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What bothers me about e-readers is the impermanence of the content. If the service goes away, will the content go away? That's happened many times with on-line music. Remember Wal-Mart Music? PlaysForSure? MTV Urge? Zune? If the service goes down, can you move your content to a new device? This is really tough with devices that talk to nothing but the service. Can you back up your e-reader? Maybe, sort of, sometimes.

Even if the content is on the reader, will the service push an update that makes the reader dependent on the service? That's happened with games. There have been updates that made e-books go away.

And don't even think about leaving your books to your kids.

The consensus is that Iran has not made any decision to build a bomb.
This may sound incredible because this kind of statements only is made in a low key fashion so they are mostly going unnoticed.
Sometimes they appear as little throwaway lines in articles with a general thrust that is always very anti-Iran.
Panetta, Dempsey, Clapper, and in Israel Barak, Dagan, Pardo are on record as confirming this.
It is becoming more visible because of the current tension between those pushing for war and those trying to avoid it.

Panetta on CBS news. Odd inconsistency in his tough talk about Iran.
www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57354647/face-the-nation-transcript-january-8-2012/

Israeli intelligence report
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-iran-still-mulling-whether-to-build-nuclear-bomb-1.407866

Barak
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/19/israel-tamp-down-iran-war-threats/

Even the NYTimes has picked up on it now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/world/middleeast/in-din-over-iran-echoes-of-iraq-war-news-analysis.html?_r=3

Now it's always possible that Iran goes as far as possible within the NPT limits and then suddenly locks the IAEA out and starts making a bomb. It is always possible with every nuclear capable country. But that would be a very visible and costly move. And there is no indication they want to take that step. The assessment can be colored a bit "still mulling creating a bomb", but all that is behind it is there is no intent. It's not as if they're on the edge of taking a decision.

It was a dispersion event at an Occupy _______ site. Forgive me, I assumed that this event had reached total media saturation at this point. Here is some more information on the subject:

* http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/us/police-officers-involved-in-pepper-spraying-placed-on-leave.html
* http://gawker.com/5861688/its-a-food-product-essentially-fox-news-starts-spinning-pepper-spray-cops
* http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/casually-pepper-spray-everything-cop

The government will give you a free cell phone if you're below the poverty line.

About 15% of Americans are below the poverty line. According to TFA, 19% of Americans don't own any kind of cell phone (smart or dumb). I don't know whether this says more about how Americans define poverty or more about how much Americans love cell phones. Someday soon I expect to be the last affluent, educated American under 50 who doesn't own a cell phone.

As long as you don't mind your kids getting indoctrinated with the social-conservative party line, anyway.

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

More and more US schools are using math books from Singapore with some districts importing the teachers as well. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/education/01math.html?_r=1

Math perhaps but anything with any political aspect will be fought over, i.e. Texas re-writing history textbooks in an effort to lesson the constitutional barriers of separation of church and state.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/17/AR2010031700560.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html

Here's your evidence; please jump off a cliff at the next opportunity. (FWIW, everything Apple was suing over in that suit, they stole from Xerox.)

Way to stick your head in the sand there.

The preemie issue is not due to "we have higher standards and report it differently". It's because the US has higher incidents of premature babies. And you know the reason for this....poor social care & health care!

The NYT had an article about this a couple of years back...you can read it here

From the article:

Dr. Fleischman said the smallest, earliest and most fragile babies were often born to poor and minority women who lacked health care and social support. The highest rates of infant mortality occur in non-Hispanic black, American Indian, Alaska Native and Puerto Rican women.

why is the cost of living lower in Zimbabwe

- the cost of living at what level, measured in what? Cost of living in Zimbabwe is impossible in Zimbabwe dollars, but you can live if you have money - gold or maybe other currencies.

Once a company gets large enough (e.g. Intel), they can engage in anticompetitive practices (i.e. bribing companies not to use a competitor's product).

- that's just normal business.

Without government intervention, Intel would have destroyed AMD years ago by either cheating or simply buying them outright.

- so what? Apparently AMD is doing just fine destroying itself all on its own. It's not a viable company.

But it doesn't matter. Intel is not a monopoly unless it gets government help and support, but it is a company that has a very good brand at giving people the best product at the best price. If the price or product are unsatisfactory and there is space in the market for profits building better products at maybe better prices, then without gov't intervention a company would emerge building that product, it's happens all the time.

Government intervention stops that happening.

- you are mistaken. Gov't intervention destroys viability of some companies to promote unviable businesses of their friends. Kodak was a company that was attacked by gov't in the nineties. Were they not attacked and were they able to restructure at that time, they possibly could have still continued their existence.

