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According to the NYTimes article http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/business/global/14compete.html, the fine has to be paid right away. The money is placed in a bank account until further appeals are resolved.

If you want good healthy food, go for fresh vegetables (and fruit, meat and fish) instead of the processed kind.

Unless it's tainted spinach. Or tainted peanuts. Or tainted organic eggs. Or tainted organic sesame seeds. Or tainted organic alfalfa....

I thought about that, Bolivia has One answer. But unless there is a Major deposit of Lithium that no one has discovered, or the rest of the Lith' is easy to get to, then all the D.O.E. has done is trade one monopoly for another. Oil, and Lithium are by nature, not renewable. Generating electricity from combining Hydrogen, and Oxygen is renewable. The energy sources to separate Hydrogen is the Sun, and Wind. Converting cars to run on natural gas from gasoline is fairly straightforward, going from Natural Gas to Hydrogen is also straightforward. What needs to be done is to Venture Capital conversion kits and refueling stations. The stations are already there, the owners just have to put a hydrogen tank in the back next to the natural gas tank. Nothing is free in the Transportation industry, especially Oil, and Lithium.

I get it - you're Enlightened American Guy and I'm Parochial Redneck Guy! Nice try, douche.

Let's see...

Britain

France

Germany

And yes, the US deficit is growing too thanks to Dubya and Obama Inc and due in no small part to our own efforts including Medicare and Medicaid.

Really it's the same all around. Rising budget deficits. The EU has done OK during the recent bubbles, but it's going to be HI-LARIOUS watching them flounder when they figure out that past performance is not indicative of the future.

Seriously, does it take that much thought to figure out that as your population grows your country is fucked if you provide too many services as entitlements to said population? Seems kind of obvious. Any numbnuts can thing for 30 seconds and realize "shit, as population goes beyond some point per-capita productivity goes down." Extrapolate from there and you can see why EuroSocialism is bound to fail.

But hey, it's worked out alright for the last several decades, therefore it will always work out right, huh?

NY Times "WASHINGTON â" President Obamaâ(TM)s top antitrust official this week plans to restore an aggressive enforcement policy against corporations that use their market dominance to elbow out competitors or to keep them from gaining market share."

"The new enforcement policy would reverse the Bush administrationâ(TM)s approach, which strongly favored defendants against antitrust claims. It would restore a policy that led to the landmark antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft and Intel in the 1990s."

Recently in the New York Times, there is an article about how YouTube is segmenting its reach, because it is expensive to stream their media to developing nations, that fail to return costs back to Yahoo in the form of advertising rates/revenue.

"In Developing Countries, Web Grows Without Profit"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/technology/start-ups/27global.html

"The iphone has more quality apps than all other platforms have total apps combined."

No. Not even close. In your utterance of that hyperbole you've given away your fanboi status.

The numbers on this are a bit difficult to track down but it's very clear that the IPhone is nowhere near WinMo and you can absolutely forget about it if you combine Palm and Symbian application numbers.

Here's a quick rundown.

In late July of LAST year WinMo _alone_ had 18K applications.

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/07/windows_mobile_7.html

Some estimates put Palm at 80,000 back in ***2005***.

http://www.pocketprof.org/running_palm_os_software.htm

Symbian numbers are very difficult to come up with but a low ballpark would be 10,000 of them.

The IPhone currently has about 15,000 applications listed in the app store ( http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/so-many-iphone-apps-so-little-time/ ).

It's clear that your statement isn't anywhere near true.

Please leave some of Mr. Jobs AHEM for his wife, sir.

Wikipedia is self-correcting, isn't it? I knew IBM would respond; they after all make money by destroying value

Congratulations on your ignoratio elenchi convincing the mods to troll me out. By the way, are you really neutral to IBM?

I guess this has nothing to do with the fact that right-wing parties in Austria have won a large share of votes in recent elections, furthering the already prevalent mindset of isolationism that is present in Austria.

It's unlikely for several reasons.

For one the right-wing parties are not in government. This decision to quit CERN has been made by the socialist party and the people's party (they are a party for the middle class).
Second Austria entered the ESO (European Southern Observatory) only a couple of months ago, so there doesn't seem to be a prevailent mindset of isolationism.

