Slashdot Mirror

Where have you been? Why is Netflix double what it was a few years ago? Why are soda prices up? Why are all bottled beverages / ice creams sold in smaller sizes? Why is it called a McDouble and not a Double Cheeseburger.

In 2007-2010 lost 40000 of the median income: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/business/economy/family-net-worth-drops-to-level-of-early-90s-fed-says.html

Care to explain where inflation isn't? I'm not sure whether Ron Paul has any real solutions to this mess, and maybe Krugman's right about what we should do, but there definitely has been inflation in recent times despite Krugman's so-called statements that there hasn't been any.

Tell me more about the status of the Roma in your racially equal utopia. Here let me help:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/world/europe/17roma.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/forced-evictions-of-Roma-in-Italy

http://m.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/18/dale-farm-travellers-lifestyle?cat=uk&type=article

I think he messed up by comparing NASA's budget to social safety net and education budgets in the video though, the implication that one should grow at a cost to the others is not going to sit well with many. He carefully stepped around mentioning the bloated military budget for some reason.

In fact, I thought about including a comment about this in my post —

He realizes that our military infrastructure is one of the things that also drives and protects our society, and while war isn't preferable to other motivations for technical progress and scientific research, it is one of the chief motivations throughout our history. He also realizes that exploration can reinvigorate the human spirit, even stoking industry and the economy, which actually would help the people served by the "government safety net" more in the long term by creating a robust economic environment instead of having an environment where half of US households are on the government dole.

There was an interesting part of his UW-Madison speech where he reflected on how many Americans assume that NASA's budget is a lot larger than it actually is. He then went on to (jokingly) propose a new model for government budgets, wherein each agency would get the amount of money that the public thinks they get.

I was amused because if that were true, even among this informed and educated audience, that would mean that DOD would get something like "50%" or "over half" of the federal budget — as many people erroneously assume — when in reality, all of "national defense, veterans, and foreign affairs" is closer to 20%, while "Social programs" and "Social Security, Medicare, and other retirement" are what accounts for "over half" (55%) of our spending.

And some people will still say it's too much; to that I say that China exceeded US space launches for the first time in 2011, has increased their military spending 12% every year for the last decade, and is on track to exceed US military spending by 2025. Hint: that's not all for "peaceful regional defense". In sum, Neil deGrasse Tyson isn't anti-military, and recognizes its necessity and the significant scientific and research contributions it has brought to our society. He also talks about the broader historical context for war. You should really listen to his speech.

Sigh, here we go again.

You should read the Myth of Japan's Failure --- a great piece on perception vs. reality of Japan's economy. Hopefully, this will clear your misconceptions and not have you spewing forth silly rubbish.

Slashdot, where geeks who do not know or understand economics talk about it, and sound like idiots doing so.

Well, that would be tricky as "pants" are underwear here, but yes, it does look as dumb as it sounds.

Fascinating. Among seedy urban types here in the United States, underwear is often used as pants. Truly our cultures have much to learn from each other.

except, you know, being unhealthy leads to less time spent in retirement and overall lower costs for the healthcare system.

Here you go:

"Conclusions: Smoking was associated with structural, material as well as perceived dimensions of socioeconomic disadvantage. "

http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/15/3/262.full

And before you say it, here's one focused on the US instead of the EU:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/american-smokers-and-income-charted/

subsidies are there to maintain a stable food market...and it works.

No, subsidies exist to feed money into corporate farms that in turn give their lobbying groups the edge to make sure that they come out turning taxpayer dollars into profit (often with negative or little disposition towards the family farms and little guys).

Soda are marginally cheaper because of it. Less then a penny a liter.

That's not true at all. To come to that conclusion, you're taking the billions of dollars that the federal government is paying out to farmers and dividing it across the number of servings in that time frame. But that's not the true net effect of what those subsidy dollars have on the industry. The market is literally flooded with corn now that ethanol subsidies have been put in place and removed. The price is going to plummet and you'll be able to make as much HFCS as you want for nothing. The amount the government put in to bait these farmers into this system is paltry compared to the effect it's going to have on the price of corn. You didn't even read the article I linked to, did you? A ton of people are producing corn right now thinking they're going to get a ton of money just like last year as that corn is turned into "green" ethanol and when that doesn't happen, HFCS will basically be free for soda manufacturers. Hell, the government (read: taxpayer) will probably end up paying (er, "incentivizing") again to prevent that corn from rotting in the fields.

