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Uh, huh. Sure. Sorry to say this, but New York is worth more than most of the shitty little cities on the West Coast. One day without the stock exchange and our economy would be in the shitter. One day with the stock brokers not being able to make it to work, and well, someone just lost a lot of money. NYC is a major center of modern finance and a discontinuity in service has major repercussions. A strong storm surge could knock out power to the Exchange, and then what? Better safe than sorry, I like to say, but I guess the idiots in California want to have it both ways. They want to laugh at those they perceive to overreact and also want to criticize President Bush when he failed to adequately react. You can't have it both ways.

Oh, you know how hindsight is 20/20? A nuclear reactor in Virginia scrammed because of the earthquake. I guess you menly men don't worry about nuclear reactors reacting badly to earthquakes, but we liberal worryworts here tend to be concerned about stuff like that.

When you lived in Florida, did you plan for Hurricane Andrew, or were you one of those idiots who got washed away and had to move to California?

DeBeers allegedly have lots of diamonds that they hold in vaults to reduce supply and artificially drive up costs. And apparently bought rough diamonds from competitors to maintain monopoly control. As they have in the past acted to control supply in that fashion, it would not be surprising if they continue to do so, and continue to lie tot he world that diamonds are as rare as they claim them to be. Along with probably lying about the "supply running low" as diamond mines are fully exploited, and purposely reducing production to allow the mines to be operated longer.

I have no idea how much of that is accurate, but it seems to come up any time diamonds are mentioned.

Here's my citation.

It's your post.

Simply pointing out that some of the data used as the basis for the AGW conclusions is not as reliable as was believed when those conclusions were formed was enough for you to paint me as "one of them", was enough for your hackles to stand on-end and for you to personally attack me.

I'm not saying the conclusions are wrong. I'm saying they may be less right than initially believed. That's how things FUCKING WORK, dude. Get off your high horse, you're every bit as devoted to not changing your views as any other fundamentalist whacko.

Based on what was known, the AGW conclusions were not incorrect. New things become known. Conclusions must be revisited and the impact that the newly-discovered data uncertainty has on those conclusions must be evaluated.

Oh, and here you go, asshole.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005E%26PSL.229..183I
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/4/1331.full
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2001/2000GC000146.shtml

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/science/02obtree.html

None of that necessarily means AGW conclusions are wrong, but it does mean that the assumptions that were made to establish historical data points were not as reliable as was believed at the time they were made. I do not recall hearing about anyone revisiting their AGW conclusions to determine what effect this new uncertainty may have on those conclusions -- because any suggestion that they need to do so is taken as an attack on the AGW conclusions. It is not. It's simply good fucking science.

If tomorrow we discover that assumptions that we made and believed to be true which were used in calculating the speed of light may not have been as true as we believed them to be at the time, that does not mean we have the speed of light *wrong* but it DOES mean that we need to re-determine if our calculations of the speed of light are still correct. To simply assume so and attack any suggestion otherwise is not science, it's blind faith. Lashing out just like any other religious fundamentalist. It's embarrassing, and frustrating to be painted as some sort of monstrous denier of reason when your goal is to not destroy but IMPROVE knowledge and understanding and to evolve conclusions and ideas as new evidence presents itself.

Obama [... has] run up more debt in less than 3 years that GW Bush did in his whole 8 years...

There's no need for lies here. We've incurred $2.4 trillion in debt under Obama and a staggering $6.1 trillion under GW.

Don't believe me? You can check for yourself, but I don't take you to be a facts-based kinda guy.