The reasons are most likely fiscal as the summary suggests. The majority (70%) of the research money for international projects goes to CERN. While the research done there is impressive for the money spent it seems to offer not much payback in terms of scientific archievement that can be directly linked to Austria, which would be important for the government in order to justify the project. In comparison to that the 3 Million for the ESO offer far better returns.

While the particle physicists will surely be hit hard by that decision it offers opportunities for cooperations in other areas. I am sure the scientists in other disciplines will be glad for that.
Another thing is that everything that has to do with nuclear research is highly suspect to the general population in austria, mainly due to misconceptions about the danger and pollution that nuclear power plants cause, which might also have influenced this decision.

Personally I would like austria to continue funding CERN, but the fiscal realities today don't really allow for the expension of the research budget that would be needed to do that and still diversify austrias involvement in international projects.

I guess this has nothing to do with the fact that right-wing parties in Austria have won a large share of votes in recent elections, furthering the already prevalent mindset of isolationism that is present in Austria.

It is a telling fact that the 20M budget for CERN is outstandingly tiny compared to the 3.4 billion EUR science budget Austria has.

Thomas Crapper did not invent the toilet. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/02/science/l-of-facts-and-artifacts-568392.html

The discovery and debate over the "hobbits" Homo floresiensis is fascinating.

It appears that the hobbits are a unique species and not a shrunken version of Homo erectus based not so much on brain size, but on different and more ape-like body parts including feet, wrists, hips, and shoulders. The NYTimes has a couple of stories on this.

The discovery and debate over the "hobbits" Homo floresiensis is fascinating.

It appears that the hobbits are a unique species and not a shrunken version of Homo erectus based not so much on brain size, but on different and more ape-like body parts including feet, wrists, hips, and shoulders. The NYTimes has a couple of stories on this.

I thought you were saying research died in the 70s. I think the stories I mentioned took a fair amount of research. In any case, I agree that the government tries to manipulate the media for exactly the reason you say, and to some degree they succeed. This is the way it has always been and almost certainly the way it always will be. I think that in many ways the government exercises less control today than they did in the past; for example if you contrast press control during WWII to the two recent wars in the middle east. However, you're right that they certainly still control coverage to some degree. (See for example this bit of newspaper investigative reporting about just that.)

I generally believe in applying Hanlon's razor to such things, though, so I don't think there's any grand conspiracy behind it. The press is in a sort of battle with the government, and the government has a lot of power and legal ways to enforce secrecy, so it wins a lot of the time in being able to manipulate the press. And I think most of the time the government types think they're doing it for the greater good. In the warrantless wiretapping case, the Times held back on publishing because they were told it would significantly endanger national security. They may well have thought that was BS, but they were not in a position to be sure (because they didn't have all the information), so they held off on publishing out of a sense of moral obligation (and probably fear of litigation).

You don't see much outside the political mainstream in the media for three reasons: 1) The people in the media are mostly part of the political mainstream, so they may see the ideas as nutball stuff not worthy of coverage. 2) They don't think it will sell. 3) They don't think people are intersted. On point 1, they obviously have to make this call at some point, lest the news be full of stories about how the moon landing and the holocaust were faked, but obviously sometimes they will ignore things worth covering. On points 2 & 3, they are probably often right. Now, I do think they should err on the side of including some of the more fringe stuff and let people decide for themselves whether to lend it credence.

To take the Ron Paul thing as an example: They should have covered at least things like his poll numbers, but he never had any real chance of of winning the republican nomination let alone the presidency for the simple reason that his views are very different from the majority of Americans. His combination of views is relatively unusual today (for good or ill) and carrying them out would be a huge departure from they way our society is currently organized. The other candidates were largely interchangeable (part of your point, I think), and if all but one would have left the race, the remaining one would have garnered almost all the votes of the others. So each had a legitimate chance. Paul could never have garnered the supporters of the others, because his views were totally dissimilar; thus, he never had a shot in hell. I think that's why the mainstream media didn't really cover him.