In 1979 GM was bailed out. Just a few years back it was bailed out again, and Obama says: here is a company that would have failed if it wasn't for gov't.

Well, that company DID fail, the bond holders got crashed by the government - that's the real end of the company. Companies only exist to provide their shareholders with profit on their investment, not for any other reason, not to hire people - to make money for investors.

That company DID fail, but bond holders had their property CONFISCATED, so the normal contract laws DO NOT APPLY ANYMORE IN USA.

And people are WONDERING why there is no manufacturing business in USA? What are you all, blind?

False.

Obama opposed the law, called it "ill-conceived" in his signing statement, and he has now issued executive orders curtailing its effect. Essentially, under his new guidelines, a panel of six people has to approve each such military detention. All six have to agree, i.e. each of the six has the ability to veto it and force the person to go through the civilian justice system. One of those members is the secretary of state (currently Ms. Clinton), whose primary job is keeping other countries happy with us.

Of course, as soon as Obama is out of office, be that in one year or five, the next president can erase all that and come up with their own guidelines. It is a bad law, and it should be changed. But it won't be changed so long as Republicans control Congress.

... Scientists can make mistakes. They can misinterpret data. They can make bad theories. Lots of people were eating bran muffins everyday in the 80's because they were told... by scientists... that eating them would reduce cholesterol. In the 90's, scientists told them Sorry, you're wasting your time.

...

Er... did scientists say to eat bran muffins? Probably not. There was simply scientific evidence that getting more soluble fiber is good for lowering cholesterol and that's not wrong at all. If you read the second link, that even confirms it. The problem is strictly a problem with bran muffins as they also contain egg yolks that increase cholesterol. Again, was the science wrong? No. Was the popularization of eating bran muffins wrong? Yes, but who actually popularized that?

You keep saying "real prices," "real money," and "real value." As if what the market chooses to pay for things isn't the actual value of those items. What is your benchmark for "real" exactly?

and they are not producing anything, because manufacturing left the country

The U.S. is a mixed economy. Manufacturing hasn't been the dominant economic sector in a long time and it's only going to fall further behind. We will never be a significant world power in terms of making physical things again. We would do better to focus our efforts on sectors which are growing, like information (technology), finance, and services.

and manufacturing left because money is not good

No, manufacturing left because Americans demanded lower and lower prices on physical goods and the businesses were (rightfully) more than happy to shift production overseas so they could meet those lower price points and keep more profit at the same time.

inflation is killing savings and investment

Inflation is basically lower than it's been historically and it's trending downward. (source)

and taxes are historic high.

For the past few decades, the average effective tax rate has waffled between 20-25%. (source) The U.S. has lower tax revenue as a percentage of GDP than many (most?) other first-world nations. (source)

There seems to be something in the US psyche that resists anything like "best practices".

No, there's something in the US psyche that makes us go "OK, you say we should do this, or stop doing that. Prove it". And that takes time. We've seen too many snap-judgement science mistakes... Alar on apples anyone?... to just blindly fall into line. We see "best practices" discredited all the time, usually after a decade or more (Huh, how about that?) of experience on the issue. Scientists can make mistakes. They can misinterpret data. They can make bad theories. Lots of people were eating bran muffins everyday in the 80's because they were told... by scientists... that eating them would reduce cholesterol. In the 90's, scientists told them Sorry, you're wasting your time.

Best practices? Sure. But prove it first.

BTW, obesity is on the rise in Europe too. Guess they're developing a resistance to "best practices"?

What's really mind-blowing is the GOP candidates (except Paul) attacking Obama for both
1) not being tough enough with Iran
2) and for high gas prices (!)

In what universe do they live in where they don't realize pressuring an oil-producing country is going to raise oil prices (and hence gas prices, it doesn't fall from the sky)?

What's really mind-blowing is the GOP candidates (except Paul) attacking Obama for both
1) not being tough enough with Iran
2) and for high gas prices (!)

In what universe do they live in where they don't realize pressuring an oil-producing country is going to raise oil prices (and hence gas prices, it doesn't fall from the sky)?

the Intelligence Community is not authorized to collect on US Persons, except where allowed by law or authorized by a properly adjudicated warrant from a court of law. I know people on Slashdot don't like to believe this, and prefer to imagine that the sole purpose of the Intelligence Community is spying on our own citizens instead of, you know, doing the jobs they've been charged to do.

If that is the case, then how do you explain this or this or this. Sorry buddy, but you have to get your head out of the sand.

Oil doesn't get subsidies.

Yes, they do. Where did you hear such a ridiculous fallacy? The Cato Institute?

And most of the time, it doesn't even get tax breaks.