"Don't even get me started on how US corn subsidies and NAFTA have destroyed Mexico's farming and forced millions to turn to other crops like drugs." Since it isn't true, there is nothing to start.

Citation granted. You don't realize it, but the poorest parts of Mexico are suffering from the above subsidies paid for on my and your dime.

Troll harder. Apple licensed the GUI from Xerox.

Yeah, about that... Xerox sued Apple for "unlawfully using Xerox copyrights in its Macintosh and Lisa computers."

Something tells me that this wasn't designed by a teenager.

Arguably, yes it was. According to the NYT, it was designed under George Bush.

That's not what the article says. It says Olympic Games began under George Bush's administration. The article doesn't say who developed Flame, only that forensic analysis is underway.

The more I learn about Flame the more it amazes me.

The more I learn about the whole cyberwar program the more I am impressed.

Something tells me that this wasn't designed by a teenager.

Arguably, yes it was. According to the NYT, it was designed under George Bush.

Any source for that comment? Because I'm pretty sure it's extremely misleading.

Clooney held a fundraiser in which other people donated something like $40k a head. Now, that is a lot of money. But it's chump change compared to the amount raised by the Republican Super PACs. Romney's personal Super PAC has brought in around $52 million. Karl Rove's has brought in another $28 million. Newt Gingrich has another $24M. Santorum's got a little over $8M. There's another $30M among the smaller Republican Super PACs.

All told, that's around $142 million dollars. All the Democratic PACs have together brought in about $30M. It's pretty clear who the billionaires want to win.

The only reason there's even a chance of Obama being re-elected is because the small individual donors (under $5k) heavily favor Obama: $96M to $11M.

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/31/us/politics/super-pac-donors.html
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/index.php

Rats, hit 'submit' before I included my cool link for yes-this-could-really-happen: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/technology/postcards-from-planet-google.html?pagewanted=3

... the most trivial events may also register on Google's sensitive cultural seismic meter. The logs team came to work one morning to find that ''carol brady maiden name'' had surged to the top of the charts. Curious, they mapped the searches by time of day and found that they were neatly grouped in five spikes: biggest, small, small, big and finally, after a long wait, another small blip. Each spike started at 48 minutes after the hour...

That night the million-dollar question on the game show ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'' had been, ''What was Carol Brady's maiden name?'' Seconds after the show's host, Regis Philbin, posed the question, thousands flocked to Google to search for the answer (Tyler), producing four spikes as the show was broadcast successively in each time zone.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?_r=3&pagewanted=2&seid=auto&smid=tw-nytimespolitics&pagewanted=all

"Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet. "

Join the US military as a path to citizenship.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/us/15immig.html?pagewanted=all

If you are not willing to join and support the future of this country and just want to be a leech you can GTFO.

I can not imagine the path for a US citizen to become a citizen or a working visa holder of many other countries is much easier than someone coming here and I doubt the US citizen living illegally in many foreign countries is a walk in the park either. Would I get government assistance? Could I walk into any medical facility and get treated? Would I be able to get a drivers license? Would my kids get schooling and assitance? Would I be able to finance and buy property? If I got arrested for stealing, would I be back out on the street the next day? Maybe, I don't really know.

Any third option for the foreseeable future is a hippie pipe dream

I don't get it, all the free market preachers are promising that my energy problems will shortly be solved by the free market but your view is such a fatalistic-don't-even-try-jaded response that you seem to doubt the free market can provide.

And if anyone thinks that solar panels and wind turbines are going to supply Tokyo with even a fraction of its power needs, you've obviously never been there.

I haven't been there. But no one's asking those solutions to go from zero to powering Tokyo over night. Look how gradually it's taken wind power to start in the United States (current numbers here). Japan is comparable at our state level and is looking at connecting with Korea, China, Russia and Mongolia power grids to buy more renewable energy. So why call these hippie pipe dreams? If these are hippie pipe dreams, when will our innovation kick in and 'save us' from nuclear and coal?