Comparing energy production density to Corn-based Ethanol is like stealing candy from a baby. Corn-fueled Ethanol has a tough time doing much better than just burning fossil fuels outright in systemic carbon footprint, and in some studies, is actually WORSE than strictly burning gasoline/oil.

Yes, the average is a net improvement of anywhere from 25% to 70% return on investment, but even then, you have to consider the value of the farmland itself! We'd probably do much better by simply growing wild grass on prime farmland, harvesting it, and burying it, when looking in terms of carbon footprint!

So saying that NNN technology is X% better than bioethanol is like saying that doing X is less painful than scraping off your penile foreskin with a cheese grater.

Truthful, but not very useful. Come back when you have something that actually works. For example, what's the benefit of bio-electricity over Photo-voltaics? Now that the latter technology is down to (or better than) $1/watt, this becomes a very, very tough technology to beat, and actually works better on craptastic, rocky soil off in the desert someplace with 3 inches of rainfall per year.

Meaning, we can get back to using farmland for growing food, and stop with this silly "let's raid the kitchen cupboard to feed our guzzling SUVs!" craze that's been on for the last few years.

... Or write his app for the #1 selling phone ?

The Blackberry Curve

America's a wacky place. Spending less than 100 billion saving people who were dumb with mortgages is cause for Panic! Hyperbole about Socialism! Quick, throw a tea party! Fox News anchors weeping on air for their fallen values system!

Oh, come on. You know a mere $100 billion isn't the cause of anyone panicking or any hyperbole about socialism. Where do you even get such a paltry number from? $12.2 trillion is the cause for panic and "hyperbole" about Socialism. That is of course is just the bailout commitments, the stimulus is another $789 billion, which is "too small" and will require a larger sequel. All of this is only the projections right now, like the wars which were initially projected to cost far less than they ended up costing the real costs will be higher than current optimistic government projections.

Of course it's not only the money spent but the fact that the government now either directly owns or is seeking to own several very large businesses and is effectively running quite a few more that it doesn't (yet) own outright: making personnel and compensation decisions. Deciding which (politically connected) creditors will get paid back and which (politically unpopular) creditors won't. You may be right that this doesn't amount to socialism, the correct term is probably corporatism, which you may not have a problem with but a lot of people find very troubling.

We've already spent more ($2.5 trillion according to the NY Times linked above) "saving people who were dumb with mortgages" in less than a year than the total spent in over five years of the Iraq war.

I'll agree with you though that America is a wacky place.

America's a wacky place. Spending less than 100 billion saving people who were dumb with mortgages is cause for Panic! Hyperbole about Socialism! Quick, throw a tea party! Fox News anchors weeping on air for their fallen values system!

Oh, come on. You know a mere $100 billion isn't the cause of anyone panicking or any hyperbole about socialism. Where do you even get such a paltry number from? $12.2 trillion is the cause for panic and "hyperbole" about Socialism. That is of course is just the bailout commitments, the stimulus is another $789 billion, which is "too small" and will require a larger sequel. All of this is only the projections right now, like the wars which were initially projected to cost far less than they ended up costing the real costs will be higher than current optimistic government projections.

Of course it's not only the money spent but the fact that the government now either directly owns or is seeking to own several very large businesses and is effectively running quite a few more that it doesn't (yet) own outright: making personnel and compensation decisions. Deciding which (politically connected) creditors will get paid back and which (politically unpopular) creditors won't. You may be right that this doesn't amount to socialism, the correct term is probably corporatism, which you may not have a problem with but a lot of people find very troubling.

We've already spent more ($2.5 trillion according to the NY Times linked above) "saving people who were dumb with mortgages" in less than a year than the total spent in over five years of the Iraq war.

I'll agree with you though that America is a wacky place.

Well if China says it's safe, that's good enough for me!

Their safety record speaks for itself.
http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2008/10/product_safety.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/fury-as-china-baby-milk-scandal-escalates-934993.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/19/MNV1RKN0L.DTL
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/business/worldbusiness/19toys.html
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/series/toxicpipeline/index.html

Well if China says it's safe, that's good enough for me!