They already answered to the suborbital flights part. Regarding orbit, “If there were people sitting in the Dragon capsule today, they would have had a very nice ride,” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/science/space/09rocket.html The main reason they do not fly humans on Dragon (yet) is because it still lacks an escape system (that the Shuttle never had, and would have probably saved the Challenger crew). "Musk: Well actually if our safety threshold was equal to that of the Shuttle, then we could do that this year. In fact the Dragon spacecraft that we flew in December, if we had put someone in there with a seat, they would have had a fine journey. However we think that there needs to be an additional level of safety which is that there should be a launch escape system which the Shuttle does not have. And so that launch escape system will take us a few years to develop and verify all the functionality and so that's why we're expecting our first astronaut flight in about a few years." http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/07/08/pm-elon-musk-on-the-future-of-space-travel-and-exploration/ Apparently they are so ahead of schedule that they will be berthing the Dragon Capsule to the ISS this December instead of waiting for another year as originally planned. Of course the road is still long but I'll make sure to be near Vandemberg to witness the launch of Falcon Heavy, double the payload of the Shuttle and a tenth of the cost. As for the "third world countries" where you think they will be building their stuff: "[E. Musk] also outlines why he believes American innovation will trump countries like China in space –even though that country has the fastest growing economy in the world and lower labor rates than the US" http://www.universetoday.com/85409/elon-musk-why-the-us-can-beat-china/

From 2004 through their agreement with regulators they were fully participating in this grey market.

No, they stopped some time ago. From an article from May 13th this year:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/technology/14google.html?_r=1
In 2010, after the federal investigation began, Google stopped using PharmacyChecker, costing the small company business. Google started requiring online pharmacies to be certified by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy in the United States or the Canadian International Pharmacy Association.

In a hyper-growth industry, profits from early years will be much less than they are now, so you can't take a 2010 number and multiply it by the number of years and get anywhere near the right amount.

I've yet to see any plan saying that test scores would be the only thing used to determine who is a "good" or "bad" teacher.

No Child Left Behind does require that teachers be fired under certain circumstances. Here's an example from in New York City of an intermediate school teacher whose principal thinks she's a good teacher, and wants to keep her, whose students are getting good grades and admissions to the best competitive high schools. Yet the teacher has to be fired because she did badly on a test that nobody can figure out. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/education/07winerip.html

The test concluded that she was in the 7th percentile from the bottom of teaching ability, so the principal couldn't keepher. But the confidence interval of the test was between 0 and the 52nd percentile. So it's meaningless. If you know what a confidence interval is, you'll understand that.

Another example of firing teachers on the basis of test scores was Michelle Rhee in the DC school district. USA Today had a series of stories on that. Rhee was firing lots of teachers based on student test scores, and giving bonuses to teachers whose students were doing well on test scores. But it turned out that there was widespread cheating on the tests. Furthermore, when Rhee heard about these accusations, she hired a firm to look into the cheating who merely asked the school officials whether there was cheating and reported back to Rhee that they said there wasn't. You can find the whole story on Rhee in her Wikipedia entry.

There is no evidence that US workers, particularly US teachers, are more likely to do nothing if they can get away with it. There is no evidence that a significant number of teachers have exploited the union system to earn over $100,000 a year even though they're incompetent. You're just making that up. I challenge you to provide a link to evidence.

There's lots of good data on teaching and education in the US, what makes students and teachers effective. The best writing I've seen is by Diane Ravitch, who was secretary of education in the GHW Bush and the Clinton administration. She uses the scientific method and follows the data. She started out believing some of the things you said, but the data made her decide that she was wrong. She said that the major factor that was associated with school performance was family income. She said that unions aren't the problem, and the anti-union movement is doing lots of harm.

So that tells you how to make student performance worse -- lower their family income. And that's what the anti-union movement is doing.

The data comes from eMarketer and is cited in this New York Times article:

Health care and pharmaceutical companies spent $1 billion on Internet ads in the United States last year, up 14 percent from the year before, according to eMarketer.

Sure except for the fact that your conspiracy theory is squashed by:

“We banned the advertising of prescription drugs in the U.S. by Canadian pharmacies some time ago,” Google said in a statement Wednesday.

From here. So, no, that really wasn't the issue.

This is not about safety it is about protecting profits for those companies. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.

Yeah, it must be. I mean it's not like it's fraudulent that many of these pharmacies were claiming to sell name-brand drugs but were instead selling people fakes. Oh wait, it is.

