Slashdot Mirror

In before you claim that Jim Crow was *only* the government's doing. Without the backing of businesses and such, Jim Crow wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell of lasting as long as it did.

The government of course was a part of it, but the core of Jim Crow was not government or business but the KKK and those who's sentiments were basically agreeing with the KKK. The laws in question began getting passed in 1876, shortly after the US troops stopped enforcing the Reconstruction-era racial equality in the South. The KKK and its allies started using violence to prevent Republicans (who in that era supported those equality policies and sometimes elected black politicians) from voting, and then once in power passed Jim Crow laws. By 1890 it was perfectly acceptable for white mobs to lynch black people, which would continue into the 1950's.

I'm not always a "blame the people for the government's actions" sort of guy, but there's a lot of evidence that many if not most white southerners in the early 20th century were very very racist. There's also evidence (e.g. this story) that a lot of white people, particularly older and poorer white people, still are quite racist.

Hockey fighters start out young, and when fighting most players tug the helmets off. The NY Times did an extensive article about a player who made a career out of fighting, and died of an overdose at the age of 28. Fighters get blows to the head nearly every game, akin to the way football players also get pummeled.

Actually some donate more than others.

Historically, the official line substantially underrepresented the risks of head trauma. As knowledge of the area has grown, an increasing number of players have been putting themselves on the list for inclusion in the brain bank at the BU Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy... The chap who deliberately shot himself in the chest, rather than the head, to preserve his neural tissue for research is a somewhat extreme example of the phenomenon...

The server, which was operated by the European Counter Network ('ECN'), ... was seized in relation to bomb threats sent to the University of Pittsburgh using a Mixmaster anonymous remailer hosted on the server.

Given their recent activities - Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I. - I wouldn't be surprised if the FBI e-mailed that bomb threat themselves so they could legally seize and search the ECN system - brilliant.

Don't kid yourself that public debates such as those that occur here on slashdot don't make a difference; they do. Public opinion is changing and the reason is not that the government has released illustrated pamphlets, it's because just ordinary individuals everywhere, acting on their own initiative and motivated by their own conscience and understanding are waging an public war against deniers online, over dinner tables and in the media.

. If you doubt that we're effective, here's some good news for your efforts (about three quarters of the way down under the heading - Global Warming and Extreme Weather Events:)

http://environment.yale.edu/climate/files/Extreme-Weather-Climate-Preparedness.pdf

Highlight- 69% of Americans believe global warming is effecting the weather in the US.

then there's this, via TomDispatch.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/science/earth/americans-link-global-warming-to-extreme-weather-poll-says.html

and this:

63% of respondents believe the United States should move forward to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of what other countries do.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/30/473484/public-opinion-the-death-of-public-support-for-global-warming-action-is-greatly-exaggerated/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=d3e9d40391-TD_McKibben5_3_2012&utm_medium=email

and this:

65% of Americans backed the idea of imposing mandatory controls on carbon dioxide emissions/other greenhouse gases

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/10/461246/gallup-americans-have-more-guts-than-obama-support-mandatory-controls-on-co2-emissions/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=d3e9d40391-TD_McKibben5_3_2012&utm_medium=email

and this:

75% now support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/26/471840/poll-75-of-americans-support-co2-regulation-60-support-revenue-neutral-carbon-tax/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=d3e9d40391-TD_McKibben5_3_2012&utm_medium=email

Actually, ISPs in the US don't block copyright infringing websites

Up until the point where the US government seizes domain names.

As to your claim that other areas of free speech are restricted in the US, exactly what speech are you talking about?

How about praising terrorists:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/a-dangerous-mind.html?ref=terrorism

Or publishing articles with controversial views about terrorism:

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

Or publishing books about making drugs (note that Shulgin lost his license to do research -- including research on drugs that he discovered):

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

Or recording the police:

http://cryptogon.com/?p=22744

Some of these things are illegal; some are legal in theory but restricted in practice. Or publishing information about breaking DRM systems:

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

Or publishing cartoon descriptions of child abuse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_Act_of_2003

Or speaking outside of designated free speech zones:

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

I guess you could say that these things are not as bad as outright bans on criticisms of the government. Yet we do have a whole lot of restrictions on free speech, both in the law and in practice.

In the US one is subject to such searches if one is going on a plane

This amounts to millions of people subjected to searches, in a systematic and humiliating way.

Any violation of this sort in Pakistan is actually orders of magnitude worse than the US

[citation needed]

It's been done.

Do remember the NYT is a very left-wing paper and that climate change supporters are majority left-wing.

In a way that's true. Just as evolution "supporters" are more left wing.

Really?

John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said he was surprised to see that teaching both evolution and creationism was favored not only by conservative Christians, but also by majorities of secular respondents, liberal Democrats and those who accept the theory of natural selection. Mr. Green called it a reflection of "American pragmatism."

1) Reality has a well know liberal bias.
2) On average liberals are more intelligent than right-wingers.

1) When I hear liberals say things like, "Obama is doing a great job with the economy", I see that bias has affected what some see as reality.

2) Bullshit. I hear that spouted all the time, but only by liberals. Many of the media driven surveys that claim this usually did so by asking respondents questions that liberals are more likely to know the answer to, like "Where was Obama born" or "Did Iraq have something to do with 9-11". They don't ask questions like, "Who said that she could see Alaska from her house."

