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But why write an April Fool's joke in February?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/opinion/02SAFI.html

If that's the principal objection, these people have bigger problems on their hands. Fertility clinics create and discard enormous numbers of embryos every year; even if everyone was screening for a particular Mendelian trait would, at worst, increase the number of discard embryos by a factor of four. And that assumes parents are selecting traits they themselves do not have (e.g. they both have a recessive gene that they want expressed in their child).

Stronger objections include the societal ramifications of this sort of selection: If blonds succeed more in life, then we are limiting a factor of success to those with:

1. The necessary genes (non-Caucasians need not apply)
2. The money to have the selection done

Sex selection is worse; in cultures that prize a particular gender, the ratios get out of whack (see China). And no, it's not just the one child policy fueling this practice.

There is also the icky eugenics factor. It's not entirely rational, but we went through a period where "scientists" claimed to find a basis for every positive characteristic in eye color, hair color, skin color, etc. While this is not necessarily the same, there's an instinctive "ick" factor associated with choosing "better" genes like that.

and is unfortunately still prevalent in india, china, and korea, and immigrant communities from india, china, and korea

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/nyregion/15babies.html

they should outlaw sex selection. an absolutely disgusting practice

Northern Wisconsin is about as redneck and white as it gets. What you described is exactly what happened.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/president/33703659.html

http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/states/president/wisconsin.html

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/06/14/magazine/20090614-search-slideshow_6.html

In the case of the one I designed it was a huge red slam button labeled "Master Shutdown" and was under a flip cover.

In other worse, nuclear power is still the best solution until we can significantly improve the efficiency of generating solar power and wind power.

The word "best" is not solely defined by price. When you buy a new car, do you always get the cheapest pile of shit you can get your hands on? Or do you look for something with a certain range, speed, capacity, and maintainability, in addition to it being in your budget?

We should also address the major reason for the growing demand for energy. That reason is overpopulation. However, no American politician has the guts to touch that topic. It is too closely tied to illegal immigration. When a faction in the Sierra Club tried to address that issue, the members of that faction were accused of being "racist".

Sending all the immigrants back just moves the problem of energy generation to another place in the world - but it will still be there, and the ecosystem is a global one.

Of course, americans use more energy per head of the population than everybody else. Scaling that back a little would be trivial, and wouldn't have any impact on your quality of life.

1. solar power: more than 20 cents/kwh, 10 to 14 cents/kwh

2. wind power: 5 to 7 cents/kwh, 3 to 6 cents/kwh

3. nuclear power: more than 3 cents/kwh, more than 3 cents/kwh

Here, "wind power" refers to wind turbines on land. A wind turbine at sea would surely cost more than a land-based one.

In other worse, nuclear power is still the best solution until we can significantly improve the efficiency of generating solar power and wind power.

We should also address the major reason for the growing demand for energy. That reason is overpopulation. However, no American politician has the guts to touch that topic. It is too closely tied to illegal immigration. When a faction in the Sierra Club tried to address that issue, the members of that faction were accused of being "racist".

I've read it in a couple of places... usually listed as a "disadvantage" like in this article:

Another issue is that current LEDs generally provide only âoedirectional lightâ rather than a 360-degree glow, meaning they are better suited to downward facing streetlights and ceiling lights than to many lamp-type settings.

Sorry about the NY Times links... just paste the url into google and then click on the search results to bypass the login.

A look at this website will show you what this company is doing regarding the New York City streetlights. Included on that site is a cool ray-tracing photo (the third one) which really shows how targeted the light is.

And, of course, you can google for the LED manufacturers who tout the light pollution aspect - like these guys.

No one should be above the law, ESPECIALLY not the government. If it's a crime for ME to have drugs in my possession and offer to sell them to someone, it should be a crime for the POLICE to do so.

Take it a step further and replace drugs w/ promise of weapons from an al Qaeda "informant" and next thing you know you've got some 2-bit street thugs convicted(3rd time's a charm) of international terrorism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_City_7

If that doesn't Shock & Awe the people, what will? Civillian checkpoints inside the borders?
http://arizona.typepad.com/blog/2007/11/why-interior-bo.html

How about strip-searching at the airport?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/24/us/24scan.html

just not particularly lethal

in 1918, the same thing happened: the flu appeared in the spring, outside its usual pattern of appearing in the fall, and then percolated all summer, just below the radar, expanding stealthily but inevitable everywhere

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol12no01/05-0979.htm

then (in the northern hemisphere, it would explode in the cold months of the spring in the southern hemisphere) the flu exploded in the fall, and killed millions that winter. this is inevitable with flu because the flu virus actually survives in cold air for a longer period of time

