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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/10/us/politics/20100505-kagan-opinions.html#constitutional-theory

"The Constitution generally imposes limitations on government rather than establishes affirmative rights and thus has what might be thought of as a libertarian slant. I fully accept this traditional understanding[...]"

During her confirmation hearing last week, Elena Kagan, the nominee for solicitor general, said that someone suspected of helping finance Al Qaeda should be subject to battlefield law — indefinite detention without a trial — even if he were captured in a place like the Philippines rather than in a physical battle zone.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/09/us/politics/20100409-stevens-candidates.html

Elena Kagan
49 years old
Solicitor general
Princeton, 1981; Oxford, 1983; Harvard Law School, 1986

With no judicial record, Ms. Kagan is less known. As dean at Harvard Law School, she hired conservative professors to expand academic diversity and has supported assertions of executive power.

Sounds like someone Bush/Cheney would have nominated.

The problem doesn't stem from giving kids nutritional guidelines. When I was growing up we learned about the food groups, etc, and nobody got disciplined for eating junk food.

The problem stems from an unchecked authoritarian mindset among school administrators. Since the 80s, the easy solution to social problems has been to criminalize bad behavior and institute harsh penalties across the board. Now when a child brings utensils for his lunch, he gets hit with weapons violations. A girl rumored to posses OTC medication is strip searched by the principal and could have faced expulsion for drug charges. Some kid gets a cell phone picture from a partially undressed peer, and he's hit with child pornography. These are just a few examples. We routinely classify innocuous behavior as the most extreme and vile crimes. So now are public schools are microchasms of a police state, with TSA security screenings, strip searches, a huge police presence, and criminal sentences for routine disciplinary problems. Institutionally, we see our children as equally capable of evil as Al Queda.

What we're seeing is the inevitable result of that process, where effective discipline has simply given way entirely to arbitrary enforcement of state power. But the process didn't begin when they started talking about the four food groups. The process started when we decided we needed to "get tough on crime" and we culturally embraced zero-tolerance. The problem started when politicians started to convince people that law enforcement was the best answer for all our social ills.

The New York Times paraphrases Kagan as saying "that someone suspected of helping finance Al Qaeda should be subject to battlefield law -- indefinite detention without a trial -- even if he were captured in a place like the Philippines rather than a physical battle zone.

- New York Times, 17th February 2009

There you go! An article on her view regarding detention and human rights, two hot topics on any news website. If you want a nerd angle, consider the word "cyberterror."

Yep.

AFAICT, the only biological attacks in the USA have been made by Federal employees.

Then what you know is wrong. Another who has worked in the same lab and is no longer restricted by his contract has come forward and stated is would be impossible for the Anthrax to have been made there. Furthermore, the DNA of the Anthrax was proved to not have come from that facility; though likely to be very closely related.

You're talking about Bruce Ivins and the 2001 Anthrax attacks, of course. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attack Because Ivins killed himself, we'll never know for sure whether he was responsible. His friend Harry Heine said Ivins was innocent http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/us/23anthrax.html and Heine knows more about the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases than I do, but how do you know he's right? Nobody knows.

One thing that everybody agrees on is that the anthrax used in the attacks came from the USMRIID. In other words, it came from U.S. biological weapons research. If Ivins wasn't responsible, then another federal employee was, because federal employees developed and distributed the Ames strain. So the parent is right.

Bottom line: The U.S. military created biological weapons, with the excuse that they had to create them to figure out how to defend us from them. A lot of microbiologists said that was BS and we shouldn't do it, because once you develop the microbes, or even the technology, the chances are too high that it's going to escape -- and they were right.

So we've demonstrated to the world that it's possible to create weaponized anthrax (a microbe that's found throughout the world, including Iran), which could bring the mail system (and the country) to a halt and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of Americans. And we've shown them how to do it. Now any postgrad microbiologist can make weaponized anthrax.

Fortunately anthrax is just one more disease that people have been getting for thousands of years. Livestock farmers in Iran and Iraq still get it. We've survived plagues before. We'll survive again (most of us). But if the U.S. government hadn't done the research, it wouldn't be a problem.

From the NY Times, May 9, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/08/opinion/08durbin.html

"On Thursday afternoon, the Dow plunged 1,000 points within a few minutes, followed by an equally sudden recovery. We don’t know all the details about the drop, but it was almost certainly the result of computer or human error in a high-speed trading program.

Among the many arcane corners of the financial world highlighted by the Wall Street crisis, high-frequency trading — in which computers scan billions of bits of market data for trading opportunities that may exist for mere fractions of a second — has generated a surprising amount of discussion. Alongside the risk of expensive errors like what happened Thursday, critics say, these programs facilitate insider trading and overwhelm regulators’ access to critical information.

These are fair criticisms. Fortunately, they can also be easily addressed without undermining the positive role that high-frequency trading plays in the market.