The more professional studies used to come up with that conclusion used kids to make the determination. KIDS! They also allowed the kids to determine their political affiliation themselves rather than determining them from the ideals the children hold dear.

The Add Health study shows that the mean IQ of adolescents who identify themselves as "very liberal" is 106, compared with a mean IQ of 95 for those calling themselves "very conservative." The Add Health study is huge — more than 20,000 kids — and this difference is highly statistically significant.

But self-identification is often misleading; do kids really know what it means to be liberal? The GSS data are instructive here: Kanazawa found that more-intelligent GSS respondents (as measured by a quick but highly reliable synonym test) were less likely to agree that the government has a responsibility to reduce income and wealth differences. In other words, intelligent people might like to portray themselves as liberal. But in the end, they know that it's good to be the king.

In other words, the kids said they were liberal, but when you got down to what they truly believed, it turns out they were actually fairly conservative.

5,000 annually in the US, according to the CDC. cite

but if you really cared to research facts that challenged your world view you would have looked it up yourself.

Most of the bands you have heard of are associated with a label which has paid the fees (possibly out of the band's pocket to itself) to allow them to play cover songs. And the bands you haven't heard of are playing at venues that have paid the fees to allow cover songs to be played.

Here's an article from 1996 about ASCAP threatening to sue camp grounds for public performances. ASCAP claims it only meant to charge for professional performances, but frankly, that's an excuse. They decided to shake down a bunch of camp sites with an ambiguous legal threat and got caught up in a public backlash over their attempted extortion of several girl scouts camps (among the over 6,000 camping grounds they threatened).

Copyright organisations seems to be evil by definition, they seek to steal from the public to enrich themselves. It's simply ridiculous that a song (Over the Rainbow) from a movie released in 1939 (The Wizard of Oz) is still covered by copyright and still requires a license to sing in a "public performance". Copyright needs to be eliminated, or at least dramatically reduced. I see few good reasons for it to exist, and no good reasons why copyright should last more than 10 years. Copyright's revenues are heavily front loaded, which means each additional year of copyright protection increases costs for less revenue. By 15 years out, 98% of all revenues have been realised. If we broaden that out to economic benefits rather than specifically revenues of the copyright holder, the economic benefits of copyright are probably negative by 15 years out. The costs to enforce and police the copyright, which are increasingly being socialised by aggressive content industry lobbying, will definitely outweigh the limited benefits of copyright by that point.

Well, I don't know what he's referring to about OKC, but while the FBI didn't help construct the WTC bomb, they also didn't do anything to stop it despite knowing who, what, when, and how:
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/28/nyregion/tapes-depict-proposal-to-thwart-bomb-used-in-trade-center-blast.html

It sucks for law enforcement sometimes when informants turn around and tape them surreptitiously.</sarcasm>

First, a backdrop, beginning with the fact that China is on track to exceed US military spending by 2025:

Chinese Insider Offers Rare Glimpse of U.S.-China Frictions
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/world/asia/chinese-insider-offers-rare-glimpse-of-us-china-frictions.html

"The senior leadership of the Chinese government increasingly views the competition between the United States and China as a zero-sum game, with China the likely long-range winner if the American economy and domestic political system continue to stumble, according to an influential Chinese policy analyst. China views the United States as a declining power, but at the same time believes that Washington is trying to fight back to undermine, and even disrupt, the economic and military growth that point to China’s becoming the world’s most powerful country."

Asia's balance of power: China’s military rise
http://www.economist.com/node/21552212

"NO MATTER how often China has emphasised the idea of a peaceful rise, the pace and nature of its military modernisation inevitably cause alarm. As America and the big European powers reduce their defence spending, China looks likely to maintain the past decade’s increases of about 12% a year. Even though its defence budget is less than a quarter the size of America’s today, China’s generals are ambitious. The country is on course to become the world’s largest military spender in just 20 years or so."

China’s military rise: The dragon’s new teeth
http://www.economist.com/node/21552193

And now on to what's happening every day in US academic and business environments:

How China Steals Our Secrets
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/opinion/how-china-steals-our-secrets.html

China's Cyber Thievery Is National Policy—And Must Be Challenged
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203718504577178832338032176-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwOTEwNDkyWj.html

FBI Traces Trail of Spy Ring to China
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203961204577266892884130620-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwNzEwNDcyWj.html

NSA: China is Destroying U.S. Economy Via Security Hacks
http://www.dailytech.com/NSA+China+is+Destroying+US+Economy+Via+Security+Hacks/article24328.htm

Former cybersecurity czar: Every major U.S. company has been hacked by China
http://www.itworld.com/security/262616/former-cybersecurity-czar-every-major-us-company-has-been-hacked-china

China Attacked Internet Security Company RSA, Cyber Commander Tells SASC
http://defense.aol.com/2012/03/27/china-attacked-internet-security-company-rsa-cyber-commander-te/

Chinese Counterfeit Parts Keep Flowing
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=defense&id=news%2Fasd%2F2012%2F03%2F27%2F04.xml&headline=Chinese+Counterfeit+Parts+Keep+Flowing

China Corporate

First, a backdrop, beginning with the fact that China is on track to exceed US military spending by 2025:

Chinese Insider Offers Rare Glimpse of U.S.-China Frictions
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/world/asia/chinese-insider-offers-rare-glimpse-of-us-china-frictions.html

"The senior leadership of the Chinese government increasingly views the competition between the United States and China as a zero-sum game, with China the likely long-range winner if the American economy and domestic political system continue to stumble, according to an influential Chinese policy analyst. China views the United States as a declining power, but at the same time believes that Washington is trying to fight back to undermine, and even disrupt, the economic and military growth that point to China’s becoming the world’s most powerful country."