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/health/05flu.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=login

so the summer months deaden its spread (really, just slow down its spread) so that it spreads stealthily but inevitably, while the winter months allow it to flourish and explode, seemingly everywhere at the same time (because the summer months allowed to actually go everywhere, just in small little clusters everywhere)

its also important to note that flu in 1918 killed at a very low rate, like under 1% of its victims. whatever strain dominates this winter, will be the real issue. will it have a 0.0003% mortality rate? or a 0.3% mortality rate? we're talking about the difference of tens of millions of lives in that difference, and no one knows what that mortality rate will be, since its such tiny little variations and random chance of one mutation dominating or another at work here

so beware false alarmism, and beware false complacency. this virus is a genuine unknown quantity. it really could kill a lot this winter, it could really completely fizzle out. both anyone freaking out, or completely blase and lackadaisacal about the whole thing, are fooling themselves

an unknown is an unknown is an unknown. neither false complacency or false alarmism is an appropriate response to that

> Take a look at any housing bubble chart you'd like. When did the spike
> start? About the same time the deregulation fantasy took effect

O I C! And how does that explain this:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/06/05/business/0606-biz-webCHARTS.gif

Erm, I just noticed my link is wrong. Here is the right one.

The hot fusion guys get untold $$ BILLIONS to fail. Here's an article from 1989:

The Government has spent many billions of dollars over more than a third of a century in a thus-far fruitless attempt to tame hot fusion, a process that proponents see as a source of safe, cheap and nearly inexhaustible power.

But experts say the effort, which is now nearing its goal of igniting self-sustaining fusion reactions, has recently been hurt by excessive secrecy and large financial cutbacks. As a result, they say, rivals in Japan and Europe are forging ahead and taking the lead in some areas.

-U.S. Losing Ground in Worldwide Race for 'hot' Fusion

The cold fusion guys get the scraps that are left over, and they make progress anyways. There was a Japanese researcher who held a demonstration in May 2008 of his Cold Fusion setup.

If $1 Billion was budgeted and scientists realized that "there are no questions that this is possible anymore", we'd have prototype reactors within a year.

Remember, Obamas laughable speech a few days ago?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/us/politics/10obama.html

Is this the US GOVT. response? Please Obama, stop making yourself look like a fool.

Yes, it's remarkable that the US is pursuing this weird, illegal vendetta against international online gambling when recent legal decisions have conclusively proved that its actions are unsupportted by anything approximating a legal right. The NY Times apparently knew this back in 2004, but it has apparently forgot by now.

The WTO's decision regarding the inability of the US, or its constituent States, to prohibit international commerce in the culturally protected arenas of sport and gambling is clear and, for a massive bureaucracy, surprisingly understandable. I think we can expect a lot more legal cases against the US by countries with offshore gambling economies. The WTO withheld awarding Antigua and Barbuda virtually unlimited license to duplicate any or all intellectual property copyrighted within the US. That could have cost billions, and really pissed off Microsoft. In a followup case, given persistent recidivism by the defendant (the US), a larger award might be more possible.

The United States was not able to invoke successfully the GATS exceptions provisions. In this regard, the United States was not able to demonstrate that the Wire Act, the Travel Act and the Illegal Gambling Business Act are âoenecessaryâ under Articles XIV(a) and XIV(c) of the GATS (i.e. âoeexceptionsâ provisions, including for public morals) and are consistent with the requirements of the chapeau of Article XIV of the GATS; ...
On 7 April 2005, the report of the Appellate Body was circulated. The Appellate Body: ...
upheld the Panelâ(TM)s finding, albeit for different reasons, that the United Statesâ(TM) Schedule includes a commitment to grant full market access in gambling and betting services.

It's not like they are hunting the person down in order to physically assault them...

...yet.

And how long until they go after an innocent person?

it is not a good thing.

I'm sure Grace Wang would agree with you.

Thank you for posting this. This is a perfect example of how Chinese groupthink works.

I don't have a link, but I remember reading an article where an angry ex-wife put some false allegations about her ex-husband online (this was also in China) and the guy ended up being constantly harassed until the government stepped in and protected him and put the ex-wife in jail for lying. I've heard of similar stories happening with "online justice" in South Korea where people just believe whatever horrible thing someone says online about another person.

What really bothers me about China is that many young people there seem to have this patriotic fervor that's based in nothing more than believing what the government tells them. I would be shocked if someone asked Chinese students why they are so angry about Taiwanese independence or Tibetan independence (or even autonomy) and that had anything to say beyond "They are now and always have been part of China". I've been to Taiwan and except for a few crazy pro-independence nut jobs, most people there just want to be left alone by China and nothing more than that. They don't wish any ill on China, they just want to be left alone. It seems to me that the Chinese government actually likes to encourage this irrational "Everything we say and do is right" attitude. It makes the population easier to control when they are incapable of independent thought.

