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That article shows four fatalities in ten years. Four.

Nationwide.

Compare that with New York, where eight fatalities in one year is reported as a record low. And NY is one of the US's safer large cities nowadays - the numbers in Chicago or Los Angeles are way higher.

I defy you to even find any figures for nationwide police shootings in the USA.

> Fines aren't high enough. Make them proportional
> to income, like they do in Germany.

Any rich guy that can't convince you he's *actually* poor when the need arises isn't very good at being rich. Once you have money, you pay lawyers and accountants to make sure you keep it.

See also this.

Well, since the war is over it won't be long before they find the Higgs.

The amazing thing about the 30 millisecond advantage graphic is that has been on the NYT site since July, 24, 2009, depicting 30 milliseconds as being 0.3 seconds.

The smart ones go work in the fancy financial industry.

That's the way to legally cheat, consistently make a profit, and not have your bones broken.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html?_r=1
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/07/24/business/0724-webBIZ-trading.ready.html

And the betting limits are really high.

The smart ones go work in the fancy financial industry.

That's the way to legally cheat, consistently make a profit, and not have your bones broken.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html?_r=1
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/07/24/business/0724-webBIZ-trading.ready.html

And the betting limits are really high.

It looks like those that offer the content are free of blame, but those that take the content are guilty. I cannot help but wonder how lobbyists for Drug Cartels, and Sexual Perversions would not benefit from this.

I question the legality of Lobbyists.

And NO, businesses are not people, and money does not have a voice. If so, why was there no Homicide investigation for the Upper Big Branch 29? Why are Super Pac's allowed to even exist. And influence from the Unknown is Tyranny.

"More the other way around: which ones are you talking about? Almost all serious economist are non-Malthusian,"

This is a fair question, even though you shouldn't appeal to authority. Also Malthus made some mistakes.
Personally I feel that mainstream economists don't allow themselfs a close enough connection to reality.

Here is a non-economist who had a much more believable view of the world:

http://bartlett.house.gov/uploadedfiles/DODRickover1957SpeechAcknowledgement.pdf

Also the NYT had an article about a different school of economics:
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/10/23/23greenwire-new-school-of-thought-brings-energy-to-the-dis-63367.html?pagewanted=2

I don't even have to feel like an early adopter on this one, the seventies already saw an energy crisis and we can just look at the work of Georgescu-Roegen to find that energy is the main thing to look at.

To sum it up, the UN report is mainly based on demographics and assumptions about fertility and other parameters. If the guys above are any good you should see a stronger decline following energy availability.

Well, the NYTimes reports proof that it was tested in Israel, which makes Russia unlikely.

This came out during the week, but was overshadowed by the news that Falcone And Friends got Wells Letters, SEC notices that are basically game-over. Investors in Harbinger Capital Partners, Falcone's hedge fund, are likely to flee, but they'll be limited in their ability to withdraw funds. This has happened before to Harbinger in 2009, and Goldman Sachs seems to have gotten preferential treatment in exiting.

The LightSquared bit is juicier, though, because of the hints of corruption that have squeaked out through the press. Air Force General William Shelton, testifying before Congress about LightSquared and the interference that its plans could cause GPS, complained that the White House had told him to change his testimony to make it seem that he was less opposed to LightSquared's plans. There are also allegations of $30,400 donations being given to the Democratic Party by Falcone and LightSquared's CEO on the days of meetings and on days when meetings were arranged.

This came out during the week, but was overshadowed by the news that Falcone And Friends got Wells Letters, SEC notices that are basically game-over. Investors in Harbinger Capital Partners, Falcone's hedge fund, are likely to flee, but they'll be limited in their ability to withdraw funds. This has happened before to Harbinger in 2009, and Goldman Sachs seems to have gotten preferential treatment in exiting.

The LightSquared bit is juicier, though, because of the hints of corruption that have squeaked out through the press. Air Force General William Shelton, testifying before Congress about LightSquared and the interference that its plans could cause GPS, complained that the White House had told him to change his testimony to make it seem that he was less opposed to LightSquared's plans. There are also allegations of $30,400 donations being given to the Democratic Party by Falcone and LightSquared's CEO on the days of meetings and on days when meetings were arranged.

executives traveling to china where they can be held hostage on trumped-up charges).