Their safety record speaks for itself.
http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2008/10/product_safety.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/fury-as-china-baby-milk-scandal-escalates-934993.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/19/MNV1RKN0L.DTL
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/business/worldbusiness/19toys.html
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/series/toxicpipeline/index.html

Subscription-free, minus the pictures and maps.

Subscription-free, with the pictures and maps.

Maybe there were not lawsuits because no one had a case against the city.

New York City has paid out over 1.5 million dollars to settle over 140 cases related to the city's handle of the republication national convention in 2004.

I'm familiar with the area from my childhood, but couldn't recall anything on the site other than dead grass and a dilapidated parking lot. I read through the article and searched the web looking for remnants of the tower or something and found one article on what may be of value there. According to the 2002 article the 94x94 ft. lab is still in good condition. I would like to see Agfa sublet the property and at least donate that building. After all, they did poison the groundwater (well, the company they acquired did), it seems like a reasonable goodwill gesture to the community.

My advice would be not to make an affectation of reading original works. Here is a good article that discusses this "Great Books" paradigm, and points out how poorly it fits in the sciences especially.

One example you gave was Newton's Principia. Well, I'm a physicist, and I've read most of the Principia. I would not recommend it to anyone. First off, it's all written in the language of Euclidean geometry, merely because most of Newton's audience wasn't familiar with algebra, and certainly not with calculus, which had only been published a few years before the Principia came out. Today, the way to approach the subject is to read a treatment that uses modern math that you're familiar with. If you know calculus and analytic geometry, you can read a two-page proof of the elliptical orbit law, a result that took Newton the bulk of his entire book to prove because of the mathematical tools to which he limited himself.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule. I think the first 1/3 of Euclid's Elements is still something that everyone interested in mathematics should read.

Name ten more.

1. Paul Krugman
2. Greg Mankiw
3. David Beckworth
4. Brad DeLong
5. Mark Thoma
6. Bruce Bartlett

Sorry for only finding six; these are mostly economists with more prominent blogs. I'm sure someone who studies economics could find many more.

Note that there is a little debate here about the very top of the Reagan tax cuts, but I would consider that to be "some time ago".

Name ten more.

1. Paul Krugman
2. Greg Mankiw
3. David Beckworth
4. Brad DeLong
5. Mark Thoma
6. Bruce Bartlett

Sorry for only finding six; these are mostly economists with more prominent blogs. I'm sure someone who studies economics could find many more.

Note that there is a little debate here about the very top of the Reagan tax cuts, but I would consider that to be "some time ago".

Obama, being a fool

Obama isn't a fool. He knows what the consequences will be. He just doesn't care. He doesn't care because his constituents don't care. His constituents love it when he makes business yell. They hate business.

They all figure US businesses are captive victims and they can squeeze all the 'justice' they want out of them. These tax moves are clever and far sighted. They will cause businesses to kill US jobs. Obama doesn't mind.

When, after these and other changes, business does what business must to survive (kill US jobs) Obama will claim another injustice and impose trade regulations to 'stop' it. He can't do that now. Remember the NAFTA stink during the campaign when Obama's people said the wrong thing to the Canadians? Remember the TARP stink over the 'buy American' language? It's too early yet to act this way on a large scale, but the time will come...

People in the US need to be made to hate business enough that Obama and his ilk can get away with this stuff. That's what Obama's voters want. It's what the unions want.

Will this eventually cause a general drop in the standard of living in the US? Probably. Does that matter to Obama and his voters? Nope. They want 'fairness'. They want 'justice'. They don't care if the white professionals in Tech take it in the rear. They just don't care.

Real soon now they're going to get Franken seated. When that happens the real battle for Card Check begins. That's when Walmart gets unionized. Walmart will be paid off with amnesty for illegal immigrants in the form of some guest worker racket. More voters for the left, you see. Obama and his people don't care that this will end whatever remnant industrial base still persists in the US; eventually they'll have the unions draft the trade regulations to fix it.

