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The US "doesn't torture" only because it asserts that it doesn't. It also asserts that inflicting pain would not be considered torture unless it caused "death, organ failure or permanent damage."

Even the current Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, considers waterboarding to be torture, saying, "it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Potâ(TM)s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today."

Besides, many consider any form of pain compliance, for forced information extraction, to be torture. Waterboarding is essentially forced drowning with a medic in attendance, to revive the "patient" in case his/her vitals falter.

The US "doesn't torture" only because it asserts that it doesn't. It also asserts that inflicting pain would not be considered torture unless it caused "death, organ failure or permanent damage."

Even the current Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, considers waterboarding to be torture, saying, "it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Potâ(TM)s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today."

Besides, many consider any form of pain compliance, for forced information extraction, to be torture. Waterboarding is essentially forced drowning with a medic in attendance, to revive the "patient" in case his/her vitals falter.

Great idea. And it seems to me that academic writing is more about prestige than money, anyway. I would think that a university would love to brag about how much its professors contributed to the textbooks that their rivals are using.

Finally, there should be a great "public good" argument in favor of this. Universities get a lot of public funding and many have huge treasure chests built up. If they help to create great textbooks that are FREELY available to public schools, that would be be a clear public service to justify taxpayer support.

...are sold at a premium to captive customers. It seems that the students have begun a revolt, with one even sending a message to the publishers about the situation, as stated partially in this NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/technology/27digi.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

I have to agree that something must be done, for when I was in college I paid an average of $1000 a semester for my books. The editions changed so quickly that used books were not always an option. Some "good" professors will tell you that an older edition will be fine, but some will not. It also depends on the class, for things do change quickly in some fields, unlike for basic calculus, chemistry and such. It is nice to see some instructors who want to keep education affordable by taking action in one form or another. I teach college now, and I do my best to see that my students do not need the book by giving them materials that they need to learn which they will be tested on. I remember what it was like to be on their side of the fence, having to pay outrageous prices for books.

I am inclined to think that the publishers are making the same mistakes of music industry by not changing with the times. They should offer reasonable digital editions, but they do not. Who wants to pay just a few dollars less for a digital edition which is full of DRM and expires, being unusable after a semester or two? Nobody.

It seems there are sites out there now with nothing but text books, such as http://www.textbooktorrents.com/ in addition to the usual hodgepodge torrent sites which have books to be found. Todays students are doing what they can to save a buck, knowing that they are getting the shaft from publishers it seems.

I wonder why the environment movement has been losing its credibility - or, since I suppose you were around in the 60's-70's, call it a "credibility gap" http://www.wellesley.edu/Writing/Nixon/Slideshow/nixon_sign.jpg

You can't make the excuse "kids today..."

Maybe the movement has been "infiltrated"?

http://www.ncforestry.org/docs/Latest%20News/articles/Archives/environmental_movement_is_rapidl.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/opinion/12kristof.html

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/13/doe-reprint/

Did you know that South America has a gallon of gas priced under $1 USD? They're not losing money on it, and it's not subsidized. How are they doing it? Simple, they're turning coal into oil products.

This is BS. If anyone was producing gasoline or oil at below global market prices, they would sell it on the global market at the global market price to maximize profits. If they are not, then there are government price caps or subsidies going on.

For example Venezuela has a tremendous amount of gasoline subsidy, bringing the consumer price to 7 cents a gallon. The Venezuelan government pays more than $9 billion each year in gasoline subsidies.

Other Latin American countries also have huge subsidies: Mexico: $19 billion, Argentina: $11 billion, Colombia: $3 billion. Even otherwise fairly capitalist Chile has a $1 billion "fuel price stabilization fund."

The only problem is that Polaroid is abandoning the kind if camera it is famous for. They're willing to license the technology to other companies, however, so it's not necessarily over.

News article from the NY Times here:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/polaroid-abandons-instant-photography/

When did Ric Romero start submitting Slashdot stores?

there is an assumption in the story synopsis that photo manipulation is somehow new

read this engrossing blog by errol morris at the nyt, it's an extremely anal retentive take on photo manipulation throughout the ages

his investigation of manipulation of the placement of cannon balls in a photo from the crimean war- yes, the crimean war, that far back, is thoroughly engrossing if you are mentally predisposed to highly detailed anal retentive visual forensics

for everyone else, the shocking historically manipulated propaganda photos are worth the visit

There was an article on this in the NY Times a couple of weeks ago. In addition to drug use and prostitution, people would leave so much trash in the toilets that the automatic scrubbers had to be disabled or they jammed on the trash... and as a result, the toilets became so disgusting that even the druggies avoided them.

