preacher-arrested-for-saying-homosexuality-is-a-sin.html
3. "Christian foster couple lose 'homosexuality views' case", http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-12598896
4. "Last Catholic adoption agency faces closure after Charity Commission ruling"
            http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7952526/Last-Catholic-adoption-agency-faces-closure-after-Charity-Commission-ruling.html
5. "Defining Religious Liberty Down", http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/douthat-defining-religious-liberty-down.html
6. "Controversy over Heaven" http://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/controversy-over-heaven

Ex-sceptic says climate change is down to humans

"The results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature are in and Richard Muller, the study's director (formerly an AGW skeptic) declares, 'Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?_r=4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19047501

CEO Exxon admits AGW is real and burning fossil fuels causes it.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/06/27/exxon-ceo-climate-energy-fears-overblown/

The natural progression:

• 1. There is no such thing as global warming!
• 2. Global warming is theoretically possible, but it's not happening.
• 3. Global warming is happening, but we are not the cause
• 4. Global warming is happening and we are the cause but it's no big deal.
• 5. Ok, we should probably do something about this global warming before it gets worse.
• 6. We're really fraked now.

We are now at step 4.

I guess then question becomes...can a family who does not have such skills and such access afford to live healthily on less than five dollars a day per person?

I think the first question you have to answer is if an average American family will eat healthily on any amount of money. Despite widespread belief, junk food is not cheap. See this NYTimes article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/is-junk-food-really-cheaper.html?pagewanted=all

(And I think the prices they give for the homecooked meal are significantly higher than I would pay.)

I suspect most American families would eat crap no matter how much money you gave them, because that is what our food culture has become. We gave it all over to the food processing companies. It seems like homecooking has really been looked down on in this country over the last 30 years or so. But if you want to eat healthily, you still have to cook.

I think we can also agree that such skill should be taught, one way or another - perhaps in school though I could perceive some pushback for 'the American way' (or whatever else those who breed and sell beef would come up with to fight such education). Access to healthy food at reasonable prices is, perhaps, more difficult to achieve in some areas but is probably doable across much of the country.

Grocery Outlet produces a pamphlet on feeding your family on $3 a day: http://www.groceryoutlet.com/default/bargainistablog/09-09-14/Feed_your_Family_on_3_a_Day.aspx The food doesn't sound terribly appealing to me, but I'm sure it's much better than many families are eating. Maybe such things should come with the food stamps check. Maybe such things do.

There are a lot of Home Economics skills that really should be taught to everyone. Everyone should learn the basics of financial management, cooking, and house keeping. None of these issues are that hard, for example, most of the things my wife makes are not complex. But if all the food you've ever eaten comes out of a cardboard box, how can you learn how to cook?

I have no idea what to do on the political end. It really annoys me that my daughter brings home all these preachy pamphlets about healthy eating from school, but what's on the school lunch menu? Beef Nachos and pepperoni pizza. Is that some kind of joke? But, of course, the food processing companies can write whatever they want into the laws, no matter who you elect.

In your world the ideal market is a place where no one can ever trade. In my world the ideal market is where anyone can trade almost instantly at or near the desired price. Guess which one is closer to what HFT actually is? Don't let your jealousy of the rich man being able to roll over his capital much easier than you cloud the fact that no one is forcing you to complete a transaction. HFT is only providing a solution to the supply/demand of the market at any given point in time. It does not make the market. It does not force you to sell a share. It does not force you to buy a share. It does, however, enable you to sell your shares almost instantly at the asking price. And it does enable you to buy stock almost instantly at the bid. Now if you're a day trader trying to make money off the spread, HFT will eat your lunch. If you're an investor, however, HFT is your friend.

Strangely enough, the actual number of shares traded is declining after having peaked a while back, which seems to fly into the face of people who think that HFT is skewing the market. You'd think that if HFT businesses were just rolling the same cash over and over, this would increase the total number of trades and thus add to the overall volume of the market. But no, that's not the case. What's happening is that when their algorithms want to buy stock, they will buy it from you faster than anyone else. And likewise on the other end of the transaction. How does this affect you, if you manage to make the trade you were going to make anyway?

