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After keeping their populace docile and stupid...

That's untrue. Mainland China's people aren't stupid (maybe some are ignorant, many afraid), and a few brave ones conjure up the balls to endure the inevitable beat-back that always comes when questioning authority.

A better way to characterize the effect of PRC's viciously retrograde policies against their own people might be "repressed and pwned," given the deeply fucked-up nature of the authoritarian and communist government there.

While China's economic liberalization may leave more coin jingling in the average worker's pocket, all else remains the same. Makes me wonder if the West's political mollycoddling of PRC was ever intended to benefit their people, or if it was just to retain a cheap manufacturing source.

There's no hardball involved. Google looks at China and goes "It cost us more than it's getting us." Pure business, with the added bonus of nice PR for being the first corp that said no to the PRC.

Absolutely spot-on. Let us hope they follow it through to total withdrawl and contribute some loss of face for PRC's communist party. Let's not forget the near-complete blind eye turned by Western governments and the lame-stream media during the Olympics in Beijing not so long ago.

After keeping their populace docile and stupid...

That's untrue. Mainland China's people aren't stupid (maybe some are ignorant, many afraid), and a few brave ones conjure up the balls to endure the inevitable beat-back that always comes when questioning authority.

A better way to characterize the effect of PRC's viciously retrograde policies against their own people might be "repressed and pwned," given the deeply fucked-up nature of the authoritarian and communist government there.

While China's economic liberalization may leave more coin jingling in the average worker's pocket, all else remains the same. Makes me wonder if the West's political mollycoddling of PRC was ever intended to benefit their people, or if it was just to retain a cheap manufacturing source.

There's no hardball involved. Google looks at China and goes "It cost us more than it's getting us." Pure business, with the added bonus of nice PR for being the first corp that said no to the PRC.

Absolutely spot-on. Let us hope they follow it through to total withdrawl and contribute some loss of face for PRC's communist party. Let's not forget the near-complete blind eye turned by Western governments and the lame-stream media during the Olympics in Beijing not so long ago.

After keeping their populace docile and stupid...

That's untrue. Mainland China's people aren't stupid (maybe some are ignorant, many afraid), and a few brave ones conjure up the balls to endure the inevitable beat-back that always comes when questioning authority.

A better way to characterize the effect of PRC's viciously retrograde policies against their own people might be "repressed and pwned," given the deeply fucked-up nature of the authoritarian and communist government there.

While China's economic liberalization may leave more coin jingling in the average worker's pocket, all else remains the same. Makes me wonder if the West's political mollycoddling of PRC was ever intended to benefit their people, or if it was just to retain a cheap manufacturing source.

There's no hardball involved. Google looks at China and goes "It cost us more than it's getting us." Pure business, with the added bonus of nice PR for being the first corp that said no to the PRC.

Absolutely spot-on. Let us hope they follow it through to total withdrawl and contribute some loss of face for PRC's communist party. Let's not forget the near-complete blind eye turned by Western governments and the lame-stream media during the Olympics in Beijing not so long ago.

After keeping their populace docile and stupid...

That's untrue. Mainland China's people aren't stupid (maybe some are ignorant, many afraid), and a few brave ones conjure up the balls to endure the inevitable beat-back that always comes when questioning authority.

A better way to characterize the effect of PRC's viciously retrograde policies against their own people might be "repressed and pwned," given the deeply fucked-up nature of the authoritarian and communist government there.

While China's economic liberalization may leave more coin jingling in the average worker's pocket, all else remains the same. Makes me wonder if the West's political mollycoddling of PRC was ever intended to benefit their people, or if it was just to retain a cheap manufacturing source.

There's no hardball involved. Google looks at China and goes "It cost us more than it's getting us." Pure business, with the added bonus of nice PR for being the first corp that said no to the PRC.

Absolutely spot-on. Let us hope they follow it through to total withdrawl and contribute some loss of face for PRC's communist party. Let's not forget the near-complete blind eye turned by Western governments and the lame-stream media during the Olympics in Beijing not so long ago.

After keeping their populace docile and stupid...