""I'm not going to lie: I used to smoke crack in there," said one homeless woman, Veronyka Cordner, nodding toward the toilet behind Pike Place Market. "But I won't even go inside that thing now. It's disgusting.""

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/us/17toilets.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=seattle%20public%20toilet&st=cse&oref=slogin

IMO, the reason this works in other countries but not in the U.S. has nothing to do with our "puritanical mindset": instead, it's because Americans have no concept of public common space. We feel that everything on Earth is for our exclusive personal use until someone tries to stop us.

You mean that?

The official "Updates and alerts about your Gmail service" on Google group.

For stories about the problems:

NYT

Google News

Google search problems have been mentioned a few times on Slashdot

No very big deal by the way. Just don't jump to the "it's a conspiracy" conclusion right away, will you?

I haven't seen anyone saying that we are going to go to 100% renewable resources. Those seem to be the strawmen that are always trotted out in these discussions.

How about Al Gore and his groupies?

I'm going to issue a strategic challenge that the United States of America set a goal of getting 100 percent of our electricity from renewable resources and carbon-constrained fuels within 10 years

âoeTrolling is basically Internet eugenics,â he said, his voice pitching up like a jet engine on the runway. âoeI want everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed. Blogging gives the illusion of participation to a bunch of retards. . . . We need to put these people in the oven!â

I listened for a few more minutes as Weev held forth on the Federal Reserve and about Jews.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?pagewanted=4&_r=1

I think everyone who wants to know about trolls should read this article. I didn't know that debates like this got Godwin's law applied to them so regularly, even by the trolls themselves.

I have to say that if Quanxi is at roll, or a counter-troll, I've never encountered such paranoid rudeness in my life and had it so tacitly accepted. I don't think the problem is Slashdot, because this must happen on other parts of the net. In general, Slashdot has less trolly activity than any other forum I've been on, but then again I browse at +2 normally.

Made up, that is, that the original post was "racist," probably because he's afraid of something in it.

The original post (that I made) was about the ethnic differences between European groups. I'm not sure how he went off on this jeremiad about race, but it wasn't a logical conclusion. It was a fearful, reactionary, dramatic one, and I think he's in error.

My intent was never to talk about "race," a term which badly needs a definition for us to even discuss it. I find it more sensible to discuss ethnicities because those we can reasonably define. Does race mean, in the ancient meaning, any group that evolved in a fixed area, for example "Lydians" to the ancient Greeks? Or do we mean the four "root races" which are Euripids, Africans, Asians and the indigenous people of Australia? Guanxi wants to talk about race; I posted an article about European ethnicities and only discussed ethnicities.

The more I think about it, the more it's ludicrous and insane that anyone took his response seriously. He did not read the Huntington book, nor did he read Cavalli-Sforza. What kind of internet drama is that? The only reason people put up with him is that he pulled out the modern equivalent of blasphemy, which is the debate over race, in which you can apparently call someone a "racist" and everyone else panics and mods him down, for fear that they'll be called racists next.

It must be a variant of Godwin's law.

For the sake of ending this, I have found several sources on race for those who want to debate it -- I do not.

* The Race FAQ, specifically "Isnâ(TM)t there actually more genetic distance between populations within the traditional human races than between the major races themselves?"

* The New York Times had a story on how dangerous uninformed discussion about race can be:

At the same time, genetic information is slipping out of the laboratory and into everyday life, carrying with it the inescapable message that people of different races have different DNA. Ancestry tests tell customers what percentage of their genes are from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/us/11dna.html

Read the full thing, Guanxi, before you call them "racists."

* There's also a lively discussion on race, genetics and culture in various blog posts at Gene Expression blog.

Again, it was not my intent to come here to debate race, but to discuss the differences between European ethnicities, which is something I find interesting. I also find the coming clash between ethnicities and nation-states, as concepts for the basis of the legitimacy of government, to be interesting.