Finally I read the original article and I found some aspects troubling. First of all, some people figured out where the kitten killing in China occurred by recognizing things in the video. No problem them. But then it says that someone recognized the shoes the girl wore and knew they were ordered online. OK, maybe these shoes are only available online and someone knew that. Fine. But then it says that they figured out who ordered them and went after her. Hmm... serious lack of privacy here. So it's not the government asking the business to see who did this but just an angry mob and the company apparently gave them the info. What? Was there only one woman who ordered the shoes? So how on earth from this paltry information did they figure out who did it? I don't know. It sounds kind of fishy to me but if true, I guess it says a lot about China that all you have to do is get an angry mob and businesses will give out all your personal info to them.

I'm sure Grace Wang would agree with you.

In brief, Grace Wang was an international student at Duke and dared to try an initiate a discussion between the pro-Tibet and pro-Chinese sides of a protest. After being attacked on forums such as mitbbs.com "Online Vigilantes" decided to bring these attacks to the real world by posting her personal information (her student visa application) and providing maps to her parents' house (which was defaced, causing her parents to go into hiding).

Defending kittens are one thing, but as with "think of the children", it rarely stops there.

I live in the city and don't drive.

I'm in the same boat. My daughter gets a kick out of seeing stars when we visit our parents. Maybe things like the new LED lights will help, but I wouldn't bank on it.

it's all electronic control, rather than hydraulic/ pneumatic controls. meaning its more simple, but it's also more rigid: if your computer goes, so goes your aircraft. yeah, they use triple redundant systems, but how many electric surges do you need to take out 3 computer systems in an aluminum tube?

learned from this interesting comment:

http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/06/02/world/europe/02plane.html?s=3

I always had concerns about Airbus design of their aircraft. They use fly by wire technology. They have 3 redundant computer systems to control the airplane including flight controls. It is nice on paper and very efficient, except a systemic failure like getting hit by lightning fries all the computers.

Boeing still uses a combination of mechanical and hydraulics. Take a little more weight and not as efficient... but much more reliable. It goes back to the tradition from WWII with the B-17 Bombers. It would take something like 25 direct hits on the average of 20 mm cannon from German fighters to bring one down. The Germans had to go to the MK-108 30 mm cannon and then it would need 4 direct hits on the average.

Also there is too much use of composites in the Airbus planes... I am not sure they can stand abnormal stresses as well as metal alloys traditionally used.

Too many Airbus aircraft have fallen and the EU has been protective. The FAA needs to investigate these issues instead of just giving them a pass.
-- Buba2000, USA

  Recommend Recommended by 277 Readers

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/washington/24gaza.html.

(or, if you don't trust/like NYT - google "900 million" and pick any of the suggestions.)

Clearly shows where Obama's priorities lie.
Our economy is in the shitter.
100-year-old corporations are shutting down.
Educational system is utterly fucked-up (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/26/174212)
...
{too many examples}
...
And now NASA's budget is getting cut.
Meanwhile, Hillary and Obama want to give the better part of a trillion bucks to a "nation" with a proven track record of terrorism.

Yeah, change we can believe in.

(O/b/ligatory SFX: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU- )

I keep seeing people posting about how much more advanced than us a species would have to be to reach earth. I simply don't see why thats true. To my knowledge we have at least general knowledge of every major technology we would need to travel between stars, and thats with NASA never having had a budget over about $34B 2007 dollars, and currently closer to half of that. If we spent less time and money on killing each other and bailing each other out, and maybe cared about something other than our own social problems, there's no reason we couldn't have people on other planets as we speak.

Consider this:
For about $135B 2005 dollars we effectively went from flying propeller planes to repeatedly placing men on the moon.
Since 2001 we have spent about $865B in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since Fall of 2008 we have committed about $12.2 Trillion Dollars to "Economic Recovery" plans


The barrier between us and the stars is not some insurmountable technology one, its a matter of money and willpower. The only hope I see is that private interests (including SpaceX and other companies) will pursue these technologies (considering that hundreds of companies have higher revenue than NASA) otherwise I'm afraid we may never get off this miserable rock before we kill ourselves off. You wouldn't bet the uptime of a moderately important website on a single webserver, yet we continue to bet the survival of our species on a single rock floating in space.

Does "zzzz" get you sex?

Microsoft Spell Check Easter Eggs.

Why is it that corporations who want to keep the money they earned by selling products and services are evil and greedy, but the government wanting to take more and more of that money is perfectly fine?