(unless you count regular, sustained blackouts as an option)

Did you hear that Japan did actually make small adjustments following Fukushima and called the movement setsuden?

I don't think the situation is as dire as you describe it and, frankly, dismissing all the alternative efforts really undermines what we should be working toward which are transitional phases until some breakthrough comes in fusion or an unforeseen source.

it was on an isolated network, they just somehow got the malware on a thumb drive that was brought into the facility.

This is a logical next step for them.

First came CDs and movie bootlegs sold on street corners.
Second came CD and DVD players from no-name brands.
Then came CDs and DVD players with legitimate brand names. Yes the chinese cloned entire companies complete with head quarters in Bejing and a network of legitimate retail distributors.

It's only fair that they clone the living room next, and the shop where I go to buy popcorn. The entire fat western experience is now complete.

All that's left to do is to rip off their own and Japanese game shows, dumb them down to the point of being lame, and broadcast them to the fat loners with 5minute ad breaks every 2 minutes.

BTW: here's your citation: Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran. Cheers! Also, start reading news sources outside of slashdot.

Why do we let politicians write the text books, instead of having a quorum of people in their respective fields with masters degrees? Shouldn't the most educated in their respective fields have a say in what the younger generation is being taught, so they can be more prepared for higher education?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html?_r=1

The problems I have with HFT are:
1) At least at one point of time it was (is?) a front running scam - favoured HFT traders got to front-run others ( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html )
2) When favoured HFT players screw up, the exchange rolls back their trades: http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/07/markets/explaining_wall_street_turmoil/

Even an idiot like me can make lots of money if the exchange keeps rolling back my biggest mistakes.

Call me cynical but all that HFT, fancy math and fancy systems (computer and financial) are just a "magician's smoke and mirrors" to disguise what is actually happening: the transfer of money from the nonfavoured to the favoured.

Hello, Creationist here, Oil fields could well be geological in nature and not from dead corpses as commonly believed..
here and here from a quick google.

As for coal seams, the creationist believe is that the Earth had a much greater environment at creation. The creationist believe that there might of been a canopy of water over the earth before the flood which 1 - reduced X rays, 2 created greater pressure in the atmosphere. This greater pressure would make the entire earth into a hyperbolic chamber. A scientist decided to grow a tomato in a hyperbolic chamber and the tomato plant grew 14 ft high and produce 15000 tomatos which instead of being miniature where "full" size. The moved the tomato tree into a shopping center.
This perfect environment meant that there was alot more vegataion on earth. Alot more. The increase pressure also meant more water vapor which and as a hot house gas meant more heat on earth, which is why you get 300ft trees burried under 1000ft of permafrost ground in Alaska.
quick google again

I dare say in tongue and check why we hasn't done flood geology mining is we gave our money to the poor. :-P
Also I have no interest in drilling.
Also please explain what makes Flood geology good or bad about drilling? It doesn't say anything about where to drill. But I am not a geologist so I can't comment.

I think within the next 10 years, this will be entirely possible. Medical researchers are making some great strides for mapping the brain and reading synapses firing from outside of the head. I think that as soon as it's practical, it'll be marketed like crazy, and it'll be a cheap technology very, very quickly. I think in 10 years we'll be thinking, instead of typing or using a mouse, and if you can program in your head as you walk/run, then sure, you'll be able to do it.

Recent article with video

They've got most of it figured out pretty well. It's just a matter of refinement at this point.

It was no accident, the Shanghai index fell 64.89 points and people starting blogging that since 6/4/89 was the date of Tiananmen massacre, the stock index coincided with the date, which is a particularly infamous one. The censors then blocked those people for discussing the massacre, which is verboten. The NYT has a more in depth article. Now, the fact that the stock market fell by that exact amount by closing (see here) might be an accident, but the censors were doing exactly their job, censoring people discussing the massacre. As the NYT points out, other stock markets have been hacked and this may have be the case here as well, or some other intentional act. The Chinese government is investigating and you may rest assured that we will likely never know what they find since that would draw attention to why they were investigating in the first place.

