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The Church is opposed to freedom of expression.

Wrong.

Say goodbye to your remaining credibility — two examples relating to Catholicism are trivially located on Wikipedia through google. You didn't even try to be honest.

I don't think any modern Catholic would argue that you shouldn't be free to choose to be a heretic, if you so wish. It's your immortal soul, not mine. I do of course reserve the right to disagree with you and possibly even to attempt to explain to you where you've gone wrong. ;-)

The church has disagreed throughout history. If they had the power I am quite sure that they would make it a criminal act to be a heretic today. The Catholic church has a history of punishing people for unbelief when they are in a position of sufficient power, and there is no reason to believe that they would act any differently today. Given what they do to [a percentage of] believers, which is to say raping them homosexually while preaching that both rape and homosexuality are wrong, I'd say there's every reason to believe that the church hasn't changed its stripes whatosever since high officials are still covering up this abuse, which proves collusion rather than simply implying it. Every time your church hides a child molester, they are condoning child molestation.

Supporting this church is an unconscionable act. Describing yourself as a member of this church is condoning child molestation in the same way that describing yourself as a member of the KKK is condoning lynching and cross-burnings. Furthermore, it is a foolish act, as this is clearly a church that will not hesitate to throw you to the wolves, or even tear you apart themselves if it furthers their goals. Given how Jeshua supposedly treated the money-changers in the temples, he would certainly have been appalled at the gold dripping from Catholic churches while followers starve in the streets — all too common in Latin America.

Truth should be a defense against Troll mods.

I DEFY anyone to discredit anything in the above post.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=catholic+abuse+settlements

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/

http://bishop-accountability.org/priestdb/PriestDBbylastName-A.html

http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/europe/01vatican.html?src=me

Troll?
The only reason for downmodding that post is being an apologist for the Church. How dare you do that?

Given the over ONE BILLION dollars in pedo payoffs worldwide and the ongoing investigations turning up pedo priest after pedo priest, that's no troll.

No one hides a pedo unless they are a pedo. There is no reason for the systematic and effective pedo-shuffling policy of the Catholic Church except rampant pedophilia through the ranks. That they didn't give the pedos to the police, and excommunicate them, proves it beyond doubt.

Latest catch, Google for a vast number of other examples:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/world/europe/03briefs-Germany.html

People have withdrawal symptoms when they break up with their girlfriends, too, but we don't go around trying to treat people for love addiction.

Who says we don't? Although if you mostly hang around slashdot, the problem is rare enough here that you might not have heard of the treatments...

What was the criteria for evaluating success? TFA says that the impressive result by anyone's standards is that they predicted a crash in gold, which then was roughly flat for the next six months... There is an entire industry of "quants" attempting to do things like this for banks and hedge funds. Of course, they do not publish their results. If you would like to see what a good classification of bubbles looks like, see: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/schillers-list-how-to-diagnose-the-next-bubble/. Note also that identifying a bubble is not always sufficient to profit. Julian Robertson of Tiger Fund famously identified the tech bubble - in '97. He subsequently lost billions betting against tech stocks that stubbornly refused to crash until after he had given up.

FTFA:

"We will hold talks with like-minded countries (read Brazil, China, Egypt, etc.) and may oppose the ACTA proposal jointly as well as individually by holding talks with countries involved," said an anonymous government official.

In short, China is trying to be included which can make this a very interesting and powerful movement. China is already being considered around the levels of a superpower with the US. And since China has $1 trillion invested in the US government, it could be one hell of a powerhouse against ACTA if it does indeed join with India in this.

So, if China does join in it would become more of RIAA/MPAA verse China and a few others. Support the **AA's and the US could see a LOT of problems from China and it's investment. Join with China and the the **AA's will try to give as much hell (no doubt saying that they sold them, an american business, to a foreign country.) Either one and it will be one hell of a mess.

Caffeine is a known performance enhancer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/health/nutrition/26best.html

Of course that is for non addicts.