Listen to reason, and ignore hateful, bigoted people like guanxi who want to stifle any discussion on this issue out of fear. You wouldn't put up with censorship from your government, and you wouldn't put up with it from the RIAA or Comcast, so don't do it to yourselves out of fear of saying the "wrong" thing.

This is just yet another example of how the current copyright regime is prima facia unconstitutional.

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries

Copyright is not a property right; copyright is an agreement between the public and authors & inventors creating a privilege of limited exclusive right as incentive for dissemination of ideas because otherwise authors & inventors have only the choice of keeping their inventions secret or sharing them that the recipient does what he or she will with the information without limitation, which is the natural right of the recipient.

Any mechanism of securing exclusive right to the author or inventor must meet two tests to be constitutional:

• the term of the exclusive right must be limited (that is it is not a property right),
• the mechanism must demonstrably promote the progress of science and the useful arts.

An attempt was made to test the absurdly long exclusive term against the "limited" requirement and that failed because any finite term is by definition limited.

The test that must now be made is against the requirement that copyright laws "promote the progress of science and the useful arts." The burden of proof should be on demonstrating that the laws do promote the progress of science and the useful arts because copyright is a limitation on the rights of the public and therefore intrinsically a burden on society. In granting copyright society temporarily yields their natural right to a privilege offered authors & inventors, a privilege that may be revoked at any time.

Current copyright laws do not pass the test of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts; they are a burden on innovation and have systematically retarded the progress of science and technology, strangling many significant innovations, once again with internet radio. Current copyright laws are therefore unconstitutional.

Are you kidding? I don't trust the news now!

With the right tech, in 20 years I'll be able to pick and choose whose face I want to deliver the "news", or star in my favorite shows/movies for that matter. Altered wedding photos will be the least of our worries. ;)

Actually, both the McCain campaign and the RNC have gotten itself in hot water several times for using copyrighted music or video clips without permission during this cycle.

A few examples:

McCain was served with a cease and desist letter from Fox News after he used their broadcast footage in a commercial without buying it...

McCain was sued by Mike Myers after he used a clip from a skit from SNL without purchasing it or getting permission from Myers himself (Myers isn't the copyright owner, but that's irrelevant).

McCain got yelled at by copyright owners for using the "Rocky" theme song in an ad without permission.

One of McCain's YouTube videos have been hit with a copyright infringement claim by Warner Music Group after the campaign used a song by Frankie Valli without permission.

Of course, all of this is not to mention McCain's little plagiarism issue with Wikipedia...

What I find more important is that the target of his humor is the ceaseless argumentation on all matters, political and otherwise, that the citizenry engages in when permitted freedom of speech.

You are implying McCain believes people need to be "permitted" freedom of speech.

You are, of course, completely making that up. There is no truth to it. It's odd that you feel the need to lie about McCain; if he's so bad, why don't you just stick to truth?

The sad thing is that YOUR guy, Obama, has attacked "the blogosphere" at least as much as McCain, but you apparently ... don't care. He has blamed "blogs" and the Internet for "driving up" his negatives. How dare he attack this "democracy at its most raw!"

Come to think of it, you've done the same thing on MANY occasions.

The point, of course, is that it is one thing to attack certain expressions on the Internet, and another to condemn the Internet in general. You, Obama, and McCain have all criticized certain expressions, not the whole thing.

And politicians like McCain mock them, and mock the way we argue.

No, he only criticizes SOME of the way they argue, such as pretending to be superior and making stuff up. And good for him. And good for you and Obama for doing the exact same thing.

Fuck that shit.

Fuck your overtly partisan hypocrisy.

Apparently her husband was incidentally questioned in a fraud case many years ago.

Some thought it was part of a smearing campaign:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9A02E5DB1139F931A35751C1A963958260

============
  Federal authorities are examining whether the surgical group that employed the husband of the United States Attorney in Newark submitted false medical insurance claims to the Government, law enforcement officials said today.

The criminal inquiry involves the former medical practice of Mark Hochberg, the husband of Faith S. Hochberg, the Clinton Administration's top prosecutor in New Jersey. The investigation comes at a politically vulnerable moment for Ms. Hochberg, who on Monday was nominated by President Clinton to a Federal judgeship.
=========

Maybe she stepped on someone's foot again?

Everyone is faster in the pool. I watched a race where even the 5th place finisher came in above the old world record time.