The REAL problem with the market is government money printing which is now pouring trillions into the market every year so that stock prices inflate not because of any actual connection to a company's performance, but because the economy is so bloated. It wouldn't matter if the market only went up, but the higher you go, the further down you get to fall when falling time comes...

Lots of replies to your post! The bank collapse could have been contained had government enforced existing laws. There is/was a massive amount of fraud in the bubble, which the FBI was aware of at the time, as well as others who paid attention.. At the least, fraudulent loan applications could have been pursued. At a better level, bank/finance firms clearly misrepresented to investors about the underwriting standards when they sold the bundled products. We also have fraudulently signed and notarized documents on titles. So, lots of low hanging fruit in the real estate bubble.

The Federal Reserve has injected massive amounts of money into the system to try to contain the crash, and bubbles still persist. In the stock market, only chumps are getting prosecuted. The major players (Goldman Sachs and other HFT firms) are untouched.

The fine article states (on page 7): "The thing is, the SEC already has rules against placing orders not intended to be filled. Obviously, it doesn’t enforce them very well."

http://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=456724 is a nice PDF from where on page 126 we read:

"The FBI significantly reduced its investigative efforts for fraudulent activity involving financial institutions (such as banks). Principally, the FBI scaled back its handling of lower dollar cases [SENSITIVE INFORMATION REDACTED]. We agree that the FBI must prioritize its investigations and first address the most egregious criminal activities. However, discussions with USAOs and analysis of USAO data revealed that no other federal agency has replaced the reduced FBI effort in this crime area. Therefore, an investigative gap exists for financial institution fraud (FIF), [SENSITIVE INFORMATION REDACTED]."

This is also found at http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a0537/chapter13.htm

Michael Burry made billions (with a b) betting on the downfall of the CDO's. After writing an op-ed in the New York Times asking why the government (including the Federal Reserve) didn't see the same things he did, he was audited by the IRS. So, again we're looking at a massive financial system where the rules are not being enforced.

Sheesh, we even have agents running around Africa now. No doubt they are creating goodwill wherever they go.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/world/africa/us-expands-drug-fight-in-africa.html

"but is under no obligation to provide them for free "

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/fcc-verizon-tethering/
Thanks to a government investigation, a large number of Verizon Wireless customers will be able to download apps that share a smartphone’s Internet connection with other devices, a feature known as tethering. And they won’t have to pay monthly fees to the carrier for the privilege. ..."won't have to pay monthly fees"

"They also were compliant by allowing customers who did have third party applications to use the network for no additional fee." - sure. no charge, and NO DATA FOR YOU

http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/05/30/psa-using-an-unapproved-tether-app-on-your-verizon-device-expect-to-have-your-data-session-cut-off-with-an-upsale/

"....as the latest Gingerbread update for the Droid X now seems to detect tethering apps not approved by the carrier and cut off users' data, replacing all requests with an upsale page for the official hotspot add-on.'

According to a number of sources, the reason this happens is related to the way YouTube partners with companies like Scripps. Essentially, when one of YouTube's enterprise customers uploads a video, in the process of making it available YouTube kicks off an automated search that immediately goes looking for other copies of that video, already online.

This is why a video that's been on YouTube for months or years and is clearly someone else's property can get shown on a late night talk show and then suddenly get a copyright takedown

In short, YouTube assumes that if one of their paying partners uploads a video, it must belong to the company, and no matter how long that content has been on YouTube before Scripps, NBC, or whoever uploads their copy, it must be a pirated copy.

Slashdot article: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/07/15/1829254/how-the-inventors-of-dragon-speech-recognition-technology-lost-everything
And the actual article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/business/goldman-sachs-and-a-sale-gone-horribly-awry.html
Enjoy it. Business as usual, right?

Back in the day, our elite (and often inherited) ruling class had a sense of responsibility and duty to the public.