Then it's on to medicine. There are a lot of white professionals that need punishing there. Doctors, drug companies, insurance companies, etc. The trick will be sending those folks up the river without harming too many Obama voters.

This will continue and accelerate. No one has ever spent as much fiat money to pay for voters as Obama is/has. You can assume this will translate into a landslide reelection with monster coat tails. Obama has plenty of time. What you understood to be the US is over. The damage inflicted during the next seven and a half years it permanent, just like all the other damage inflicted by collectivists in the US.

Adapt and get used to it. Law is a good bet because a law degree goes a long way in a government controlled system. That's why lawyers, who contributed 5 times as much money to campaigns as the entire 'tech' industry, prefer Democrats like Obama 4-1 when they vote with their wallets.

I've not tried the Woodford Reserve myself, but it did win a Double Gold and "Best Bourbon" at the SF Spirits competition, so it better be a good sipping Bourbon. ;) denttford says that it has a smoky characteristic, so I agree that it probably doesn't have the right flavor profile for mixed drinks.

I suggest reading these articles, but as always, there's a lot more to explore:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/dining/28bour.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/01/02/WI144547.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/19/WIBC14LRGR.DTL

I tend to drink more Rye than anything else, though.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/dining/29wine.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/16/WIRYE.DTL

I've not tried the Woodford Reserve myself, but it did win a Double Gold and "Best Bourbon" at the SF Spirits competition, so it better be a good sipping Bourbon. ;) denttford says that it has a smoky characteristic, so I agree that it probably doesn't have the right flavor profile for mixed drinks.

I suggest reading these articles, but as always, there's a lot more to explore:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/dining/28bour.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/01/02/WI144547.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/19/WIBC14LRGR.DTL

I tend to drink more Rye than anything else, though.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/dining/29wine.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/16/WIRYE.DTL

President Obama's recent statements are simply following through with what he has said before the election: it's how he's going to be paying for his programs. His line about the Cayman Islands building in particular is almost a word-for-word repeat of something he said in a 2007 debate. He's paying for the programs he's implementing, in a Tax 'n Spend manner. Statements like these have already been priced into the stock market, and are a major reason that the Dow Jones dropped almost 1000 points over the two days after Obama was elected president (Nov. 5-6). (Perhaps relevant, the Dow has not since regained the level it was at on Nov. 4) While not a good thing for the U.S. corporations who benefit from tax loopholes, this latest statement is nothing new, and very expected.

Maybe corporations that are actually on the ground in the Netherlands pay these costs. I suspect many corporations only keep their paperwork there.

I find myself terribly amused by this account of the Dutch welfare state. Far from being "socialistic", it appears to be motivated by a Lutheran "everybody for everybody" ethic.

And parts of it seem positively whimsical. You guys get "vakantiegeld" (vacation money) every May? Even if you're unemployed? Maybe a good idea, but it still makes me laugh.

Wrong!

You incorrectly claim that "the cable companies and telcos have a huge investment in infrastructure ahead of them before they can profit in the general market". However, this is absolutely not the case in America. Please look at a story from Wired.com which was published in 2004 about how "Time Warner Cable Earnings Refute Bandwidth Cap Economics":

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/04/time-warner-cab/

Also look at a recent New York Times article which tells us how "providers' profit margins are stable, and that investment in network equipment is generally falling."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/business/20isp.html?_r=2

And here is the simple summary: "Comcast, the nation's largest cable provider, has told investors that doubling the Internet capacity of a neighborhood costs an average of $6.85 a home." That's not $6.85 per month, that's a *one time cost* of $6.85 per home *period*. So anybody who's trying to trick you into thinking that the problem is "huge investment in infrastructure" is absolutely wrong, and the cable companies' own accountants are admitting this.

Not to mention that the gas lawnmowers are much more polluting than the truck that hauls them.