Just read this: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/sports/olympics/12records.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Over above whatever the swimmers are using, the pool itself is engineered to create faster times. Everything from the lane dividers, to the wall of the pool, to the extra meter of depth are meant to dissipate turbulence in the water and increase times.

Besides, it appears that the government really isn't interested in hiring brighter police offers.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/12/191255&from=rss
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/georgia-takes-a-beating-in-the-cyberwar-with-russia/

When the crisis abates, I expect the botnets will be returned to their regularly scheduled duties. Quite a versatile tool those botnets -- pimping V!agr4, collapsing government sites, enhancing the male doodad, distributing pr0n, bullying your neighbors (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6665145.stm). For the cost of one M1A1 tank tread, Putin bought himself a whole lot of firepower.

Advantage: Putin.

NY Times Story

Autoweek Story

PhysOrg Story

If the NY Times story doesn't come up from the link, just search Google for Nissan electric car and you'll be able to read it.

And this is where electric cars really let us down. For, you see, that 'Transportation' cost carries with it a large portion of over-the-road trucks. And as far as I know, there are no plans of replacing those with battery-powered beauties any time soon.

So we'll all have electric cars, and will use less gas. We'll have less cost, individually, until 'the man' comes up with enough invisible costs to put us back down.

All the while, the trucker is still buying diesel fuel. Lots and lots of it.

Over time the lessened demand for oil used by cars will cause the cost of the trucker's oil to go up, and those extra costs will be passed onto us at the shelves of our local Walmart.

At the end of the loop we have extra taxes/fees/etc AND higher prices.

WOOT?

BobMcD - You make an excellent point here, and I hope more people read it. The roads we drive on were designed for the transport of goods. This lead to us using large trucks to carry our goods to points across the US. It was much cheaper to transport it via truck than train (or other) at the time. In time that cost savings may no longer exist, and "the man" will pass down the extra changes in all of our goods/services. I found an EXCELLENT article from the early 1900's which discusses this predicament and the reasoning behind the creation of these roads in the first place. (as described above). http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=980CE1DB143AEE32A25753C3A9639C946195D6CF Your point is dead on.. The solution is not just figuring out how we get to work without oil, but the delivery of goods across the US without oil.

Publicity and attention? I would think that having a politician on the show increases their visibility.

There's an old NY Times article that describes how (non-fiction) authors have their Amazon.com sales figures "pop" immediately after appearing on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Not many numbers there, but they talk to some reporters and publishers, who agree with that belief.

(Login may be required for the article, sorry.)

...for example, when he made fun of Michael J. Fox's Parkinsons Disease...

No, Rush pointed out that MJ Fox didn't take his medication before the taping to make is condition look worse. Also, Rush pointed out that MJ Fox supported three Democrat candidates because they favored embryonic stem cell research. MJ stated that Jim Talent wanted to criminalize the research could cure his disease. That was simply not true. What Talent opposed was a bill that inaccurately called "The Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative", because it allowed for human cloning. Jim Talent supports stem cell research from adult lines or the lines that were in place before Bush's executive order. Saying that Talent wanted to "criminalize" research was simply not true. Fox used the team "Stem Cell Research" and never attempted to clarify that he meant "EMBRYONIC Stem Cell Research". Instead, he made it seem as if Republicans were against all stem cell research, which, again, is not true.

So, it's not that MJF has Parkinsons, or even that he supported three Democrats (he is a free man, after all), but the fact that MJF didn't know learn the facts before doing the commercials. Of course, I'm giving him the benefit of doubt and assuming that he didn't know better as opposed to being dishonestly partisan.

The line sync frequency for TV is (based on a quick google search) something around 15625 Hz or 15750 Hz.

The nominal maximum frequency is 20 kHz. The graphic in http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/12/technology/12ring.html indicates that people 18-24 generally have a cutoff of around 16 kHz, 30-29 at around 14 kHz, 40-49 at around 12 kHz.

(I may be 1 kHz off there, as it is hard to determine how the graphic is actually scaled).

It is definitely plausible that some phones emit a nasty high pitch frequency, but I doubt this is very consistent between phones. However, the people who believe they can tell if a cell phone is nearby may have experience with one or two cell phones that do emit such a frequency.

It occurs to me that if you asked a bunch of economists, they'd probably say that people don't know enough about economics. Same for any other field.