Asia's balance of power: China’s military rise
http://www.economist.com/node/21552212

"NO MATTER how often China has emphasised the idea of a peaceful rise, the pace and nature of its military modernisation inevitably cause alarm. As America and the big European powers reduce their defence spending, China looks likely to maintain the past decade’s increases of about 12% a year. Even though its defence budget is less than a quarter the size of America’s today, China’s generals are ambitious. The country is on course to become the world’s largest military spender in just 20 years or so."

China’s military rise: The dragon’s new teeth
http://www.economist.com/node/21552193

And now on to what's happening every day in US academic and business environments:

How China Steals Our Secrets
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/opinion/how-china-steals-our-secrets.html

China's Cyber Thievery Is National Policy—And Must Be Challenged
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203718504577178832338032176-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwOTEwNDkyWj.html

FBI Traces Trail of Spy Ring to China
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203961204577266892884130620-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwNzEwNDcyWj.html

NSA: China is Destroying U.S. Economy Via Security Hacks
http://www.dailytech.com/NSA+China+is+Destroying+US+Economy+Via+Security+Hacks/article24328.htm

Former cybersecurity czar: Every major U.S. company has been hacked by China
http://www.itworld.com/security/262616/former-cybersecurity-czar-every-major-us-company-has-been-hacked-china

China Attacked Internet Security Company RSA, Cyber Commander Tells SASC
http://defense.aol.com/2012/03/27/china-attacked-internet-security-company-rsa-cyber-commander-te/

Chinese Counterfeit Parts Keep Flowing
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=defense&id=news%2Fasd%2F2012%2F03%2F27%2F04.xml&headline=Chinese+Counterfeit+Parts+Keep+Flowing

China Corporate

Starting August 15, 2011, viewers of content from Fox and related networks will have to authenticate whether they subscribe to a paid cable or satellite service wherever Fox streams episodes, including Hulu, to be able to watch them the morning after the first airing. Non-subscribers will see those episodes delayed a week before they are viewable.

The wikipedia article cites the following NY Times article. The source is more credible, and there's a big difference between "Hulu to Require Viewers To Have a Cable Subscription" and "Fox to Limit Next-Day Streaming on Hulu to Paying Cable Customers."

I believe the design *was* flawed, or at least there was an issue with the materials of construction, in regard to the rivets used to hold the plates together that made up the hull.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/15titanic.html?pagewanted=all

and there's this which is totally a design thing:

Although the compartments were called watertight, they were actually only watertight horizontally; their tops were open and the walls extended only a few feet above the waterline [Hill, 1996]. If the transverse bulkheads (the walls of the watertight compartments that are positioned across the width of the ship) had been a few feet taller, the water would have been better contained within the damaged compartments.

http://www.writing.eng.vt.edu/uer/bassett.html

Fortunately for humanity, lots of people are willing to donate a kidney to save a stranger's life.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/health/lives-forever-linked-through-kidney-transplant-chain-124.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1

Apple responds to the nytimes article[1] . Lame.

* They employ and "incredible" number of people (34,000 in 2009, 47,000 in TFA) by comparison, Walmart employs 1.8 million. That's more than 300x more incredible.

* They have "more than 500,000 jobs for U.S. workers -- from the people who create components for our products". Must be a lot of americans working in china. How is 47,000 a "vast majority" of the workforce?

* "Apple has conducted all of its business with the highest of ethical standards". lol Yes, and all the child labor and suicide data will back that up.

[1] - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-response-on-its-tax-practices.html

Didn't Gm pay almost all of it back.

Probably not. From that article: “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that taxpayers will lose around $30 billion on G.M.”

IIRC, more than half of Foxconn's production is iStuff, all the other brands are under 10% each. So yeah, Apple has more say in that than Dell, Samsung, Amazon, Toshiba, and ...

If I remember correctly, you just make stuff up. But since neither of us has a citation, let's move on...

Foxconn apparently makes 40% of the world's electronics and its customers include Amazon, Apple, Dell, HP, and numerous others. If Apple is really selling 20% of the world's electronics, then the company is doing a lot better than anyone thought...

It's not a legal defense, just a public opinion defense.

The odds are really against him not serving time in action during WWII. The NY Times mentions his time in "the Pacific". Unless he scored a spot in Hawaii for his entire service, he was definitely out of the country.

I would personally be less likely to care about this because of the man's age than his previous service.

yep, you are right, RSA isnt a major company, that dont have as its clients most of the other majors companies and governments... stolen RSA IDs couldnt be used to acces to important information...

not, EMC wasnt hacked, and the source for vmware stolen... so you are safe in thousand of companies and corporation that use ESX in trust that their platform is safe and trusted...

and dont forget you are always save with the encryption, certificates are safe, no one can issue rogue certificates and decrypt your data

Since organic labels are cheap to buy and there is no enforcement I have heard that a number of people have learned to buy badly shaped vegetables and sell them as organic - thus getting a premium price for cheaper goods. The consumer is non the wiser, poorer, but happier?