That's untrue. Mainland China's people aren't stupid (maybe some are ignorant, many afraid), and a few brave ones conjure up the balls to endure the inevitable beat-back that always comes when questioning authority.

A better way to characterize the effect of PRC's viciously retrograde policies against their own people might be "repressed and pwned," given the deeply fucked-up nature of the authoritarian and communist government there.

While China's economic liberalization may leave more coin jingling in the average worker's pocket, all else remains the same. Makes me wonder if the West's political mollycoddling of PRC was ever intended to benefit their people, or if it was just to retain a cheap manufacturing source.

There's no hardball involved. Google looks at China and goes "It cost us more than it's getting us." Pure business, with the added bonus of nice PR for being the first corp that said no to the PRC.

Absolutely spot-on. Let us hope they follow it through to total withdrawl and contribute some loss of face for PRC's communist party. Let's not forget the near-complete blind eye turned by Western governments and the lame-stream media during the Olympics in Beijing not so long ago.

...how exactly did he know his neighbor had a wireless router running, unless he used some sort of wireless device (all of which produce their own EM emissions) to specifically detect the EM emissions coming from his neighbor? And no, divining rods don't count, regardless of what Iraqi bomb squads are doing.

Google results for "metagene" seem to suggest that they're classifications attached to the way that genes express themselves. They're independent of the actual contents of the DNA and don't change the contents of the DNA (they only reflect how the genes operate). DNA should only change with mutations, copy-errors, and viri.
Maybe someone can drum up a good car analogy to make it clear

The trade may be free, but it's sure as hell not fair:

1. China has no environmental or labor standards. It's not fair to expect our domestic industries to compete against theirs when we have to clean up after ourselves. Here, we have elections. There, if you complain about the local river turning green and your kids' hair falling out, you get disappeared.
2. China has been manipulating its currency, the renminbi, to subsidize its exports and cost us millions of jobs.
3. Third, the unmitigated, unregulated, and unabashed greed exhibited by Chinese manufacturers and their American partners has not only poisoned our economy with a cavalcade of cheap crap, but put the lives and well-being of our pets, our children, and ourselves in danger.

It's time to place heavy tariffs on Chinese imports until they play by the same rules as the rest of the civilized world. We shouldn't do business with Dickenonsian nightmare states.

This may be (and I think probably is) all true, but doesn't change the fact that China has us by the balls financially and there's nothing we can do about it without addressing the deficit.

Lucky you go when the guards are awake: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/02sirenswe.html

Though the study, released Monday, does not provide a definitive correlation, Twenge and mental health professionals speculate that a popular culture increasingly focused on the external - from wealth to looks and status - has contributed to the uptick in mental health issues.

And also:

The study is not without its skeptics, among them Richard Shadick, a psychologist who directs the counsellingcentre at Pace University in New York. He says, for instance, that the sample data weren't necessarily representative of all college students. (Many who answered the MMPI questionnaire were students in introductory psychology courses at four-year institutions.)

I have a cute anecdote about a friend who graduated with a psychology degree and left her job as an assistant to become a grade school teacher because most of the psychologists at the Manhattan practice had more psychological problems than their patients.

Emphasis mine. Now, another interesting thing about Jean Twenge is that the books she writes aren't universally accepted by her peers:

"Generation Me" inspired a slew of articles in the popular press with headlines like "It’s all about me," "Superflagilistic, Extra Egotistic" and "Big Babies: Think the Boomers are self-absorbed? Wait until you meet their kids."

Ms. Twenge is working on another book with W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, this one tentatively called "The Narcissism Epidemic."

However, some scholars argue that a spike in selfishness among young people is, like the story of Narcissus, a myth.

"It’s like a cottage industry of putting them down and complaining about them and whining about why they don’t grow up," said Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a developmental psychologist, referring to young Americans. Mr. Arnett, the author of "Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road From the Late Teens through the Twenties" (2004, Oxford University Press), has written a critique of Ms. Twenge’s book, which is to be published in the American Journal of Psychology.