Google claimed to only accept ads from pharmacies verified with PharmacyChecker.com, but ads from unverified pharmacies continued to appear.

That's not true. Vatican don't give their okay to condoms. They tolerate the exceptional use. If you're not a male prostitute, you'll still burn in hell for using contraceptions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/world/europe/21pope.html

Yes?

Not really, no.

Pope Benedict says that condoms can be used to stop the spread of HIV

In 2006, the Pontifical Council for the Health Care Pastoral, led by Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, was asked by Benedict to report on the use of condoms as a way of combating HIV.

"The pope is saying that if you can prevent disease, the use of condoms could be permissible," said John Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter. "But this has been in the mix for a while," he argued. "I think Benedict has been thinking this way since 2006, which is why he asked for the commission to look into it.

"The problem was not Benedict, it was others in the Vatican who argued that if you said using condoms was OK in certain situations, it would send out the message that they were approved. This was a PR problem."

The Catholic Church, Condoms and ‘Lesser Evils’

Speaking to Mr. Seewald, Benedict said the news media had misconstrued his remarks. Condoms are not the sole answer to the AIDS epidemic, he said, but, “There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants.”

Later, a Vatican spokesman said the pope’s words were meant to apply broadly — beyond gay sex workers. “This is if you’re a man, a woman or a transsexual,” the spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said. “The point is it’s a first step of taking responsibility, of avoiding passing a grave risk onto another.”

You weren't paying very much attention then to what was being done with your data. Facebook Beacon was one of the worst privacy violations I've ever run into, bad enough for them to lose a class action lawsuit over it. The Face Recognition feature was also enabled by default, letting data collected from your pictures be used to tag your face in other people's pictures you appeared. If that doesn't seriously concern you, you should reconsider just what else could happen with that data.

Interesting that Colorado got a M5.3 (which is rare). OMG. The End Is Near!

USGS link

There was an earthquake in Colorado last night:

link

Google is a manufacturer in the same sense that Dell is a manufacturer. Dell is one of the 3 companies that manufacture more servers than Google. I don't think Google is manufacturing their own processors, memory, or hard disks either. They all find vendors for that stuff. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/technology/03google.html?ei=5088&en=11ad7f241098c6e2&ex=1309579200&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1151888719-NxrsEO+IzRvSa28feeFzfw&pagewanted=all&pagewanted=all

little of the money actually makes it down to the general population.

Admittedly a lot of it served to line up the pockets of Gaddafi's family, no doubt about that. But I wouldn't call the remainder little, by any measure. They really did have excellent healthcare and education.

Heck, remember that story about Libyan students in US in danger of being kicked out because Libyan government accounts were frozen, and it's what paid the tuition fees for all these guys (and also their living expenses)? How much does it cost to study in US for a foreigner, again? Especially ironic considering that those same students were mostly anti-Gaddafi - so you can't even call that corruption and be done with it.

Here, how about this. Picture we've got a bunch of people in other countries telling you, "Oh, Americans are too irresponsible or stupid to handle democracy. America should just have a strongman who brutalizes and robs from his people for decades." What would you think of a person who thought that of you?

I'm not an American to begin with.

Nonetheless, there is a crucial difference between your hypothetical scenario, and what's happening in Libya. The first one involves an already working democracy being replaced by a dictatorship. The second one involves a dictatorship being replaced by... who knows? but most likely scenario seems to be an "Islamic republic" along the lines of Iran (i.e. a theocracy).

I much prefer the US, true, but given the choice between Libya and Iran, I think I'd prefer to live in Libya.

Which would be terrible if Iraq were doing badly.

Yes, things are going very well.

Actually the market for new law school grads is pretty terrible right now, and outsourcing lawyer work is already happening.

You forgot this one: suspending kids for "improper behaviour" (oh, the irony) while at home (IIRC, they accused him of taking drugs -- which actually turned out to be candy rather than drugs -- although I cannot find a link to verify that right now).