I wonder how widespread this is? In the absence of a predator, a new life form can prosper. I see regulators as the predators would make sure organic food was in fact grown to certain rules and the fakers are their legal prey.

Personally, I shop at a co-op in Seattle that sells almost exclusively organic...certified organic retailer. I've complained to Whole Foods that since they sell so much conventional, mistakes must be made occasionally. independent studies I've read, show that organic produce really does have fewer or no pesticides, etc. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/08/us/study-finds-far-less-pesticide-residue-on-organic-produce.html Can't steer clear of all of it, but trying to reduce my exposure and throw the environment a bone in the process.

Just so you are aware, Wall Street bonuses have little to do with the market being up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/business/29bonus.html

It is the investors who generally gain the most from the market being up, the largest investors typically being pension funds, university endowments or 401K accounts belonging to individuals.

So learn a little before shooting off your mouth.

Everyone should be aware of the costs and driving factors as well. It wasn't done "just because".

Portugal Gives Itself a Clean-Energy Makeover

While Portugal’s experience shows that rapid progress is achievable, it also highlights the price of such a transition. Portuguese households have long paid about twice what Americans pay for electricity, and prices have risen 15 percent in the last five years, probably partly because of the renewable energy program, the International Energy Agency says.

Although a 2009 report by the agency called Portugal’s renewable energy transition a “remarkable success,” it added, “It is not fully clear that their costs, both financial and economic, as well as their impact on final consumer energy prices, are well understood and appreciated.”

Indeed, complaints about rising electricity rates are a mainstay of pensioners’ gossip here. Mr. Sócrates, who after a landslide victory in 2005 pushed through the major elements of the energy makeover over the objections of the country’s fossil fuel industry, survived last year’s election only as the leader of a weak coalition.

I'll bet this will be really popular among progressives:

To force Portugal’s energy transition, Mr. Sócrates’s government restructured and privatized former state energy utilities to create a grid better suited to renewable power sources. To lure private companies into Portugal’s new market, the government gave them contracts locking in a stable price for 15 years — a subsidy that varied by technology and was initially high but decreased with each new contract round. . . .

Portugal’s venture was driven by necessity. With a rising standard of living and no fossil fuel of its own, the cost of energy imports — principally oil and gas — doubled in the last decade, accounting for 50 percent of the country’s trade deficit, and was highly volatile. The oil went to fuel cars, the gas mainly to electricity. Unlike the United States, Portugal never depended heavily on coal for electricity generation because close and reliable sources of natural gas were available in North Africa, and Europe’s carbon trading system could make coal costly.

Corporations spend a lot of money trying to capture that centralized power to get more regulations enacted that are favorable to them. Should we give them what they want? SOPA anyone?

They do spend money to enact things like SOPA (good common ground...we both hate that), but are you denying that they spend a lot of money trying to avoid regulation too? Should we concede half the fight? (I'd argue that avoiding regulation is much more than half of what they're doing). It seems you don't think corporations always have the best of intentions, but it sounds like you don't want restrictions on them, which seems contradictory.

I am not a lawyer, but I believe the law is...

Thanks for the link. I'm not a lawyer either, but I like the basic idea at the start. It's convoluted enough that I'm not sure that it or the MF case is cut and dry. But let's say it (or a new law) was iron clad. Would you be for or against that restriction on corporations?

Probably not. No. And No. ...

What makes you so sure? Given the ever increasing complexity in the financial world, how can you be sure it's easy to prove who did what, why, or that their conduct amounted to criminal activity? It seems that complexity is intended both to confuse the customer and to provide plausible deniability if anything goes wrong. That's why I support regulations, reporting and efforts at transparency being pushed by the CFPB. I agree that margin requirements would only delay things if someone is intent on looting accounts, but it was also a critical piece of the swamping of Lehman, among others. So are you for or against margin requirements?

According to the NYTimes:

While using customer funds was a serious red flag at MF Global, it was not necessarily illegal.
A little known loophole in futures regulations permits firms to spend some money belonging to customers who traded abroad, an exemption that contradicts a cornerstone of the industry to always protect client funds. It also differs from the law policing trading in the United States.

Shouldn't that loophole be closed, by law?

http://nutrition.stanford.edu/projects/az.html

Stanford ran a comparison of various diets, including Atkins, and Atkins beat the other diets by 2:1 or better in terms of weight loss, and one of the diets was a traditional high carb, low fat "starvation" diet.

That's one of the better trials, but much of the rest isn't "scientific" studies per say but clinical experience with patients who actually use the diets.

http://www.dukehealth.org/health_library/news/low_carb_diet_effective_at_lowering_blood_pressure

This one refer specifically to blood pressure, although there's a guy at Duke (whose name escapes me) running a weight loss clinic using a low carb diet.

For even better reading and the science involved, you could read:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Another article on a related topic by the same author, Gary Taubes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Check out his two books, "Good Calories, Bad Calories" and "Why We Get Fat" for detailed, well-annotated scientific explanations of low carb, high fat diets specifically.

http://nutrition.stanford.edu/projects/az.html

Stanford ran a comparison of various diets, including Atkins, and Atkins beat the other diets by 2:1 or better in terms of weight loss, and one of the diets was a traditional high carb, low fat "starvation" diet.