Let’s start with the insider trading charge. Often, when an exchange operator receives an investor order and finds that another exchange has a better price, it will “flash” the order to a few select traders in its exchange a split second before sending it to market, giving those traders an opportunity to improve their price, too. When used properly, flashing ensures that investors trade at the best available prices.

But that hair’s breadth of time also gives high-frequency traders an opportunity to make a tidy profit off what amounts to insider information. How? Rather than improve their price, the recipient of a flash can go to the other exchange, buy up all the assets at better prices, and force the original investor to trade with them at an inferior price.

We don’t allow trading based on private knowledge of pending business deals or court rulings, and we shouldn’t allow it in high-frequency trading, either. But that doesn’t mean we should ban flashing all together. Instead, to deter abuse, anyone who gets a preview of a trade, whether by phone or flash, should be required to register with an exchange and keep records of every negotiation."

Lake County growers said that pickers' pay was not low -- up to $150 a day -- and that they had been ready to pay even more to save their crops. "I would have raised my wages," said Steve Winant, a pear grower whose 14-acre orchard is still laden with overripe fruit. "But there weren't any people to pay."

$12/hr isn't below the minimum wage in Florida ($7.25/hr)

Florida grows a majority of the nation's domestic winter tomato crop. Its workers earn about $12 an hour during the picking season for the hardest-working laborers, usually immigrants who receive no health insurance or overtime benefits. That equates to about 47 cents per 32-pound bucket. The new agreement's penny-per-pound increase only applies to the two participating farms.

Just as the patent on Roundup Ready soybeans is about to run out, the Roundup Ready weeds come out. Coincidence?

If global temperatures went down significantly over a period of many years, it would certainly be fantastic evidence against anthropogenic global warming. But the fact is that past decade is the warmest on record. Ice in the Arctic, the Antarctic, and Greenland has been melting as a result of this warming.

The major ISP's seem to disagree with you. Time Warner's COO Landel Hobbs has said himself that heavy users pose no threat to their profits. "If you are getting feedback that there is an immediate problem, nothing could be further from the truth," http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/time-warner-cable-profits-on-broadband-are-great-and-will-grow-because-of-caps/ Time Warner just reported a 30% increase in earnings http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704302304575213750225569156.html On top of that their bandwidth costs have been steadily decreasing. Seems pretty viable to me

. . . and you will not need a key - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/greathomesanddestinations/05gh-costarica.html

When I used to write my own automated trading system software, I wrote some code that ignored bad events until they had persisted for a small period of time. That was motivated by a stop loss order I had in place automatically taking me out of a position at a severe loss when a bad tick (one second) of data from a mistaken trade showed up, the chart was quite similar to today's mess. So it's easy to write something that rejects bad market data for a little bit, waiting for some confirmation before doing something rash. For what I traded, if I saw the same condition for five seconds straight, it was probably real and then I'd have the program act.

Unfortunately, the current situation market includes so many automated systems that try to make money based on high frequency trading that the normal safeguards here are rejected as "adds too much latency". It's yet another one of those situation where optimizing for the normal case, where fast trades are better, causes instability during unexpected situations.

Universally known eh?

Every review of the iPad I have seen was written on the iPad and every reviewer I have read has said that, while not quite as good as a physical keyboard it is quite sufficient for something like writing an article for a magazine or blog. If that's not good enough for sending emails or posting on facebook or slashdot then you aren't doing it right.

David Pogue's Review

CNET's iPad Review

UberGizmo iPad Review

Mossberg had positive things to say about the iPad's keyboard (no surprise there), and Engadget didn't slam it, but they only really talked about "banging out e-mails" on it.

About the only thing the iPad's keyboard has going for it is that it's larger than some netbook keyboards. But you have to balance that against the fact that it's not tactile, so there's no touch typing.

I suppose that if you're used to typing on an iPhone, you'd love the iPad. But for those who need to do any type of document production -- other than short e-mails -- it's not going to work as a netbook replacement.

Well, at least the don't have to pay more than $75 million.

Under the law that established the reserve, called the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, the operators of the offshore rig face no more than $75 million in liability for the damages that might be claimed by individuals, companies or the government.

The fund was set up by Congress in 1986 but not financed until after the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska in 1989. In exchange for the limits on liability, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 imposed a tax on oil companies, currently 8 cents for every barrel they produce in this country or import.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/us/02liability.html

Turns out that the government already has a rainy day fund to deal with industry disasters. At present it holds $1.5 billion, it is not adequate but I think this is the way to go. The impact of this accident is going to be felt by the entire industry, it is only logical for funds to be collected from all oil companies to help with recovery efforts.

Tax on Oil May Help Pay for Cleanup

Curiously BP is not carrying insurance, it is having self-insurance -- they apportion an amount of almost a billion a year into a fund on the island of Gernesey (the offshore UK tax haven).

