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About those shrimp:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/business/simple-innovation-is-often-the-most-successful-prototype.html

• Kidnapping
• Extortion (protection rackets)
• Oil theft
• Pirated goods

Not to mention that post-legalization, they could enter the legal market for marijuana. See Legalization Won’t Kill the Cartels

You don't understand, there is this thing called the multiplier effect, for every $1 the government spends, it creates $1.5 of economic growth, Krugman says so, don't trust a Nobel winning economist? ( http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/bang-for-the-buck-wonkish/ ) So, all we have to do is have the government spend $15 trillion dollars and it will create $22 trillion in GDP. And the next year, the government can spend $22 trillion and create $33 trillion in GDP!!!!!!! Financial crisis solved, perpetual GDP growth guaranteed!!!! Eat your heart out Bernie Madoff.

And here is the original NYTimes article that presented the graph -

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/jobs-will-follow-a-strengthening-of-the-middle-class.html?_r=1

Here's the original source graph from the NYTimes if anyone is interested.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html

Ask Parejo Gonzalez about it. He thought he was safe behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary.

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/18/weekinreview/the-world-ambassador-shot-by-cocaine-ring.html

If you really want the troops home, you'll vote for Ron Paul.

One of the first financial press conferences before (after?) the google IPO was by their CFO.. Chielf Food Officer, back in February 2005.
Google was proud of announcing the number of eggs they were cooking each day for their employees. Wall Street was pissed by their lack of respect.

They had a formal presentation by their chef but not their chief financial officer,” said Mark S. Mahaney, an analyst with American Technology Research. “I have never been to an investor day where the C.F.O. didn’t speak.”
Indeed, Google’s top chef, Charlie Ayers, spoke to the assembled analysts and investors about the lunch he had prepared, featuring entrees like grilled pork tenderloin. The chief financial officer, George Reyes, moderated the presentation and answered a few questions, but did not give a formal talk.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/technology/10google.html?ex=1266123600&en=60d19019bb842d20&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt

"Dead fuel is free energy; its that simple." It's not FREE. Not even remotely. So are you telling me the environmental destruction from the Alberta Tar Sands is FREE? http://s.ngm.com/2009/03/canadian-oil-sands/img/candian-oil-sands-615.jpg. Are you saying that the cancer causing elements that are spewed into the air from fossil fuels are FREE? http://www.epa.gov/air/basic.html. Your misnomer is one of the reasons we are in this situation. And there are a thousand other articles and studies that say that fossil fuels are harmful to you and me. If you want me to site them I will.

It's great that you made your argument on your opinion. But let me give you some information about alternative energy that is from reputable sources. From MSNBC (and others...FYI from a study funded by Google): "Clean, accessible, reliable and renewable energy equivalent to 10 times the installed capacity of coal power plants in the U.S....What's more, the energy can be tapped with existing technology, according to the researchers. That's largely due the recent development of drilling techniques that make methods such as enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) possible." TEN TIMES what we get from coal on an annual basis without the mining destruction nor the carcinogens in the air. THAT IS FUCKING FREE ENERGY. http://futureoftech.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/27/8509629-energy-from-hot-rocks-abounds?chromedomain=cosmiclog. Or CNET if you prefer: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20125837-54/geothermal-potential-reaches-coast-to-coast/

Or maybe you'd like to hear the opine of a nobel prize laureate in economics about the economic reality of solar power? Is there a Moore's Law to solar power? Actually there probably is, but if the fossil fuel industry has it's way it will probably be stymied....oh wait it already has. " In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year."--AND--"Let’s face it: a large part of our political class, including essentially the entire G.O.P., is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers’ money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/opinion/krugman-here-comes-solar-energy.html?_r=1&hp.

So the question remains smarty are you with us or against us? Please give any sources that are not your opinion and actually sited to a reference to the contrary.

Thanks.