Gallon for gallon or, given the size of lawnmower tanks, quart for quart the 2006 lawn mower engines contribute 93 times more smog-forming emissions than 2006 cars, according to the California Air Resources Board. In California, lawn mowers provided more than 2 percent of the smog-forming pollution from all engines.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/us/24lawn.html

Yes, the 'real' applications for this technique are much more interesting, possibly even to whisky drinkers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/02cell.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/science/03heart.html

The nuclear powers helpfully performed a gigantic pulse labelling experiment on the DNA of the entire biosphere back in the 50s, which allows the cell 'birthdays' in various tissues of people born in that era to be determined. The measurements can be calibrated by the C-14 content in tree rings, so you can work out if the cells are (e.g.) as old as the person (certain brain cells) or renewed more recently (like heart muscle).

Yes, the 'real' applications for this technique are much more interesting, possibly even to whisky drinkers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/02cell.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/science/03heart.html

The nuclear powers helpfully performed a gigantic pulse labelling experiment on the DNA of the entire biosphere back in the 50s, which allows the cell 'birthdays' in various tissues of people born in that era to be determined. The measurements can be calibrated by the C-14 content in tree rings, so you can work out if the cells are (e.g.) as old as the person (certain brain cells) or renewed more recently (like heart muscle).

This is why international corporations are packing up and moving operations to countries with less regulation and less taxation

Just when "Obama Calls for New Curbs on Offshore Tax Havens".

Falcon

I agree with you. Something of value WILL be lost when the newspapers are gone. However, their added value has still diminished over the years.

Here's some of my favorite articles produced by major news outlets:

What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?
Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

I hate to break it to you, but if your countries' advertisement rates vs exorbitant bandwidth cost ratios do not make financial sense to web entertainment companies (such as facebook, hulu, youtube, veoh) in these tough times you are likely to be cut off, or about to be cut off from the spigot!

Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia users make up the huge percentage in many of these sites, but their nations' ad rates are very low! The NY Times has a piece on it. Relatedly, it amazes me that facebook claims a gargantuan photograph cache so vast that storing it, and disseminating it is that much of a problem, third world or not. ?

..."Whenever you have a lot of user-generated material, your bandwidth gets utilized in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, where bandwidth is expensive and ad rates are ridiculously low," Mr. Volpi said. If Web companies "really want to make money, they would shut off all those countries."

...There may be 1.6 billion people in the world with Internet access, but fewer than half of them have incomes high enough to interest major advertisers.

...Web companies that rely on advertising are enjoying some of their most vibrant growth in developing countries. But those are also the same places where it can be the most expensive to operate, since Web companies often need more servers to make content available to parts of the world with limited bandwidth. And in those countries, online display advertising is least likely to translate into results.

Some experts are cautiously optimistic. A computer simulation of this outbreak released Wednesday by a team from Northwestern University projected a worst-case scenario, meaning no measures have been taken to combat the spread. It predicted a mere 1,700 cases in the United States four weeks from now.

I'm sorry you were saying?

I'm not gonna be some MSM conspiracy kook here, but seriously - you really think that 48% or whatever of Americans are anti-intellectual xenophobic racist apes? Citation needed!

Why else would they vote for the most incompetent flip flopper in politics?

There are a lot of people left in the Republican party who are a whole lot closer to those old time conservatives than you think, and if they don't get noticed, it's only partly their own fault and largely the media's fault.

If they are, they're staying put because of inertia and party loyalty only. Today's Democrats are more conservative than Nixon.

although at least the left-leaning media does focus on their own moderates once in a while.

The HuffPo is a drop in the media ocean.

it's that they somehow get branded as the fringe element. Maybe the Dems are just better at branding?

The GOP has done it's own job branding itself as a batch of insane idiots.

and Cheney isn't as diabolical

Other than planning warrantless wiretapping *before* 911.

Obama's overdoing the spending

Only in the Treasury department. The stimulus was short a good $2 trillion.

overdoing the apologies

Such as?

and proving to be far less centralist/consensus building/corruption free than his words promised

Hardly. When he first came into office, he put bipartisanship ahead of legislation, and look where it got him - only three votes and only in the Senate. Obama's been far too accommodating to the right wing.

I'm gonna go ahead and forecast the filibuster will be back next election cycle

Fat chance, and that's with Obama making some moronic picks from a strategic perspective: Napolitano for DHS, when she was probably the only Democrat in Arizona capable of beating McCain next year. And he picked Sebelius over Howard Dean, eliminating the best chance of having a Democratic senator from Kansas for the first time in 70+ years.

forecast the filibuster will be back next election cycle (which I think will be healthy).