Granted you could claim that this is just one example of two camps infighting in a field that plagues even physics and hard sciences but I think it's important to realize that this study might be a little self serving. Personally I share two concerns. The first being similar to Shadick's in that I'm not sure how these two studies were normalized samples and the second questioning if we have any idea what the 'norm' is for these 'diseases.' How subjective is this test and would a variance of 1% to 6% for depression be unrealistic if we knew that it's been as high as 10% at other points in time between 1938 and 2007?

The curmudgeon in me wants to chalk this up to kids having it too good these days. No polio to worry about, no eight hour shifts to support the family and more information swarming them. A lot of today's youth have the luxury of being diagnosed with hypomania. Now I know that there are serious cases of depression and always have been ... but sometimes I encounter a youth who says, "My boyfriend just broke up with me and now I sit in my room and listen to depressing music." And they (or their over protective parents) think they need medication for that. They don't. Sounds to me like they need to be picking rock and bailing hay to help take their mind off that. We're overmedicated as it is. If Ms. Twenge continues to push this idea it might just get worse. How many people read news of this study and though "maybe my kid needs to see a psychologist for depression?" It's hard to look past this and assume the motives for this study are pure.

Though the study, released Monday, does not provide a definitive correlation, Twenge and mental health professionals speculate that a popular culture increasingly focused on the external - from wealth to looks and status - has contributed to the uptick in mental health issues.

And also:

The study is not without its skeptics, among them Richard Shadick, a psychologist who directs the counsellingcentre at Pace University in New York. He says, for instance, that the sample data weren't necessarily representative of all college students. (Many who answered the MMPI questionnaire were students in introductory psychology courses at four-year institutions.)

I have a cute anecdote about a friend who graduated with a psychology degree and left her job as an assistant to become a grade school teacher because most of the psychologists at the Manhattan practice had more psychological problems than their patients.

Emphasis mine. Now, another interesting thing about Jean Twenge is that the books she writes aren't universally accepted by her peers:

"Generation Me" inspired a slew of articles in the popular press with headlines like "It’s all about me," "Superflagilistic, Extra Egotistic" and "Big Babies: Think the Boomers are self-absorbed? Wait until you meet their kids."

Ms. Twenge is working on another book with W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, this one tentatively called "The Narcissism Epidemic."

However, some scholars argue that a spike in selfishness among young people is, like the story of Narcissus, a myth.

"It’s like a cottage industry of putting them down and complaining about them and whining about why they don’t grow up," said Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a developmental psychologist, referring to young Americans. Mr. Arnett, the author of "Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road From the Late Teens through the Twenties" (2004, Oxford University Press), has written a critique of Ms. Twenge’s book, which is to be published in the American Journal of Psychology.

Granted you could claim that this is just one example of two camps infighting in a field that plagues even physics and hard sciences but I think it's important to realize that this study might be a little self serving. Personally I share two concerns. The first being similar to Shadick's in that I'm not sure how these two studies were normalized samples and the second questioning if we have any idea what the 'norm' is for these 'diseases.' How subjective is this test and would a variance of 1% to 6% for depression be unrealistic if we knew that it's been as high as 10% at other points in time between 1938 and 2007?

The curmudgeon in me wants to chalk this up to kids having it too good these days. No polio to worry about, no eight hour shifts to support the family and more information swarming them. A lot of today's youth have the luxury of being diagnosed with hypomania. Now I know that there are serious cases of depression and always have been ... but sometimes I encounter a youth who says, "My boyfriend just broke up with me and now I sit in my room and listen to depressing music." And they (or their over protective parents) think they need medication for that. They don't. Sounds to me like they need to be picking rock and bailing hay to help take their mind off that. We're overmedicated as it is. If Ms. Twenge continues to push this idea it might just get worse. How many people read news of this study and though "maybe my kid needs to see a psychologist for depression?" It's hard to look past this and assume the motives for this study are pure.

You still don't explain why the government would spend the balance of that 6 million better than I would, or indeed why the government would be better run if it had it.