That I thought I read about 3 years ago
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/us/30grease.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2008/0506/p01s03-usgn.html
http://blog.oregonlive.com/nwheadlines/2008/05/restaurant_kitchen_grease_thef.html
http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/articles/2884/california-cop-is-arrested-for-grease-theft/

And last year
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-09-29-restaurant-grease-thieves_N.htm

But apparently has been around much longer, maybe even before the Simpsons episode (1998)
http://www.salon.com/2000/11/06/grease_wars/

Why don't you come here and live in Gary, Indiana? Oh, you won't be doing that, right? What a fuckin' surprise.

While I still love my good 'old U.S. of A., it is facing a rapid decline, whereas China is still the fastest growing economy in the world.

btw, 'disciplined citizenship' means that less crimes are committed. In America, crime is a burgeoning culture and has been since the 20s. We incarcerate far more people than China does - both in total numbers and percentage-wise. Nothing says freedom quite like prison.

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html?pagewanted=all

Well, at least it's not likely to get mixed with sewage to make lard for human consumption like in China.

One hopes so, at least.

I'd be interested in seeing evidence on your wiretapping claims.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/world/26wikidrugs.html?ref=drugenforcementadministration

As for the DEA being part of the DOJ, keep in mind that the FBI is also considered to be part of the intelligence community. These are law enforcement agencies with enormous intelligence gathering power and which have greatly expanded that power over the past decade. The fact that the DEA, a supposedly civilian law enforcement agency, has access to military resources (NORAD) is a troubling sign for our democracy.

The existence of such a powerful and heavily armed law enforcement agency is not a direct assault on civil liberties. However, the laws that agency is charged with enforcing are an attack on civil liberties, and always have been. Drug laws have been used as an excuse to deny people their freedom of association, their privacy rights, their freedom of speech (e.g. Alexander Shulgin, who was penalized for publishing books), their right to property (e.g. asset forfeiture), and to incarcerate large numbers of people (more than any other country, by orders of magnitude). The war on drugs has also been used to weaken our democracy: the Controlled Substances Act grants the attorney general's office the power to declare drugs to be illegal without any democratic process, a power that has been exercised twice this year (in practice, it is the DEA that exercises this power -- thus the DEA both makes the law and enforces it).

4. Announced a plan to responsibly end the war in Iraq: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/washington/28troops.html

Notice that this article is almost 3 years old. In the present day, we have two people to thank for getting out of Iraq: George Bush, ironically, and whoever released the key Julian Assange's cache of cables. Obama was lobbying Iraq to stay longer but Iraq refused to extend the timetable setup by GWB. In other words, we are getting out DESPITE Obama, not because of him and he is holding in solitary the one person in this whole mess that deserves a peace prize way more than warmonger-Obama, providing Manning is the hero who helped bring us an end to Iraq by shining a light on war crimes.

So --- I wonder how many of the items in this list are pure BS like #4, and how many obscure acts are nothing more than list fodder.

4. Announced a plan to responsibly end the war in Iraq: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/washington/28troops.html

Notice that this article is almost 3 years old. In the present day, we have two people to thank for getting out of Iraq: George Bush, ironically, and whoever released the key Julian Assange's cache of cables. Obama was lobbying Iraq to stay longer but Iraq refused to extend the timetable setup by GWB. In other words, we are getting out DESPITE Obama, not because of him and he is holding in solitary the one person in this whole mess that deserves a peace prize way more than warmonger-Obama, providing Manning is the hero who helped bring us an end to Iraq by shining a light on war crimes.

So --- I wonder how many of the items in this list are pure BS like #4, and how many obscure acts are nothing more than list fodder.

Obama's Office of Legal Council disagreed.

Just wondering, have you bought a house in China to compare your American one to? Have you seen the quality of construction work that passes for "acceptable" around here? There was a news article the other day about a bridge where the construction workers used stones instead of cement and that one construction worker admitted "“I wouldn’t dare ride [any trains that go over this bridge] once its opened."