The government is supposed to represent the will of the people. If the people are tired of seeing wealth disparity increase, tired of getting ripped off because there are no rules enforced, tired of bailing these companies out every time the free market fails - which is often, when there aren't any rules - then companies have a choice: pitch in or leave. I personally have no problem seeing any company leave - as long as their US operations are formally closed, the remnants put under federal control and auctioned off to real entrepreneurs who want to give Americans jobs instead of giving themselves raises. The government is not threatening corporations with anything but actual work, and less dazzling profits. And true to form, they threaten to leave. I say fuck'em. I believe in a free market and competition. They are afraid of both.

What makes government more entitled to that money than the person or entity that earned it? You can hate and bash MS or any company for thinking of offshoring jobs to save money, but what about rethinking our punitive tax policy?

If you really want an interesting point of view, look at what corporations say about the Fair Tax. I'm not personally sure it would work, but the reason there is no "political" support for it is because they would be forced to pay more taxes than they are now. Look at what Warren Buffet says about US tax policy, and how he personally pays a lower tax rate than his administrative assistant.

We are the market. This is our society. Personally, I consider the well-being of my fellow man far more important than having some pouty billionaires tell me they want to take their ball and go home.

...Bajillionaire Warren Buffett has argued that he isn't being asked to pay his share. He went around his office, asking people what share of their income they pay in income taxes. Buffett's 17.7 percent tax rate compared a bit too favorably with the 30 percent tax rate paid by his secretary.

So it appears that the tax system favors the super-rich over working stiffs.

And Buffett went a step further, putting his money where his mouth is. Last November he issued a challenge to his fellow billionaires:

"I'll bet a million dollars against any member of the Forbes 400 who challenges me that the average (federal tax rate including income and payroll taxes) for the Forbes 400 will be less than the average of their receptionists."

So far, no-one has taken him up on this bet.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/taxes-warren-buffett-and-paying-my-fair-share/

To be fair, the US labor market of Carnegie's day was on par with that of most other countries, his railroad empire was largely built on the back of indentured labor (a substantial portion of which had consisted of Chinese immigrants). He maintained a private army to hedge against an armed workforce uprising, which eventually happened -- and during which he retreated to the safety of his personal Scottish castle. Afterward said labor force was promptly replaced with a force entirely composed of desperate immigrants.

It is widely believed his later philanthropic activities were entirely motivated by his damaged reputation and desire to right a fortune built on questionable ethics and ruthless business practices. What do you buy someone who already has everything? Posterity.

You just have to lie.

And to generate a controversy on slashdot, you just have to lie in the article summary.

Look, I have no doubt that all kinds of universities do all kinds of crazy things to influence their rankings. But the summary gets a lot of stuff wrong.

For example, on the faculty salaries... Apparently, Clemson did two things. Firstly, they raised actual salaries, which would have a real and legitimate impact on their ability to recruit and retain outstanding faculty. Second, they corrected a previous under-reporting of compensation. US News bases its formula on total compensation (which combines salary and benefits), and apparently Clemson had been previously only reporting salary. (Here's the money quote: "Clarifying Clemson's approach after the panel for a reporter and an interested Robert Morse, director of data research for U.S. News's college rankings, Watt said that the university had added benefits to its faculty salary reporting to U.S. News after previously having failed to do so, as the magazine requires. So its jump came not from double counting or including information that it should not have, but from playing catchup." [source]

On class sizes, the way Clemson "manipulated" the data was by... um, actually changing their actual class sizes. They made their smaller classes smaller and let their bigger classes get bigger, because US News uses thresholds of 50 in evaluating class size. Sure that helps their numbers... but it's also not a bad thing from a pedagogical point of view. With a discussion-oriented seminar, reducing below 20 makes a real difference. And with a big lecture, 55 versus 100 is not that much of a difference. So they might have actually improved their delivery of education.

As for the fake applicants mentioned in the summary, I couldn't find that in any of the linked articles. But one of the articles said that Clemson tightened their actual admissions standards (i.e., required higher high school class ranks and SAT scores). That isn't manipulation, that's objectively becoming a more selective institution.

The dirtiest accusation is that in the peer rankings, Clemson deliberately gave low scores to close rivals. If that was really done intentionally (which Clemson denies), that is genuinely dirty, but not terribly shocking. And that kind of a pattern should have been easily detectable by US News, if they had bothered to look for it.

"Most people are not very susceptible to reason." -- Leonard Silk

Holy crap, I thought you were trolling. Well, it's offtopic but damn...

David Carradine Dies. No wonder "Wild West Tech" wasn't on History Channel last Sunday morning.

Damn. They didn't mention Long Riders, a historically accurate portrayal of the James Gang, with the Carridine brothers playing the Youngers and the Keaches playing the James. That's one of my favorite westerns.