Unfortunately, their credulity of power is what makes the New York Times a useful tool for disinformation. Also note that sometimes a piece of information which is true can be misleading when taken out of context or blown out of proportion.

> Thus the most interesting part of making a better electric car isn't making a better car, it is making a better battery.

Or making a better hydrocarbon fuel cell and better ways of converting hydrogen + CO2 to hydrocarbons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process#Carbon_dioxide_reuse

If you have cheap enough nuclear power even if the total efficiency isn't that good initially, you may not care if the oil prices go up and up.

Better batteries are an important problem to solve, but so is the hydrocarbon problem. While better batteries are likely to be invented in the near future, it is unlikely that in the near future we will have battery powered planes with 950kph cruising speeds and >10 hour flight times. Even less likely they'd be able to fly at mach 2.

FWIW, I find it rather impressive that some birds can fly nonstop for 9 days and travel a total of 7100 miles: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/25migrate.html?pagewanted=all

It's not very fast, but it does show our technology is still inferior in many ways. Yes we had that flying fuel tank fly around the world, but try to build an autonomous UAV as small as one of those birds with a 7100 mile range (so far there's rather big one that crossed the Atlantic: http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20031217/Feature1.asp ). Even more challenging would be something as small as a dragonfly: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8149000/8149714.stm

These are hoaxes of course. But your willingness to believe them proves how far we came...

Real ones:
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2008/06/frivolous_lawsu.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/us/14pants.html (because he was offered 15k.)

List:
http://nakedlaw.avvo.com/2010/04/the-7-most-absurd-lawsuits-of-all-time/

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/17colwe.html?_r=1 and that guy was in the it business

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

Does this really surprise anyone?

Yes, I am surprised. In one really important regard:

That NYT piece is an excellent piece of reporting. It gets to the facts - some of which are decidedly uncomfortable for both the government & BP and many of which required considerable research and effort - it ties everything nicely together and, without commentary, innuendo or logical fallacy, manages to paint a compelling picture of corporate and bureaucratic laxity.

Congratulations to Brown and Lehren for an excellent and important piece of work. This kind of journalism is exactly what we need.

It's not the religion that Scientists attack, but those who abuse it, This actually happened in 2009

Yes. This incident has a lot of visibility, and the government can not afford to let it go with a slap.

If what happened to Exxon after Valdez is any indication, then there will be an initial, very large and very public fine, which they will eventually find a way to avoid paying. See here. In short: They were told just after the disaster to pay $2.5 billion, but years later the Supreme Court reduced that number to just $500 million.

Go read early statements.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/business/15google.html
"... But the company explicitly said then that it did not collect or store so-called payload data — the actual information being transmitted by users over unprotected networks."
Or read from :
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html
"we did not collect payload data " changes to "mistakenly collecting samples of payload data" then they tack on 'we never used that data"
Also note how they only talk of Ireland and Germany.
You can also go back and read
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2010/04/data-collected-by-google-cars.html
where they talk of Germany "as the German DPA states, illegal to collect WiFi network information" but just seem to side step the issue with "We do not believe it is illegal"

Religion can never be disprove. If there is truly an omnipotent being then that being could change the result of ANY experiment performed. Thus, the results of ANY experiment designed to disprove the existence of god can't be trusted because some omnipotent being could have simply fucked with the results.

Even though in theory a generic omnipotent deity could affect the outcome of any given scientific study and create a false null result, in practice most religions make specific claims about their deities. For instance, a common one is that God listens to prayer and will heal the sick if we pray for them. However, when we actually studied whether or not this happens, we found a null result. This means that either:

1. God doesn't heal the sick, or
2. God only heals the sick if they are not currently part of a study to determine if He heals the sick.

Those are the only two options. There's no way omnipotence can get you out of that observed result. Either God doesn't heal the sick in the first place, or He's a douchewidget who will refuse to heal the sick if they're part of a study.

It's these sorts of specific truth-value claims that science can verify, and every single time we've tried it we've come up with a null result, or the result that it's got nothing to do with God.