I have lived outside Shanghai for 3 years and the way they cut corners in this country is mind-blowing in its thoroughness. Remember the melamine-tainted milk from a few years back that killed all those babies? What about the toys containing lead made for export? Did you know that 10% of oil used in restaurants in China is carcinogenic because it's been recycled using harsh chemicals? In my opinion, the Chinese as a whole are far less concerned about "doing the right thing" than people are in America are. The culture just doesn't see a problem with screwing other people over, if you can get away with it. Doesn't stop at manufacturing, either--people litter shamelessly, don't stop at red lights, and extortion is considered a viable business strategy. Call me racist if it makes you feel better, but I've seen too much to pretend that Chinese culture isn't shit. I didn't come to this country with such notions, but I certainly will leave with them.

"To be rich is glorious." - Deng Xiaoping

Articles that mention the stuff I said:
http://www.chinasmack.com/2011/pictures/corner-cutting-exposed-in-jilin-railway-bridge-project.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/world/asia/china-recycled-cooking-oil-poses-risk.html

Was that this case?

Horrifying, but at least the guy wasn't actually killed.

Yes! Nate's writing is smart and fun. Don't believe me? Read how awesome he uses statistics to describe the improbable collapse of the Boston Red Sox this year:

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/september-collapse-of-red-sox-could-be-worst-ever/

Nate Silver, the man behind fivethirtyeight.com He does analysis on multiple topics and has been pretty accurate historically. The questions that he can answer can probably be a lot more geeky than those that could be asked of others, and are also the types of questions that are less likely to get bullshit responses. I also think he's the type of person who would probably be willing to answer Slashdot questions so there's that to be said as well.

Profit motive is universal, it becomes problematic when a group with a monopoly on force, AKA the government, has a stake. Where communism is the popular ownership of the means of production, communism is in fact directly responsible. If these were wholly private companies there would less of a conflict of interest for separate government agencies to prosecute breaches of existing regulation. You and others commenting on this keep closing your eyes to the similarities and dissimilarities because it undermines your ideological belief. Both the US and China have regulations and regulatory bodies, but China has a far greater problem with government being both the offender and the prosecutor. This is a systemic problem that occurs here as well, not because of that evil, evil capitalism, but the simple and more direct matter that it remains a conflict of interest for government to police itself.

Whether through government conflict of interest (communist or otherwise), corrupt government or less government - corporations will pollute indiscriminately. The net effect is that factories don't get regulated and so China's polluted landscape is EXACTLY what could happen in the US if we continue to let corporations erode EPA regulation and enforcement.

Who the hell cares whether its through communist conflict of interest or a democracy infiltrated by corporate interest? Or for that matter, a group of nutjobs that think no government will somehow make these corporations suddenly stop fucking up the environment?

Profit motive is universal, it becomes problematic when a group with a monopoly on force, AKA the government, has a stake. Where communism is the popular ownership of the means of production, communism is in fact directly responsible. If these were wholly private companies there would less of a conflict of interest for separate government agencies to prosecute breaches of existing regulation. You and others commenting on this keep closing your eyes to the similarities and dissimilarities because it undermines your ideological belief. Both the US and China have regulations and regulatory bodies, but China has a far greater problem with government being both the offender and the prosecutor. This is a systemic problem that occurs here as well, not because of that evil, evil capitalism, but the simple and more direct matter that it remains a conflict of interest for government to police itself.

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota wants to padlock the E.P.A.â(TM)s doors, as does former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas wants to impose an immediate moratorium on environmental regulation.

Representative Ron Paul of Texas wants environmental disputes settled by the states or the courts. Herman Cain, a businessman, wants to put many environmental regulations in the hands of an independent commission that includes oil and gas executives. Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former Utah governor, thinks most new environmental regulations should be shelved until the economy improves.

Only Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, has a kind word for the E.P.A., and that is qualified by his opposition to proposed regulation of carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming.

But maybe they're just talk? No, not if you remember George Bush.