Today, the guys at the top do not consider themselves elite or a privileged ruling class. They're just out to make as much money for themselves as possible and get out while the getting is good. The key word is "stewardship". The old guys had it, new guys don't.

Excellent article on NY Times, no less (I would not have expected them to print something like this) :

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/brooks-why-our-elites-stink.html

"Wall Street firms, for example, now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not experience and character. Most of their problems can be traced to this."

Oh, trust me, I'm familiar with Wikipedia's rules. WP:BLP. It does not say what you think it says. In particular, the purpose of WP:BLP -- summarized as "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced--whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable--should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion" -- is to stop improperly sourcing material from appearing in someone's biography; it became Wikipedia policy after someone was accused of being part of a killing conspiracy with no references or other reliable information backing up the assertion, and Wikipedia being shamed in the media for this.

Romney's bullying incident does not violate WP:BLP because the accusations have been made and repeated in a number of reliable sources: Starting with the original Washington Post report and by countless other well-renowned news reporting sources, such as The New York Times, Fox News, the BBC, etc.

WP:UNDUE states that "Editing from a neutral point of view (NPOV) means representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources." A Google search for "Romney Cranbrook site:news_source.com" and clicking on the first link is how I found the above articles (I put in "Romney Cranbrook" in BBC's search box instead of using Google but got the same results). The only significant reporting about Romney's days at Cranbrook in the mainstream press has been about this bullying incident. Wikipedia's Mitt Romney article violates WP:UNDUE. It violates WP:UNDUE because the only significant view about Romney's days at Cranbrook posted by reliable sources is about his bullying incident. Wikipedia has over 120 words describing his days at Cranbrook but not a single mention of his bullying.

The bottom line is this: There is a group of people who are trying their utmost to engage in Orwellian 1984-style suppression of Mitt Romney's high school bullying incident at the Wikipedia. So far, they have succeeded. This kind of deliberate suppression of information is not Conservative; it is downright fascist. The fact that some moderators here at Slashdot have tried to suppress my postings pointing out this Orwellian behavior does not impress me with this site.

Read this, and this, and maybe learn a little something The Who taught us about bosses a long time ago.

Dullest Campaign Ever - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/opinion/brooks-dullest-campaign-ever.html

"Finally, dishonesty numbs. A few years ago, newspapers and nonprofits set up fact-checking squads, rating campaign statements with Pinocchios and such. The hope was that if nonpartisan outfits exposed campaign deception, the campaigns would be too ashamed to lie so much.

"This hope was naïve. As John Dickerson of Slate has said, the campaigns want the Pinocchios. They want to show how tough they are. But the result is a credibility vacuum. It’s impossible to take ads seriously. They are the jackhammer noise in the background of life."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/the-cybercrime-wave-that-wasnt.html April 15th of this year.

Yes it is, it's called contempt to court, and in this case can be taken as an attempt to influence the jury

Read the Groklaw article:

3. The materials were already publicly released, some by Apple and the rest because this very court forced the parties to unseal documents. (See Docket 1256, the judge's order: "The whole trial is going to be open." Also the order, docket 1269: "Unlike private materials unearthed during discovery, judicial records are public documents almost by definition, and the public is entitled to access by default.”)

In harmony with those orders, Samsung released the materials, attached to Joby Martin's Declaration, Exhibits 5, 6, and 8 [PDFs].

4. Apple released some of the information itself, in Docket Numbers 1428-1, 1438-2 (Tucher Declaration in Support of Apple's Motion to Enforce), 1429-13 (Walker Declaration in support of Samsungs Opposition to Motion to Enforce), and 1451 (Cashman Declaration in Support of Motion for Leave).

5. There were, as a result multiple articles about the materials already in the media, *before* the jury was even chosen, in the New York Times, the L.A. Times, Huffington Post and CNET. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/technology/apple-samsung-trial-highlights-patent-wars.html

7. It can't influence the jury in any way now, because they are not allowed to read any coverage of this litigation. "Moreover, Apple's baseless and public assertions that Samsungs transmission to the media of public information constituted contempt of court and that these actions were intended to pollute the jury were themselves glaring falsehoods, highlighting why Samsung has every right to defend itself in the public domain from unfair and malicious attacks."