Please, which ineffable things can religion eff but science cannot? I hear religious people make this statement all the time, but they can never back it up - and when they try, all I get is "well science cannot explain the nature of some specific thing that religions came up and which doesn't appear in real life". Science can't explain the nature of Harry Potter, but that's okay because he doesn't exist.

Also:

Obviously religious people should stop trying to religion away science, but just as much scientists should stop trying to science away religion.

Did you know that the second half of that sentence is the most common way of performing the first half of the sentence? After all, what is religion that science should not perform science on it? Should we not study the effect of prayer on health outcomes? (hint: it has no detectable effect) Should we not study the origin of life? Should we not study whether or not it is possible to create a synthetic organism? Should we not study what neurological effects people who pray experience?

What parts of "religion" should scientists stop trying to "science away"?

Not to mention Murdoch lost millions in China. He totally misjudged the culture, got ripped off at every turn, ran afoul of the government, and possibly married a spy, Wendi Deng...

BP's original estimate was 1000 barrels per day. After doing their own estimates from satallite images and viewing the first available footage shown from the leaks publicly, various scientists/engineers disagreed with BP and claimed it looked more like 5000 barrels per day. After a day or so, BP and the various government agencies relented and agreed the 5000 barrel estimate was probably more accurate. The most recent, and supposedly more accurate estimate, is 12,000-19,000 barrels per day.

I read that the facebook users in question seemed to be automatically-generated bogus accounts, if they ever existed at all.

Not only do I rate this series as one of my top 5 dramas made globally, I think it is as significant for nerds as Star Trek.

Seconded. My feeling on it is that 'every scene is a practical civics or organizational lesson'. One of the only pieces of media I've experienced that provided a solid foundation and rewritten my understanding of a topic. Don't miss it. See also one sociologist's experience watching episodes with gang members.

Cell phones play a key aspect of the story line over the 5 series from 2002 to 2008, and includes the formation of the Dept Home Land Security and the impact on the police team and how it helps there investigations(by season 3-4).

The progression from pagers to cell phones during those seasons and how the technology vs. law battle unfolds is pretty interesting.

I disagree; pacemakers have been capable of two-way communication for some time with the right equipment. Here's just one example: http://www.medtronic.com/for-healthcare-professionals/products-therapies/cardiac-rhythm/patient-management-carelink/medtronic-carelink-network-for-cardiac-device-patients/index.htm#tab2 And there has been a successful demonstration of a hack: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/business/12heart-web.html How long until these are automated? Who knows, but just know that they are at risk. . .

I'm fine with high frequency trading. I'm not fine with "30 millisecond advantage" trading:

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/07/24/business/0724-webBIZ-trading.ready.html
(it's probably a simplified description[1])

The fact that the casino allows such stuff tells me that they and their friends are crooked. I don't really see how allowing this provides any advantage to the market or makes it more efficient.

[1] I am not a fast trader but I think something similar to this happens: the mutual fund's program will fail to buy at $21 and so reissues another buy for 21.01, the "fast trader" program will then offer to sell at 21.50, if it sees no order from the mutual fund program after X milliseconds, it will try to sell at 21.45 and so on, meanwhile it buys all other stuff - hopefully before the other fast traders beat it. Alternatively it could offer to sell a few shares at 21.02, (check to see if the mutual fund sends an order to buy, then cancel, repeat till there are no buy orders, then go back down a bit and sell everything at that price, thus extracting as much from the mutual fund as you can). If the few shares are sold before you cancel it's probably a fast trader buying them. The tricky bit is countering the other pesky fast trader programs ;).

It's also about marketing, bullshit and "plausible deniability".

This is so the gamblers can give better excuses/bullshit for gambling with other people's money. This way everyone can say it's some sophisticated stuff that few people understand, so they get to keep their bonuses and profits when it all blows up.