Fortunately, congress has been busy passing a lot of important legislation lately. I'm sure we can trust these wonderful representatives to continue to stand up for the issues that matter as they diligently work to bring this country back to the prominent state God intended it to be in. I'm sure that once congress has passed comprehensive patent reform, they'll soon get to on other digital issues such as legally enforcing net-neutrality and guaranteeing that using the internet does not void one's fourth amendment rights.

I think patents make a lot of sense, for some things and not for others.

On balance, there are a lot of really bad software patents, simply because you can sit down with any one of a hundred people "skilled in the art" of whatever area of software and ask them "is this obvious?" and they will almost always say yes, though when you ask "why hasn't it been done before?" the answer comes back a little more murky, usually something about it just not having made sense before because of the user base or available hardware or whatever, and during the period of 1995-2005, the patent office seemed to be in rubber stamp mode for software.

If you go back to something like barbed wire, there were probably a half-dozen wire manufacturers crying "oh, that was so obvious, we were about to do that" when the patents issued, but today with software, you literally have millions of individuals who are capable of implementing these things that are getting patented - it's a different scale, and the standard for obviousness and prior art should be equally higher.

Linux is about choice. Don't like it? Install something else.

Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?

I made my choice when I installed Ubuntu in the first place with the hope of not having to revisit my initial choice any time soon.

From Benford to Erd(slashcode fuckup)s

Erdos carried a suitcase from one city to another, arrived at the doorstep of any living mathematician, and declared "My brain is open!" Are you advocating that I carry my home directory with me from one distribution to another and declare "My desktop is open!" as a model of good living?

The percentage bachelors degrees granted in engineering doubled from 1975-1985 and it's dropped back down to the 1975 value again. I can't find the source but I read the other day that the number of bachelors degrees has roughly doubled since the 1970s. If so, we're graduating as many engineers as we were in 1975 but "production" of engineers has not not kept up with the increase of over 25% in population.

"Considering 70% of the cost of a real book is wrapped up in printing and distribution..."

How about considering numbers other than those pulled out of your *** in order to make your point? Physical costs are about 11% of the MSRP.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/business/media/01ebooks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

maybe they made things better for music, but they actively did worse things for prices on eBooks in order to build up support for iBooks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/technology/11reader.html

http://www.idealog.com/blog/apples-disruption-of-the-ebook-market-has-nothing-to-do-with-the-tablet

(Yet again I'm going to violate my rule and reply to the AC.)

The fees we're talking about are not charged to other banks, they're charged to the merchant, who then passes them to the customer in the form of higher prices.

You continue to repeat BILLIONS OF DOLLARS like it's a bad thing. According to my brief research, Bank of America has 10.13 BILLION SHARES. If they make $2B in profit, that's only 20 cents per share. And they lost money in 2010. The larger the bank, the more the profits have to be spread around.

Hell, my employer rolls in BILLIONS OF DOLLARS and then spends it all on tens of thousands of employees spread throughout the world. And if we start turning a profit again, I might see a penny dividend per share on my stock, because I happen to be one of the investors. And if I didn't expect to see a profit at some point, I wouldn't continue buying the stock—I'd invest it in another company that does have a plan to make a profit.

And finally, the "really big banks" are going to be able to charge less than half of what the other banks charge. You're characterization of this mess makes me think that you 1) don't understand it, 2) didn't bother to research it, and 3) don't give a shit, because you've been lied to about how the economy works in the first place. For instance, nobody makes money by charging EACH OTHER fees. That would be a zero-sum game.

To the AC, informed, yes: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/business/bank-of-america-drops-plan-for-debit-card-fee.html
" On Oct. 1, a new federal rule went into effect that limits the fees banks can levy on merchants every time a consumer swipes a debit card to make a purchase. The new limit is expected to cost the banks about $6.6 billion in revenue a year, beginning in 2012, according to Javelin Strategy and Research. That comes on top of another loss, of $5.6 billion, from new rules restricting overdraft fees, which were widely seen as onerous and went into effect in July 2010. "

The full report unfortunately is paywalled: https://www.javelinstrategy.com/brochure/219


However, if we ask what percentage of revenue this is: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-25/dodd-frank-cutting-9-billion-of-revenue-spurs-u-s-banks-to-invent-fees.html
" The 10 biggest banks’ estimated impact of the two rules accounts for less than 2 percent of the $514.6 billion net revenue they posted last year. "


I'm not sympathetic.