The filibuster is great, as long as it means the senators are breaking out the cots and the phonebooks. The current, painless filibuster needs to go.

I'm definitely pro-small government

Wanting a small government for the sake of a small government is as sensible as wanting a big government for the sake of a big government.

I think most Americans are for their own comfort - when the economy is chugging along, that means pro-big-business (Republican)

Except of course that you want Democrats at both times though.

And my point is that the media should be digging at least a little bit below the stage persona

Too bad our media sucks so bad. They're obsessed with glittering trivialities, reporting he said/she said while leaving out the facts, and covering up their support of the Iraq war.

It's ironic that the Times article quotes Orwell.

"Blocking such groups has become more insidious as Internet filtering technology has grown more sophisticated. As with George Orwell's "Newspeak," the language in "1984" that got smaller each year, governments can block particular words or phrases without users realizing their Internet searches are being censored."

A couple of years ago the Times did another story on how The Voice of America has been engaged in creating newspeak: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/31/washington/31voice.html

"Using a 1,500-word vocabulary and short, simple phrases" Oh and don't forget to add some good old fashioned censorship. "A 1948 law prohibits Voice of America from broadcasting in the United States"

But some listeners, like Ali Asqar Khandan, 36, an assistant professor from Tehran, said Special English seemed like "a special program for advertising American life and culture, not a simple radio station for broadcasting news or teaching English."

No need to broadcast it here anyway.

We'll let you know what should and should not be censored thank you very much.

Can somebody please pass the kool-aid?

Or, is it because meat packers are concerned that people might stop eating pork in fear of the virus?

Meat packers aren't just concerned about it - it is in fact actually happening. Plenty of people genuinely (and jokingly) think that eating pork products is a way to get this disease.

Public health officials have to live in the real world, where irrational behavior, fear, hysteria, and misinformation are enemies as big as disease itself. If referring to it as "H1N1 Influenza" rather than "Swine Flu" gets people to smarten up about it, and has the benefit of reducing damage to the meat industry, then so be it.

I thought so as well, but it turns out to be legit. Some very snappy writing for the time, it must be said.

It's authentic.

It's verified.

You are mistaken. It's not as though Apple didn't see the Cell coming. Sony shopped it to them but they simply weren't interested.

Mr. Jobs rejected the idea, telling Mr. Kutaragi that he was disappointed with the Cell design, which he believes will be even less effective than the PowerPC.

And this was way back in 2005. The Cell is arguably good in it's role as the cpu for a game console / blu-ray playback device, but that doesn't mean that is the best choice for a general-purpose computing device.

Apple looked at the Cell before switching to Intel, they weren't interested.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/11/technology/11apple.html?_r=1&oref=login

I'd recommend reading the Times Magazine's interview with Obama on the topic of healthcare reform, where he addresses his own experience with end-of-life care for his grandmother. I hadn't realized so much of the money spent on healthcare is to keep the terminally ill alive a little longer, and it opens a new part of the debate for me.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=spanish+flu
Swine flu > cytokine storm

Most of Mexicoâ(TM)s dead were young, healthy adults, and none were over 60 or under 3 years old, the World Health Organization said. That alarms health officials because seasonal flus cause most of their deaths among infants and bedridden elderly people, but pandemic flus â" like the 1918 Spanish flu, and the 1957 and 1968 pandemics â" often strike young, healthy people the hardest.

While CDC may not being saying it and from the available information there isn't enough to be sure, the facts that are available clearly support GP's hypothesis.

The ages of the victims in Mexico concern health officials. Unlike typical flu seasons, when infants and the aged are usually the most vulnerable, none of the initial deaths in Mexico were in people older than 60 or younger than 3 years old, a spokeswoman with the World Health Organization said. Pandemic flus -- like the 1918 flu and outbreaks in 1957 and 1968 -- often strike young, healthy people the hardest.

Source: The NY Times