Wait, are you talking about the substance itself? Surely no one would intentionally be that obtuse... anyway, oil companies most definitely receive tax breaks, to the tune of billions every year.

Most of those go to exploration, and drilling.

Well gee, Wally, care to explain why companies who break their own records for pure profit every single quarter actually need those "exploration" tax breaks?

But hey, don't let reality worry you.

Doesn't seem like I'm the one having trouble with the concept...

Feed-in-tariff ringing any bells?

No, since the term has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of oil subsidies.

Let's put some numbers to it as well. Annual car sales are about 6 million/year in the US. At a cost of $200/vehicle, that's a total incremental cost of $1.2B. That puts the "cost to save a life" at $1.2B/200 = $6 million per life saved, assuming that the backup cameras prevent every single death.

Well, as it just so happens, the Transportation Department has tabulated the value of a human life and decided it is $6 million.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/economy/17regulation.html?pagewanted=all

Don't forget that America is getting older and fatter, with a corresponding decrease in range of motion.
The number of deaths from being backed over is only going to go up as the "greatest generation" loses its wits.

In the stupidly big vehicles lots of people drive these days,

Some are less big, but with large blind spots none-the-less. From a related article U.S. Rule Set for Cameras at Cars’ Rear:

Edmunds said some of the biggest blind spots are on passenger cars where the trunk has a high deck lid and the driver sits low to the ground. For the Cadillac CTS-V coupe, Edmunds measured a blind spot 101 feet long, compared with about 40 feet for minivans from Toyota and Honda.

I'm curious if anyone knows how it compares to the National Pinball Museum, recently reopened in Baltimore, MD.

There seem to be a few places like this now. There is the one in las vegas: pinball hall of fame
The one in Baltimore you mentioned: national pinball museum
One I just found in California
The one the article mentions in Seattle
another I found in NJ
An article about several of these opening up around the country.
And if you are interested in playing I found a place in St. Louis CP Pinball.
Any other places people have found that are worth noting here?

But Apple SHOULD do technological research. Because it provides a long term competitive edge for them, and because its the right thing to do. Corporations, like people, live in a larger society, culture (and nation) and they benefit from those things. Apple would not exist were it not embedded in the Silicon Valley culture emanating from Stanford and Berkeley. Apple should give something back. Maybe Steve would not understand this, but surely Woz would.

Yeah, iPhones are great, but honestly, ten years from now, we'll be on to a newer, better UI (glasses, brain implants, holodecks, or whatever.) It turns out we're still using lasers and transistors and communications satellites, all invented by Bell Labs in the 60s.

Here, I'm pasting the best bit from the NYTimes/Bell Labs article, written by Jon Gertner;

"But what should our pursuit of innovation actually accomplish? By one definition, innovation is an important new product or process, deployed on a large scale and having a significant impact on society and the economy, that can do a job (as Mr. Kelly once put it) “better, or cheaper, or both.” Regrettably, we now use the term to describe almost anything. It can describe a smartphone app or a social media tool; or it can describe the transistor or the blueprint for a cellphone system. The differences are immense. One type of innovation creates a handful of jobs and modest revenues; another, the type Mr. Kelly and his colleagues at Bell Labs repeatedly sought, creates millions of jobs and a long-lasting platform for society’s wealth and well-being."

The whole article is here (paywall yadda-yadda)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/innovation-and-the-bell-labs-miracle.html?pagewanted=all

The top half percent cutoff is less than $1M/year of income (source). The top 0.1% have a cutoff just over $2M/year - which is to say, roughly 120k households in the entire US are up in the rarefied level of making the kind of money where you don't have to go earn it every day.

The top 1% starts at a household income of just over $500k, which is a nice income but by no means enough to put you in Paris Hilton territory. Even the top 0.5% starts at under $1M/year. Again, that's great money, but it's not exactly people living off generations of inherited wealth - it's mostly successful small business people, some very successful sales people, and a few doctors and lawyers. (Especially when said doctors, lawyers, sales, and business people marry each other.)

Of course... It's getting silly now :(

Nope, Politicians are:

Jake Tapper, the White House correspondent for ABC News, pointed out that the administration had lauded brave reporting in distant lands more than once and then asked, “How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistle-blowers to court?”

GOD DAMN YOU BOOOSH!

Oh, wait...

A nifty graphic on the federal budget While defense is high, healthcare and social security both outstrip it and interest on the national debt is gaining ground rapidly. Not to say we can't reduce defense as well, but it's not the only bogeyman in the budget, and it's not the one with a rapidly increasing share of the budget either.