Good question. It's because the rich spend the money on luxury goods that are inferior (from a utilitarian perspective, because they benefit only a few people) to social benefits (which are very useful to everyone). Furthermore, luxury goods have a lower multiplier effect, which means the money spent on them recirculates less, and causes less economic activity.

And that's money that's actually "spent". Most of it isn't, and is instead invested, usually in the kind of bubble we've seen lately. That money is written off when these bubble pop, thus making sure the economic value of that money never made it into the real economy. Yes, investment can be a good thing, but when there are too many dollars chasing too few assets, bubbles result, and bubbles always pop. It's like flaring off otherwise-useful natural gas: it's both wasteful and harmful.

Actual experience of trying out tax rates like that suggests that it is a seriously bad idea - just ask any successful Briton form the 1970s, or any Argentinian farmer today.

We had tax rates that high in the 1960s and 1970s, yet we didn't suffer. Argentina's economic problems had more to do with a flawed industrial policy, an ossified political structure, and punishing tariffs on imports from other first-world nations.

Furthermore, there are plenty of success stories. A whole continent full of them, in fact:

Strange to say, however, what everyone knows isn't true. Europe has its economic troubles; who doesn't? But the story you hear all the time -- of a stagnant economy in which high taxes and generous social benefits have undermined incentives, stalling growth and innovation -- bears little resemblance to the surprisingly positive facts. The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works.

The trade may be free, but it's sure as hell not fair:

1. China has no environmental or labor standards. It's not fair to expect our domestic industries to compete against theirs when we have to clean up after ourselves. Here, we have elections. There, if you complain about the local river turning green and your kids' hair falling out, you get disappeared.
2. China has been manipulating its currency, the renminbi, to subsidize its exports and cost us millions of jobs.
3. Third, the unmitigated, unregulated, and unabashed greed exhibited by Chinese manufacturers and their American partners has not only poisoned our economy with a cavalcade of cheap crap, but put the lives and well-being of our pets, our children, and ourselves in danger.

It's time to place heavy tariffs on Chinese imports until they play by the same rules as the rest of the civilized world. We shouldn't do business with Dickenonsian nightmare states.

So, how can it be "price fixing" if somebody could just make an LCD-based alternative and take over the market? Price fixing implies collusion among industry players not to allow such competition. But in reality, there are lots of different companies competing for this market with different technology. There's not an agreement among them to fix prices.

Oh dear, you just might be incorrect in your assessment of what companies have agreed to in the past.

You're confusing Sweden with China. In Sweden (and most of Western Europe) environmental regulation is actually tougher than they are in the U.S. And wages are not that far behind ours.

Funny you should make that mistake when all the right wingnuts are making so much noise about the imaginary conspiracy to turn the U.S. into a "European Socialist" economy that can't compete at all:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/opinion/11krugman.html?em

I didn't mod it funny.

Plenty..read this link posted by an earlier commenter:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/business/global/28return.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

Every year, the US media feels obliged to panic about some high-profile scientist that returns to China/India. In most cases, the same scientist will come back to the USA after 1-2 years, because they grew frustrated with the backwardness, lack of freedoms in their home country. These guys gave up promising jobs in the USA, so they have to go to some much less prestigious job in the US.

Don't believe me? Here's one example. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/business/global/28return.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

In the same vein, US universities like to loudly proclaim the opening of campuses in Asia, such as in Singapore, Dubai, or South Korea. Most of the campuses end up being shut down after about 3 years, because they couldn't get enough students, and the students they could get were of very low caliber. In the meanwhile, student tuition experiences huge hikes to pay for the millions of dollars to open new campuses, university administrators pat themselves on the back and give themselves huge bonuses, then when they shut the campuses down, they give themselves bonuses again for "cutting costs".

Well, considering planes have crashed from an excess of fat, I'd say that's pretty inconveniencing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/us/faa-reviews-rules-on-passenger-weight-after-crash.html?pagewanted=1

Seriously, I put this into the "personal responsibility" category. If I know that flying can kill me, I won't fly. I won't whine about requiring many, many thousands of people changing their habit to suit my condition.

...someone they can scare with random stuff that never really happens...