In other offtopic obituary news, blues great Koko Taylor has died also. Sad day for blues fans.

The report details the locations of hundreds of nuclear sites and activities. Each page is marked across the top âoeHighly Confidential Safeguards Sensitiveâ in capital letters, with the exception of pages that detailed additional information like site maps. In his transmittal letter, Mr. Obama said the cautionary language was a classification category of the International Atomic Energy Agencyâ(TM)s inspectors. U.S. Accidentally Releases List of Nuclear Sites

As much as I like to ding the Obama administration, the truth is just because the IAEA thinks something is confidential doesn't mean the USG should think the same. Security through obscurity isn't security and all the info is available through other public channels, so I don't see it as a big deal. We invaded Iraq because they made it difficult for the IAEA weapon inspectors, now with the current situation in Iran and N. Korea this accidental on purpose release is an example of leading by example.

I suspect that perhaps it was a computer-generated post.

Maybe written by someone in the same family as the guy who "wrote" 100,000 books (with a computer doing much of the work)

"In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

It's easy to mince people's words in order to prove a point.

It's much more difficult to actually listen to the whole thing and receive their message.

Full text: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/politics/15judge.text.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Nice non sequiter there. Of the "70% to 90%" who were picked up, almost all of them were cleared and released immediately. Those detentions have nothing at all to do with Gitmo.

The article you are replying to said: "...were sent home from Guantanamo in March 2004, 15 months after their capture, with letters saying they posed 'no threat' to American forces." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html?ei=5088&en=4579c146cb14cfd6&ex=1274241600&pagewanted=all "

Did you not actually read the article you're responding to????

Rantings, indeed.

To wit:

Are you aware of Sotomayor's dissent in which she defended the 1st amendment rights of a white NYPD employee when he was fired for having sent blatantly racist and anti-Semitic replies in response to charity requests he received in the mail?

That she ruled against the plaintiff in 80% of race discrimination cases?

That in her famous speech she also said stuff like:

I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.

There is always a danger embedded in relative morality, but since judging is a series of choices that we must make, that I am forced to make, I hope that I can make them by informing myself on the questions I must not avoid asking and continuously pondering.

The horror!

I am so sick of people taking one fragment of a speech or one ruling and rushing to judgment based on their own biases and agendas. Take a deep breath. Read Ricci. Read the Pappas dissent. Then let us know what you think.

Barbie said that "Math class is tough!" (often misquoted as "math is hard.")

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/21/business/company-news-mattel-says-it-erred-teen-talk-barbie-turns-silent-on-math.html

It's funny how these inaccurate stereotypes find their way into the stranges places.

"Coalition military intelligence officials estimated that 70% to 90% of prisoners detained in Iraq since the war began last year 'had been arrested by mistake,' according to a confidential Red Cross report given to the Bush administration earlier this year." http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0511-04.htm "In February, an American military official disclosed that the Afghan guerrilla commander whose men had arrested Mr. Dilawar and his passengers had himself been detained. The commander, Jan Baz Khan, was suspected of attacking Camp Salerno himself and then turning over innocent "suspects" to the Americans in a ploy to win their trust, the military official said. The three passengers in Mr. Dilawar's taxi were sent home from Guantánamo in March 2004, 15 months after their capture, with letters saying they posed 'no threat' to American forces." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html?ei=5088&en=4579c146cb14cfd6&ex=1274241600&pagewanted=all

Then improve efficiency by driving her and the neighbors' kids too. Take turns with the other parents.

Of course, this plan assumes we're not talking about a typical suburbanite who can't name his neighbors and never sees another soul from more than two houses away except at the yearly block party, assuming he bothers to show.

Tiananmen Square is very much ongoing for China. Zhao Ziyang - who was effectively the Chinese Gorbachev - was planning to liberalise Chinese society substantially. Students were demonstrating peacefully. A handful of hardliners used the army to crush the students, illegally deposed Zhao and have turned China into a vicious police state where old ladies get sent for reeducation camps for requesting permission to complain that developers have kicked them out of their houses. Before Tiananmen most people thought that China would liberalise just like Eastern Europe. After there was no chance of that. All the tensions with Taiwan and Japan greatly intensified following Tiananmen. It was a coup, plain and simple and a noticably fascist regime took over from a much more liberal one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/world/asia/15zhao-transcript.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1

Based on this, we can say that if a country wishes to modernize, not only should it implement a market economy, it must also adopt a parliamentary democracy as its political system. Otherwise, this nation will not be able to have a market economy that is healthy and modern, nor can it become a modern society with a rule of law. Instead it will run into the situations that have occurred in so many developing countries, including China: commercialization of power, rampant corruption, a society polarized between rich and poor.