Here's an analogy: the financial system is a casino. The casino doesn't produce any "real" wealth - it just distributes it. The Federal Reserve produces the casino chips (trillions of them if necessary). The casino operators take their cuts+fees. The players gamble with OTHER people's money (pension funds etc), and when they win they get pay raises and bonuses. If a single gambler loses big, he loses his job. If a huge bunch of gamblers lose big, they say "bail us out". How can a huge bunch of gamblers lose at the same time? They can if they play a "let's create fake wealth" game.

Here's a popular version: you start with a "parcel". You sell it for a profit to the next person. And the next person may do the same thing and so on. Whoever currently holding the parcel is allowed to declare that they are richer by the current "outside" value of the parcel. When the "music stops" the parcel is opened and the holder gets whatever is inside (which may be a bunch of IOUs).

It doesn't really need very much sophistication to play such games.

Here's another game: this is a trading/auction game: a few players pay the casino a special amount and they then get to see other people's bids 30 milliseconds[1] before everyone else does and they also get to make bids and cancel their bids rapidly. Naturally this is very profitable for those few players, unless there is a bug in their software, and they make a big loss in which case they ask the casino to rollback the trades, or change the rules so their losses are limited.

This needs a bit more sophistication if you are aiming for maximum profit since your program has to "battle" the other programs. But the few with the 30 millisecond advantage should make money from the rest.

Lastly, the gamblers who get sacked for losing will often get rehired since even if their companies lose big and maybe even go bankrupt, they make their _bosses_ rich.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html

Simplified version of how it works:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/07/24/business/0724-webBIZ-trading.ready.html

It's also about marketing, bullshit and "plausible deniability".

This is so the gamblers can give better excuses/bullshit for gambling with other people's money. This way everyone can say it's some sophisticated stuff that few people understand, so they get to keep their bonuses and profits when it all blows up.

Here's an analogy: the financial system is a casino. The casino doesn't produce any "real" wealth - it just distributes it. The Federal Reserve produces the casino chips (trillions of them if necessary). The casino operators take their cuts+fees. The players gamble with OTHER people's money (pension funds etc), and when they win they get pay raises and bonuses. If a single gambler loses big, he loses his job. If a huge bunch of gamblers lose big, they say "bail us out". How can a huge bunch of gamblers lose at the same time? They can if they play a "let's create fake wealth" game.

Here's a popular version: you start with a "parcel". You sell it for a profit to the next person. And the next person may do the same thing and so on. Whoever currently holding the parcel is allowed to declare that they are richer by the current "outside" value of the parcel. When the "music stops" the parcel is opened and the holder gets whatever is inside (which may be a bunch of IOUs).

It doesn't really need very much sophistication to play such games.

Here's another game: this is a trading/auction game: a few players pay the casino a special amount and they then get to see other people's bids 30 milliseconds[1] before everyone else does and they also get to make bids and cancel their bids rapidly. Naturally this is very profitable for those few players, unless there is a bug in their software, and they make a big loss in which case they ask the casino to rollback the trades, or change the rules so their losses are limited.

This needs a bit more sophistication if you are aiming for maximum profit since your program has to "battle" the other programs. But the few with the 30 millisecond advantage should make money from the rest.

Lastly, the gamblers who get sacked for losing will often get rehired since even if their companies lose big and maybe even go bankrupt, they make their _bosses_ rich.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html

Simplified version of how it works:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/07/24/business/0724-webBIZ-trading.ready.html

It seems only yesterday (1997):

"What would I do?" Mr. Dell said to an audience of several thousand information technology managers. "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/technology/16apple.html

Don't laugh, it already happened.

"Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

Fashion is an interesting case because it's exempted from copyright laws

Actually, it's not completely exempt because there have been numerous cases of copyright in the fashion industry. For example, Van Halen suing Nike over a criss-cross pattern on a line of sneakers Nike produced. Anthropologie has sued Forever 21 (see below for a separate case) over copyright infringement for nine garments. We also have Diane von Furstenberg suing Target (see separate case below) for copyright infringement as well as other issues.

There is the case of jewelry company Merit Diamond Corp that sued Samuels Jewelers and Rogers Jewelers because their design of certain pieces of their jewelry was copies of Merit's. A similar case involved Tacori vs Beverly Jewelry Company Ltd for copyright infringement of ring designs.