• Yes, I suppose that
• you must be entirely
• right, despite the
• easily Googled evidence
• to the contrary.
• Of course, Googling is a rare skill, and one can't
• expect everyone to grasp it.

That, by the way, was a hit directly on your head with the clue-bat. :)

Yeah. Next thing you know, they'll resort to price fixing to keep the profit margins nice and fat.

Exactly. It is already known that 8% of our genomes comes from HERVs , the novelty of the paper is that this virus is not a retrovirus. The Borna Disease Virus does not require integration ("assimilation" into our genome), in contrast to retroviruses, and I assume that this discovery doesn't change the 8% figure...

I read about this almost a month ago in the New York Times blogs and must point out one very important detail (to me at least) about this case that was not present in The Wall Street Journal article: Google applied for a trademark on "NEXUS ONE". Now it's not even assigned to an examining attorney yet but come on. You can 'borrow' something from a novel but if you're going to be making money, hand over fist, with it you should probably get permission. And then on top of that you go after the trademark since Dick never did?

Even Motorola had the wherewithal to kindly ask Lucas before using Droid as a name for their phone because 'droid' is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. You would think the least amount of courtesy Google could do is not apply for a trademark out of respect of where they borrowed 'nexus one' from. And if Google's afraid that someone will just use that name to profit off of their device then they should just find another name instead of borrowing from a novel (deflating the argument of "they have no choice, they have to trademark everything they do"). I'm hoping that this is some Google executive not realizing that 'nexus one' is a reference to a Philip K. Dick android but now it looks more like them toeing the line of what they could use and then completely running off with it.

If they were just using the name, I'd consider this a nice homage or nod to the late great Philip K. Dick. But since they're applying for a trademark it's just a dick move.

The next 1 gigawatt nuclear plant built in the west will cost 5-10 Billion dollars. Look at Finland's effort: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/business/energy-environment/29nuke.html three years or more behind schedule and easily 50% over budget. The economics and short work schedules are what make renewables more attractive than these hulking plants designed with the 1960s mindset. Smaller plants have much lower impact if they go down, and can usually get back online faster than a large coal plant (1 day) or a nuke (1-4 weeks). I used to like nukes, being a technocrat, but the economics don't work out. They actually never worked out. Over the history of the grid, total capital expenditures have been roughly equally divided between generation (power plants), transmission (high voltage, long distance lines) and distribution (the lower voltage lines on wood poles bespoiling your suburb). In fact, transmission was 10-20% more than the other two, which tells you the problem with giant wind farms in the Dakotas. The exception to this was the 1970s, when our current fleet of nukes was built, and generation took up almost 50% of that CapEx pie. So be happy that your utilities are encouraging everyone to save energy rather than build new plants, because we need end use efficiency to get us more cold beers and hot showers for less energy, before we need more power plants, nukes included.

I call bullshit. If environmental activists...

There isn't any "if" involved here. Feinstein is sprinkling "national monuments" all over the Mojave to prevent solar projects.

link
link

No development of any kind, anywhere, under any circumstances, ever.

EnviroMission has been failing in Australia for at least half a decade. They aren't going to get anywhere in the US.

Not really. Most companies freely brag about their unreleased products in order to gain hype. Apple has everybody else brag about their products to gain hype.

Exactly, a perfect example can be found here. Look how the article says "Microsoft and H.P. to Reveal Slate PC Ahead of Apple", and then proceeds with "The slate will be made by Hewlett-Packard and possibly available by mid-year, these people said."

Possibly available by mid-year. Right. It's the typical Microsoft strategy of announcing a product before the competitor, hoping that this will deter people from buying the competitors product. At least when Apple announces anything, you know you can order it from the Apple store the next day.

In the case of today, I would guess:

the competitor is Microsoft

and

the partners are Verizon (more) and TV networks (for content)

Why are you linking to this "article"? It contains no information, only the Obama-bashing expected from your American right-wingers and unsupported hypotheses.

If you care about facts, you can find them, a few seconds of searching revealed this for instance.