8. Attorneys have a First Amendment right to speak. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has already so ruled, in Standing Comm. on Discipline of U.S. Dist. Court for Cent. Dist. of Cal. v. Yagman, 55 F.3d 1430 (9th Cir. 1995), where the court held that "truth is an absolute defense" and a "statement of opinion based on fully disclosed facts can be punished only if the stated facts are themselves false and demeaning."

Which of those arguments do you think is incorrect? What law do you think can be used to punish Quinn for exercising his First Amendment right to republish information that is already in the public domain?

you can't appeal a jury's decision without being able to claim mistrial

A mistrial and an appeal are two completely different legal concepts. Mistrial is when the court is disbanded before concluding its business. Appeal is something that happens after the original trial is concluded.

How are they doing an end-run around her orders? Has the jury seen any of this evidence? I doubt it, considering that they're supposed to be sequestered now. So the "end-run" theory fails.

Besides, all of the documents were already in the public. All Samsung did was say "here is what the judge is suppressing." Here's a NYT article which explicitly mentions the F700 evidence...and it's dated before the jury had even been chosen!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/technology/apple-samsung-trial-highlights-patent-wars.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all

"We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions."
The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic
  RICHARD A. MULLER
  July 28, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?pagewanted=all

The corporate media does occasionally notice that Johnson and Stein are in the race. For instance, the New York Times actually gave some coverage to Jill Stein, and The Daily Show had a pretty interesting interview with Gary Johnson.

But that's the sad thing: their collective chance of getting serious attention is basically 0. I should also point out that the Greens and Libertarians, despite significant differences in ideology, regularly cooperate on trying to force their way onto ballots and into debates. I was chatting with a local Libertarian congressional candidate, and he talked about how he was coming off of a great debate with his Green counterpart.

"[Each] day finds some six million high school students and two million college freshmen struggling with algebra. [...] Why do we subject American students to this ordeal? I’ve found myself moving toward the strong view that we shouldn’t."
"Making mathematics mandatory prevents us from discovering and developing young talent."

From the NYT Jul 28
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/is-algebra-necessary.html?&pagewanted=all

So that everyone actually has some reasonable figures to look at you can see the federal budget breakdown in some very detailed manner various places with nice charts and graphics.

There is the XKCD Money chart
The NY Times "Obama’s 2012 Budget Proposal: How $3.7 Trillion is Spent"
The NY Times "Obama’s 2011 Budget Proposal: How It’s Spent"
The NY Times "Four Ways to Slice Obama’s 2013 Budget Proposal" best when viewed by department as it is pretty worthless otherwise
The U.S. National Debt Clock showing the 6 largest budget items.

Yes we spend a ton of money on military related spending but contrary to what people think or have been led to believe it is not the majority of the total federal budget. Even if you include stuff like veterans affairs or civil benefits for the military (pensions and health care for retired military) it still isn't as big as people make it out to be.

So that everyone actually has some reasonable figures to look at you can see the federal budget breakdown in some very detailed manner various places with nice charts and graphics.

There is the XKCD Money chart
The NY Times "Obama’s 2012 Budget Proposal: How $3.7 Trillion is Spent"
The NY Times "Obama’s 2011 Budget Proposal: How It’s Spent"
The NY Times "Four Ways to Slice Obama’s 2013 Budget Proposal" best when viewed by department as it is pretty worthless otherwise
The U.S. National Debt Clock showing the 6 largest budget items.

Yes we spend a ton of money on military related spending but contrary to what people think or have been led to believe it is not the majority of the total federal budget. Even if you include stuff like veterans affairs or civil benefits for the military (pensions and health care for retired military) it still isn't as big as people make it out to be.

So that everyone actually has some reasonable figures to look at you can see the federal budget breakdown in some very detailed manner various places with nice charts and graphics.