China hasn't really figured out how to build their own aircraft carrier, either. Sure, they just announced that they built one. But that's really just refurbishing an old Soviet aircraft carrier and not designing and building one from scratch. Of course, if other nations keep giving China access to our stuff, it won't be long before they start building their own airplanes and aircraft carriers. Nonetheless, it's still not exactly Chinese innovation; it's Chinese copying.

Mobile version works for me.

Hundreds of framed patents hang on two separate walls at the headquarters of Motorola Mobility in Libertyville, Ill. They testify to the pride in innovation at Motorola, a luminary of American business that has survived corporate crises and enormous technological change.But the company has never grappled with something like this: a murky future governed by Google, a powerful master with unclear intentions.In announcing its planned $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility last week, Google emphasized its interest in the company's rich trove of 17,000 patents. That portfolio would allow Google to defend itself against foes like Apple and Microsoft in the legal arena, where billions of dollars in patent licensing fees can be indirectly negotiated through lawsuits and countersuits.But while industry analysts and insiders say the rationale makes sense, they also say it leaves Motorola in an unusual position. Many acquisitions are aimed at creating some well-articulated synergy between the two companies, but Motorola's future role in this union - beyond patent warehouse - is unclear.Heightening the uncertainty is that the companies involved, both of which declined to comment, are in some ways as different as two technology companies can be. Google makes Internet services and software, thrives on high profit margins and distributes its product using giant data centers. Motorola makes hardware, has modest margins on a good day and moves its products on trucks and airplanes and through brick-and-mortar stores.Some hope the cultures will fuse and lead Motorola to a future as storied as its past. Martin Cooper, 82, who worked at Motorola for 30 years and developed the first hand-held cellphones there, said he hoped great things would come from combining Google's momentum and confidence with Motorola's tradition of excellence in radio technology.

What anonymous doesn't have in common with those people is crippling poverty and religious conviction, that are given as the underlying cause. I don't understand the mentality involved here.

Actually, many of the suicide bombers don't have crippling poverty. They are more likely to be literate and have college degrees than the general populations from which they spring. One fact that might be particularly interesting to Slashdot is that there's a disproportionate number of terrorists who are engineers. See e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t.html and http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/tech-careers/why-are-terrorists-often-engineers. There's an associated idea known as the Salem Hypothesis which is the observation that in the US, anti-evolution proponents with advanced degrees are disproportionately engineers - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_Hypothesis). Engineers in the United States are also more politically conservative and religious than scientists. There's something weird going on here. But regardless, attributing "crippling poverty" as a major part of why people engage in suicide bombing seems to be off.

As I point out occasionally, many, if not most, of the problems with web spam, phishing, etc. on the web are because Google doesn't verify the identity of the business behind a web site.

Businesses don't have any right to anonymity. Even in Europe. In the European Union, businesses come under the European Directive on Electronic Commerce.: "Member States shall ensure that the service provider (defined as "any natural or legal person providing an information society service" i.e. a web site) shall render easily, directly and permanently accessible to the recipients of the service and competent authorities, at least the following information: (a) the name of the service provider; (b) the geographic address at which the service provider is established ... (c) his electronic mail address...". The European Privacy Directive is only for individuals. If the search end of Google took a hard line on that, search would be much less spammy. Currently, they can't even keep totally fake business locations out of Google Places. Yes, "Illusory Laptop Repair is still in Google Places, right in the middle of the railroad crossing. So are so many phony business locations that it's been covered at length in the New York Times. Legitimate local businesses are screaming about this; customers try to find them and end up calling some outsourced lead-generation service, thinking it's a local company.

Google wants to use Google+ for "crowdsourcing" recommendations. They used to use Citysearch and Yelp for that, but those became too polluted with fake recommendations. The trouble with "crowdsourcing" is that crowds can be sourced. You can buy "likes", "recommendations", and "+1"s in bulk on any of the black hat SEO forums.