Insurance rates will go up

This is like the "no transitional fossils" argument against evolution. Every time you point out one, the deniers insist it's not a transitional fossil and continue the zombie meme of denial. Or the "evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics argument". It doesn't matter how many times you refute this, it will continue on and on as a zombie.

Both climate change and evolutionary biology are similar, right? Both fields are given millions in funding, right? If either one discovers the truth (that neither climate change nor evolution is true), they will lose all that money for their work. Hence, they are suppressing negative data. Neither evolution nor climate change is really science.

Well, that's the argument anyway.

You're thinking of the "Rods from God" program.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/rods-god and http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10section3a.t-9.html?_r=1

Here's a PDF of the original interview in the New York Times: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9907E3D7173EE033A25750C2A9639C946897D6CF

what part of people getting killed don't you understand?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/world/asia/03dissident.html

That link should give you an idea of what can happen when governments don't like what you say or do.

I don't need tor to torrent anything. Others can be in deadly danger if they don't.

Britain, at least from my POV, has undertaken a huge, perhaps unprecedented social experiment in immigration and mosaic, cultural restructuring.

The true extent of that, probably dwarfs your POV. It is more telling that the CIA unit tasked with locating Bin Laden jokingly called themselves the Manson Family. It is mass immigration and open borders paired with the threat of terrorism that government may use to justify warrantless wiretapping of its own citizens.

I don't think you can accurately model inferences from personal data; non-sequiturs abound. We don't need a government database to prove this, Amazon recommendations will do fine. When Amazon get it wrong ("clean underwear", some homosexual text etc), it's amusing and the user can usually omit the data point that caused the error. When the government get it wrong, they're potentially ruining someones life!

We're already producing more food worldwide than needed. Our problem is the allocation of those resources, and that's a question of politics - nothing else.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/09/science/scientific-advances-lead-to-era-of-food-surplus-around-world.html

As to power: Solar is currently doubling in efficiency every second year. In 20 years we're thus able to supply the (known) energy requirements of Earth with solar alone.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/080219-kurzweil-solar.html

As to space: Urbanization has been going on for quite some time. Let's look at some popular population densities and project that crudely over available land mass:

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

While Swedish myself (and we have a LOT of unpopulated land available - welcome over!) I like the Netherlands. Wonderful country. Pop. density 400/km2. Pop. density on the available landmass (excluding Antarctica) today, 50/km2. That is, without changing anything else, and with everyone living the good life of people in the Netherlands, we'd already be able to support comfortable living space for 72 billion people (and please remember that millions of people are happy to live a lot more urbanized than the average of the Netherlands).

So, the question is simple. Why do you claim things that simply aren't true? What's your agenda - and why? Is it important for you to claim that the world is overpopulated for some other reasons than you've posted so far?

Protip: If you are going to link Wikipedia to bolster a point, choose an article where virtually every sentence doesn't end with "citation needed".

Given the well-documented editing of Wikipedia by corporations, it does bolster my point.

For the cognitively challenged, you could try searching for "NATO Afghan killings" - just to get started.

"Consumed by fireball, the Afghan village devastated by Nato strike on Taliban" - The Guardian, September 4 2009

"Moeen Marastial, a member of parliament from Kunduz, said: "Local people are telling me 130 people have been killed despite all the promises of Nato to do fewer bombardments and reduce civilian casualties. There will be a reaction to this. It is a very bad day for international forces in Afghanistan."

and

"Nato strike kills 27 Afghanistan civilians" - BBC, February 22, 2010

"At least 27 civilians died in a Nato air strike in southern Afghanistan, the Afghan cabinet says, revising downwards a prior statement that 33 were killed"

and

"U.S. Admits Role in February Killing of Afghan Women" - New York Times, April 4, 2010

"After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the women during the nighttime raid."

and

"NATO strikes killing more Afghan civilians" - USA Today, April 16, 2010

"Deaths of Afghan civilians by NATO troops have more than doubled this year, NATO statistics show, jeopardizing a U.S. campaign to win over the local population by protecting them against insurgent attacks."

and

"NATO Investigates 3 Afghan Civilian Deaths" - New York Times, May 1, 2010

"The French military took responsibility on Friday for killing four Afghan children during a missile strike in early April, and NATO said it was investigating allegations of a military convoy gunning down two Afghan women and a girl in southeastern Afghanistan."

and

"NATO checks report of Afghan civilian deaths" - Reuters, May 1, 2010

"NATO said on Saturday it was investigating whether shots fired by its troops in southern Afghanistan had killed two women and a child traveling in car."

Of course, expending any effort whatsoever to consider the plight of those being killed in Afghanistan and finding out some facts - rather than making a false assumption and then using your error to defend killing innocent people - might have taken you almost as much time as you spent supporting the murders committed by "our guys."

For the cognitively challenged, you could try searching for "NATO Afghan killings" - just to get started.