They are sitting in a cleanroom in upstate New York. There is a longer, more detailed article in the New York Times. The satellites may save $250M each or more on various NASA missions, but they still need to be launched and have a program built around them — which may put dark matter research more than a decade ahead of schedule.

For the folks who don't know what the National Reconnaissance Office is, the NRO is the member of the US Intelligence Community responsible for designing, building, launching, and maintaining the United States' intelligence satellites. It does not do intelligence work itself, nor does it direct the use of space assets. Judging from some of the comments on the NYT article, I should also say this: NRO has been around for a half century, and its existence was declassified two decades ago, so this isn't some kind of "new"/shadowy intelligence agency. While its work is classified, its purpose and function is well-understood.

For a look at what kinds of work NRO does, see

Declassified US Spy Satellites Reveal Rare Look at Secret Cold War Space Program

Twenty-five years after their top-secret, Cold War-era missions ended, two clandestine American satellite programs were declassified Saturday (Sept. 17) with the unveiling of three of the United States' most closely guarded assets: the KH-7 GAMBIT, the KH-8 GAMBIT 3 and the KH-9 HEXAGON spy satellites...

Secret No More: Spy Satellite Designer Reveals Life's Work

Phil Pressel had kept a secret for 46 years. A secret that he shared with no one, not even his wife, since he first went to work for the Perkin-Elmer optics company in 1965...

Aside: I know this is difficult to comprehend for some on slashdot, but US intelligence assets in space are almost exclusively used for FOREIGN intelligence. Occasionally capabilities of, e.g., the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) may provide civil support in natural disasters. Our intelligence operations are not transparent, and are kept secret to deny our adversaries knowledge of our techniques, capabilities, sources, and methods. Be happy that we're able to repurpose for science intelligence assets that might otherwise have been destroyed or kept secret beyond all usefulness.

They are sitting in a cleanroom in upstate New York. There is a longer, more detailed article in the New York Times. The satellites may save $250M each or more on various NASA missions, but they still need to be launched and have a program built around them — which may put dark matter research more than a decade ahead of schedule.

For the folks who don't know what the National Reconnaissance Office is, the NRO is the member of the US Intelligence Community responsible for designing, building, launching, and maintaining the United States' intelligence satellites. It does not do intelligence work itself, nor does it direct the use of space assets. Judging from some of the comments on the NYT article, I should also say this: NRO has been around for a half century, and its existence was declassified two decades ago, so this isn't some kind of "new"/shadowy intelligence agency. While its work is classified, its purpose and function is well-understood.

For a look at what kinds of work NRO does, see

Declassified US Spy Satellites Reveal Rare Look at Secret Cold War Space Program

Twenty-five years after their top-secret, Cold War-era missions ended, two clandestine American satellite programs were declassified Saturday (Sept. 17) with the unveiling of three of the United States' most closely guarded assets: the KH-7 GAMBIT, the KH-8 GAMBIT 3 and the KH-9 HEXAGON spy satellites...

Secret No More: Spy Satellite Designer Reveals Life's Work

Phil Pressel had kept a secret for 46 years. A secret that he shared with no one, not even his wife, since he first went to work for the Perkin-Elmer optics company in 1965...

Aside: I know this is difficult to comprehend for some on slashdot, but US intelligence assets in space are almost exclusively used for FOREIGN intelligence. Occasionally capabilities of, e.g., the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) may provide civil support in natural disasters. Our intelligence operations are not transparent, and are kept secret to deny our adversaries knowledge of our techniques, capabilities, sources, and methods. Be happy that we're able to repurpose for science intelligence assets that might otherwise have been destroyed or kept secret beyond all usefulness.

Normally these CA servers stand in highly secured room, with no network connection whatsoever. [...] So it's not really surprising they could just pay a disgruntled employee, or hack into the building, or doing some James Bond stuff, or god knows what, to get their hands on these certificates.