Recommendation systems only work in three situations - when the number of reviewers is huge compared to the number of items being reviewed, as with movies, when the reviewer is known to have bought the product, as with eBay and Amazon, and when the reviewer's identity is verified and their reputation is known. Google seems to be trying for #3. To make that work, they have to tighten the screws on "Google+" users. Tightening the screws on businesses would be more productive.

Your claim that unemployment mostly resides in the housing sector is wrong. As Paul Krugman wrote last year:

[T]here should be significant labor shortages somewhere in America — major industries that are trying to expand but are having trouble hiring, major classes of workers who find their skills in great demand, major parts of the country with low unemployment even as the rest of the nation suffers.

None of these things exist. Job openings have plunged in every major sector, while the number of workers forced into part-time employment in almost all industries has soared. Unemployment has surged in every major occupational category. Only three states, with a combined population not much larger than that of Brooklyn, have unemployment rates below 5 percent.

Oh, and where are these firms that “can’t find appropriate workers”? The National Federation of Independent Business has been surveying small businesses for many years, asking them to name their most important problem; the percentage citing problems with labor quality is now at an all-time low, reflecting the reality that these days even highly skilled workers are desperate for employment.

So all the evidence contradicts the claim that we’re mainly suffering from structural unemployment.

> ICultists wont touch it with a 10 foot pole at any price because it's
> not made by Apple and everyone else that's on the fence is going
> to see the identical price and buy the Ipad because either they saw
> it on TV more / their ICult buddy recommended it and since they're
> priced the same might as well get what everyone else is talking about

I am SO FUCKING SICK of all this "it's all because of fanboys/marketing/cultishness" shit! EVERY SINGLE MAJOR REVIEW of the TouchPad says it's barely in the same league with the iPad 1 and not even CLOSE to the iPad 2.

And because someone is bound to post a reply asking for proof, here are two major mainstream ones:

• David Pogue, New York Times
  "... the TouchPad doesn't come close to being as complete or mature as the iPad or the best Android tablets..."
• Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal
  "Bottom line: ... I can't recommend the TouchPad over the iPad 2"

And if you think the big sites are just dumb and/or Apple whores, how about some tech sites, like Ars Technica or Engadget?

• Engadget
  We all wanted the TouchPad to really compete, to give us a compelling third party to join the iOS and Android boxes on the ballot. But, alas, this isn't quite it... The shortage of apps is a problem, no doubt, but that will change with time. What won't change is the hardware, and there we're left a little disappointed. Holding this in one hand and either an iPad 2 or a Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the other leaves you wondering why you'd ever be compelled to buy the HP when you could have the thinner, lighter alternative for the same money. Meanwhile, the performance left us occasionally wanting and, well, what is there to say.
• Ars Technica
  The HP TouchPad, if it were less expensive, could be an extremely strong, if slightly less polished, alternative to the iPad. But like other recently-released high-profile Android tablets, it's determined to take on the champ. And just like those Android tablets, its hard to recommend over an iPad at the same price.

That said, I would have snapped one up for $99 but it's now Saturday afternoon and there are none to be found. (I went to bed early last night and was out of the house first thing in the morning. Dammit!)

> Non Apple Tables are priced roughly $200-300 too expensive. Get
> them around $199-$299 and they'll sell like gangbusters just like it
> did for Android phones in the mobile market.

There is not magical "make it cheap" dust that can be sprinkled on non-iOS devices. The fact that the OS is free really doesn't amtter much at all. (Remember when everyone thought Linux would take over the desktop because it was considered to be as good as Windows?) Believe it or not, Apple is being DAMN price competitive on the iPad. Do you think multibillion dollar companies are spending billions of dollars to bring tablets to the market and then watching them fail just for fun? No, they're selling them for that much because they HAVE to in order to make any profit at all, and they're failing because they just aren't as good. You CAN NOT MAKE a tablet as good as the iPad for less. It has a good looking, responsive touchscreen, the best battery life out there, and it's within 1mm of being the thinnest as well. Lightest of all the 10" tablets, too, AFAIK. Cheaper tablets have screens that are worse looking and/or less sensitive, they're thicker, they're heavier, AND they have worse battery life.