They didn't simulate zero-g. A zero-gravity environment results in an average 1% loss of Bone Mineral Density per month (PDF) and muscle atrophy; however, these detrimental effects on the body might be countered by putting astronauts in a centrifuge for some time each day. We have seen plenty of astronauts experience extended periods of time in zero-g and in isolation though. The record for the longest space flight is held by Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 days traveling 300,765,000 km orbiting the Earth on the Mir space station and who said his experience showed that “it is possible to preserve your physical and psychological health throughout a mission similar in length to a flight to Mars and back.”

• Imperial presidency: judge jury and executioner.
• Unconstitutional detention.
• Unconstitutional wiretapping.
• Unconstitutionally waging war and not even bothering with the War Powers Act.
• Taking credit for Iraq ending when it was Iraq that kicked us out on Bush II's timetable and Obama was trying to stay longer. Assange has a much bigger claim for the removal of troops from Iraq.
• Cut deal with insurance industry while touting the public option. In the end, we get the No Insurance Company Left Behind Act. Lobbyists got their money's worth.
• Recent financial reform legislation so weak it would not have even slowed the meltdown had it already been in place. Lobbyists got their money's worth.
• Forgiving torturers Excusing them makes him complicit.
• Not even a show-attempt to prosecute fraud in the meltdown. Instead its bailouts and bonuses.
• Made deepwater horizon more likely.
• And the famous "hire the lobbyists for the industry you bow to" tactic. Good for what I don't know.
• Whistleblowers who expose wrongdoing should not be treated as Manning has been, and we don't even know if manning was responsible. He'll probably just get indefinite detention because the president says so. Welcome to Napoleonic America.

While I agree that the US is dealing with medical care costs particularly badly, I don't think the way other countries handle medical care costs is the panacea you seem to think it is.

Take a look at this:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/us-health-spending-breaks-from-the-pack/
The data is from the OECD.

Health care spending is consistently growing faster than GDP in all of these countries, and GDP growth is already exponential so the growth of health care in developed nations is growing faster than exponentially. The top spending countries are already reaching the point that the US was at by the end of the 1980's. If this long term trend continues, then these countries will eventually be facing a medical finance situation of the same magnitude as the US, it will simply take longer.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/drilling-down-documents-7.html#document/p1/a27935
A 1987 EPA study in WV. "the residual fracturing fluid migrated into (the resident's) water well."
"A spokesperson for the EPA would not directly address the apparent contradiction but said in an email that the agency is now reviewing the 1987 report and that 'the agency has identified several circumstances where contamination of wells is alleged to have occurred and is reviewing those cases in depth.'"

That 2004 EPA "study" was done with negotiations with gas companies. " fluids migrated unpredictably -- through different rock layers, and to greater distances than previously thought -- in as many as half the cases studied in the United States."

I have very little faith in the EPA after Bush/Cheney gutted it to be their personal sockpuppet.

How come my posts are supported by actual facts and your posts are only supported by your vivid fantasies?

http://www.thenation.com/article/159997/nuclear-dead-end-its-economics-stupid

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/radioactive-corporate-welfare/

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/nuclear-renaissance-is-short-on-largess/

http://www.economist.com/node/14859289

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n1/reg15n1-rothwell.html

Terrestrial nuclear fission plants cannot compete in the marketplace. They are a handout of government money to favored corporations.

The study wasn't even peer-reviewed and was done for an organization who's stated goal was eliminating the risks of nuclear power. The NY Times ran an article referencing the same study, and then had to append a revision because of how biased it was.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/business/global/27iht-renuke.html?_r=3

Dick's claim [is] that Tablet PC was doomed because the Office team refused to make a version of Office designed around stylus input

And this is the original article from NYT: Microsoft’s Creative Destruction :

When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn’t like the concept. The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed. To guarantee they were, he refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow.