Like that Russian programmer who was held hostage by the government for half a year when he foolishly visited the United States, only freed after he paid the $50,000 ransom (and agreed to try to fuck his employer)?
Please give a link that supports your claims, I don't think China would do that to a rich foreigner who is investing in the country.

The following is what I could dig up on the effects of multi-lingualism. It does impact the brain in many different areas and there appears to be a growing belief that learning a new language at any age will have a pronounced impact on your ability to think and reason, but that if taught young the improvements are far more dramatic still. I didn't want to clutter the submission with this stuff, especially as these studies don't have nearly the same level of rigour as the MRI scans of the taxi drivers (where a whole host of variables can now be examined directly versus the somewhat more indirect studies done on polyglots). They're also a bit more controversial, with opposing studies claiming that the benefits either don't exist or don't exist in the way that is claimed.

http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/0012brain.html
http://www.sfn.org/index.aspx?pagename=brainbriefings_thebilingualbrain
http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/11/10/cognitive-ability-improved-when-bilingual/20740.html

(Press coverage adds yet another level of indirectness and potential sources of errors, but there's still some useful info here)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/science/31conversation.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3739690.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/18/bilingual-alzheimers-brain-power-multitasking

The impact of music on learning is also not very well studied - I can find press links that talk about the research, but not much actual research.

http://www.livescience.com/5327-music-memory-connection-brain.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070801122226.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3095807.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12135590

However, the story gets MUCH more complicated...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15791973
http://www.mymultiplesclerosis.co.uk/misc/amnesia.html

There IS a fascinating "reverse" case, where alteration of the brain resulted in a remarkable alteration in musical ability, but as far as I know there has been no real work done on what changes the brain has undergone as a consequence of the new obsession.

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

If anyone can add to the list, that would be great, especially for the different areas you were mentioning.

Note that a well-known online language forum has picked up this story as the latest examle of a crash blossom, i.e., a headline that has two or more radically different parsings.

This one seems to have originated in the beeb, and there are suspicions that they have headline writers who specialize in this sort of ambiguity. They have had a lot of hilarious headlines recently, that are often read completely wrong by most readers.

Official link: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/press_relations/credentials.shtml

There have been some disputes in the past on how this is adjudicated (esp. to online writers): http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/nypd-is-sued-over-denial-of-press-credentials/

I've already lived this with iTunes. I bought iFitness (more here. During an iOS upgrade there was some sort of issue and PC backup turned out to be corrupt and couldn't restore the apps. "No problem," I thought, "I downloaded all of these apps from the store, I can just re-download everything."

Nope, despite being one of the five best fitness apps it was pulled from the market for unknown reasons. Some claim it was banned for posting fake positive reviews, but that seems completely unnecessary considering how much praise iFitness received.

Because of that I no longer trust my phone or the "cloud" to keep my data safe.

Replying to self with links:

Lawsuit in 2008 over NYPD denying press passes to online publications -- http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/nypd-is-sued-over-denial-of-press-credentials/

Recent spat over arresting journalists in OWS sweep -- http://www.observer.com/2011/11/bloomberg-spokesperson-admits-arresting-credentialed-reporters-reading-the-awl/

And what makes the government where "the cloud" resides any more respectable of my privacy than my local government?

- well, that's an easy one.

If you have your data in some places like these, then you may want to consider places like these instead.

I'll just leave this here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/us/04bar.html

Protip: the sooner you realize this isn't a simple issue of "let's steal the domains of stinky pirates", the sooner everyone will stop laughing at you.

Well... if you call pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of having the US of America call Iranian internet policies 'an electronic curtain of surveillance and censorship around its people.' while, at the same time, engaging in something even worse than website blocking (i.e. stealing domains), with the same level of judicial oversight (i.e. zero), "acting super-enlightened", sure... everyone's acting all super-enlightened and stuff.

In case you haven't noticed, this includes websites that were deemed fully legal in their respective countries (e.g. rojadirecta) and it's not limited to IP issues: they have been blocking websites for political reasons too.

People are mentioning what I said above, not to feel smarter, but because it's painfully obvious and, still, apparently some people prefer to pretend it's not true.