There ARE cheap Android tablets out there (especially if you include things like the Pandigital Novel and B&N Nook Color) and they ARE NOT SELLING anywhere

http://feeds.nytimes.com/nyt/rss/Science

I (like many I'm sure) are sick of this fucking paywall so using this RSS feed in your favorite reader (I use Google Reader) allows you to read the content without having to pay them.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/science/article_3eb9f408-c955-11e0-8349-001a4bcf6878.html

and

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/08/darpas-very-expensive-sci-fi-projects-future/41427/

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/science/space/18starship.html?_r=1&hp&gwh=30EB3709176A86B1A438FEC050C5C291

It would appear that you do not live, for example, in a part of Ohio that tends to vote for a Democratic candidate. See this article.

Hopefully Google can do something about this too.

Atop TV sets, a constant power drain

1. i don't know everything. i never thought i did or said i did. stop projecting

2. the end effect of revolutions are not guaranteed. we already live in a democracy. it is infected with money. so lets remove the infection. revolution? what will that lead to exactly?

3. i have an ancestor that fought in the american revolution (the real kind of revolution, against a foreign power, not against a democratically elected government by the majority of citizens- you want to revolt against that?!), and on my mother's side her roots go back to the 1600s in New England. i am certain your ancestors came here long after mine. so why don't you leave, you lazy newcomer?

but my ancestry doesn't actually matter to me (it matters to you, apparently). biology has no meaning, ideology does. and i am familiar with many new immigrants, and i have to say, considering some of their attitudes, and yours, i consider them more of a real american than you. to me, being an american is about embracing a certain set of ideals. apparently, according to you, being an american is about being entitled to something superior because of the GPS coordinates of where your mom opened her stinking twat and squeezed you out

this is a real american:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/us/17land.html

you? you're an ugly troll. improving this country is about deporting you. the content of your thoughts are unamerican, what you believe in has nothing to do with what is good about this country. you don't deserve citizenship, because you don't support citizenry, in a democratically elected government. you support revolution, based on a set of ideas help by only a small minority. that's not revolution, that's a fascist coup that you champion: the will of the minority fringe idea is what is FOUGHT, not FOUGHT FOR, moron. what an ignorant scumbag

I suggest you read this and learn something:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/traders-vs-chimps/

Liberal tree-hugging pipe dream that destroys jobs and wastes money

`Stimulus' funded, tax break-ed liberal tree-hugging pipe dream failures in the past few days:
Seattle's 'green jobs' program a bust
Solar Panel Maker Moves Work to China
Evergreen Solar files for bankruptcy
Stimulus Created 'Green' Jobs at $2 Million Per Job

I'd be willing to be that the execs at Samsung & HTC are eyeing the hills and seeing what's the best path to get there.

And if Google, just wanted patents instead of the hardware too, there were other options:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/google-turning-into-a-mobile-phone-company-no-it-says/?nl=business&emc=dlbka8

The New York Times has an interview with Don Henley of the Eagles on this matter. Here is a delicious quote, right at the end, when Don was asked how he thought revocation would affect recording companies:

I don’t know. The recording industry is already in trouble and this probably wouldn’t help it any. If the recording industry had been more fair, historically speaking, to both artists and consumers, it might be looked upon a little more kindly. But the labels are sleeping in a bed of their own making.

I think the lower capital gains taxes are there to encourage investment into businesses/economy/society.

That's the excuse, but there's zero science behind it. Even multi-billionaire Warren Buffett says, "I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone -- not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 -- shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off."

Capital gains exist only so those who don't work for a living can keep more of the money they did not earn themselves. It's welfare for the rich, nothing more.

I might resent the fact that you're calling me a pessimist but the only thing I can actually infer from your statement is that you're an optimist. I'm a realist. Have been all my life so I look like a pessimist to the optimist and an optimist to the pessimist.