That's one of the better trials, but much of the rest isn't "scientific" studies per say but clinical experience with patients who actually use the diets.

http://www.dukehealth.org/health_library/news/low_carb_diet_effective_at_lowering_blood_pressure

This one refer specifically to blood pressure, although there's a guy at Duke (whose name escapes me) running a weight loss clinic using a low carb diet.

For even better reading and the science involved, you could read:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Another article on a related topic by the same author, Gary Taubes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Check out his two books, "Good Calories, Bad Calories" and "Why We Get Fat" for detailed, well-annotated scientific explanations of low carb, high fat diets specifically.

Yes, US and Israeli intelligence - with all the uncertainties that come with such assessment - say that whatever there was, stopped or mostly stopped in 2003 . The NYTimes talks about it eg here http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/world/middleeast/us-agencies-see-no-move-by-iran-to-build-a-bomb.html?_r=1 . The confusion is normal because Western intelligence contracticts everything you hear so how can it take in account the IAEA. This confusion is especially large with the press themselves because they've been exposed to the full load of propaganda.

There have been discussions about the IAEA report and while the IAEA is currently overstating the problems with Iran, careful reading should show they're not making the strong claims people believe they're making. They're not saying Iran is working on a bomb, or probably working on a bomb, and what they're saying is a bit shaky. The Parchin story in particular is weak, and there is no plausible connection between the container for controlled explosions and work on nukes.

Gareth Porter has been following the IAEA work for years now so you could read up on that. Here's Seymour Hersh's articles about the matter.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2011/11/iran-and-the-iaea.html
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/06/06/110606fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all

There's historical works, and then there are works meant to be studied and absorbed by students of this century. Yes, you and I would have no trouble at all with an Algebra book written in 1975, laugh at some of the rather dated soviet russia cartoons explaining parabolic arcs, and probably pass the state standardized test as a result, but how well can you comprehend the Harvard 1899 Entrance Exam at a glance?
 
It takes considerable skill and effort to write a text for the appropriate age group, make it engaging, easy to read, yet cover all the material required without losing the 50th percentile students who are struggling to pass so they can stay on the football team (or insert stereotype here).
 
Tools that modern students can relate to aren't simply slapped together in an afternoon, and require a serious editorial staff.

I'm still not sure how you're coming up with your numbers. Here's a chart of the delegates awarded so far:
http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/delegates

It includes the caucus states and the delegates that have yet to be awarded. Even if all of the unawarded delegates in the states that have held contests so far were awarded to Paul he'd still be well behind Romney, though he'd be giving Gingrich a run for his money. Granted, Paul winning is is still mathematically possible, and as much as I would like to see him beat Romney (and Santorum and Gingrich) I just don't see it happening.

Now facebook can monitor you even more effectively.

No, it's just the Axis partners aligning themselves for another battle.

Microsoft and Facebook have formed gang to beat on Google. This time, Microsoft paid for the ammunition, but Facebook will be pulling the trigger. Interestingly enough, there are hints that Apple may be piling on too.

http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000850.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/some-of-the-anti-google-tea-party-is-astroturf/6496
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-12/facebook-enlists-pr-firm-burson-marsteller-to-pitch-google-privacy-story.html
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/google-deflects-pr-firms-attack-gmail-privacy/story?id=13566971#.T5XZdFRUTrE
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/13/business/seeking-to-fix-damaged-image-apple-hires-burson-marsteller.html
http://www.burson-marsteller.com/Innovation_and_insights/blogs_and_podcasts/harold_burson_blog/default.aspx

I don't understand why the replies I'm getting seem to treat me like I think the US gov't is all sunshine and daisies.

Maybe because you're being overly literal. The point of making analogies other comparisons isn't to say two things are identical, but to, you know, compare them where they are comparable.

In other words, you are sounding the like sort of person who hears a comparison between the wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam and proceed to spend your time complaining that there is no draft, jungle, or communist army to deal with and little time talking about spending blood and treasure to prop up an unpopular, extremely corrupt government with no clear mission or way out of the occupation.

And yeah, having people kidnapped and tortured or assasinated by executive fiat are exactly the sort of activities that corrupt dictatorships like Syria engage in. We should know - the victim in the above "kidnapped and torture" link was flown to.....Syria to be tortured.

One percent of taxpayers reported almost 17% of all taxable income. But that same tiny group also kicked in 37% of all the taxes paid.

1% of the population is only paying 37% of the total income tax revenue collected by the government. Clearly they're parasites

The problem with your argument is that "taxable income" is defined as income subject to income tax. It does not include income from capital gains or investments. If you included that income into the total, you would find that the "income" break point to enter the top 1% is considerably higher than ~$350k, and that they "earn" considerably more than 17% of total income.

Also, a more appropriate measure for this resource inequality discussion is probably wealth, and the numbers for wealth inequality are much more skewed.

The Times had estimated the threshold for being in the top 1 percent in household income at about $380,000, 7.5 times median household income, using census data from 2008 through 2010. But for net worth, the 1 percent threshold for net worth in the Fed data was nearly $8.4 million, or 69 times the median household’s net holdings of $121,000.

News good. Paywall bad. A Google News search for the first couple of paragraphs should bring up either the NYT article or another copy of it.

Note that "em-dashes" have been changed to hyphens and "curly" apostrophes and quotation marks have been changed to "straight" versions marks to accommodate /. as viewed in my browser. Please avoid blocks of text that have -, ', or " when selecting text for search engines.