Quote:

Contrary to its portrayal in some movies, Interpol has no police force that conducts investigations and makes arrests. Rather, it serves its 188 member countries by working as a clearinghouse for police departments in different nations to share law enforcement information — like files on wanted criminals and terrorists, stolen cars and passports, and notices that a law enforcement agency has issued an arrest warrant for a fugitive.

...

“We don’t send officers into the field to arrest people; we don’t have agents that go investigate crimes,” said Rachel Billington, an Interpol spokeswoman. “This is always done by the national police in the member country under their national laws.”

When public international organizations are operating on United States soil, a law allows the president to grant them certain rights and immunities, just as foreign embassies receive privileges. More than 70 organizations — including the International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Bank and the International Pacific Halibut Commission — receive those rights.

...
But Mr. Reagan’s order did not include other standard privileges — like immunity from certain tax requirements and from having its property or records subject to search and seizure — because at the time, Interpol had no permanent office or employees on United States soil.

That changed in 2004, when Interpol opened a liaison office at the United Nations in New York City.

...
The State Department recommended approving the request, but the Bush White House did not complete the matter before its term ended, and so it rolled over.

In other words there appears to be nothing to get worked up about. Even if you believe whatever republicans do is right. Because they would have done the same.

You Americans are crazy.

you better watch out we'll invade your country next!
We are Amerika We are Right We Are Alpha and Omega.
WE are sheep we are slaves we are ignorant we are impotent we are nothing...we are the terrorist

“Consumers shouldn’t have to know what’s inside,” he said. “They should just know it will play.” What applies to entertainment for the drooling masses also applies to security for the drooling masses.

Well - sounds better than the magic wand the Iraqis are using.

Even so - the millimeter wave approach would probably identify any wiring or fuses that are secondary to the explosives in the crotch. In the end though, the only real solution is full body X-ray scans.

Maybe they can offer the option to send the scan to your Doctor's office if requested. Probably catch all sorts of undiagnosed medical problems for every person who gets on a plane. You're probably going to get a similar dose on a high altitude flight anyway...

The idea of having a huge database of full body x-ray scans could be a medical researchers dream. I'd start with making a visual recognition system for tumours, pneumonia, spinal issues - the results could be pretty awesome.

X-ray densities just need to be kept really low, and with modern digital detectors, it's likely to be easily achieved.

I feel fairly confident that if I buy a book from them, I can access it in the future.

Don't be too sure about that. In a supremely ironic move, Amazon recently deleted Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindles even though the books had been legally purchased. It's as if Amazon walked into your house and took books from your shelves, leaving a few bucks in their place. Being backed by a huge retailer makes me less confident that I'll be able t read the ebooks I purchase in the future.

Thanks to the public outcry, they then apologized, gave them back, and promised never to do so again.

I feel fairly confident that if I buy a book from them, I can access it in the future.

Don't be too sure about that. In a supremely ironic move, Amazon recently deleted Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindles even though the books had been legally purchased. It's as if Amazon walked into your house and took books from your shelves, leaving a few bucks in their place. Being backed by a huge retailer makes me less confident that I'll be able t read the ebooks I purchase in the future.

Maybe not the first two, but you can't underestimate the last one. Even mainstream news organizations like the New York Times complain about the poor quality of AT&T's network.

i.e. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/technology/companies/03att.html

Why are you linking to this "article"? It contains no information, only the Obama-bashing expected from your American right-wingers and unsupported hypotheses.

If you care about facts, you can find them, a few seconds of searching revealed this for instance.

Quote:

Contrary to its portrayal in some movies, Interpol has no police force that conducts investigations and makes arrests. Rather, it serves its 188 member countries by working as a clearinghouse for police departments in different nations to share law enforcement information — like files on wanted criminals and terrorists, stolen cars and passports, and notices that a law enforcement agency has issued an arrest warrant for a fugitive.

...

“We don’t send officers into the field to arrest people; we don’t have agents that go investigate crimes,” said Rachel Billington, an Interpol spokeswoman. “This is always done by the national police in the member country under their national laws.”