Zhao Ziyang, RIP.

More to the point one year after Tiananmen similar demonstrations broke out in Taiwan, which was at that point a one party state and effectively a mirror image on China where the KMT was the ruling party instead of the CCP. President Lee Teng Hui met the students and agreed to their demands for free elections, which he proceeded to win until he run into newly reintroduced term limits. Now Taiwan is a vibrant democracy and China isn't.

If it hadn't been for Tiananmen I'm quite sure China would have gone the same way. I also think Lee Teng Hui and Zhao Ziyang would have been able to negotiate some sort of way for Taiwan and China to coexist. Reading Zhao's book, the similarities with LTH seem quite striking. I think they would have got on pretty well.

You should read his book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_the_State:_The_Secret_Journal_of_Premier_Zhao_Ziyang

I bought the English edition in Taiwan. I had to reserve a copy because it had sold out in both Chinese and English. I'm told the Chinese edition has sold out in Hong Kong. Inevitably it's been scanned as a pdf and is circulating on the internet inside China where equally inevitably it has been banned. A great injustice happened to the Chinese people at Tiananmen and has continued in the years since. While most people are scared to talk about it, it most certainly has not been forgotten.

I hope I dont get flamed for saying this, but... as a user of an unlocked Google G1. The iPhone does not win. If I am going to type an email, I pop out the keyboard. Sure I can use the virtual keyboard on the new 1.5 cupcake firmware, but it is so inefficient. Can you pull up a shell in the iPhone? Is the iPhone based on one of the most stable operating systems in the world (Linux)? Did Apple talk about releasing the CPU specs so that the components could be modded to improve usability see http://phandroid.com/2009/05/08/g1-specs-leak-could-mean-developer-hacking-heaven/ ? Does apple have multiple phones available see: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/google-expect-18-android-phones-by-years-end/ ? Sure, multiple manufactures are going to put android on their phones, but does Apple let people do is? Does Apple...? Does Apple...? Well, now you know I am an Android fanboy :) But seriously, The iPhone does not stack up against the Android platform. How does Apple expect programmers to take advantage of all the hardware if the operating system on the phone is not based off something that is opensource?

Next, they'll say Betty Crocker isn't real, either.

As the name "horseless carriage" suggests, technological evolution is as much - or more - about subtracting things from society as about adding them. The Popular Science view of a jetpack in every garage and a submarine in every bathtub also neglects the layers of infrastructure needed to make a new paradigm work.

Combine these two and you must face dark economic wizards like Malthus, and evil powers like the Tragedy of the Commons. James Bond (or rather, Q) can employ a single jetpack. But a Robert Moses is needed to bring us all to the promised land of some new visionary technology (casually crushing the South Bronx along the way, of course).

I don't buy it. Conventional wisdom among who? Almost no one I know - and that's quite a few people - subscribes to the idea that the US government -- at any level -- should repress speech and opinion. My impression is that is just propaganda we hear from the government itself. Who do you consider "conventional"? Old USSR expatriates? Saudi Shaikhs? Colonel Gaddafi? Sonia herself? Seriously, who can you point to that supports the government should suppress free speech and opinion position such that you characterize it as "conventional"?

Umm, how about every Justice currently sitting on the Supreme Court? We're talking "conventional" in the sense of the mainstream of American jurisprudential opinion, not "saudi shaikhs." And I don't disagree with your view of the first amendment but you're not going to get that kind of radical view from anyone coming out of the Obama administration.

Are you suggesting I just say "well, she's only confused on about half the amendments and the commerce clause, so, "Hurray Obama"?

No, because that would be idiotic - she's not "confused" about ANY of the amendments; she just has a different view than you do of how best to interpret them. And her view is a lot closer to the political and juridical mainstream in this country than yours, sorry to say.

The fact that it isn't just the first amendment she screws up on. She screws up on the commerce clause; she screws up on the 2nd amendment (and badly, and even according to the most recent SCOTUS ruling); she screws up on the 4th amendment; she screws up on the 5th amendment.

No; she interprets these laws differently than you do. That's not a bad thing, especially since she has consistently shown she is open to persuasion given the facts of the instant case rather than ideologically driven. You want to see someone "screw up" the 4th amendment for example, look at General Hayden -- he clearly screwed up the fourth amendment. But Sotomayor clearly understands what it says; she just applies it in a different manner than you might.

That is why she's a constitutional nightmare. Add to that the fact that she thinks she's a "wise latina" (oh, brother) and that her POV is inherently better than that of a "white male."

Talk about screwing things up -- you're just repeating right wing talking points here and they're not even close to true. Read the full speech in context.