I'm a bit skeptical about the seriousness that the hardware vendors treat security. Depending on how rushed to market the product is, a lot of corners are cut in both hardware and software development -- and Realtek seems to be no exception in my experience. We see malware on fresh-from-the-factory hard drives and USB drives, tagging a ride on drivers, etc., all the time.

And the Stuxnet architects said it best: "It turns out there is always an idiot around who doesn't think much about the thumb drive in their hand."

Tobacco smoke is far more dangerous than marijuana smoke (yes, really -- marijuana smoke does contain carcinogens, but even heavy marijuana smokers do not show an increased risk of cancer).

I would rather have a legal, regulated chemical plant producing methamphetamine for people to buy over the counter than the system we have today.

Maybe so, but wait till you legalize marijuana and Philip Morris and friends get their hands on it.

1) Go compare what's in tobacco and what's in cigarettes: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3990-crack-nicotine-in-cigarettes-varies-widely.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16728749
2) Industrially farmed tobacco typically is grown from phosphate fertilizers. That results in higher amounts of polonium in the tobacco. Yes there's plenty of other toxic stuff in cigarette smoke that can increase your odds of getting cancer but polonium certainly doesn't help. Anyone going to bet that industrially farmed marijuana won't concentrate polonium?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/opinion
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tobacco-firms-kept-quiet-on--polonium-role-in-cigarettes-907194.html/01proctor.html

Not saying marijuana shouldn't be legalized, but that you shouldn't be too optimistic about the results.

failing to take advantage of the brief period of Democratic control of Congress by getting his health care plan passed

It's not his fault; he's naive and inexperienced, and never should have been put up as a nominee

I have a somewhat different view of this. It seems that Obama actually got the health care that he wanted. Sure he paid lip-service to a public option for political reasons, but maybe you don't remember or didn't know that he negotiated away the public option in private meetings with the insurance companies early on [1] [2]. There's also the fact that Obama decided to personally scold Kucinich for trying to stick up for the public option. So I don't really buy the argument that Obama has good intentions but is just too powerless, inexperienced, good-natured, etc. to stand up to the Republicans.

... are doomed to repeat it.

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/17/nyregion/ascap-asks-royalties-from-girl-scouts-and-regrets-it.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Somebody mod this guy up. Ever since LBJ we have been introducing ever more programs to "defeat" poverty. And yet, more Americans than ever are living in poverty --> https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/14census.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all How can this be? It's plain to see that these programs are not working.

Then there are pension benefits. As in: you actually have a real pension. Usually they are defined benefit, meaning you will know how much you are going to get when you retire.

Unless the aforementioned lousy administrators have underfunded the pension plan. Which roughly everyone has done.

+1 for teaching at private schools. The school where my kids go has recently hired a part-time math specialist, and I've been filling in myself, volunteering one lesson a week. Any discipline problems, I just sic my elder boy on them :-)

People left England because of religious oppression.... Then you know what they did?
They set up their own theocratic territories which doubled down on the behaviors they had left England to escape.

People do this stuff all the time.

Black people were horribly oppressed in the US before the Civil War (slavery), and after it too (2nd class citizens until the Civil Rights laws were passed in the 1960s). Yet they're some of the biggest proponents of oppressing gay people; they were instrumental in pushing through Prop 8 in California, and prominent black people who've come out as gay say their biggest problems were with other black people. The Root has lots of articles about this:
http://thegrio.com/2012/02/07/don-lemon-being-black-and-gay-is-about-the-worst-thing-you-can-be-in-black-culture/
http://www.theroot.com/buzz/don-lemon-yes-black-community-homophobic
http://www.theroot.com/views/will-blacks-accept-gay-marriage
http://www.theroot.com/views/black-men-and-black-and-women-who-love-them

Similarly, Jews were horribly oppressed in Europe during WWII (death camps), yet many of them are just like the Taliban, spitting on 8-year-old girls who dare to "dress immodestly" and go to school:
http://jezebel.com/5871293/orthodox-israelis-spit-on-whorish-8+year+old-girl-for-going-to-school
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/world/middleeast/israeli-girl-at-center-of-tension-over-religious-extremism.html?pagewanted=all

You'd think that people who were previously the subject of horrible oppression (and not very long ago to boot, within many peoples' living memories or at least their parents') would be the first to stand up for the rights of others who are oppressed, but nope, that's not the way we humans work. With us humans, it's all "I got mine, so fuck you".