"Consumed by fireball, the Afghan village devastated by Nato strike on Taliban" - The Guardian, September 4 2009

"Moeen Marastial, a member of parliament from Kunduz, said: "Local people are telling me 130 people have been killed despite all the promises of Nato to do fewer bombardments and reduce civilian casualties. There will be a reaction to this. It is a very bad day for international forces in Afghanistan."

and

"Nato strike kills 27 Afghanistan civilians" - BBC, February 22, 2010

"At least 27 civilians died in a Nato air strike in southern Afghanistan, the Afghan cabinet says, revising downwards a prior statement that 33 were killed"

and

"U.S. Admits Role in February Killing of Afghan Women" - New York Times, April 4, 2010

"After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the women during the nighttime raid."

and

"NATO strikes killing more Afghan civilians" - USA Today, April 16, 2010

"Deaths of Afghan civilians by NATO troops have more than doubled this year, NATO statistics show, jeopardizing a U.S. campaign to win over the local population by protecting them against insurgent attacks."

and

"NATO Investigates 3 Afghan Civilian Deaths" - New York Times, May 1, 2010

"The French military took responsibility on Friday for killing four Afghan children during a missile strike in early April, and NATO said it was investigating allegations of a military convoy gunning down two Afghan women and a girl in southeastern Afghanistan."

and

"NATO checks report of Afghan civilian deaths" - Reuters, May 1, 2010

"NATO said on Saturday it was investigating whether shots fired by its troops in southern Afghanistan had killed two women and a child traveling in car."

Of course, expending any effort whatsoever to consider the plight of those being killed in Afghanistan and finding out some facts - rather than making a false assumption and then using your error to defend killing innocent people - might have taken you almost as much time as you spent supporting the murders committed by "our guys."

See my other comment on this thread re fallacy #1. Also see the UNAMA report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009. To quote:

"Suicide and IED attacks caused more civilian casualties than any other tactic, killing
1,054 civilians, or 44% of the total civilian casualties in 2009. Although such attacks
have primarily targeted government or international military forces, they are often
carried out in areas frequented by civilians."

I reiterate my disgust with people who practice the double-think of justifying the inevitable civilian deaths on the one side as "collateral damage" done with noble aims, while simultaneously claiming the other side are evil for killing civilians in their military operations.

Note 25% of the remaining deaths were due to pro-gov forces "PGF" (i.e. the occupying forces). The NYT also has a good article on the report. Note that there have been a number of high-profile raids on Afhani compounds this year that have resulted in dead civilians, including one case where special forces apparently dug bullets out of bodies with knives in order to try cover up.

As for fallacy #2, yes it would indeed be a fallacy of logic for me to try persuade anyone against CTSs post. That said, CTSs logic-free assertions become quite tiring eventually - he's been trolling forums I read for the best part of a decade. It's hard not to get annoyed by him. Further, it is not a fallacy of logic for me to relate my experience of CTS to others here. (There's a fine line here obviously).

See my other comment on this thread re fallacy #1. Also see the UNAMA report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009. To quote:

"Suicide and IED attacks caused more civilian casualties than any other tactic, killing
1,054 civilians, or 44% of the total civilian casualties in 2009. Although such attacks
have primarily targeted government or international military forces, they are often
carried out in areas frequented by civilians."

I reiterate my disgust with people who practice the double-think of justifying the inevitable civilian deaths on the one side as "collateral damage" done with noble aims, while simultaneously claiming the other side are evil for killing civilians in their military operations.

Note 25% of the remaining deaths were due to pro-gov forces "PGF" (i.e. the occupying forces). The NYT also has a good article on the report. Note that there have been a number of high-profile raids on Afhani compounds this year that have resulted in dead civilians, including one case where special forces apparently dug bullets out of bodies with knives in order to try cover up.

As for fallacy #2, yes it would indeed be a fallacy of logic for me to try persuade anyone against CTSs post. That said, CTSs logic-free assertions become quite tiring eventually - he's been trolling forums I read for the best part of a decade. It's hard not to get annoyed by him. Further, it is not a fallacy of logic for me to relate my experience of CTS to others here. (There's a fine line here obviously).

You're wrong. See Russia's cyberwars on Estonia (2nd story) and Georgia.

• Iraq under Sadam after first Gulf war, wasn't producing oil at 100% therefore; the price of oil was historically (at the time) high.
• When oil prices are high, US economy goes into the toilet because our economy is based on cheap oil.

I would argue with that; you have to remember that there were oil men from Texas in the White House.

• Increasing tension in the Middle East drives speculation which in turn increases oil prices
• Speculation enables plain old-fashioned price gouging and thus incredible profits
• High oil prices are good for Texas as they subsidize their state government with healthy severance taxes on the market value of oil
• High oil prices provide an excellent lever to use to force the opening of near-shore drilling as well as ANWR
• The Bush Administration was so interested in seeing the right people make a lot of money that when energy prices really began getting out of control they flat-out refused to do anything about the hedge funds

My point being that the invasion of Iraq had NOTHING to do with lowering the price of energy, which would have been good for ALL of the American people; rather, it had to do with enabling a few people to increase their rate of wealth accumulation. Consider: The former objective is Democratic; the latter, Republican.