There is the XKCD Money chart
The NY Times "Obama’s 2012 Budget Proposal: How $3.7 Trillion is Spent"
The NY Times "Obama’s 2011 Budget Proposal: How It’s Spent"
The NY Times "Four Ways to Slice Obama’s 2013 Budget Proposal" best when viewed by department as it is pretty worthless otherwise
The U.S. National Debt Clock showing the 6 largest budget items.

Yes we spend a ton of money on military related spending but contrary to what people think or have been led to believe it is not the majority of the total federal budget. Even if you include stuff like veterans affairs or civil benefits for the military (pensions and health care for retired military) it still isn't as big as people make it out to be.

I don't know why anyone would care what Crichton has to say. Sorry, but he's just a petty little man.

Just a little fyi. Narcissistic ness is no longer anything. It's being removed from the medical journals as a disorder, which means it is a normal thing. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/narcissism-no-longer-a-psychiatric-disorder/

I particularly loved the quote from TFA from BCC saying 'the chairman of the Power Grid Corporation of India said the exact cause of the power cut was unclear, he said, but that it appeared to be due to the "interconnection of grids".' That sounds a lot like the "series of tubes" speech...

But at least they've got this things under control and are honing on the root cause, they've already managed reproducibility of the bug!
'After Monday's cut, engineers managed to restore electricity to the northern grid by the evening, but at 13:05 (07:35 GMT) on Tuesday, it collapsed again.'

Wait, no, according to a NY times article, another electric company chief executive clarifies: '“We have one of the most robust, smart grids operating” in the world, he said. It would “not be wise” to give an assessment of what happened at this time, he added.'

Okay, that's settled then. Just keep replugging it, one of these times it's bound to work.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/a-closer-look-at-climate-studies-promoted-before-publicatio/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/30/my-response-to-ncdcs-op-ed-in-the-new-york-times/#more-68408

More on CRN.

1869 Harvard entrance exam

Take a look at that. Now keep in mind that the best you had at the time would have been a slide rule and paper. You say that we are more educated today than the previous generations, I would argue that the majority of kids these days most likely could not answer any of those questions. Hell, I took Algebra, Calc, Trig, Geometry, 6 years of Latin and speak or are familiar with 11 languages and I can barely answer many of those questions.

You say better educated, and I would disagree. I think more people are educated than previous generations and I think that current generational knowledge extends to more subjects, but definitely not better.

Granted, the rate of improvement has slowed down considerably, during the last few decades. However your great-grandmother's generation was definitely not better educated on average than the current one.

Between the article itself and personal experience with educating kids these days, I can guarantee you her generation would run circles around these kids in math, grammar, vocabulary and probably foreign languages. Hell my 71 year old (at the time) Great -Grandmother was able to help me with my Latin lessons 20 years ago and again, she was raised in the back woods of TN where they really only gave a damn about agricultural knowledge.

I speculate GP just made up an equation that is quite easy to prove, but otherwise pointless, presumably to make a point about people who speak or act based on prejudice about people who cannot prove pointless equations.

If by "GP" you mean "the person who made this post", he did not make up the equation, he copied it from Prof Hacker's article and pasted it into his posting (and converted it to use BASIC-style syntax for exponentiation because he didn't trust it to survive Slashdot's posting tools otherwise - just pasting it definitely didn't work, and at least one person quoting me tried using HTML entities without success, either, although maybe they just did it wrong), so, no, he didn't make it up.

It would, however, have been helpful if GP would have hit reply on the post he was replying to instead of on the /. summary; without context, his post appears just slightly more random than mine. Or is that because we're both playing the "parse this sentence" game?

He wasn't replying to a post. He was, in effect, replying to a whole crapload of posts in which people seemed to think Prof. Hacker was saying math, or algebra, was completely useless, which, as anybody who Read The Fucking Article would see, is not what he was saying.

No, that doesn't make sense. It's more like all those Democrats who want higher taxes but don't give all of their money to the IRS. See: Stop Coddling the Super-Rich by Warren Buffett for an extreme example.