Maybe you missed it but even Goldstone has clearly come out and said that the situation in Israel is nothing like Apartheid. See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/opinion/israel-and-the-apartheid-slander.html You might also want to check some history books.

Was there any doubt? Crooked cops are rarely prosecuted....unless they are costing the state money, like with the recent ticket fixing scandal in New York. Mace a peaceful protester in the face? Lose a few vacation days. Get rid of a ticket for a friend or relative? Then you're looking at a federal pound-me-in-the-ass penitentiary.

During the investigation, overseen by the Bronx district attorneyâ(TM)s office, prosecutors found fixing tickets to be so extensive that they considered charging the union under the state racketeering law as a criminal enterprise, the tactic employed against organized crime families. But they apparently concluded that the evidence did not support that approach.

The Bronx district attorney, Robert T. Johnson, said the tickets fixed had robbed the city of $1 million to $2 million.

Individually it's not a lot, but injecting $306 Billion into Mainstreet, USA would be huge.

Many people might not care about an extra $1000 in their pocket, but people at the bottom of the economic ladder would really benefit - the long-term unemployed, and the people living entirely on food stamps.

NYC Public schools apparently have teachers ont he payroll that the school district feels are too dangerous to put in a room with students - why don't they fire them? Union rules...

NY Times article

Are you sure it's the HMOs driving this? I don't think so. If you take a look at the recommendations this group has given in the past, many of those recommendations would go against the interests of HMOs, so I do not see any particular pattern emerging one way or another.

Not to mention, even food is addictive (and I don't mean that in the "if you quit eating you'll starve to death" sense, I mean it in the "it releases dopamine the same way alcohol, nicotine, and other drugs do" sense).

And now we have come full circle to the NIH because when they were trying to prove that fat makes you fat and causes heart disease, and spending a boatload of money trying to prove this despite study after study which failed to do so, they were obviously pursuing an agenda. I'd sure like to see someone draw the money flowchart on this one. The NIH finally commissioned a study which could show that if you took drugs to reduce your cholesterol count, it reduced your risk of heart disease. On the basis of this study, they announced that eating fat made you fat, and that eating fat gave you heart disease. Three classes of product benefited massively: drugs to reduce cholesterol, low-fat "diet" foods packed with carbohydrates which leads to addiction, obesity, and diabetes; and of course, the industry selling products to diabetics. And you can read the article (from 2002) here that explains all about it. If you like, you can poke around for a "Rebuttal" of the article, which was in turn brilliantly rebutted by the author of the original article.

The NIH is full of lies, the USDA likewise.

Well, for starters, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

The point at which a different sort of revolution is a viable option is when the rank-and-file military decide to protect the citizens from their government. That's part of what happened in 1775 - the militias and the like were in theory part of the British military. It's what happened in Egypt - when Mubarak sent in the army to try to regain control of Cairo, the army decided to protect the protesters from the police. Probably relevant here is that a significant number of Occupy protesters are either military on leave or recently discharged veterans (including Scott Olsen, severely injured by police in Oakland).

“Although the total number of electrons in the memory does not change as the stored data changes,” Dr. Kubiatowicz said, the trapped ones have a higher energy than the untrapped ones. A conservative estimate of the difference would be 10^(-15) joules per bit.

As the equation E=mc^2 makes clear, this energy is equivalent to mass and will have weight. Assuming that all these bits in an empty four-gigabyte Kindle are in a lower energy state and that half have a higher energy in a full Kindle, this translates to an energy difference of 1.7 times 10^(-5) joules, Dr. Kubiatowicz calculated. Plugging this into Einstein’s equation yields his rough estimate of 10^(-18) grams.

Of course Kubiatowicz also says that:

[10^(-18) grams] is only about one hundred-millionth as much as the estimated fluctuation from charging and discharging the device’s battery.