This sort of thing probably has something to do with it:

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

Speaking of DS9: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/a-goldman-observation/

iTunes is not in and of itself profitable.

You're a fool. They're celebrating billions of iTunes song sales and you're telling me that they're taking a hit on each of them? Is that why The New York Times calls it a "profit machine"? Is that why Billboard estimates they made a half billion in profit from song sales one year? The most conservative estimate I can find puts them closer to a 10% profit margin on song sales which means that their billions in revenues equates to hundreds of millions of dollars.

I tell you what, though. I'm such a nice guy, I'll take the iTunes Media Service off Steve Job's hands and keep supporting only his iPods. I'll start accepting the "loss" and "risk" you seem to associate it with.

There's no way that Lala could have been profitable.

Really? The pricing structure I laid out for you didn't look like it could possibly net some profit?

Here, let me help you out with what actually happened. Jobs saw Lala make some innovations like 10 cents to stream a song as much as you like. He got a bunch of consultants to analyze what would happen if iTMS started doing that. And they said that he would still make money but it wouldn't be the drastically high amount he makes because those streamers would opt for that instead of buying the full price song. So he had a choice. Take some undetermined loss by meeting Lala's functionality and compete with them ... or drop $80 million and burn Lala to the ground. I think he made the right choice for his company and the wrong choice for consumers and actual competitive capitalism. Can't blame him but you're a fool if you think he's losing cash on iTMS. I'm not even a businessman and this is painfully obvious to me.

You are assuming a random distribution. You are assuming there are no unknown quirks or bias in the way the experiment was run. You are also assuming there was no dishonesty.

The difference between taking the drug and not taking it is tiny, according to the stated results of the experiment.

Quote: "The big story here is that this is the first proof of principle..." Translation: The big story is NOT that this drug works well.

Note that the U.S. government is very weak in regulating drug companies. For example, the fine in this case was trivial compared to the profits: Drug Makers to Pay Fine of $81 Million.

There's actually an interesting story, retold in a recent NY Times article, about Elon Musk's desire to launch a greenhouse to Mars in the early 2000s. When he realized that launch costs would dominate, he decided to create SpaceX instead to bring down those costs. I wonder if Elon Musk still hopes to carry out his original plan, though:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/science/16elon.html?pagewanted=2

Mr. Musk said he did not set out to be a rocket manufacturer. Rather, with some of the millions of dollars he reaped from the sale of PayPal to eBay, he wanted to send a small greenhouse to Mars -- a private science experiment to see if Earth plants could grow in Martian soil. Beyond the science, he said he thought the sight of a green plant on Mars would capture people's imagination and reinvigorate interest in space.

"I could get all that down to several million dollars," he said. But a rocket to get Mars Oasis off the ground was expensive. At the time, in 2001, a Delta II rocket would have cost $65 million, Mr. Musk said. He made three trips to Moscow to look at a refurbished Russian intercontinental ballistic missile. But even that would have required the development of a third stage to get into space.

He wondered whether it would make more sense to build his own rockets, and he started talking to people in the rocket business, including Dr. Diamandis. "I was actually trying to talk him out of it," Dr. Diamandis recalled, "because I said, 'You know, it's going to take two or three times as long as you think it is, and it's going to cost you two or three times as much.' The reality is it has taken him longer, and it has cost him more than he expected, but I'm extraordinarily thankful he didn't take my advice."

That is untrue! Just ask the newly formed Farmers Union and the Framers of the Constitution! ;)

Nuclear is actually cost competitive with coal,

So the Wall Street Journal is wrong? Even they say "The only way to handicap the field in nuclear power's favor is to put a big price tag on emissions of carbon dioxide." If however emissions of carbon dioxide had a price tag then geothermal, solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources would be more competitive as well not just nuclear power. And if nuclear is so great then why does the industry need subsidies and gets loan guaranties?

and is the only green energy source that is.

Nuclear power is not clean, it is dirty from cradle to grave, oops there is no grave for nuclear waste. Ask the Navajo how clean uranium mining is. Or some First Nations in Canada, the aboriginals in Australia, or any number of other indigenous peoples throughout the world.

It's also wrong that nuclear plants need to be these massive, expensive things. We've had portable nuclear generators since the '60s, and you can build out plants of various sizes from there all the way up to the mega installations.

Is that why Finland's Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant has costs overruns raising it's cost from 3 billion euros to more than 4.2 billion? Or seen it's operation delayed from 2009 to 2012 at the earliest? Since you didn't like the previous CATO article you probably won't like this one either but Nuclear Energy: Risky Business says "the industry in the early 1990s asked for-and got-exactly the sort of safety regulations, permit review process, and public comment regime now in place." Further, it says "Indeed, if government were the reason why investors were saying "no" to their loan applications, I would expect that industry officials would be the first to say so. But they do not."