As for the grandparent's assertion about Iraq, total spending in the total war on terror is estimated (on the high side) at about $4T. The deficit has increased by the same amount since Obama was elected. So is it the sense of /. that Obama is as big a disaster as the Iraq war? If you want to blame Bush, just remember the Democratic majority in congress for two years prior to Obama's election that passed those spending authorizations up to and including all Obama spending. Many of those same people voted to go to war in Iraq.

Now go worship your Obama god having completely ignored any of the accepted facts above.

The real reason behind Kodak's failure is not what this story says.

Just like the real reason behind oil prices in USD going up is not what most illiterate Keynesians and lying politicians say, it's inflation because of currency counterfeiting by the Fed, not anything else, prices are actually falling in real money.

Kodak would not have failed this way (or maybe at all), if it was not prevented from diversifying its business the way it wanted to in the nineties by the government. It was not a monopoly obviously, not any more a monopoly, than any so called 'monopoly' that gov't ever used its attack dogs on.

Citation for my earlier claim:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/is-junk-food-really-cheaper.html?pagewanted=all

Do you really think that the Arabs living under bad governments needed someone to tell them that they had badly run corrupt governments

Strawman argument. The claimed effect of Wikileaks wasn't to "tell them how bad their government was", it was to "confirm" it. There is a difference between suspecting that your leaders are corrupt, and actually seeing classified intelligence reports from another country's diplomats detailing the exact corruption that is going on, and basically stating that your government operates more like the Mafia.

Would the revolution have happend without Facebook? Possibly - Berlin Wall fell long before people commonly had access to email. But does that mean that Facebook wasn't a factor? Obviously not: the fact that something was possible without X (where X is Facebook, Wikileaks etc.) does not mean that X was not a factor in this particular case.

Nobody is claiming that the Arab Spring happened because of Wikileaks, or because of Facebook or the internet. What people are claiming is that these things were contributing factors. Amnesty International named Wikileaks, the Internet, technology and journalism as being catalysts of the Arab Spring It's also worth pointing out that Qaddafi accused Wikileaks of being behind the Arab Spring in Tunisia, so it's not as if it's only Wikileaks supporters who saw Wikileaks as being a factor. Julian Assange has said Wikileaks played a role, but was not the major factor in the Arab Spring:

He said WikiLeaks had ''played a significant role'' in the uprisings sweeping the Arab world by publishing secret documents about those countries' authoritarian regimes, but the site was not the major factor in the movements.

''It does look like we played a significant role in it. That said, the tinder of the Middle East was drying,'' he said, crediting the internet and satellite TV stations like al-Jazeera with major roles in the uprisings.

Even those who reject the Wikileaks factor do admit it "may have played a minor atmospheric rule":

There’s been a lot of speculation, notably in the U.S., over the role social media played in the Tunisian revolution (it sure feels nice to say those two words.)

Wikileaks may have played a minor atmospheric rule in baring to the whole world what was whispered about the Ben Ali regime’s corruption, showing that US diplomats were aghast at the mafia nature of his regime.

Social media, from Twitter and Facebook to video upload sites, were crucial in spreading the word about what happened in a country where the press was tightly muzzled. It generated tremendous amounts of solidarity in the Arab world in beyond. But it’s just a means of communication, not a driver in itself.

At the end of the day, Tunisians took the streets because they had enough. They risked getting shot and beaten with no guarantee of success. And it’s likely that if they hadn’t heard about events around their country through Twitter and Facebook, they would have heard it by telephone.

The Mayans are still there, living in the land their ancestors lived in. They were not "killed off". Any study that suggests they were "killed off" can be ignored as propaganda.

The Mayans made a transition from living in large, centralized cities to a more dispersed, less organized society.

And surely these changes were ordered, pacific and without bloodshed. Their culture survived, as did their way of life and society. In fact we do not need archeologists for learn anything about the Mayans, because we just can ask the contemporary Mayan scholars who know everything about their culture.

And there was neither famine nor infighting for the resources that suddenly had become scarce. And even better, from being an unsuccessful society with some degree of science and organization they became a bunch of happy-ever-after farmers, just like YOU want to be.

This is likely because their centralization was expensive and only supportable based on specific agricultural conditions and faith in their leaders to be able to sustain them. When those conditions changed, that faith could no longer be justified and the expense could no longer be afforded.

I do not follow you. Changes in the agricultural condition caused the changes, but anyone claiming that climate changes lead to changes in agriculture conditions that lead to the collapse of their society is a fear-mongering propagandist of AGW? I know many people in /. are urbanites, but most of us remember that most vegetables are grown outdoors/...

When your society is built on the idea of all-powerful mystic kings, then your society falls when the population loses faith in those kings' power.