When public international organizations are operating on United States soil, a law allows the president to grant them certain rights and immunities, just as foreign embassies receive privileges. More than 70 organizations — including the International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Bank and the International Pacific Halibut Commission — receive those rights.

...
But Mr. Reagan’s order did not include other standard privileges — like immunity from certain tax requirements and from having its property or records subject to search and seizure — because at the time, Interpol had no permanent office or employees on United States soil.

That changed in 2004, when Interpol opened a liaison office at the United Nations in New York City.

...
The State Department recommended approving the request, but the Bush White House did not complete the matter before its term ended, and so it rolled over.

In other words there appears to be nothing to get worked up about. Even if you believe whatever republicans do is right. Because they would have done the same.

You Americans are crazy.

WTF, I don't know what happened to it but I had included a NY Times URL.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/business/smallbusiness/19edge.html?8dpc

> white elephants are something the US already has plenty of.

The Empire state building was not called Empty State Building for nothing: it has had a spotty history, financially speaking.

On the other hands, who would want to do without it? Sometimes economically unsound investments
have a bright future (think railroads). Here's to hoping the Burj Dubai will have a great future after
the debt has been written off.

Right, but then please stop spreading the myth that "dirt is never helpful" -- just a few references for your benefit:

Dirt can be good for children, say scientists

Babies Know: A Little Dirt Is Good for You

Health and happiness is all down to a roll in the dirt

These are news articles, I know, but they do quote actual researchers!

I don't know why I bother reading the comments.

Maybe it's the favorable ranking Slashdot has in my Firefox awesome bar. Maybe it's the arbitrary and Skinnereque reinforcement that comes from being modded up. Perhaps it's just a bad habit. Regardless, arguing here is like wrestling a fifth grader. Between the ultra-individual libertarian ideologues and the clueless teenagers (never mind the considerable overlap), it's hard to find anything challenging.

As another poster mentioned a few weeks ago, Slashdot has become a site for "computer janitors" --- i.e, the bored and easily amused who have no real ideas, power, or authority. The comments section has become a showcase for naivety. Oh, there's sound and funny and fury, but there's no creativity, even among the trolls: does anyone remember OOG_THE_CAVEMAN? Now we're left with copypasta that aims to offend in the most superficial way.

Frankly, reading Slashdot has become an embarrassment. I mention it with the same tone and trepidation I might use to admit I'd purchased a Big and Rich album. Remember when we used to talk about technology? Now we mainly argue about people talking about technology.

If I want interesting stories, fair and timely news, or probing analysis, I know where to find it. Still, there's nothing that can replace the Slashdot of yore.

That isn't exactly what's going on. What they did was move some of their business out of Ireland to The Netherlands because of the lower tax rate on royalties. It's tax avoidance (legal), not tax evasion (illegal).

Actually, it wasn't so much a lower rate they were looking for as the fact that Ireland decided to cap the tax-free portion of royalties at $250000 euros. How any starving artist, such as Bono, is supposed to survive on a mere $250000 euros tax-free, rather than all of their hard-earned cash, is hard to understand. As we all know, it is only really after the first quarter million euros that artists are truly motivated to be creative.

In Zimbabwe since 2002 they've been engaging in an innovative agriculture program: seizing farms owned by white farmers and turning them over to military lackeys who know nothing about agriculture. Surprisingly, yields are down.

Zimbabwe was once a major food exporter to southern Africa. Now they can't even feed themselves.

So yeah, the sad part is that lot of farmers that could have feed their communities are pushed out of business by thugs who then don't know what to do with the land.

I am the only one who was imediately reminded of the Jenny Holzer truism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
...should be a good start as evidence that idiots have gotten themselves elected by idiots and forced their religion into school science curricula. Fortunately, in this case the courts, and eventually an election where more enlightened voters than idiots turned out, turned this around, but the battle continues. Here in Texas, the battle continues...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/24/education/24texas.html
That's right. Until early this year, there was a state law that requiredthat creationism (and yes, "intelligent design" is indeed just another term for this or that religion's version of how things came to be the way they are) be taught in our public schools. Don McLeroy, http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=3713 , has made it quite plain that he believes in the Biblical version of creation and that it should be given equal time in schools. Don is free to believe any idiotic "theory" that he wants, but to advocate pushing into public schools? Well, it's no wonder that we are losing ground when it comes to the teaching of science. Our priorities are seriously fucked up. That someone with such an agenda is allowed to waste the public's time and money with such distractions from the real business of education is a disgrace.