Solar is currently 3x - 10x more expensive than coal.

Saying that's true now, I don't know, solar is constantly dropping in costs. And coal does not pay all of it's own costs. Like other energy sources coal is subsidized. Mountaintop removal probably the safest way to mine coal is very destructive and polluting.

The only reason it can be cost effective is because the government very very heavily subsidizes solar installations.

If ethanol subsidies, most of which go to corn and there are better feed stocks than corn, are removed from alternative energy subsidies coal comes in first place in the amount of subsidies it gets. The graph on the page linked to says alternative energy got $4.875 billion in 2007. Of that though $3 billion went to ethanol. Coal on the other hand is broken down into 2 categories. Refined coal, whatever that is, got $2.370 billion and coal got $932 million. Together coal got $3.302 billion whereas goethermal, solar, wind and other alternative sources got $1.9 billion excluding ethanol. I do see that it has nuclear as getting less than alternatives though, however I wonder how it breaks down for the different types? As that page asks, "which pig wears the most lipstick?"

Geothermal will never amount to more tha

Nuclear is actually cost competitive with coal,

So the Wall Street Journal is wrong? Even they say "The only way to handicap the field in nuclear power's favor is to put a big price tag on emissions of carbon dioxide." If however emissions of carbon dioxide had a price tag then geothermal, solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources would be more competitive as well not just nuclear power. And if nuclear is so great then why does the industry need subsidies and gets loan guaranties?

and is the only green energy source that is.

Nuclear power is not clean, it is dirty from cradle to grave, oops there is no grave for nuclear waste. Ask the Navajo how clean uranium mining is. Or some First Nations in Canada, the aboriginals in Australia, or any number of other indigenous peoples throughout the world.

It's also wrong that nuclear plants need to be these massive, expensive things. We've had portable nuclear generators since the '60s, and you can build out plants of various sizes from there all the way up to the mega installations.

Is that why Finland's Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant has costs overruns raising it's cost from 3 billion euros to more than 4.2 billion? Or seen it's operation delayed from 2009 to 2012 at the earliest? Since you didn't like the previous CATO article you probably won't like this one either but Nuclear Energy: Risky Business says "the industry in the early 1990s asked for-and got-exactly the sort of safety regulations, permit review process, and public comment regime now in place." Further, it says "Indeed, if government were the reason why investors were saying "no" to their loan applications, I would expect that industry officials would be the first to say so. But they do not."

Solar is currently 3x - 10x more expensive than coal.

Saying that's true now, I don't know, solar is constantly dropping in costs. And coal does not pay all of it's own costs. Like other energy sources coal is subsidized. Mountaintop removal probably the safest way to mine coal is very destructive and polluting.

The only reason it can be cost effective is because the government very very heavily subsidizes solar installations.

If ethanol subsidies, most of which go to corn and there are better feed stocks than corn, are removed from alternative energy subsidies coal comes in first place in the amount of subsidies it gets. The graph on the page linked to says alternative energy got $4.875 billion in 2007. Of that though $3 billion went to ethanol. Coal on the other hand is broken down into 2 categories. Refined coal, whatever that is, got $2.370 billion and coal got $932 million. Together coal got $3.302 billion whereas goethermal, solar, wind and other alternative sources got $1.9 billion excluding ethanol. I do see that it has nuclear as getting less than alternatives though, however I wonder how it breaks down for the different types? As that page asks, "which pig wears the most lipstick?"

Geothermal will never amount to more tha

Standing up to the salt air may be an issue.

The Dutch have had them for a couple of years, so there's at least some precedent and any issues they encounter are likely to give a 4 - 5 year heads up to this initiative.

Really? Heard of priest-scientists? ( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/nyregion/13jaki.html?_r=2&hpw , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23640170/, http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/priest-turned-scientist-francisco-ayala-wins-153-million-prize/19414671)

If the feds weren't abusing it, why do you think the locals will?

Do you know anything about the Police climate in Arizona and specifically Maricopa County? The MSCO is already violating civil rights and abusing power, this will make it much, much worse. Read up before spout ignorant comments. Here is just one article from the NY Times. Search for Sheriff Joe Arpaio & racial profiling, immigration, illegal arrest, lawsuit, etc. http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/americas-worst-sheriff-joe-arpaio/

It turns out, however, that Facebook is not using HTML5 at all. The company told ReadWriteWeb that, "All new videos are encoded in h264 format, so we're playing videos natively in the iPad since it supports h264-encoded videos. It will load them full-screen, similar to what it does for YouTube videos."

I don't think that the iPad, using Safari, supports native "h264 format" [sic], seeing as how AFAIK h.264 is just a stream of data.