But, you've missed the point. The bicycle is more efficient than the bus or the train so it's a poor choice for people with bikes to put the bike on the bus or the train. I've seen commuters in our city go from one end of town to the other and have to cross bridges and go through down town to do it without resorting to putting their bikes on a bus or train. Before I injured my back I used to do the same thing. What's the matter with these other people that they have to put their bicycles on a bus to cross town? It's simple, they're as lazy as all the rest of the people who ride the bus or the train.

As for me, after so long my back is probably pretty much calcified so I could probably go back to riding some sort of adult trike for short trips but, to be honest, I wouldn't want to be associated with the cyclists in this town. They have a sense of entitlement that results in them running red lights, stop signs, ignoring the 30 Kmph speed limits on their much fought for bike routes and even starting a campaign to have the provincial laws re-written so that bicycles are legally exempt from any traffic control signals or signs. Unfortunately, I've seen indications that the lawmakers in the area are starting to go along with the idea. There are already plenty of signs up indicating where the bicycles can abandon the street and compete with the pedestrians for space on the side walks. The day that happens I really will hand in my driver's license and just sit on the front porch, watch the bicycles crash into each other ( I live at the intersection of two bike routes. ) and make bets on who can get up and dial 911 for help first. (if no one moves after three or four minutes, I might call 911 myself.) I've already seen too many near misses. We just need a few more riders coming at the intersection with the belief that they have the right of way since they're on the bike route for the collisions to really start happening.

Oh, yeah, and an electric assisted bicycle is going to be just the method of transportation for my 76 year old mom with osteoporosis (a crumbling back) to get to her doctor's appointments. She can't even walk around the block but, with the car, we can get her out for her appointments and she can see some sights. All that would stop when the car is finally banned from Vancouver. She and many like her, some who still can drive for themselves would become shut-ins.

AS for whether or not there are serious movements to eliminate the car from the urban landscape I might point to these sites.

http://www.peopleforbikes.org/blog/entry/bicycle_cities_a_plan_for_car-free_communities
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/creating-a-car-free-community/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/12/how_to_build_a_1.php
http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/south-carolina-to-build-car-free-community-26499/
http://www.worldcarfree.net/resources/free.php

and these are only a few of the things you'll find if you google "car free city".

And, of course, there is the planned future jewel in the sustainable city crown, Masdar City, http://www.masdar.ae/en/home/index.aspx , where you couldn't even bring your privately owned electric car. There won't be any roads to accommodate it.

So, you'll have to pardon me when I say that he

Might as well be a new meme for the crazies such as yourself who just toss the name around and don't even know what you're whining about.

Yeah, I know. Crazies like me never know what they're talking about.

I've seen it, and it also lacks base-line data for many of its statements. The majority of the "facts" presented are exaggerated at best, and often outright wrong.

Obama was trying to do the classic Keynesian response to an economy in a death spiral and that is for the government to make up for the loss of consumer spending. Well it failed, all it did was delay the inevitable...

Blah blah blah. If only it was true. He actually didn't even try it, instead offering a program which barely prevented us from forming Bread Lines.

There's nothing structural about the economic decline right now, other than the lack of political will that allowed it to happen. Hell, even the New Deal wasn't enough to really save us from the Depression--it was World War II that actually allowed for close to full employment, and that was "stimulus" that just went to killing people. One could argue if the same amount of cash by percentages was spent by the government on domestic projects and infrastructure from 2007 on, we'd all have jobs right now.

2) People who don't care to know any better, and will simply treat them as a tool that prevents them from having to think. These are the kinds of people who will follow their GPS into a river / off a cliff / the wrong way on a one way street / etc.

Technology Leads More Park Visitors Into Trouble

Far more common but no less perilous, park workers say, are visitors who arrive with cellphones or GPS devices and little else — sometimes not even water — and find themselves in trouble. Such visitors often acknowledge that they have pushed themselves too far because they believe that in a bind, the technology can save them.

It does not always work out that way. “We have seen people who have solely relied on GPS technology but were not using common sense or maps and compasses, and it leads them astray,” said Kyle Patterson, a spokesman for Rocky Mountain National Park, just outside Denver.