Yes their problem was not that they did not have enough food. It is just that they did not have the right moral values. How clever of you!

And now, since you are the one who brought the subject of AGW: Even in the worst Nuclear War scenarios, some people would survive. The question is how many of them and in which conditions. So I do not fear that AGW will wipe out mankind. That does not mean that it should be ignored, though...

If you want to know what man can do to his environment, search for the history of Pascua.

Last friday Brent Crude Oil was trading at $126/barrel. This is near the all time high in modern history. We are already at the point where oil supply has become much less responsive to the price and price spikes are commonplace. It's a curious time for somebody to be declaring peak oil "debunked".

Oil is finite and the price of oil is getting exponentially more expensive as was predicted decades ago. Meanwhile, solar technology has been benefiting from a Moore's Law rate of advancement and the price of solar energy is plummeting exponentially. Even without cap-and-trade, the price of solar energy is projected to achieve grid parity by the end of this decade. Given prevailing trends, we can expect that people will use energy to make petrochemicals synthetically from the carbon in the air, using Green Freedom or some other such technology in the next 20 years.

Solar is the power source of the near future. If we embrace that fact now we can begin to adapt and avoid a huge amount of economic dislocation and suffering. Or we can get dragged into the future kicking and screaming and burdening the human race with massive ecological damage.

If you hire a lawyer, you've failed, if you go to a doctor, you've failed? Read NYT David Pogue's Post http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/what-cameras-inside-foxconn-found/?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto#comments

'Since the superdollars were first detected about a decade ago...

The superdollar story has been kicking around for 16 years now, making it closer to two decades than one.

WHAT?

ABOUT THIS?

No, seriously. The people that claim that unions only protect lazy teachers have no idea what the current system of education in the USA looks like, except through what the major news organizations feed them. If your job required not just you to perform, but also to raise 30-40 humans because their parents won't, pay for your supplies out of pocket, and require 10-12 hour days 6 days a week, would you be willing to go with 'the next big movement'?

The problem is that teachers are jaded. Everything 'good' that comes along is usually just a rehash of what has been done to them in the past, or an excuse to privatize education

Oh, and Michelle Rhea was, in my opinion, just a shill for privatization, so her buddies could get their hands on that sweet, sweet Department of Education money. But, that's just my opinion

As he says on his Web site, he's the "inventor of EMAIL".

He does not, however, say he's the inventor of email or e-mail or electronic mail, so I guess he means he's the inventor of a system named "EMAIL". the copyright he got was for a "COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR Electronic Mail System", which suggests that "EMAIL" was a program that implemented, err, umm, email.

He als says "Every software system needs a User's Manual, so did the world's first E-MAIL system. At that time, Shiva was everything on the project: software engineer, network manager, project manager, architect, quality assurance AND technical writer.", so maybe "the world's first E-MAIL system" was the first system that "handled it all" - ARPANET e-mail involved different mail user agents and mail transfer agents on different operating systems, so there wasn't a single "COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR Electronic Mail System".

Or not. A historical overview of the CTSS system, from its fiftieth anniversary, quotes Tom Van Vleck (also cited in another posting):

Electronic Mail. Noel Morris and I wrote a command, suggested by Glenda Schroeder and Louis Pouzin, called MAIL, which allowed users to send text messages to each other; this was one of the earliest electronic mail facilities.[11] (I am told that the Q-32 system also had a MAIL command in 1965.)

Reference 11 is to Van Vleck's The History of Electronic Mail (which mentions the copyrighting of "EMAIL" in a parenthetical note at the top of the page) and Errol Morris's New York Times Opinionator blog post "Did My Brother Invent E-Mail With Tom Van Vleck?" (my head asplode when I learned that Errol Morris was Noel Morris' brother).

The news article he cites says he "created an electronic mail system", which may well be the case. It doesn't say he created the first electronic mail system, and "created an electronic mail system" suggests that the notion of an "electronic mail system" wasn't a Shiny New Idea (and, in fact, it wasn't).

And, in fact, the article to which the "to defend his standing as email's creator" link takes you quotes him as saying "I did not claim that I created electronic communications," so at least give him credit for that.

This NYTArticle from April 28, 1957 says:

Mail Sped by Electronics Predicted by Summerfield; One-Day Delivery Sought Between Any 2 Cities --Many 'Ifs' in Plan ELECTRONIC MAIL SEEN IN A DECADE Senate to Study Bill Full Report Planned 'Pattern' for Country Fire From Two Sides Question of 'Intangibles'

WASHINGTON, April 27--The Post Office Department envisions a five-to-ten-year transition to the electronic age...

To clarify, it's not a monopoly per say. It's the market structure that makes it hard for anybody to enter.