Most lawsuits in the fashion industry revolve around trademark and patent infringement such as the case against Paris Hilton, Coach vs. Target and Trovata vs Forever 21.

However, to prove your point about the fashion industry and copyright, see this article from the NY Times from March which talks about this very subject.

First off, fashion occupies a unique niche in culture and purchasing decisions. As noted http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/597on a relevent blog "The fashion industry profits by setting trends in clothing, and then inducing consumers to follow those trends. This process leads us to treat clothing as a status-conferring good to be replaced once the fashion changes, rather than as a durable good to be replaced only when all the buttons fall off. Trend-driven consumption is good for the fashion industry, because it sells more clothing. " That nature is hardly applicable to software, literature, film, or design.

The New York times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/us/04fashion.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=allran a story that included this telling quote, "“If I see something on Style.com, all I have to do is e-mail the picture to my factory and say, ‘I want something similar, or a silhouette made just like this,’ ” Ms. Anand said. The factory, in Jaipur, India, can deliver stores a knockoff months before the designer version."

An NPR story http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1434815noted that "it's expensive and risky to actually create new designs. It's cheaper and easier to simply knock off successful ones."

The entire point of IP is to encourage social and cultural development through the protection of initial investment. The fashion industry demonstrates what happens when IP is weakened or non-existant - a disincentive to create and develop and a thriving copy-culture.

You may find this article interesting: Steven Pinker - The Moral Instinct. Also, the bright line distinction you setup between ethics and morality is far from universally held.

I have trouble giving them too much slack though. They collected 600GB of payload traffic, and did so over a span of years before they discovered this "error." (reference)

Perhaps, but there's still the part where the whole rover gets covered in hundreds of pounds of dry ice. Maybe an RTG could have kept it from being buried, who knows.

If RTGs get your heart going, just wait for the Mars Science Lander, scheduled for next year's launch window. It's an RTG-powered rover that should last on the surface for quite a while. How long? After 10 years, the RTG should still provide 100 watts.

The two Viking landers were also nuke-powered, and Viking 1 lasted for some six Earth years (2246 sols). Opportunity only just passed Viking 1's longevity record last week.

One other note about RTGs: it's not like you can just order them out of a catalog. They're expensive, they require a lot more intensive mission planning than solar-powered craft, and they are hard to come by. The RTGs that run on Pu-238 are in short supply, because Pu-238 is in short supply, because we aren't manufacturing nuclear weapons anymore. It is in part for this reason that the Juno mission to Jupiter will use solar panels.

And I hope there are many interesting results, other than buncha nerdy half-assed bullshit software projects. There are a lot more out there in life in need and want. Build a better water pump. Build a better wiring harness. Things people in need can use.

Like this pump?

Here's an excerpt:

For 15 years, Kevin Costner has been overseeing the construction of oil separation machines to prepare for the possibility of another disaster of the magnitude of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.

Disturbed by the effects of the Valdez spill in Alaska, Mr. Costner bought the nascent technology from the government in 1995 and put $24 million of his own money into developing it for the private sector.

Kevin saw the Exxon Valdez spill, and as a fisherman and an environmentalist, it just stuck in his craw, the fact that we didn't have separation technology, said John Houghtaling, Mr. Costner's lawyer and business partner as chief executive with Ocean Therapy Solutions, which developed the technology.

On Wednesday, BP's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, said that the company had approved six of Ocean Therapy's 32 machines for testing. All boast centrifuge processing technology giant vacuum-like machines that suck oil from water, separate the oil, store it in a tanker and send the water, 99.9 percent purified, back into the gulf.

The technology was available for use 10 years ago, Mr. Houghtaling said. "These machines have been very robust, but nobody's been interested in them until now," he added.

He said that the largest four machines have the capability of separating 210,000 gallons of oil from water a day, 200 gallons a minute.

Sounds like the quintessential hacker.