Of course math changes the way you think, and often to the good. The real question, left unaddressed in the original article, is when and how do we start teaching math?

There is a body of experimental evidence, mostly from upstate NY in the 20s and 30s (see [PDF] here) that the main problem in early education is that math, with its many abstractions of notation and convention, is brought in far too early. Instead, rigorous verbal and written exercises could cover the necessary conceptual bases for math to be added onto later, while not losing huge amounts of time creating arti-factual stories to get 7-year-olds to learn division, which may then interfere with their later understanding of the actual basis.

Another method that's been suggested, also with a body of experimental evidence (see for an overview), takes the opposite tack, and says okay, we can teach everything the first time in a way consistent with later fundamentals, but to do so, we have to recognize that many apparently simple steps are actually 5-7 'micro-steps' and we need to break out and teach these explicitly.

Given that much more rigorous levels of math education don't seem to cause mass dropouts or lack of bachelors attainment in many other countries, I think the emphasis should be on fixing the way we teach math, rather than further devaluing (and yes, the ability to jump through hoops is important for successful employment.. and also, this guy thinks he can do rigorous statistical inference without a rock solid understanding of modern algebra?) high school and college degrees.

There are Algebras for Logic, you know. I don't know how you could get through a class in Logic, Philosophy, or even Rhetoric without Boolean Algebra. Not as well known here are Heyting Algebras.

I guess my point is that Algebra is a pretty broad term

Yes, there's "elementary algebra", which is what Prof. Hacker was talking about, and there's abstract algebra", which is a much broader topic, and there's an algebra, which is a particular type of mathematical structure in abstract algebra, and....

and, yes, it appears that a Political Science student would benefit from a study of Algebra.

Of course, I'd take it a bit further and suggest that they would very likely benefit from a strong mathematics background, including statistics. I don't see how this is even a question.

And there's even a political science professor "whose work relies heavily on the use of numbers" and who would probably agree with you 100%.

The point is not learning how to do complex calculation, the point is by learning these mathematical subjects you develop certain skills in logic, problem solving , and in critical thinking. It goes beyond mathematics and to how to be a rational thinker ( and yes I am exaggerating a bit ).

Yeah. Maybe Prof. Hacker should read this essay, which proposes that

...mathematics teachers at every level could create exciting courses in what I call “citizen statistics.” This would not be a backdoor version of algebra, as in the Advanced Placement syllabus. Nor would it focus on equations used by scholars when they write for one another. Instead, it would familiarize students with the kinds of numbers that describe and delineate our personal and public lives.

It could, for example, teach students how the Consumer Price Index is computed, what is included and how each item in the index is weighted — and include discussion about which items should be included and what weights they should be given.

This need not involve dumbing down. Researching the reliability of numbers can be as demanding as geometry. More and more colleges are requiring courses in “quantitative reasoning.” In fact, we should be starting that in kindergarten.

NO.

It's the unintuitive ways in which it's taught (which in turn causes the societal alienation of the subject) that is the problem, not the fact that it's a requirement.

Mathematics is nothing less than the upmost tool of rationality. Lose it, and all progress decays.

Yeah. Somebody should point Prof. Hacker to this essay, in which the writer states that

Peter Braunfeld of the University of Illinois tells his students, “Our civilization would collapse without mathematics.” He’s absolutely right.

Algebraic algorithms underpin animated movies, investment strategies and airline ticket prices. And we need people to understand how those things work and to advance our frontiers.

Quantitative literacy clearly is useful in weighing all manner of public policies, from the Affordable Care Act, to the costs and benefits of environmental regulation, to the impact of climate change. Being able to detect and identify ideology at work behind the numbers is of obvious use. Ours is fast becoming a statistical age, which raises the bar for informed citizenship.

Perhaps if he were to read that, he'd change his mind. :-)

(Shorter me: "You did RTFA, right? If not, please do so before ascribing to Prof. Hacker opinions he does not hold.")