NYT did an article on this back in 2010. Venezuela's murder rate shot up after Hugo Chavez took power in 1999. From that article, "But some crime specialists say another factor has to be considered: Mr. Chávez’s government itself. The judicial system has grown increasingly politicized, losing independent judges and aligning itself more closely with Mr. Chávez’s political movement....More than 90 percent of murders go unsolved, without a single arrest...."

The first step of organization is disorganization...
1. Establish credibility to overcome suspicion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Bol%C3%ADvar_2000 and "The revolution will not be televised"...
2. Bait opponents into reacting http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/17/us-venezuela-gold-idUSTRE77G53L20110817 and Ban the opposition http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/world/americas/19venez.html?_r=1
3. the next logical step ???
4. Profit!!!
Remember, the ends justifies the means...

The first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer.

First thought: Who's the source on this? Everybody suspected it was the US or the Israelis, but is this reliable?

Well, let's see ... would Obama be the kind of person to do this? His track record so far:

Mr. Obama decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership. He overthrew the Libyan dictator. He ramped up drone attacks in Pakistan, waged effective covert wars in Yemen and Somalia and authorized a threefold increase in the number of American troops in Afghanistan. He became the first president to authorize the assassination of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and played an operational role in Al Qaeda, and was killed in an American drone strike in Yemen. And, of course, Mr. Obama ordered and oversaw the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Now considering all that, um, I think ordering a speed up of cyberattacks on Iran where no one dies might be something he does on a whim over coffee on a given morning.

Second thought, while reading through the article: Wow, that's pretty badass.

That's what I don't understand. Everyone has this notion that Obama is some peace loving hippie. At his Nobel Prize announcement, he basically justified going to war with anyone who gave USA the stink eye. He has been more aggressive (albeit more subtle) than George W. Bush and will probably cause problems for Romney who wants to paint him as an indecisive leader that let Libya and Syria happen. But the funny thing is that for all everyone sees him as a harbinger of peace, he sure hasn't been acting like it. And it's probably going to be obvious come this next election when people start looking at his track record ...

First thought: Who's the source on this? Everybody suspected it was the US or the Israelis, but is this reliable?

Well, let's see ... would Obama be the kind of person to do this? His track record so far:

Mr. Obama decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership. He overthrew the Libyan dictator. He ramped up drone attacks in Pakistan, waged effective covert wars in Yemen and Somalia and authorized a threefold increase in the number of American troops in Afghanistan. He became the first president to authorize the assassination of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and played an operational role in Al Qaeda, and was killed in an American drone strike in Yemen. And, of course, Mr. Obama ordered and oversaw the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Now considering all that, um, I think ordering a speed up of cyberattacks on Iran where no one dies might be something he does on a whim over coffee on a given morning.

Second thought, while reading through the article: Wow, that's pretty badass.

That's what I don't understand. Everyone has this notion that Obama is some peace loving hippie. At his Nobel Prize announcement, he basically justified going to war with anyone who gave USA the stink eye. He has been more aggressive (albeit more subtle) than George W. Bush and will probably cause problems for Romney who wants to paint him as an indecisive leader that let Libya and Syria happen. But the funny thing is that for all everyone sees him as a harbinger of peace, he sure hasn't been acting like it. And it's probably going to be obvious come this next election when people start looking at his track record ...

Since the politicians won't let us alone, we're interfering in the political sphere (rather successfully in some places) just as they've interfered in the Net sphere. It's payback time.

What a load of bullcrap.

Do you know how easy it was for me to start up a company in Norway? Required only internet access and a couple of days, and that was 8 years ago.

In greece, you'd be lucky with 10 months and lots of bribes. E.g. check out this article. And there's plenty of renowned international studies into corruption, ease of business, etc, and the Northern European countries top all those.

There's no grand conspiracy, no effort at keeping the south down through infrastructure loans or anything. The countries that are doing excellent through this crisis, e.g. the Northern European countries, do so for entirely obvious reasons.