11-Year-Old Boy Dies After Mom Says GPS Left Them Stranded in Death Valley

She told rescuers in California's San Bernardino County that her son Carlos died Wednesday, days after she fixed a flat tire and continued into Death Valley, relying on directions from a GPS device in the vehicle.

Ignore the fact it's fox for the second article for now and think about how insane that second one is. Given how blindly people rely on tech, I'm amazed it doesn't happen more often.

Yeah, knowing how to use gps and all that might be great when you're in a city, but if you're going to be roughing it you should carry the most simple of technologies (compasses, maps, etc) instead of things that use damned batteries or rely on signals to external technologies to function.

I've heard that in China, sometimes richer people drive cars while poorer people ride bicycles. If a car hits a bike rider, the bike rider can sue for damages. Thus, it can be advantageous, and it's allegedly common, for a car driver to accidentally hit a biker, back up, and run him over again to finish him off. I wonder if and when some company (maybe Google, maybe not) will have cars that do this.

Or he gets out of the car and stabs you to death when he notices you eyeing his license plate: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/world/asia/08china.html

I'm not a big fan of Walmart, but it's hard to get better produce than the "local" farmers. Not sure how extensive this is, but I do like the thought - Walmart

You are a fucking idiot

Nate Silver contends there's money to be made by betting against S&P's ratings.

If you were trying to predict a country’s default risk today, based on the market’s perception of its default risk two years ago as well as its S.&P. rating at that time, you would find that accounting for S.&P. ratings actually subtracted value from your model. That is, if the market had priced two countries as having a 20 percent default risk in 2009, but one of them had a AA rating from S.&P. and the other had a BB rating, the country with the worse S.&P. rating is likely to have proven to be the safer bet.
The reason for this is that S.&P. ratings probably have some influence on market perceptions about default risk — even though they aren’t very good. If markets evaluate a country as having a 20 percent chance of default, but S.&P. rates it as being quite safe, that price represents a compromise between daft investors who take S.&P.’s ratings to be gospel, and savvier ones who have conducted their own analysis and have concluded that the country is at significant risk of default. By betting against S.&P.’s ratings, you’re taking the side of the smart investors — and getting a subsidy from the suckers who think S.&P.’s price is right.

The thing is, bad press doesn't matter. Outside the technical community, no one notices these things.

It's gone way beyond that. There have been very critical articles in the New York Times. Google executives are being forced to testify before a Senate committee. Google's search problems are being noticed.

The thing is, bad press doesn't matter. Outside the technical community, no one notices these things.

It's gone way beyond that. There have been very critical articles in the New York Times. Google executives are being forced to testify before a Senate committee. Google's search problems are being noticed.

Who are any of the rating agencies to say how much debt a given country should carry? Point to a single country that S&P or Moodys or whomever else has successfuly managed.

Not that the rating agencies do anything particularly well, but running an actual economy (versus participating in them) is as far removed from everything else they do as it can be, and still be called 'finance'. Had the US and other big economies not debt spent into the many trillions these agencies wouldn't have any securities left to rate in the first place. Show me another entity that can affect an economy like that.

Continuing to listen to these idiots as if they have any clue what debt means to the US or anybody else is folly. It isn't like they've never been in over their heads before.

... is simple.

"Import Taxes"
when it's cheaper for a US State to employ a Chinese company (Government) to build a bridge (While doing so create totally new companies JUST for the Iron smelting / making and building of the bridge) while giving 1000's of jobs to low skilled workers that fabricate it in China, Ship it over in pre assembled kit form that only needs a few 100 US workers to assemble the kit. you gotta think something is wrong...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.html?pagewanted=all

If you tax the import of things which can be made in America; Then more companies will find it more cost effective to hire US workers to make things.
More workers = more spending
more spending = more manufacturing
more manufacturing = more revenue for the government.

S&P stands revealed as not understanding basic analysis of budget estimates.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/i-heard-it-through-the-baseline/