Which is a far better comparison than the one obtained from The Guardian where Graeme Ackland of Edinburgh University stated:

"If Prof Kubiatowicz is really struggling with the extra weight, he is welcome to come to Edinburgh where it's cooler, and the lack of thermal energy in his Kindle will more than compensate."

Slashdot, home of crowdediting.

Are you sure that filter works when 70% of high school graduates go to college? In addition, if your only purpose is to show an "ability to read boring material and then write the necessary boring reports", why doesn't HS qualify for that? (I know the article I point to mentions initial enrollment, not graduation statistics, but remember: this is an article on an education bubble. Just because someone fails to finish their degree does not mean that the loans evaporate. If you are right, and HR's "college education" requirement is needlessly shunting people into lower-paying jobs, that just makes the loan problem worse.)

• Stop unconstitutional execution of the American citizenry.
• Stop unconstitutional detention.
• Stop unconstitutional wiretapping and prosectue AT&T's complicity (and that of any other carrier).
• Stop unconstitutionally waging war. From Korea onward, all our wars have been illegal, but Obama doesn't even feel constrained by the weak tea requirements of the war powers act. Our founding fathers never intended for the president to be a Napoleon.
• End the wars we are in. And please don't cite Iraq. The ONLY reason we are pulling out troops is because Iraq would not succumb to Obama's lobbying for a longer stay with immunity from war crimes. Thanks to wikipedia for that.
• Quit sucking insurance industry cock, i.e., real nice move touting the public option while secretly cutting a deal for the No Insurance Company Left Behind Act. I guess they got their money's worth.
• Quit sucking Wall Street cock, and don't pretend that the financial reform legislation would have even been a mild hindrance to the meltdown had it already been in place.
• Prosecute torturers rather than let them off the hook. Excusing them makes him complicit.
• At least make a show of investigating fraud on Street. The S&L crisis was 1/40th the size and 1000 bankers went to jail. This meltdown isn't even being investigated, instead, their handing out bonuses. A big "Fuck You Very Much Mr. Obama" for that.
• Thanks for helping to enable Deepwater horizon, it was exactly the gift I wanted!
• Quit hiring Keystone Pipeline lobbyists for your campaign.
• Bradley Manning. We know you have a hardon for anyone that might stand in the way of relentless war, but Christ, grow a soul and a sense of morality.

Banks no longer make govt backed student loans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/us/politics/26loans.html
Unless we are talking about a bubble from current outstanding loans and the securitization of them, the bubble is coming straight from the Federal Govt. That is also assuming that almost all loans are the govt rubber-stamp type, not real show me your credit rating bank types.

For-profit schools. Shut them down. Period.

The average annual tuition for for-profit schools this year is about $14,000. Public four-year colleges charge, on average, $7,605 per year in tuition and fees for in-state students. What's worse is this: The default rate on student loans from for-profit institutions is 15%, while the default rate at public universities is only 7.2 percent (same source).

For-profit schools are milking the American taxpayer for money. Just walk into any one of these schools, tell them you want to be a nurse / chef / accountant / whatever, and they'll lay down a student loan form for you to sign before you could even say "Herbie Hancock." Because, at least with the present law, once a for-profit school gets their money from Uncle Sam, it's theirs, no strings attached. I'd almost call it fraud, except those students who enroll in a for-profit school actually do get something in return, even if it is a sorry-excuse of a half-ass education. (PBS did an excellent documentary a year back on for-profit schools, particularly exposing the "value" of a diploma one gets from these crooks. You can watch it here.)

What's sad is that there's a really simple solution to all this: require a for-profit school to assume some of the risk. If we required a for-profit school to pay back even just 50% of the loan that was defaulted on, you'd see the default rate decrease overnight.

ONLY 7.2%! while the for profit is higher the state school default rate is pretty high. For all the hype of big this big that the demonizers seem to skip Big Education. Check the rate of tuition inflation over the last 30 years, but be setting down before you do.