Not sure about the Washington Post, but the NY Times is listening: they made an Adobe AIR app called the TimesReader which has the articles well formatted without ads which is available to print subscribers at no extra charge or for $14.95/month. The price is a bit higher than you are discussing, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.

Right, because law is word so well that there is no ambiguity or variation and there is absolutely no interpretation done. Heck we might as well hire monkeys who can type into a computer to pull up the exact law that decides each case every time. No need for anyone with any experience or anything.

At least read the surrounding text where the quote was taken. If then you still feel she's biased beyond credibility so be it, but don't take the media's word for it. Of course they wouldn't blow it up to sell papers or ads... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/politics/15judge.text.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print

We're all biased by our experiences, it's called the human condition. The Supreme Court handles cases where justice cannot be objectively determined.

For example is gun ownership a good thing for society or a bad thing for society? Abortion? Gay marriage? Torturing terrorists?

Is the constitution a flexible, living document into which we can read much or is it literal, limited only to the context in which its authors lived?

Intelligent people differ on the answer to all these questions (and many more). Not because they haven't had all the facts, but because their life experiences bias them to one side of each issue or another.

Usually I think David Brooks is an asshat, but today's opinion piece in the NY Times is pretty insightful on this subject.

More specifically, here is the relevant section:

That same point can be made with respect to people of color. No one person, judge or nominee will speak in a female or people of color voice. I need not remind you that Justice Clarence Thomas represents a part but not the whole of African-American thought on many subjects. Yet, because I accept the proposition that, as Judge Resnik describes it, "to judge is an exercise of power" and because as, another former law school classmate, Professor Martha Minnow of Harvard Law School, states "there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives - no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging," I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that--it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. Not all women or people of color, in all or some circumstances or indeed in any particular case or circumstance but enough people of color in enough cases, will make a difference in the process of judging. The Minnesota Supreme Court has given an example of this. As reported by Judge Patricia Wald formerly of the D.C. Circuit Court, three women on the Minnesota Court with two men dissenting agreed to grant a protective order against a father's visitation rights when the father abused his child. The Judicature Journal has at least two excellent studies on how women on the courts of appeal and state supreme courts have tended to vote more often than their male counterpart to uphold women's claims in sex discrimination cases and criminal defendants' claims in search and seizure cases. As recognized by legal scholars, whatever the reason, not one woman or person of color in any one position but as a group we will have an effect on the development of the law and on judging.

In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Specifically, she is talking about female/minority judges bringing an additional context to a decision, informed by their life experiences, that a (rich/white/male/privileged) person's life experience would necessarily preclude them from having. Which I don't think is a racist point; her early life's biography is significantly different than the rest of t

This post (Q's 7 & 8) I think explains why Hulu has been forced to block media center apps: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/your-hulu-questions-answered/ To be fair, Hulu needs to satisfy the desires of their content-providing overlords, and whether or not the people at Hulu agree with blocking media centers, they need to at least make it appear they are making a good-faith effort to do so (it does seem that every block they've thrown up has been easily worked-around). That said, I suspect the thinking is the full-screen app isn't going to be used by technically sophisticated users who are capable of setting up and running one of the Hulu-supporting media centers, and therefore anyone who is using the full-screen app isn't going to be the type that has their PC hooked up to their TV.

According to the Hulu CEO, the issue is the cable channels. They get a large chunk of their funding from cable subscriptions, and they feel very threatened by any project that attempts to replace the cable box in your living room.

Hulu would much rather have shows like Battlestar Galactica and the users it draws than have the handful of hobbyists who currently have a Boxee or XBMC setup. Of course they'd rather have both, but this is similar to the games Apple has to play with RIAA, etc.

Officials at the German Embassy in Washington said today that they had not heard of the asylum decision and would have no reaction until it was confirmed.

The claims made were of course completely bogus.

Secondly, he didn't just walk up to them, open his trench coat and say "Pssst, wanna buy some C4 and a Stinger?" They were looking for stuff, so the FBI put forward a supplier.

Actually, the informant, Shahed Hussain, did go around saying things like that, in this case and another one, and federal agents have set up other people like that.

Hussain was a Pakistani immigrant who went undercover for the feds seven years ago to avoid deportation after being convicted of fraud. He was going around to mosques offering people money. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/nyregion/23informant.html And by being a government informant, (1) Hussain was getting paid a lot of money (hundreds of thousands of dollars, as I recall) (2) He got out of prosecution and possibly prison for his own crimes (3) Instead of being deported, he was allowed to stay in the country, which for a lot of immigrants is most important of all.

Hussain was responsible for a conviction in another case http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/nyregion/11plot.html in which he entrapped two men who never had anything to do with terrorism before, and who never could have gotten such weapons before, by loaning them $50,000.