Disclaimer: I don't live in the US. Thankfully. I'll still criticize it whenever I disagree with stuff. So will lots of other people. Deal with it.

Please stop blaming Israel for bad US policy in the Middle East. There have been multiple occasions now where the Israeli government has stepped in to tell Republicans in congress that cutting assistance the Palestinians is a bad idea. See for example http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/world/middleeast/house-gop-finds-a-growing-bond-with-netanyahu.html?pagewanted=all. The current American positions in the Middle East are influenced by a variety of lobbyists but a large fraction of policy is guided by some members of congress being batshit insane. Not too surprisingly, when you get the likes of Michelle Bachmann on the Permanent Intelligence committee and you have senators like Inhofe and Demint on the senate Foreign Relations committee you are going to get really bad results. Many of these people have developed such a distorted combination of ideology and religion that they essentially think that anything which hurts or antagonizes Muslims must be a good thing. Israel has something to do with this, but when Obama needs to literally call the Israeli prime minister to explain to the Republicans that fucking over the Palestinians is a bad thing, you know the situation has gotten pretty crazy.

In a US prison rots Javed Iqbal. Who is Javed Iqbal? He is a satellite dish installer who let people see Al-Manar television. Al-Manar is associated with Hezbollah (which as Shia, are associated with Iran, and the US government constantly links Hezbollah and Iran in statements). So how is the US throwing people getting news from Iranian, and Iranian-allied sources good, yet Iran doing the same thing is "an electronic curtain of surveillance and censorship"?

for political reasons.

Unless it wanted to, of course.

"It has become clear that if a person agrees with the idea that all tweets be archived in the Library of Congress then they are a stupid sheep getting f****d in the mouth :)"

Well looks like you called it correctly. Iran appears to have already blocked it barely a day later.

Multiple source for your browsing pleasure:
NYT: Iran Blocks American ‘Virtual Embassy’
Radio Free Europe: Iran Blocks U.S. 'Virtual Embassy'
LA Times: Access to U.S. 'virtual embassy' blocked in Iran
Fox News: Iran Blocks New U.S. 'Virtual Embassy'

They* killed a killed a guy for being ... "dangerous terrorist". No trial, no judge, no lawyer, no oversight.

Care to share the name? News reports? Evidence? If you have evidence, go to the press, or Cryptome or...

...

So, back to the point, citations please.

Well, assuming GP was referring to US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, there is no shortage of press commentary. Apparently US citizen Salmir Khan was killed in the same attack, but was not deliberately targeted, being just another collateral casualty. The press reports include statements of concern regarding this extra-judicial execution of al-Awlaki being ordered by the sitting US president. It was not a "heat of the moment" death in a shootout or in an attempt to escape from being arrested. Moreover, was not convicted of any offence, not even in absentia. Although many accusations were made (presumably with justification), no charges were ever laid against him. From what is in the press reports, he was by no means a Mahatma Gandhi, but the ordering of an execution without even going through the motions of a trial (not even a mock trial) should be disturbing to any US citizen. It's easier to slide down the slippery slope than to climb back up.

Oh, here's a few press references, in the Wahington Post, the Huffington Post, and CBS News. Use your Google-fu to find many many more. There is also an interesting comment in the New York Times, which suggests that legal advice given to the president before the execution was that it would be illegal.

I prefer the "S" corporation over the LLC...you can save on the employment taxes (SS, Medicare) that way.

May I suggest the LLC with S corporation tax election? File a Form 8832 to elect taxation for your LLC as a corporation, then file a Form 2553 to elect taxation under subchapter S.

Best of both worlds: get the benefits of S corporation income splitting with the "no fuss" LLC. It's nice not to have to do yearly shareholder meetings, board of directors elections, etc, if you have a corporation consisting of 1 or 2 owners.

However, beware the IRS. That crazy guy that crashed a plane into the IRS back in 2010 actually brought up a legitimate point: the law specifically discriminates against single person corporations in the field of "technical work" (eg. computer consulting, software development, etc).

Yes, the law has a specific "fuck you" for Slashdotters who start their own consulting corporations in our particular field. For any other field a single-person consulting corporation is fine, just as long as it isn't computer/technology consulting.

Anon, because who wants to be designated a Potentially Dangerous Taxpayer by the IRS?