So rather than using HTML5, Facebook is actually detecting that the iPad's Safari browser is in the mix, and is transcoding the original video format to MP4 on the fly.

Transcoding? It doesn't appear they're transcoding anything. It sounds like they're taking a video (pre) encoded as an h.264 stream, slapping an MP4 container around it, and throwing that file at Safari. Safari knows how to deal with the container and the video codec, and plays it back.

Write. Better. Articles! This is almost as bad as the article that tried to claim that HTML5 was a video format.

What I find especially interesting is that a social networking site like Facebook is willing to provide raw video files to iPad uses without wrapping any kind of player or anything else around them. This allows the iPad users to download the files directly, providing an easy method of liberating content from Facebook. I'm not really sure why Facebook would allow users to "escape" like this.

So Arizona could, in fact, elect a non-resident of the state and present them to the Senate, who could, in fact, seat them?

This does make sense, at least by the letter of the law.

But if Arizona chose to restrict nomination or inclusion on the ballot to state residents, this is state election law, which I do not think defers to the Senate determining the qualifications of its members... Indeed, does the Senate claim the right to seat a member not even elected and presented by a state? What an interesting concept...

I would think that at least under Article 10 states have the right to choose whom they send to the Federal Legislature. The Senate for sure, and probably the House, can choose to seat them or not, but if it is constitutional for the Senate to determine the qualifications of its members, are you implying that it could even select a member itself, without election by the state? Sure would have been much simpler for the Democrats to ignore the Massachusetts election and pick someone other than Scott Brown to take Teddy Kennedy's seat...

No, I think states have the right to conduct their elections, so long as they are fair and otherwise constitutionally correct, as they wish. There is not even any federal rule on how to replace Senators who vacate their seat for whatever reason that I am aware of. Requiring that they be residents of the state they intend to represent seems entirely fair. Even ensuring they would be of legal age at some reasonable point in time (like before the last year of a six-year term) seems reasonable also.

And by extension, requiring that candidates for President also be actually constitutionally eligible for the office seems fair to me. Remember, the first recent discussion of a candidate's constitutional eligibility for the office of President was concerning John McCain. Even before his nomination.

give them a few years, they will ;-P

besides, the way the chinese focus on hacking google, it seems the chinese think google sinks something!

but even without that red herring, there's all you navy thinkers should be thinking about, china:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/world/asia/24navy.html

american navy, prepare: zheng he has come to sink you

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

is that they're stupid. ... This has led to:
1) A ban on nuclear power here in California

Except environmentalists or greenies didn't stop nuclear power. As the Hooked on Subsidies article the pro freemarket CATO Institute republished, originally published by "Forbes", said it is state actors not the market that decides what nuclear power plants are built. Even in France and other nations, here's the relevant paragraph:
"How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

The "Hooked on Subsidies article brings up the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant being built in Finland. The French government owned business Areva and Siemans were building it, however Siemens sold it's interest to Areva. As of this tyme last year cost overruns have caused it's "3 billion euro price tag, about $4.2 billion", to climb at least 50 percent. Market Watch published a story about a study that warns of steep cost overruns at new reactors.

2) The Sierra Club successfully shutting down a massive solar plant. (What? Solar is a green energy? But think of all the DESERT that would be covered by those panels! 25 tortoises live there!) Good luck getting more companies to put money into proposing green power generators, assholes. Similar stories exist for wind and tidal projects across the country.

I'm glad I don't donate to the Sierra Club. They're not the only hypocrites though. On the Atlantic Coast there are those who oppose offshore wind farms. Even Ted Kennedy opposed a wind farm, in Cape Cod. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States" lays out the wind potential of various regions of the US. The Rocky Mountains alone has enough potential to supply all of the US with energy. Meanwhile SciAm published the article A Solar Grand Plan lays out how solar power can "supply 69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050." Then there are other potential energy sources as well. Geothermal energy supplied California with 13 terawatts or 4.5% of the electricity used in CA in 2007. One geothermal project in Hawaii is the Puna Geothermal Venture and it supplies the big island of 20% of it's electricity. The SciAm article Hawaii Says Aloha (Greetings) to Clean, Renewable Energy says geothermal energy can be expanded to supply more electricity:

"Last January, Hawaii signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) that would make the Aloha State the country's most aggressive in pursuing renewable energy. By 2030, it plans to obtain 70 percent of its power from clean energy (40 percent from renewables and 30 percent from energy efficiency). Outstripping California's goal of 33 percent by 2020, the Hawaii initiative is a green light for clean-tech experts and enthusiasts to set up shop in the heart of the Pacific and may become a blueprint (or greenprint) for the rest of the country."

Geothermal isn't only available in the west either. It is being used now in

launches a strike at Arizona.

Yours In Juarez,
Nick Haflinger

Gamepolitics has covered this extensively http://www.gamepolitics.com/category/topics/california?page=1 At the end of that article they link to a pdf of the judge's ruling.