And for god's sake, stop wasting your good brains cooking up another social network bullshit. You young people can do way way better than that.

Kostner's efforts are the product of fifteen years work and $24 spare cash. And on a somewhat related note, the special submarines that James Cameron wants to contribute, those were financed courtesy of the movie studios. The point here is that it's hard to avoid the fact that the alternative (working on some possibly useless social networking thing) looks a lot more attractive. And do-able.

NY Times:

...an important force behind this upheaval is a small Kenyan-born organization called Ushahidi, which has become a hero of the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes and which may have something larger to tell us about the future of humanitarianism, innovation and the nature of what we label as truth.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/weekinreview/14giridharadas.html

If you want to pick on a sport for hurting those who play it, forget running and let's talk about football.

Looking at the matter with an oversimplistic view is potentially harmful.

But, as many folk aren't interested in thinking harder, I'll endorse the basic idea that standing up for yourself helps. Note that bullying is a dynamic that requires victims to complete it. It should probably be referred to as the Bully/Victim Dynamic to help people remember this fact. If you don't stand up for yourself, bullies will target you.

If you look into what makes bullies feel like they have to dominate others, you will gain a much deeper understanding of bullying.

Again, I highly recommend this article for anyone interested in understanding bullying better.

Now, the source quoted in this /. article is appallingly fourth-hand and diluted. Here are some other sources:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article7133986.ece
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/health/18mind.html?pagewanted=print

And here's an abstract for the actual study (which took a while to track down): Mutual antipathies during early adolescence: More than just rejection

Not so: Despite Moratorium, Drilling Projects Move Ahead.

Fair point. I would like to counter with this where they say that there's no reliable way to measure the flow of oil and that they dispute the large 3rd party estimates while relying CG and NOAA estimates.

Here's a better article that brings up some good points: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/us/14oil.html

After the rig went down, it was 1000 barrels a day. When SkyTruth published their estimates (low end was 5000), the government raised the publicly stated figure (over BP's objections) to... 5000 a day!

All this while dispersants are being pumped into the oil stream under water, limiting the amount that reaches the surface. I'd say BP damn well knew they had a huge fuck up and have been shown fighting every step into admitting it so you'll have to excuse me if I doubt the sincerity of their promise to not hide behind loopholes.

All that goldfarming has to stop.

Without a currency realignment, Chinese-farmed gold will still be able to out-compete American-farmed gold.

Little late to be practicing the "sacrament of forgiveness" for Copernicus, at least outside the framework of some ridiculous story about how we actually have invisible immortal bits.

But if the Catholic Church wants to do some good today, there are plenty of things it can help right out with. It could, say, help with promoting condom use in Africa. It could even improve the situation by shutting up about it and at least not hindering it.

They could take action against the sexual abuse of kids. For that matter, they could even improve that situation by not actively hindering investigations, and maybe even reporting such crimes to the appropriate authorities (hint: the appropriate authorities are NOT located in the Vatican) when committed by its own members.

Any organization that makes its living deliberately promoting delusion and superstition is not worthy of any respect of any type. Maybe they should try the "sacrament of reality" someday. Causes a lot less problems than trying to live by things that are not real, amazingly enough.

What are you talking about? Here is a poll you might find interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html. If you can;t be bothered to read it here is the first sentence as a summary: "Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public [...] according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll."

I see you are falling for the vicious and baseless left wing media and Democrat politicians' attacks against the Tea Party precisely because they know that what it stands for hits at the heart of the liberal collectivist, statist mentality. Btw, the Contract From America 10 points were chosen by vote of abou 1/2 million Tea Party members and supporters and notice that none of them mentions race, immigration, violence or any other things that they are being smeared with.

Here is another one for you highlighting BPs poor safety record, but you will probably handwave this away too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/business/09bp.html?ref=us

The US has labor laws to protect workers.

Where the heck do you think those labor laws came from? What do you think is keeping them there? Unions are responsible for OSHA, the NLRB, minimum wage, overtime rules, and a host of other protections that you and most other Americans take for granted these days. And without unions applying steady pressure, you can be sure that a good portion of Congress would in fact quite happily vote to repeal those very same laws.