About six weeks ago, Mr. Sibal called legal representatives from the top Internet service providers and Facebook into his New Delhi office, said one of the executives who was briefed on the meeting.

At the meeting, Mr. Sibal showed attendees a Facebook page that maligned the Congress Party’s president, Sonia Gandhi. “This is unacceptable,” he told attendees, the executive said, and he asked them to find a way to monitor what is posted on their sites.

From the NYT blog.

"wind turbines kill birds.."

"... up to 500 million birds are killed each year by cats...
By contrast, 440,000 birds are killed by wind turbines each year, according to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, ..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/science/21birds.html

Why not transparency for all corporate donations?

You mean like this?

Are you prepared to declare your opposition to the Citizens United decision, and not to vote for any candidate who does not come out against it?

Hell no, it was a good decision. I don't like "personhood" for corporations, and they are given far too much deference even without all the favoritism by select politicians, etc. But the Citizens United case was decided the right way, for free speech. Now you can make a movie and release it close to an election, too, and that's how it should be in a free society.

Will you support a constitutional amendment saying that corporations are not people

Something like that, sure.

... and money is not speech?

Money buys media and exposure. Don't we have enough economic tyranny out of Washington already? They've already disposed of real money anyway, and have shoved Federal Reserve notes at us and jail anyone that doesn't use them. What we need more is a Constitution amendment clarifying what sound money is, and that the Federal government should be under the same restrictions on paying its debt that the states are required to follow.

another way for you to hate the black guy in the white house.

Race card? Really? Are all your arguments really that shallow? Here's some news for you: I opposed the policies coming from the White House before there was a black man there, and I still do - they haven't really changed. Same direction, and more power grabs.

Unless you have found the first truthful bit of news from Hotair, I'm going to wait for some further corroboration on your list of facts.

How about the New York Times?

Advertising has been the driver behind commercial TV for decades. Money still pours in non-stop to commercial networks and some are looking to capitalize even more with product ordering forms in case you thought it couldn't get any worse.

Advertising has been the driver behind commercial TV for decades. Money still pours in non-stop to commercial networks and some are looking to capitalize even more with product ordering forms in case you thought it couldn't get any worse.

What is there to "win" in Afghanistan?

According to headlines over a year ago, almost a trillion dollars of mineral wealth was 'discovered'. I say 'discovered' because there are some skeptics.

First: the mineral rights of the rare metals alone make it worth it as currently China controls ~95% of the World supply.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/business/global/china-consolidates-control-of-rare-earth-industry.html?pagewanted=all
Second: the pincer movement is valid in a political sense, not so much in the hardware sense, but that's my bad for not being more explicit.
Third: but not last, is that the pipeline would increase revenue massively, the amount of money saved plus the volume shipped clearly makes it worth the effort, because the corporations involved profit both from the oil and gas that will flow and by supplying the weapons needed for war while the civilian citizenry around the World pays for the privilege of "Easy Energy".

Finally, there is clearly plenty of reason to be there and they already tried being "nice" about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unocal_Corporation#Controversy

Didn't you ever wonder why the US supplied the Afghans with Russian/US made weapons during the Russian occupation of Afghan?

Don't bother replying until you've read a book, even a comic book will do.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/us/officers-punished-for-supporting-eased-drug-laws.html?ref=us

Add to this that every single technological advance in communications has been violated by the government despite the fact that the Constitution clearly indicates that it has no authority to do so whatsoever. Telegraphs, telephones, cellphones, the internet, gps... all tapped first, until the supreme court said "no".

While advances in communication seem to be stalling, sadly, advances in government bullshit continue apace. Why bother with all this warrant and constitutional limits on power when you can just ask companies up the food chain to roll over for you, all perfectly constitutional. After all, it'd be terrible if something were to happen to an entire rack of servers because the feds thought you weren't bending over far enough for them.

My guess is that ultimately, Obama will veto the law allowing citizens to be held indefinitely without trial, and the government will do it anyway, by having people held by private prison corporations not beholden to the Constitution. Of course, any complaints about "kidnapping" will be treated with the highest priority by the DA, and will be taken care of just as soon as they're finished with all of these important jaywalking and littering cases that suddenly are clogging the docket.