One of the plotters in the current case needed money because his brother was sick. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/05/25/2009-05-25_terror_plotter_did_it_for_me_brother.html

Finally, if an FBI agent *had* walked up and said "Pssst, wanna buy some C4 and a Stinger?" and they said yes, then got busted, that'd stand up in court. Offering an illegal item for sale is not legal entrapment.

Well, depending on the circumstances it can be entrapment. If the person had no predisposition to commit a crime, and the FBI agent entices him by using an unreasonable amount of pressure, such as offering a huge amount of money, it can be entrapment. It's a jury question.

Cf. John Delorean's coke bust.

DeLorean was acquitted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_De_Lorean That's a good example of entrapment, because DeLorean was offered an unreasonable amount of money, in desperate circumstances, to do something he would not otherwise do.

Or anybody who gets busted for soliciting prostitution when the prostitute turns out to be a police officer.

If someone solicits a prostitute, that would show predisposition to commit a crime.

In contrast, a person who has never committed an act of terrorism, and has nothing to do with terrorists, who is enticed to take a large amount of money and then informed that it is for terrorist purposes, is entrapped, under the law.

Unfortunately, it's easy to manipulate juries with prejudicial issues, such as the defendant's race and religion. Right now, many jurors will be prejudiced against Muslim Arabs, and it's relatively easy for a prosecutor to get a conviction against them by using scare tactics.

A good example was Hemant Lakhani, whose case was the subject of a good program on This American LIfe. http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1088 One of the jurors agreed that he was entrapped, but she felt pressured by the other jurors to go along. Most people who listen to that broadcast would come to the same conclusion. But Lakhani is in jail for the rest of his life.

Next time around, the time will come for them to be prejudiced against another ethnic group or religion.

What was your race and religion again?

Enough with your "facts", you godless commie bastard! Anyone can prove anything they want when supported by the "facts".

Secondly, he didn't just walk up to them, open his trench coat and say "Pssst, wanna buy some C4 and a Stinger?" They were looking for stuff, so the FBI put forward a supplier.

Actually, the informant, Shahed Hussain, did go around saying things like that, in this case and another one, and federal agents have set up other people like that.

Hussain was a Pakistani immigrant who went undercover for the feds seven years ago to avoid deportation after being convicted of fraud. He was going around to mosques offering people money. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/nyregion/23informant.html And by being a government informant, (1) Hussain was getting paid a lot of money (hundreds of thousands of dollars, as I recall) (2) He got out of prosecution and possibly prison for his own crimes (3) Instead of being deported, he was allowed to stay in the country, which for a lot of immigrants is most important of all.

Hussain was responsible for a conviction in another case http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/nyregion/11plot.html in which he entrapped two men who never had anything to do with terrorism before, and who never could have gotten such weapons before, by loaning them $50,000.

One of the plotters in the current case needed money because his brother was sick. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/05/25/2009-05-25_terror_plotter_did_it_for_me_brother.html

Finally, if an FBI agent *had* walked up and said "Pssst, wanna buy some C4 and a Stinger?" and they said yes, then got busted, that'd stand up in court. Offering an illegal item for sale is not legal entrapment.

Well, depending on the circumstances it can be entrapment. If the person had no predisposition to commit a crime, and the FBI agent entices him by using an unreasonable amount of pressure, such as offering a huge amount of money, it can be entrapment. It's a jury question.

Cf. John Delorean's coke bust.

DeLorean was acquitted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_De_Lorean That's a good example of entrapment, because DeLorean was offered an unreasonable amount of money, in desperate circumstances, to do something he would not otherwise do.

Or anybody who gets busted for soliciting prostitution when the prostitute turns out to be a police officer.

If someone solicits a prostitute, that would show predisposition to commit a crime.

In contrast, a person who has never committed an act of terrorism, and has nothing to do with terrorists, who is enticed to take a large amount of money and then informed that it is for terrorist purposes, is entrapped, under the law.

Unfortunately, it's easy to manipulate juries with prejudicial issues, such as the defendant's race and religion. Right now, many jurors will be prejudiced against Muslim Arabs, and it's relatively easy for a prosecutor to get a conviction against them by using scare tactics.

A good example was Hemant Lakhani, whose case was the subject of a good program on This American LIfe. http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1088 One of the jurors agreed that he was entrapped, but she felt pressured by the other jurors to go along. Most people who listen to that broadcast would come to the same conclusion. But Lakhani is in jail for the rest of his life.

Next time around, the time will come for them to be prejudiced against another ethnic group or religion.

What was your race and religion again?

Enough with your "facts", you godless commie bastard! Anyone can prove anything they want when supported by the "facts".