--cut here--
Testing Absurdities, Reading Worries and Robo-Grading
April 23, 2012, 8:19 a.m.
By Mary Ann Giordano

Week 2 of standardized testing begins in the New York City public schools - and so, it seems, does another week of testing wackiness.

The English Language Arts exam week ended on Friday with the decision by the state education commissioner, John B. King Jr., to scrap the answers to an absurd question - literally and otherwise - about a pineapple and a hare that had stymied eighth-grade test takers.

--cut here--

Further down we get to the relevant part:

--cut here--
Mr. Perelman tested the e-Rater and found that âoethe automated reader can be easily gamed, is vulnerable to test prep, sets a very limited and rigid standard for what good writing is, and will pressure teachers to dumb down writing instruction.â

You have to read the column to find out the many ways that the e-Rater misreads good writing. The examples are delicious - and pitiful. But to reveal one issue identified by Mr. Perelman:

  The e-Rater's biggest problem, he says, is that it can't identify truth. He tells students not to waste time worrying about whether their facts are accurate, since pretty much any fact will do as long as it is incorporated into a well-structured sentence. "E-Rater doesn't care if you say the War of 1812 started in 1945," he said.

Give E.T.S. credit for allowing Mr. Perelman to conduct his testing. Two other major testing services, Vantage Learning and Pearson - developer of the offending English Language Arts exam - said no.
--cut here--

The article linked in this /. article's summary refers to another article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/education/robo-readers-used-to-grade-test-essays.html

Here are some snippets from it, in case you need them for your search engine:

--cut here--
Facing a Robo-Grader? Just Keep Obfuscating Mellifluously
By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: April 22, 2012

A recently released study has concluded that computers are capable of scoring essays on standardized tests as well as human beings do.

Mark Shermis, dean of the College of Education at the University of Akron, collected more than 16,000 middle school and high school test essays from six states that had been graded by humans. He then used automated systems developed by nine companies to score those essays.
--cut here--

This article in turn links to:
www.documentcloud.org/documents/346138-essay-awarded-a-top-grade-by-e-rater.html
which is also linked in this /. article's summary.

All this talk about creating their own drone is more propaganda to prop up the Iranian government's "rep" in the middle east among Islamic countries, who pretty much buy everything Iran's news agencies pump out, clonebrush photoshops, crappy models and all.

That's not necessarily a good thing

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/middleeast/29iran.html?pagewanted=all

There was little surprising in Mr. Barak's implicit threat that Israel might attack Iran's nuclear facilities. As a pressure tactic, Israeli officials have been setting such deadlines, and extending them, for years. But six months later it was an Arab leader, the king of Bahrain, who provides the base for the American Fifth Fleet, telling the Americans that the Iranian nuclear program "must be stopped," according to another cable. "The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it," he said.

  His plea was shared by many of America's Arab allies, including the powerful King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who according to another cable repeatedly implored Washington to "cut off the head of the snake" while there was still time.

and

As Crown Prince bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi put it in one cable: "Any culture that is patient and focused enough to spend years working on a single carpet is capable of waiting years and even decades to achieve even greater goals." His greatest worry, he said, "is not how much we know about Iran, but how much we don't."

It's like Saddam really. His plan of destroying his WMD in secret and maintaining a strategic ambiguity so that Israel did not know if he still possessed them ended up meaning the US had a legal casus belli. So they invaded, toppled his regime and handed him over to his opponents who hanged him.

I very much remember a Dutch supermarket introducing their discount card some 20 years ago. They openly stated that they wanted to track what people bought (linking separate purchases through this discount card), in order to put products that were often bought in tandem closer together in the shelves. Better for sales, convenient for customers.

A few years later the card was cancelled. It didn't have the desired result. Sure they got a huge database of linked purchases, but they did not manage to get any useful connections out of it.

Maybe 20 years ago. But more recently, the discount chain Target was in the news because their data analysis was so good, they were mailing ads for baby stuff to women before the women's families even knew they were pregnant, based on analysis of purchases and other data.

The NSA has a lot more data to work with, more computing power, and presumably more and better analysts. And access to data that Google can only dream of.

Google spends several hundred millions of dollars to force chrome as default. they also bundle it with several other software and it becomes default browser and with google as default search engine without asking the user.

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/sony-defaults-to-google-chrome/

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-chrome-dell-sony/13055/

but just as someone could have downloaded Netscape using IE in Windows 98 they can change default search to bing in chrome. you either have a problem with both .. or you have a problem with none.

The fact that retractions are up is not inherently indicative of more fraud, it could just as well be indicative of more pressure and more thorough peer review.

I would hope that the people who wrote the study took that into consideration. Oh look, in the article it says they did. Lovely thing, that article.

China and India. Fraud and plagiarism are pretty prevalent in both.