Cuz in the end, its not about catching people who run lights. Enforcing the law is not an end in and of itself, its supposed to be a means to an end. Who cares if we can "catch" more people? It may feel good and let someone justify their job with some metrics but, it doesn't solve the original problem of risks and dangers....not in anything even approaching a realistic way.

Unfortunately, while sane, thoughtful people would come to this conclusion, someone, somewhere would rather make a profit off of it. This isn't theoretical, it's already happened, as some cities would rather profit at the expense and injury of motorists. What this does to insurance and medical rates I hate to think.

• Chicago
• Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, California
• Anecdotes if not evidence

This sort of thing would be great for "dynamic yellow lights," as you implied. A sane, rational person would use this to make a yellow light last a little longer to prevent an accident. People like the above could widen the range a little and make it shorten the yellow light to catch a few extra bucks. It's not the technology; this algorithm is cool and great. It's the few abusers.

1. Houses aren't actually that much of a money-maker if you actually consider all of the additional taxes, upkeep costs and market volatility. Their main benefit is freedom to modify and protection from eviction.
2. He said unsecured. Houses are not unsecured.
3. The debt you're accruing interest on accrues faster than inflation stacks up, gaining more negative value.

1) I'll accept what you're saying if you give me some concrete examples to work with and not just opinions. My experience has been that buying is better than renting.

Here is a good tool for evaluating a buy vs. rent situation: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calculator.html

2) The post that I was replying to didn't say unsecured. You're referring to a different post earlier in this branch of posts.

3) You're looking only at interest vs. inflation and you have to look at the entire equation.

At the end of the day what it comes down to is that if you are paying rent you don't have anything to show for it over time whereas the money that I am paying for debt+interest is decreasing the debt+interest over time which, when coupled with property values increasing over time (again as I said in my post with the exceptions of temporary downturns due to market fluctuations), gives me an increased net worth over time.

Not just that, most of the gap growth is between the rich and the super-rich.

What's worse is the deals that Pfizer is making with health benefit companies like Medco. Medco gets a "discount" for requiring the branded drug, which it pockets. Pfizer wins because more of their branded drug gets sold. Who loses? The consumers and the employers who end up paying more for prescription coverage. See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/health/plan-would-delay-sales-of-generic-for-lipitor.html

Interesting. The headline says "sells", but the article sounds like this is just the usual judicial warrants and subpoenas. Any evidence that this is something else?

A counter-example: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/20/technology/20google.html?pagewanted=all

The justice department requested millions of requests; AOL, MSN and Yahoo said "here it is!", and Google said "nope, we don't think this subpoena is valid so we'll fight it."

I'm not claiming they're perfect, but this seems like a promising sign.

You are also aware that you can be prosecuted for creating child pornography for taking pictures of your baby.

No, that is wrong. The law says that child pornography is an image designed to be sexually provocative. There was a case years back when the law was brought in where an artist exhibited nude pictures of her children at the beach. The police looked into it and decided not to prosecute. Of course the definition of "sexually provocative" is fuzzy and basically boils down to a judgement call by a jury, but generally speaking photos of your children in the bath or whatever are fine.

Maybe I was fuzzy about the arrested / prosecuted angle, but still:
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/are-bathtime-photos-pornographic/
http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2010/11/naked-baby-photos-lead-to-parents-arrest.html
http://www.thelocal.se/32400/20110304/

All the talk of how manufacturing will create jobs is just that, talk.

False. Apple is creating massive job opportunities in the environmental cleanup industries in China. It's just that Chinese law allows Apple to pollute and poison the countryside without needing to pay for the cleanup. Apple, like the gulf polluting BP, exploits lax local regulations to make a fat profit at the expense of the local environment. Remember, this is a company that has Al Gore on it's board of directors. Shame shame Mr. Gore. Your actions speak much louder than your words.

Bridge Comes to San Francisco With a Made-in-China Label

Im no us citizen, but I wonder if it really is more economical in the long run to outsource everything to china.

As far as I know even treatments prescribed by you MD does assert to cure cancer, but is only measured in 5 year survival rates, and if a treatment can get an extra few people out of a hundred to live past five years it is considered a success.