It's a monopoly. Full stop.
China didn't dig all the mines or build all the factories.
Instead, with the cheap capital you talked about, Chinese companies went on a global buying spree.
Now, China is closing/merging companies and concentrating ownership into the hands of state run/owned companies.

There's a new Australian built refinery going up in a Malaysian swamp, but it's shaping up to be a disaster
after the contractor who's going to supply the lining for the concrete tanks pulled out because of not-safety-reasons.

Your reading of Civil War history is flat out incorrect.

* November 1860: Abraham Lincoln gets elected on a platform of stopping the expansion of slavery into territories that didn't already have it - i.e. When the federal government created states out of Arizona and New Mexico (which they weren't at the time), they'd be free states. His election campaign was centered around that argument, which was by far the biggest issue of the day, but he did not push for abolishing slavery in places where it already existed. This was significantly more moderate a position than what the notable abolitionists wanted.
* Nov 1860-Feb 1861: Seven states secede from the United States and form the Confederacy, interpreting Lincoln's platform of not expanding slavery as a slippery slope towards abolishing slavery in their states. The rhetoric used to convince state legislatures to secede is very explicitly about slavery.
* Mar 1861: Abraham Lincoln takes office. Notice that this happened after the Confederacy was already formed.
* Apr 1861: South Carolina forces open fire on Fort Sumter, which has been beseiged for 5 months prior.
There's no reasonable way to argue that the Confederacy did not start the war, and there's no reasonable way of reading the Confederacy's motives as being about anything other than slavery.

In addition, Lincoln was very very careful not to threaten slavery in states that already had it, because if he had, he would have lost the support of Maryland (leaving Washington DC surrounded by enemies), Kentucky, and possibly the newly-formed West Virginia, which were slave-holding states that did not secede.The Emancipation Proclamation (which created the stated goal of freeing the slaves) wasn't until the war had been going on for over 2 years, and the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery wasn't passed until after the war was over.

However, depending on when and where you received your education, it's quite possible that you got the version of the "War of Northern Aggression" in which Abe Lincoln threatened people's freedom and then sent William T Sherman to wreck everything the South had for no reason whatsoever. But that view of things is simply not supported by the documents we have.

The Disunion series over at the New York Times has all sorts of excellent primary documents and articles by historians looking at almost every angle of the war, which I highly recommend.

Here's a better explanation than I can give.

http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/02/22/ravitch-new-evaluation-system-is-madness/

Ravitch Says New Evaluation System Is 'Madness'

The education historian and writer, Diane Ravitch, paints a picture of the teacher evaluation system that offers a sobering contrast to the giddiness that greeted the announcement of the agreement with the city, state and teachers’ unions.

On The New York Review of Books blog, NYR, in a post titled “No Child Left Untested,” Ms. Ravitch calls it “madness” to rely on a system of teacher accountability based on student test scores.

The new evaluation system pretends to be balanced, but it is not. Teachers will be ranked on a scale of 1-100. Teachers will be rated as “ineffective, developing, effective or highly effective.” Forty percent of their grade will be based on the rise or fall of student test scores; the other 60 percent will be based on other measures, such as classroom observations by principals, independent evaluators, and peers, plus feedback from students and parents.

But one sentence in the agreement shows what matters most: “Teachers rated ineffective on student performance based on objective assessments must be rated ineffective over all.” What this means is that a teacher who does not raise test scores will be found ineffective over all, no matter how well he or she does with the remaining 60 percent. In other words, the 40 percent allocated to student performance actually counts for 100 percent. Two years of ineffective ratings and the teacher is fired.

She goes on to say:

No high-performing nation in the world evaluates teachers by the test scores of their students; and no state or district in this nation has a successful program of this kind.

Compounding the problem, she writes, is the inability of the United Federation of Teachers to block a legal push by the media to publish the data reports of teachers a few years ago that issued grades based on improvements in student test scores, known as “value-added.”

The consequences of these policies will not be pretty. If the way these ratings are calculated is flawed, as most testing experts acknowledge they are, then many good educators will be subject to public humiliation and will leave the profession. Once those scores are released to the media, we can expect that parents will object if their children are assigned to “bad” teachers, and principals will have a logistical nightmare trying to squeeze most children into the classes of the highest-ranked teachers. Will parents sue if their children do not get the “best” teachers?

Ms. Ravitch does not defend unsuitable teachers. But she objects to doing it based so extensively on test scores.