Of course, they don't get much fraudulent or plagiarized work into big journals, and the big journals prefer researchers with a good reputation

congrats being the citizen of a reputable country.
TFA: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/rise-in-scientific-journal-retractions-prompts-calls-for-reform.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1334958458-PxivQM3BpvGZR636Xup/Qw&pagewanted=all
QUOTED: http://iai.asm.org/content/79/10/3855.full

QUOTE in asm: "Of more than 28,000 articles in its 40-year history, Infection and Immunity has issued only 15 retractions. Six of these were issued this year and arose from a single laboratory (52,–,55, 87, 89). ..."
lets check what these bad bad chindians are doing:
ARTICLE: (52-55, 89):
RESEARCHERS: (Naoki Mori1,*, Kazunori Oishi2, Borann Sar2, Naofumi Mukaida3, Tsuyoshi Nagatake2, Kouji Matsushima4 and Naoki Yamamoto1)
Affiliations:
Department of Preventive Medicine and AIDS Research1 and Department of Internal Medicine,2 Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University, 1-12-4 Sakamoto, Nagasaki 852-8523,
Department of Pharmacology, Cancer Research Institute, Kanazawa University, 13-1 Takaramachi, Kanazawa 920-0934,3 and Department of Molecular Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo, Tokyo 113-0033,4 Japan

(found to contain digital figures that had been inappropriately manipulated)
ARTICLE: (78):
RESEARCHERS: (Junghee J. Shin1, Anton V. Bryksin1, Henry P. Godfrey2 and Felipe C. Cabello1,*)
Affiliations:
1Departments of Microbiology and Immunology
2Pathology, New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York 10595

(two were unable to confirm their original results (42, 67))
Awdhesh Kalia1, Mark C. Enright2, Brian G. Spratt3 and Debra E. Bessen1,*
A Reynaud, M Federighi, D Licois, J F Guillot and B Joly
- Author Affiliations
Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut,1 and
Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY,2 and Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College School of Medicine, University of London, St. Mary's Campus, London W2 1PG,3 United Kingdom
Laboratoire d'Analyses Vétérinaires et Biologiques Département du Puy de Dôme, Clermont-Ferrand, France.

(and three found a critical reagent to be impure (19, 49, 61). The remaining article was retracted due to extensive plagiarism (43))
19, 49 and 61:
D R Cue and P P Cleary
Paola Marcato, George Mulvey and Glen D. Armstrong*
I M Orme, S K Furney, P S Skinner, A D Roberts, P J Brennan, D G Russell, H Shiratsuchi, J J Ellner and W Y Weiser
Biswajit Khatua, Angana Ghoshal, Kaushik Bhattacharya, Chandan Mandal, Paul R. Crocker and Chitra Mandal
- Author Affiliations
Department of Microbiology, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis 55455, USA.
Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2H7, Canada
Department of Microbiology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins 80523.
Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2H7, Canada
Infectious diseases and Immunology Division, Indian Institute of Chemical Biology,
College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, DD1 5EH, UK

so, 1 indian of all these and no chinese!!!
i think someone should listen to you and ban indians ad chinese from publishing - right?

Lack of calories are hardly the problem with McDonald's food. But not all calories are equal (or better said: they are, but the effects depend on the type of food).

Not to mention the lack of all the other stuff, the ultra high salt concentrations, etc.

So there's 196 papers retracted since 2001?

What? They put a nice graph to make it clear even to condensed matter physicists. There are 742 retracted papers in ten years (2000-2009), in the PubMed database and they increased from 3 in 2000 to 180 in 2009. 196 were fraudulent papers, 235 included some mistakes (they can't tell if those were intentional or not) and 311 were retracted for other reasons (including: those poor guys that based their work on prior forged papers).

Paywalled, but here is the first part of the article. If the URL works for you, great, if not, try searching Google News for a long phrase from this paragraph and hope the click-through works.
--cut here--
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/technology/coursera-plans-to-announce-university-partners-for-online-classes.html

Online Education Venture Lures Cash Infusion and Deals With 5 Top Universities
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: April 18, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO - An interactive online learning system created by two Stanford computer scientists plans to announce Wednesday that it has secured $16 million in venture capital and partnerships with five major universities.

--cut here--

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/21/mac_os_x_lion_security/
http://blog.laptopmag.com/mac-os-x-lion-vs-windows-7-which-is-better/9
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/Apple-Mac-OS-X-Lion-Bests-Microsoft-Windows-7-10-Reasons-Why-647298/ (slide 4)
http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/lions-upgraded-robust-security-features/
I think you get the point... all of these I found on the first 2 pages by Googling "lion security vs windows 7".

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/us/us-accuses-iranians-of-plotting-to-kill-saudi-envoy.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

iran plays the game too, although not too well(and they're amateurs - remember the regime doesn't have that long history and when they came to power they pretty much got rid of everyone working with international relations and operations who had any experience - making their plots like bad b-movies like trying to hire zetas or selling guns to some african rebel). mostly iran is pre-occupied with dealing with their domestic dissidents, throwing people to jail for porno and trying to make foreign export ends meet by any means their amateurs can think of and generally just being petty denialists. remember, as far as reports go and one outside the country can figure out most of the bomb attacks within iran have been actually carried out by iranian factions working toward overthrowing their petty government.

so, historically - what little there is of it - irans current regime has been quite aggressive both internationally and domestically, carrying out murders and attempts at them. what sets them apart from libya is that they're not so poor and they have more people and not just desert.

pissed off at a POS system? fuck, no, that's not the reason behind this hack, the reason is that it was hackable and they didn't fix it, they had time to fix it - but this guy did wise when he got out of the country because irans government has a history of outright killing guys like him.

Regarding "throw away your lightbulbs" -- I believe George Bush signed that bill.