How can you say these things with a clear conscience? You're either misinformed or attempting to pull off one helluva a bald faced lie!

"Last I checked Iranians weren't training terrorists."

http://www.iranfocus.com/en/terrorism/exclusive-terrorist-training-camps-in-iran-05956.html - London, Feb. 27 – Iran Focus has obtained a list of 20 terrorist camps and centres run by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

"And it is well known that Iran has actually not supported Hezbollah, contrary to popular American rhetoric."

Oh really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah_of_Iran - "The Hezbollah, or Party of God, (also HizbAllah or Hizbullah) is an Iranian movement formed at the time of the Iranian Revolution to assist the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his forces in consolidating power."

Or

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/world/africa/18iht-iran.2232363.html - "On Tuesday, Iran's rhetorical threats against Israel and its unswerving embrace of Hezbollah continued."

I'm trying to not be offensive but your viewpoint has left me incredulous! How do you say the things you do, which are in direct contradiction to well known and cited information, WITHOUT CITATION and then get modded to +5 insightful?

Help me out here.

Really? It's because when most people see an article in a newspaper talking about the intricacies of copyright, their eyes glaze over in boredom. Some newspapers do cover copyright issues. News outlets mainly give people information on topics they are interested in. Similarly, I doubt you keep up with the latest developments in choral music.

Really? It's because when most people see an article in a newspaper talking about the intricacies of copyright, their eyes glaze over in boredom. Some newspapers do cover copyright issues. News outlets mainly give people information on topics they are interested in. Similarly, I doubt you keep up with the latest developments in choral music.

The problem with anecdotal evidence, is that people arguing the exact opposite point can pull out a dozen examples too. In this article John Derbyshire pulls out a dozen examples of why Obama is trying to kill science in the United States. It's not convincing to anyone who knows about National Lab Day, Educate to Innovate STEM initiative, Computer Science Week, data.gov, and the Policy Forum on Public Access to Federally Funded Research... but this is all anecdotal too, a better resource would be an overview of all the projects being funded by the stimulus package or trends in government funding of scientific research.

However, I do completely agree that Tyson is being unfair to the American government. In fact, this is the same guy who previously argued Republicans were doing a great job of funding American science. The real issue here, and the one we are dealing with most in computer science, is American Culture's antipathy and outright contempt for science and academia. Kids aren't going into Computer Science, Physics, Chemistry, etc, because they are afraid of being associated with "geeks." The kids all want to be gangsters, models, and sports stars... not realizing how unrealistic those dreams are and that only a miniscule percentage of people succeed in those arenas.

We need a culture change, we need to be proud geeks and make others envy us. It'll help us out in the long run.

Amazon reports that Kindle owners buy, on average, 3.1 times as many books on the site as other customers

Not to mention that we've already discussed how Amazon sold more e-books over Christmas than it did physical books. Piracy is killing the publishing industry like its killing the movie industry.

We don't ban McDonald's because some folks don't eat anything else and hurt themselves in doing so.

You don't ban McDonald's, because that would be discriminatory. You ban trans fats, or perhaps, sub-grade beef. You make it unprofitable to poison the citizenry for money.

Maybe so, but one thing:

Hrm..

It also listed people who would be exempted from these screening procedures such as heads of state and their families.

Now the bad guys know is all they have to do is get a family member of a "head of state" (whatever that means), to defect to their cause, or impersonate such a person successfully. :(

What the heck is the security justification for heads of state, or their families to be exempt?

Their luggage (or the item a bad guy secretly planted in their luggage at some point to get it past security) can be just as much a security risk as anyone else's luggage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/opinion/01dutton.html So all of you must be wrong.