Here in Germany every single "terrorist" put on trial since the German Autumn has been revealed to have had contact to at least one state agency, from state and federal police to the Verfassungsschutz (part of the intelligence conglomerate) to our two secret services, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (foreign intelligence) and Militärischer Abschirmdienst (domestic intelligence), including being funded, trained, "led".

That is really quite a fantastic claim given the following item, and just a small sample of arrests below. I would think you must have some substantial proof of this? And yes, terrorism is probably not the most likely thing to kill you, but it can in fact be a serious problem for a country if not held in check. You might have a very different opinion if Islamists in Germany achieve a similar attack rate there that they do in Iraq or Pakistan. The total killed by the National Socialist Underground isn't even a busy morning's work for Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Homegrown Terror Takes on New Dimensions

Surge in Volunteers

Never before have as many volunteers from Germany attended terrorist training camps as in the last two years. According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, 138 people from Germany planned to travel to a training camp in 2009 alone. Since then, five volunteers leave the country on average each month to go to one of the camps in Pakistan. In the last decade, at least 220 people from Germany have completed terrorist training, with about half returning to Germany.

The Radical Islamist Roots of the Frankfurt Attack - 03/03/2011
Two Terror Suspects Arrested in Berlin - 09/08/2011
From the Rhine River to the Jihad - 09/29/2008
German Police Arrest 3 in Terrorist Plot - 09/06/2007

Meanwhile, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/world/africa/us-expands-drug-fight-in-africa.html?_r=1

Unless we get some good watts from some other source, your electric hybrid is likely generating more CO2 than my Chevy truck.

A perfect example of conservative/ denier thinking in action. This is what conservatives / libertarian / deniers are and why democracy appears to be unable to handle climate change. This is the quality of reasoning and level of circumspection and seriousness of thought they bring to the one issue which is actually on track to completely wipe civilization out . This person votes.

What the fuck are you talking about?

Do you really think that no one has ever computed how much coal you burn (assuming it is coal you're using) and emissions you create when you re-charge your hybrid car? A thought pops into a deniers head, it *feels* right and viola! it's now true!

Before you generated your little home-grown, data free, fucking fact-free, Google-free conclusion, did you stop to think that grown-ups capable of doing analysis have done this analysis?

http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/13/autos/electric_car_myths/index.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/automobiles/how-green-are-electric-cars-depends-on-where-you-plug-in.html?pagewanted=all

I mean really, what possible purpose could understanding the topic of conversation possibly contribute?

Nothing at all, clearly.
The debate about "truth vigilantism" taught me that much.

Many people still deny climate change is human made

Including some of the smartest people alive on the planet, such as Freeman Dyson

despite its blatant obviousness

What's blatantly obvious to a true believer isn't necessarily so to the skeptic.

Personally, I'm a lot sicker of people talking about "crazy-eyed alarmists" preaching that "the fucking end is nigh." Who, specifically, are these "crazy-eyed alarmists" and where are they making such predictions?

Hey, and I'm sick of people who are sick of things without even using sick Google! Here's one example of what an alarmist said:

Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.....If this sounds apocalyptic, it is.

He's trying to be alarmist, he's not hiding or denying that; he wants you to think it's apocalyptic. If you look at his predictions, a lot of them are wild and not backed up by science. "Over the next several decades,....California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated." There is absolutely not scientific consensus on these ideas, and climate models are known to be inaccurate at such small scales.

And this is one of the world's most prominent climatologists.

Quick google search of past headlines:

NYTimes editorial.

HuffPo

Of course, the opposing perspective (from the psychologist you love to hate, Dr. Ablow!)

There's a lot more out there. I didn't really feel like trawling through feminist blogs while at work, so you can dig deeper if you want.