Of course, teachers should be evaluated. They should be evaluated by experienced principals and peers. No incompetent teacher should be allowed to remain in the classroom. Those who can’t teach and can’t improve should be fired. But the current frenzy of blaming teachers for low scores smacks of a witch-hunt, the search for a scapegoat, someone to blame for a faltering economy, for the growing levels of poverty, for widening income inequality.

In The Daily News, the columnist Juan Gonzalez takes on the same subject, saying the combination of the new evaluation system and the public release of teacher ratings signals “a new low” for the public schools.

Pointing out flaws in the system, and the city’s failure to react to critics’ objections to the implementation of many of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s education initiatives, he writes:

This fixation on rating

Well there you have the problem, he spent 8k which wouldn't cover what I can see of the top of my head:

• Three depositions of police officers 2k per deposition = 6k
• Depose ex wife 4k for the attorney to learn all the dirt, 5k for the deposition(two days).
• Expert testimony on the drug use 10k
• Document preparation 1-2k
• Trial/arbitration/administrative hearing preparation 4k per day.

Figure 20 to 35k up front and then another 20k to deal with the fleeing out of state when she picks up the kid to visit them. Yes, American legal services cost that much and it is why most people get screwed by the courts. Division of assets and exploration of assets could easily add 100k to the legal bill.

Many (most?) judges think this is a serious problem that undermines the fabric of Americans society, but nobody really knows what to do about it.

Limited representation is suggested as a possibility, but there are lawyers that are barely getting by, and partners at large law firms that think that once you take a case you have an obligation to not tell the client, "oops sorry you don't have enough money to get justice, good luck" but rather see the case to the end and hope that the client can pay some how. The only thing that is clear is that the American legal system is dysfunctional.

An interesting editorial about this by the Chief Justices of California and New Hampshire in the New York Times

Yeah, this guy wants to bring on the American Taliban... he thinks government and religion (his, of course) should be the same thing.

But he's not as stupid that suggests, and he's clearly a follower of Karl Rove's strategies, if not as capable at it. The major innovation that Rove brought to political warefare was this: find your weakest point, and attack that first in your opponent. Who cares if the attack it true or fictional, the simple fact that you attacked first makes the counterattack weak.

Look at the 2004 election... John Kerry was a decorated war hero, George Bush served in the National Guard, and even there got out of actually doing much serving thanks to his family's political connections. In the past, the Bush people would have done anything possible to avoid even discussing military service. Rove orchestrates the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth", sells a bunch of complete lies about Kerry, and pretty much destroys that avenue of attack against Bush. Evil but frickin' brilliant... didn't help that Kerry didn't have a clue what to do about it.

And the Republican Party has been repeatedly anti-science. Sure, they'll claim as much the Democrats to want the business piece of science, but when they get right down to it, their policies have sent research elsewhere. Their energy policy directly lead to China so dominating solar, that more than half of the US solar companies have gone under in the last five years. Their wacko-religious policies on stem cell research all but halted it in the USA, while it's flourishing in Europe. Research when successful becomes business; neither of those are businesses easily won back. And that's not even getting into Creationism, Intelligent Design, or whatever new name they try next for the same basic goal: teaching the Christian creation myth to children as a credible scientific theory, rather than the fairy story it is. Only 22% of Republicans believe that global warming/climate change even exists, much less that it's man made... and they're sure to let you know, every time it snows... even when the increased snowfall actually is due to a warmer weather pattern.

The press is full of similar accounts:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/opinion/republicans-against-science.html
http://io9.com/5835970/will-the-anti+science-republicans-kill-conservatism-as-americans-know-it
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonard-steinhorn/how-the-gop-became-the-an_b_970410.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2011-09-20/gop-democrats-science-evolution-vaccine/50482856/1
http://www.waronscience.com/home.php

The Dems, of course, don't have a perfect track record, and on some issues, are closer to the Republicans, or even worse:
http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/27/whos-more-anti-science-republicans-or-de
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2011-09-20/gop-democrats-science-evolution-vaccine/50482856/1

The Dems generally fail on nuclear energy (most of the scientific community is in favor of building new, modern reactors, particular interesting are Thorium reactors), irradiated foods, and even a growing faction is anti-vaccination. And animal research, though that's objection is based on moral, nor scientific grounds.

But don't forget, it was the Republicans who put through the "Noah's Ark" version of the formation of the Grand C

GM had no money, still has no money, will always get bailed out "too big to fail", and will always be bought by "True" Americans

Bullshit.

Before you make that claim, are you going to drink your own medicine and present us with some evidence?

Absence of evidence is key evidence of absence. There is precisely as much evidence for a "god or gods" as there is for the Easter Bunny or the healing power of pyramids -- none. This is after thousands of years and numerous concepts of god or gods, and after numerous controlled experiments. The conclusion to be drawn is the same: no such thing actually exists. On the other hand, if you have actual evidence, put it on the table: You're the one making a positive assertion for a presently evidence-free contention.