Similar laws have been passed and ruled unconstitutional in numerous places including Indianapolis, St. Louis, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. The NYTimes also has an article that includes some explanation http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/arts/television/21vide.html

Some too significant (plus they were "protected" by their group...) part of the clergy seems to share a view (even if unofficially...so?) that following the same common moral code doesn't apply to them, not to the same degree, that it's relative to the position in a society. Fits rather nicely with your definition of choosing (why would you exlucde different groups in a stratified society?)

Where have you been especially in the last few months?... O_o
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8612457.stm (and not only the titular case, also the table with allegations)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8587082.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8643984.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8588427.stm
http://documents.nytimes.com/the-document-trail-stephen-kiesle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases look up "Ratzinger" throughout this article

Yes, Ratzinger seems to have undergo some some sort of conversion a decade or so ago, but this doesn't change earlier "cautiosness" and that currently he still publicly abstains from saying what he really, really should. It's an issue of who he is, and what the institution is as whole - yes, some might dismiss the above as not connecting him directly enough (would they be satisfied by anything other than watching the act or sharing some child?), or a bit "out of context", or "not so bad"...but don't pretend that we don't have the right to demand, from Catholic Church, to try as hard as possible to be crystal clear; anything less is a failure, considering how they paint themselves, what they supposedly represent. How they, in the societies under their influence (I should know, I live in one officially 90+% Catholic), have the clout of standing for what is all good; being percieved as much wiser, less likely to be lost than random mortal.

If the church isn't helping even it's most revered members to remain virtuos, clystar clear...then what good is it? (it would be especially...sad, if Ratzinger was simply the most clear out of all probable candidates at the last conclave) At the least it's another thing showing that what they preach is bs; one would think the favorites of god would at least be a bit nicer...

Oh, from one of the links above and your chosen example:

The Rev Peter Hullermann had been accused of abusing boys when the now Pope approved his 1980 transfer to Munich to receive psychological treatment for paedophilia.
The disgraced priest was convicted in 1986 of abusing a youth, but stayed within the Church for another two decades.

^even if we would buy the BS that he wasn't really involved...then at the least: if Ratzinger has allowed this while heading the organisation which was meant to deal which such stuff, then this is his fault (even if the fault was of organisational type...again, he led that part of the organisation!)

And that is how you get things like A senior priest saying(in public) that the condemnation being suffered by the Catholic Church was like the persecution of the jews.

Just as an aside: that article you cited is a shameful example of yellow journalism. Rv. Cantalamessa (the priest who delivered the homily in question) was reading a letter from a Jewish friend, who was expressing solidarity with the Catholic Church amidst its tribulations. This, of course, was radically decontextualized by the NYTimes, who (as they often do) reworked the situation to support their agenda. Moral of the story: be wary of major news publications.

But more on topic: I'm mildly disappointed Pope Benedict has decided to take a more reactionary approach to the Internet - but really, what I'm most aghast about is the timing of it all. I mean, could he have possibly chosen a worse time to tear into the Internet age? I can begin to see where he's coming from with a few of his criticisms (which this article presents in an unfairly simplified way.) Still, it comes off as too pessimistic, in an age when the Church should be seeking to embrace the world. John Paul II had a cautious but optimistic outlook that I much prefer (as articulated in his apostolic letter, "The Rapid Development.")

In so many ways, Benedict is an ill fit for the papacy: where he seeks to defend the Church, he only manages to isolate. Can't wait until somebody more worthy is elected to the papal seat - most likely one of the South American cardinals, who are the Church's greatest champions of social justice.

And that is how you get things like A senior priest saying(in public) that the condemnation being suffered by the Catholic Church was like the persecution of the jews.

Just as an aside: that article you cited is a shameful example of yellow journalism. Rv. Cantalamessa (the priest who delivered the homily in question) was reading a letter from a Jewish friend, who was expressing solidarity with the Catholic Church amidst its tribulations. This, of course, was radically decontextualized by the NYTimes, who (as they often do) reworked the situation to support their agenda. Moral of the story: be wary of major news publications.

But more on topic: I'm mildly disappointed Pope Benedict has decided to take a more reactionary approach to the Internet - but really, what I'm most aghast about is the timing of it all. I mean, could he have possibly chosen a worse time to tear into the Internet age? I can begin to see where he's coming from with a few of his criticisms (which this article presents in an unfairly simplified way.) Still, it comes off as too pessimistic, in an age when the Church should be seeking to embrace the world. John Paul II had a cautious but optimistic outlook that I much prefer (as articulated in his apostolic letter, "The Rapid Development.")

In so many ways, Benedict is an ill fit for the papacy: where he seeks to defend the Church, he only manages to isolate. Can't wait until somebody more worthy is elected to the papal seat - most likely one of the South American cardinals, who are the Church's greatest champions of social justice.