Unions are incredibly useful to the people who are in them. And for people who aren't in them, the threat of unionizing tends to keep management from walking all over their employees. Unions (or the threat thereof) give workers important protections against employer crimes such as unpaid overtime, wage theft, and dangerous working conditions, all of which are occurring regularly in non-union shops but are unheard of in union shops.

Regarding your experience of paying a guy $200 to watch you set up a booth - was he an IBEW electrician? If so, think about who you would have turned to the moment something went wrong with your power strips (e.g. all the booth electrical stuff overloaded a circuit). And also think about how expensive $200 was in comparison to the rest of the cost of that booth.

It's the Republican ideology of "Drill Baby Drill!" and it's the Democrats who have been against off-shore drilling. This disaster could only have helped Obama.

How soon we forget.....

We are not, by nature, moral creatures. Morality is something that must be imposed, either from within or without.

Current evidence suggests you are entirely wrong. Apparently, we are born with some form of innate morality. Or, at the very least, we have a tendency towards altruism and fairness.

With regards to this:

Human society pretty much depends upon a lack of anonymity to function.

I would submit the internet, in all of its glorious, pre-facebook anonymity days, as evidence that society can, and does function with anonymity. The way I figure it, the internet really is a society in and of itself. The internet allows for exchange of goods and services, enables the communication of ideas, has its own slang and languages associated with it, and, demonstrably, had its own set of rules and laws that were followed even when it was young. Those factors, would suggest that it is, indeed, a society. Back when chat rooms were still popular and young, back when ebay was just getting off the ground, and back before everyone had a myspace/facebook page to identify themselves, anonymous and pseudo-anonymous folk would get together in chatrooms, forums, and on auction sites and partake in near anarchic social interactions. While many of those interactions were trollish, flamebaitish, and ridiculous, there were a large number that were positive, contributory, and, often, pleasant. If there hadn't been, then everyone would have gotten sick of the internet and stopped using it a long time ago. That obviously didn't happen. People stuck it out, figured out ways to improve existing services, and now we have the internet today. And believe it or not, it still has its unspoken rules of etiquette and such. For instance, typing in all caps is considered inappropriate. L337 speak is considered a sign of immaturity. And screwing someone out of a deal on e-bay could get you banned from that service entirely.

While you may argue that destroying anonymity is what enabled this evolution, I would argue that the society was founded on anonymity and worked well when it did exist. As such, making the claim that a society needs a lack of anonymity to function, in my opinion, is wrong. Perhaps limiting anonymity makes for a better society, but that is a subjective judgment that hinges on a person's interpretation of better.

Furthermore, if you want other examples of social interactions that function well with anonymity, take a look at the Victorian era Masquerade balls. Those functions, in fact, valued social interaction above all else, yet, they allowed for anonymity. There are other examples, like, say, the Secret Societies of the Ivy league schools that also allow for anonymous, social interaction but are successful. So I would claim that your assertion is demonstrably false.

That said, your first sentence with regards to anonymity being left out of the Constitution deliberately doesn't address my original point, or, at best, confirms it. The Constitution was written as an explicit agreement to what the federal government could and could not do. Thus, if anonymity was not mentioned, it was intended to be left as a right to the States and/or the people due to the very nature of the document itself. So if it was purposefully left out of the Constitution, then it was purposefully left as a right to the people or the States.

I should have included the link in my original reply:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/technology/24cnd-facebook.html?ex=1350964800&en=c27e6c86844c7723&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

no. 26yr old = not enough experience in the world.

It's why he's know as a raging ass to many that deal with him. he's outright cocky and it will bite him in the butt.

Honestly, after reading the accidental billionaires book http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/books/20maslin.html
  I am certain that I would not want to have ever had to deal with the man. Every account of him makes him feel "slimey" and sets off all my red flags.

born with an innate sense of fairness.

More on this: The Moral Life of Babies.