It might have been slightly naive of us to think that Greece would have taken the out-stretched hand and used it to reform into a prosperous European social-democratic country, not try to steal our watch and rings to waste on wine and dance.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/new-yorkers-life-expectancy-reaches-80-6-years-higher-than-national-rate/?ref=nyregion

Mr. Bloomberg has made public health one of his top policy priorities and has run high-profile campaigns against smoking, obesity and the consumption of salt.

The biggest factor in New Yorkers’ increased life expectancy, however, was unrelated to any of those efforts. Instead, officials attributed it to expanded H.I.V. testing and treatment, which resulted in a substantially reduced death rate from H.I.V. and AIDS. The mortality rate from H.I.V. infection in 2010 fell by 11.3 percent since 2009, and by 51.9 percent since 2002.

Other significant factors in the increased life expectancy are a decline in deaths from heart disease and cancer, a decline in drug-related deaths and a decline in infant mortality.

In some neighborhoods, its impossible to purchase food that is actually good for you

That is a lie.

Here in New Jersey we are putting tiny solar panels on telephone poles to prove how stupid we are aboout green energy.

Roughly speaking, there are three levels of "greenness", for lack of a better word. "Off the grid" means you're totally self-sufficient; probably solar during the day stored to batteries for night, combined with ultra-efficient stuff. "Net zero" means you self-generate a surplus of power sometimes and a deficit others, selling your excess to the power company and buying your need.

Not really. First, being off the grid typically isn't a choice people make when they have the option of being on the grid. It's usually what people do when they live in remote areas where the grid simply doesn't reach. And anyway, being off the grid is normally less green than being net zero and on the grid. Most people who are off the grid are under capacity for their needs, and typically they make up for that by running a generator sometimes -- which is very bad environmentally. (Battery systems that let you store energy in the day for use at night are extremely big and expensive, and I don't know how common they are in real life. They require maintenance and are dangerous if not properly maintained. I suspect that a gigantic battery is not likely to be very green, either. You have all those chemicals, which have to be disposed of when the battery reaches its end of life.) On the other hand, if they have excess capacity, that's energy that's being wasted rather than going to people who are on the grid, so again it's less green than being on the grid. And it's essentially impossible to have an off-grid system that has exactly the right capacity for your needs. That's because energy production varies dramatically from day to day and month to month due to clouds and the height of the sun in the sky.

On-grid photovoltaics are actually really nice environmentally, because they produce the most power on hot, sunny days, which are exactly the days when a lot of people are using air conditioners. The solar energy helps keep the electric company from having to fire up more generators and feed more fossil fuels into them.

Here is an article that touches on how some of this plays out in real life.

The most of the large geothermal energy projects have been abandoned - because of the increasing number of local earthquakes. Geothermal energy obviously comes not free. The energy you withdraw from the soil seems to cause the underground to change dynamics.

See the Basel Geothermal Project as an example.

Maybe your own bias for something "everyone knows" around you in your cocoon is just showing?

Here's a link to that super-conservative Republican loving rag the NY Times explaining how your facts are incorrect.

Quote from the NYT:

"The case that has brought the issue to international attention is the Sept. 30, 2011, drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, who United States officials say was part of Al Qaedaâ(TM)s command structure. Another American was killed in the strike, and Mr. Awlakiâ(TM)s 16-year-old son, also an American citizen, was killed in an attack two weeks later."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/the-power-to-kill.html

I couldn't find the study earlier, but here is a pretty good writeup of the effect:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?pagewanted=all

"Willpower turned out to be more than a folk concept or a metaphor. It really was a form of mental energy that could be exhausted. The experiments confirmed the 19th-century notion of willpower being like a muscle that was fatigued with use, a force that could be conserved by avoiding temptation."

I don't disagree that regular exercise of willpower can have positive effects, though.

Perhaps I can help you out as far as the American citizen. He may be referring to Anwar al-Awlaki.

Yes, and of course his son

Perhaps I can help you out as far as the American citizen. He may be referring to Anwar al-Awlaki.