5 year survival rates are common in studies because it's a decent trade-off between relevance and time. That said, there are long term studies, like this one, and many look at all-cause mortality so if, by statistical fluke, 10 patients on a drug get struck by lightning (above the control group), that would probably be listed as a known side effect. And that sort low percent risk reduction of 5-year mortality is only acceptable in third or fourth line treatments. By the time you get to your third or fourth chemotherapy drug your cancer has proven itself to be treatment resistant, so it's more of an act of desperation in terminal patients rather than a truly ineffective drug (i.e. it would work in most cases, but has too many side effects so people only get it after normal therapy fails). But these issues were addressed by the palliative care movement (i.e. why shorten people's lives for an insignificant hope of cure), which was well before my time. IIRC, only a nominal percentage of doctors still recommend such drugs, although most will let people know the option exists.

Then we have Avastin, a drug that actually can kill the patient without provided any proven benefit for those diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Are the doctors following the science?

Yes. Avastin lost its indication for metastatic breast cancer. I'm sure this was preceded by doctors not prescribing it after the studies came out, since otherwise there'd be a lot more conflict about it. The FDA can't move instantly so that's why doctors keep up on studies (they'd also fail their 10 year re-certification if they didn't keep adapting). And any drug can kill a patient, (someone has probably managed to die from a placebo, truth be known). We tolerate more risk with anti-cancer drugs since it's a trade-off between too risky and not effective enough, but catastrophic complications can proceed in a Rube Goldberg fashion from even minor treatments.

And yet that comment gets rec'ced up as being "insightful".

Even more ironically, it's the same folks who love to talk about "life, liberty and the persuit of happiness" the most that seem to forget the bit about the next clause, "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men" more often than not.

But then, and speaking of editing the Declaration of Independence, Texas did drop Jefferson from its textbooks:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html

Especially now with amazon getting into the publishing business: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology/amazon-rewrites-the-rules-of-book-publishing.html?pagewanted=all

At least with the music industry's drm'ed files they could be played on a multitude of devices from various companies. Amazon's ebooks only work on amazon hardware.

I also get the impression that pirating ebooks is far less common with Joe and Susie Consumer than with what occurred in the napster days with mp3s. I doubt ebook filesharing has much affect on the publisher's bottom line, since most of those who do it probably wouldn't have purchased the book anyway (and certainly not new in hardcover).

Except that the deniers tend to claim a giant conspiracy and don't themselves go through the pier review process. At least those that don't really look at the data, and then realize that, yeah, it is happening:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/opinion/04krugman.html

And - over 95% of the world's climate experts say that it's happening, and that it's at least partially caused by humans. That's quite a peer review. Especially when the majority of the rest work for the very industries that contribute the most to said climate change.

Skepticism is a critical part of the scientific process. Debating on whether the oncoming train is a mirage without getting off the tracks is foolish and suicidal.

The Pu-238 in the atmosphere from weapons tests (about 3.3 x 10^14 Bq [9,000 Ci]) was increased by the 1964 reentry and burnup of a Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power (SNAP)-9A RTG, which released 6.3 x 10^14 Bq (17,000 Ci)

Your claim made it seem that the RTG burnup doubled the curies of radioactive material in the atmosphere vis-a-vis atmospheric weapons testing. Rather, this doubled the amount of Pu-238 — an isotope which is considered a contaminant/impurity in a nuclear weapon and therefore be expected to be released in very small amounts via atmospheric nuclear weapons tests.

Ah, here we go:

Figures from the United Nations put the total bomb radiation from decades of atmospheric testing at almost 70 billion curies.

Yeah, this and other sources just go to show that this event was quite minor compared to all the other stuff going on at the time. About 6 orders of magnitude smaller, that is.

So, if you claim that this 17,000 Ci release might have had severe effects (per you):

At the top end we are talking 200 million human deaths from cancer due to that accident.

...then I suppose that all that atmospheric testing might therefore cause, "at the top end", 824 trillion human deaths from cancer!

Oh no! I just looked inside Schrodinger's box and found out that the entire human race has all been killed 120,000 times over by the scary atmospheric weapons testing fallout back in the 1960's! The quantum wave function just hadn't collapsed until I ran the calculations that determined we're all supposed to be dead!

...or maybe the SNAP-9a release really was a minor incident after all. You might want to consider that. Occam's Razor and all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/science/earth/09climate.html?pagewanted=all