In addition, the requirements (the current ones) can be met with halogen lightbulbs (they're sufficiently efficient) which are not very different from incandescent bulbs in light quality (they are somewhat bluer). And, given modest assumptions about the price of electricity or how many hours per day you run a light bulb, the new LED lights (the one I tried was about $30 at Home Depot) pay for themselves quickly, and work very well -- they are on instantly, have better light, are durable, contain no mercury. I am sure that the much more expensive new Philips light has even better light quality, though it will not pay for itself as quickly. I've also read a good review of CREE EcoSmart LED bulbs. CREE is a good name (I use CREE and Philips LEDs on bicycles that live outdoors in Massachusetts; summing over all the bikes and all the LEDs, over 20 LED-years of weather exposure, with no failures).

I know this is off-topic, but you were just completely wrong, and on the internet, too.

Indians cannot afford american goods,

Many cannot, but many can; India's is booming and even a fraction of their 1.2 billion people can form a large market. For example, India is projected to be the world's 3rd largest car market by 2020, a top 5 smartphone market by 2016. All those people working in call centers and IT outsourcing want to buy things.

But generally, they don't have to be as wealthy as the U.S. to be improving their lot and to consume.

otherwise what would be the point of shipping jobs there to cut costs

Jobs are shipped there for many reasons, not just to cut costs. Labor is only one element of costs (there's capital, logistics, etc etc.) and costs are only one element of business investment (availability of skills, suppliers, expertise, financing, infrastructure, energy, etc. etc). Here's a good article about off-shoring jobs:
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html

Note it says: "the cost of labor is minimal compared with the expense of buying parts and managing supply chains that bring together components and services from hundreds of companies."

Secondly why would an Indian company hire American workers in America when they can pay a fraction to their own people?

See above re: labor costs. Some things are better done in the U.S,, some in India, etc. A large proportion of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are Indian; they didn't come for the cheap labor!

The recently enacted JOBS Act:

1) "Once again, the Puppets on Capitol Hill are about to slam the Muppets on Main Street. The country still hasn’t recovered from the Wall Street-induced financial cataclysm of 2008, yet Congress is preparing to enact the Orwellian ”JOBS Act”—a bill that should in fact be called the “Return Fraud to Wall Street in One Easy Step Act.” The bill will undo some of the most important reforms placed on Wall Street in a generation."
Slate link

2) "In fact, one could say this law is not just a sweeping piece of deregulation that will have an increase in securities fraud as an accidental, ancillary consequence. No, this law actually appears to have been specifically written to encourage fraud in the stock markets."
Rolling Stone (Taibbi) link

3) “Simply, the JOBS Act will make funding more accessible for startups by allowing non-accredited investors to participate in the funding rounds, and this alone, I believe will be the main factor driving the increase in new companies being founded. And with new companies comes the need to hire staff. Without a doubt, this will help the current unemployment rate,” said Tanya Prive, founder of Rock The Post, a social networking platform for entrepreneurs to fund and swap resources."
Forbes link

4) "It is self-defeating for us to say this because as criminologists and anti-fraud specialists we would have job security for life if this bill was adopted. It is literally composed of the wish list in regard to fraud-friendly provisions that those intent on cheating have been dreaming about and salivating to achieve for decades. This bill will kill millions of jobs because financial frauds are weapons of mass financial destruction. It will start an international fraud-friendly deregulation race to the bottom and will become the basis for further criminogenic U.S. Congressional actions."
Huffington Post Link

5) "Amy Borrus, a spokeswoman for the Council of Institutional Investors, an investor watchdog group, said small companies — the focus of the new bill’s relaxed regulations — are particularly prone to fraud and accounting scandals. Senators did add some investor protections, but not enough, she said."
New York Times link

So... we might be looking at a jump (bubble?) in the stock market. I don't quite know what to make of it yet, but the initial reviews seem to be pointing to such a thing. Investigate and plan accordingly (and try not to lose your shirts).

They will certainly not use oil to generate electricity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/business/energy-environment/quake-in-japan-is-causing-a-costly-shift-to-fossil-fuels.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

YOKOSUKA, Japan -- The half-century-old, oil-fueled power generators here had been idle for more than a year when, a day after the nuclear accident in March, orders came from Tokyo Electric Power headquarters to fire them up. "They asked me how long it would take," said Masatake Koseki, head of the Yokosuka plant, which is 40 miles south of Tokyo and run by Tokyo Electric. "The facilities are old, so I told them six months. But they said, 'No, you must ready them by summer to prepare for an energy shortage.' "

Now, at summer’s peak, Yokosuka’s two fuel-oil and two gas turbines are cranking out a total of 900,000 kilowatts of electricity -- and an abundance of fumes.

While un-economical on a per-BTU basis, oil has a logistics advantage when shipping to remote locations (one of the reasons why Hawaii still gets a portion of their electricity from oil-fired generators). On the whole, Japan's oil imports actually aren't projected to rise that much -- but a big portion of that is due to the increased power-generation imports being offset by reductions caused by their general economic slowdown. Not really a good situation for them.

Right. All terrorists are uneducated morons. You just keep believing that and you'll sleep better at night.

Why are so many terrorists engineers?

5 Horrifying Facts You Didn't Know About the Space Shuttle and this one, which is linked in the above story.... For Parts, NASA Boldly Goes . . . on eBay