The badges for full time employees, vendors and contractors have differently colored borders; look for "blue badge" here or here

I may be assuming incorrectly that you feel that the bar for entitlements would be substantially smaller than that for the military. If so you will be quite put out. Some individual entitlements may not be as large as the military budget but taken as a whole entitlements are far larger portion of the budget than the military. A quick search produced this course grained pie chart. If you would like a finer grained breakdown of the budget there is the obligitory XKCD reference. Then there is this (Obama's proposed 2012 budget) chart from the NY Times although there are other ones as well from the NY Times that I have previously found. If you just like spinning numbers there is always national debt clock which lists the 6 largest budget items of which military spending is listed as well as some of the entitlements.

from Krugman's blog, 5- 7- and 10-year bonds have negative yields. Investors are paying the government to buy these things instead of going into stocks.

An Amazon Education: "Sucharita Mulpuru, the retail analyst for Forrester Research, was unimpressed. "It seemed self-congratulatory," she said in an interview. "Most companies, when they treat their workers well, that's just what they do. They don't say, "This is a reason you should do business with us.'"

Rapidly declining advertising revenues continue to be the industry’s core problem. The losses in 2011 were slightly worse than those of 2010 – 7.3% compared to 6.3%. Ad revenues are now less than half what they were in 2006.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/business/media/quarterly-profit-falls-12-2-at-times-co.html

The New York Times Company reported on Thursday that its fourth-quarter profit declined 12.2 percent as rising subscription and digital advertising revenue at its largest newspapers could not offset the continued drop-off in print advertising.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120703-702076.html

Mediaset SpA (MS.MI), Italy's largest private broadcaster, expects advertising revenue in its home market to decline in the first half of 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/may/08/itv-advertising-sales-drop

ITV expected to report first decline in ad revenues for 18 months

http://www.exa.com.au/articles/autumn_09/

Meanwhile, free to air broadcasters have experienced multi-million dollar dives in profits and are writing their assets down as worthless. Channel 7, 9 and 10 are crippled by debt and funding problems in the face of declining advertising revenues and changing trends. Likewise, print media is experiencing huge decreases in both readership and advertising revenue.

http://www.filmneweurope.com/news/romania/declining-ad-revenues-at-romanian-tv

The deficit of the Romanian's public TV, SRTV (www.tvr.ro), decreased by 0.71% in 2011, to €36.7 million Euro, while revenue from advertising was 7.4 million euro in 2011, down 24.06% from 2010.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-15/sbs-admits-financial-trouble/3830502

SBS battling falling ad revenue

http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/digital-transform/print-editions-decline/

A steady decline in print circulation and a precipitous drop in advertising revenue in 2008 and 2009, especially classified advertising, have taken their toll on newspapers and newspaper chains.

Obama is the typical college professor who knows a lot of facts and information and theory, but very little real world knowledge. President Woodrow Wilson had the same flaw. (And also lied that he would not take us to war.)

You know, what you say there might have carried a wee bit more weight had this well known conservative journalist not written this last Sunday "Where Obama Shines". Which isn't to say he didn't walk into the oval office wet behind the ears. I mean he actually expected he could create consensus with the opposing party. Well they straighten his crooked out real fast didn't they.

There's no contradiction, so long as you don't have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the word "privatize". Who has tried harder to protect your civil rights, the private Qwest or the public NSA?

By the way, anyone using a phrase like "few regulations left" should be forced to read the entire US Code and CFR before they get to talk again. Or at the very least, you should recognize that whatever opinion source has convinced you that exponentially growing bookshelves full of material are describable as "few" should no longer be trusted.

Oh, crooksandliars.com - well there's a credible, non-partisan source of information, for sure.

I admit they lack the requisite number of bald eagles, statues of liberty, and flag porn that you'd expect from a reputable information source.

I don't know where your block quote comes from, it's not in the linked document. The linked chart shows the trend of corrections to the CBO baseline over the last ten years, meaning, that $1.1 trillion for the EGTRRA isn't the cost of EGTRRA, but how much it cumulatively affected the "Clinton" surplus -- it's a delta, not an absolute. The total cost is not here, Ronald Reagan's former budget director estimates it was about $3.2 trillion including interest (this is, of course, for a tax cut that was supposed to grow the economy and produce zero revenue fall-off).