Have you conducted long-term studies that show that prayer is useless?

There's no need for me to repeat those studies; there have been a number of good ones, and all have returned the same result. Here is some discussion of recent results for you.

Seems like you have a bit of a double standard, don't you think?

No. Science does not require repeating experiments in order to discuss their results unless those results are in doubt -- and these aren't. Nor does it require supporting theory for baseless ideas. You are in the precise position of asking me to try to prove that the land of Oz, and its wizard, do not exist. What, do you imagine, would serve as evidence of this state of non-existence, other than a complete lack of evidence for such a thing, which I have already pointed to, and identified for you as a key indicator?

On the other hand, since you seem to be taking the position that Oz and the Wizard do exist in the face of this known lack of supporting evidence, I can certainly reasonably ask you to show me why you think I should take you seriously. I don't really expect a good answer, but it remains a good question.

So what are you saying: that republicans and creationists are still at the intellectual level of cavemen ?

Please stop insulting cavemen.

Strange. The conservative rag NYTimes would say that it's not just a Republican thing:

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."

Did you catch that? Majorities of Liberal Democrats favor teaching both evolution and creationism.

Of course, now that you've been educated, are you going to start insulting Democrats in this way? If not.... mmmmmm... smells like propaganda!

Even today I heard someone claim that smoking pot does not have worse health effects than tobacco smoke (think about it : no filters on the sigarettes -> you're actually inhaling burning leaves directly into your lungs which will never again come out. Healthy ? Of course not)

The person who made that comment has probably been keeping up with the material. I'm guessing that either you or they paraphrased the results to the point of inaccuracy. Last month a study came out indicating that moderate marijuana smoking does not impair lung function, unlike moderate cigarette smoking.

As far as lung function goes --which appears to be the adverse health effect you describe-- your"common-sense" reasoning simply contradicts the results from this controlled study. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/marijuana-smoking-does-not-harm-lungs-study-finds/

I think the results of this study would also seem like common sense, but only to people who have smoked both pot and cigarettes.

Here's the article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/education/07winerip.html
On Education
Evaluating New York Teachers, Perhaps the Numbers Do Lie
By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: March 6, 2011

I was recalling it from memory. Actually, the Department of Education accountability formula ranked her as 7th percentile, which prevents her from being rehired at that school and probably any New York City school. The confidence interval 0-52nd percentile. Yes, P=95%. She was there 2 1/2 years, and two dozen of her students got into Bronx Science and Stuyvesant.

You can't just rank teachers based on their students' test scores. You have to correct for the students' abilities. (1) Everybody who has studied student achievement (Diane Ravitch for example) agrees that the factor that is most strongly correlated with student test scores is family income. So you have to correct for family income. But how do you do that? Parents aren't required to reveal their income to the school. So they have to use indirect methods of estimating income, which are inaccurate. (2) New York City is trying to correct for the students' past performance, to see how much the teacher improves their scores. But this has a bias against the best students, because if your class has students who already have a 98% average, they don't have any room to go up. So they have to correct for these and many other factors.

They wound up with the complicated formula in the article that tries to incorporate all these factors. The problem is that (1) the formula hasn't been validated and (2) literally nobody understands it.

The fundamental problem is that it's a bad formula that doesn't correlate with teacher ability. In this case, the teacher is obviously qualified, her students do well, her principal loves her, and yet the formula says she ranks at the bottom. How do you know this formula works?

The fact that it ranks this teacher from the zeroth to 52nd percentile demonstrates that the formula doesn't work. Even if you believe the test, the only statistically valid information it gives you is that she's either among the worst teacher or among the top half. The conclusion that she's in the 7th percentile is not statistically valid. You have to understand basic statistics to realize what's going on here. If you have a confidence interval of 0-52, you can't take one point of the distribution.

Get back to me when you've read the article.

Combine this with intel's solar powered chips and you can spread them like johnny appleseed where they're needed. Or, as a variation, set them up as fileservers with copies of music, movie, and media files and seed them everywhere until the *IAA's give up the ghost for good.

For that matter, just replace the solar powered lighting in front of intended target's residence or place of business
with a similar unit that has all the goodies inside.

Claiming intellectual property on that one. Good til the end of the year I suppose.

-AI

Gleick's announcment Feb 20: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-admits-to-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/
McArdle's Article: Feb 19: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/heartland-memo-looking-faker-by-the-minute/253276/
Pielke's tweet Feb 18: http://twitter.com/#!/RogerPielkeJr/status/170542669007818752