Seems like a good place to plug the book "The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science" (Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/books/review/Pinker-t.html). Basically, the author asked scientists in various fields what they thought adults should know about what they do.

The best is to take the 65mm neg (or blow up if your master is wimpy) do a color separation and print each color to black&white paper. Not sure if it's available now but the reconstructions from films archived that way are basically as good as the originals.

One example:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDA1538F93BA25757C0A967958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

The complaint applies to the version of Windows most people have.

A VERY nice feature of Free, Open Source Software is that there are no license hassles.

Another VERY nice feature is that the software is not designed in such a way as to trick the user into paying more. There are 7? versions of Vista: Vista Starter*, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, and Vista Enterprise. That's 6, but I think there is one more. And they are all not a new operating system, but just a new version of Windows XP.

And, even worse --> Windows XP was a huge, huge hassle for three years, until Service Pack 2 was released.

Uglier still --> --> Then, after only 3 relatively good years, Microsoft announced that it had declared the death of Windows XP!!!

More sheer ugliness: There are operating system files that the operating system won't copy, making backups a big hassle. There is the sloppiness which makes software be self-degrading and very vulnerable to attack, which helps the vendor sell more copies, because people throw away the corrupted computers and buy new ones, therefore paying for a new copy of the operating system. Another abuse: Microsoft drones attended OSCON, trying to infiltrate the Open Source Convention to sell things that require payment in more than money, in acceptance of abuse, also. There is making new versions that require far more powerful hardware, so that customers will require new computers, making it more profitable for hardware vendors, who then accept that they are being abused in other ways.

It's when you catalog ALL the abuses of commercial software vendors that it become obvious that it is good to avoid them if at all possible. Not all of Microsoft's abuses are cataloged here, of course.

(*Note from Microsoft: Windows Vista Starter is not currently scheduled to be available in the United States, Canada, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, or other high income markets as defined by the World Bank.)

do you work for ... Monstanto?

Hell. No.

And, if you do buy from a particular farmer, they are the ones getting your money, not say, Cargill.

Even if you don't buy from the farmer directly, the farmer is still paid (very well in today's market, unless they mismanage their operation).

I could go on to attack the rest of your points, but as far as I can tell, your running theme is that what's happening today is not only OK, but actually the best it can actually be. Which seems pretty far fetched.

That is most definitely not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that 'organic' != 'sustainable' in any literal sense unless you:

• Massively and continually expand the geographical extent of farm production lands. Hopefully we'll have enough land that we haven't used up the entire surface of the earth before previously depleted areas have been replenished by natural phosphorus deposition etc. Relatively cheap organic sources of fertilizer like dung are mostly byproducts of non-organic production, and are only readily available in sufficient quantities while organic farming is a very small percentage of total production.
• Get rid of a couple billion or more people and subsequently cap the population
• Either bear a massive increase in the resource cost of food production or create a class of slave laborers with a much lower standard of living (and per capita resource cost) than the rest of society in order to do the farming

There are many ways we can improve farming methods, and we're actively researching drought tolerance, nitrogen deficiency tolerance, etc., to lower input requirements on the plant side, as well as refining precision Ag technology and advances in mechanical engineering to make the processing/production side more efficient.

Saying you want to be 'sustainable', therefore you want to only use organic production methods is like saying you want energy independence, except you don't want to use solar (PV cell manufacture has toxic byproducts), windmills (think of the birds!), hydro-electric (think of the fish!), nuclear (think of the waste!--because we won't allow reprocessing (think of the terrorists!)), or geothermal (think of our heritage!). You have to prioritize. If terrorists scare you more than nuclear waste, or nuclear energy scares you more than energy dependence, that's perfectly fine, but it is crucial to realize that you're making a choice about the ordering of your priorities. So it is with organic farming and sustainability.

Many of the proponents of the former feel that their cause is justified in deliberately conflating it with other causes (health, sustainability, religion (this one is big in the genetic modification debate), class warfare and anti-corporatism, IP law, etc.) because they think that it will advance their own, so confusion on this is common.

If you study the issue of sustainability, you will quickly see that there are no simple or easy answers. It is hard enough to get people to agree on a definition. E.g., 'Sustainable means we can support population growth until all societies advance socio-economically and presumably reach voluntary population peak' vs. 'The definition of sustainability must include an internationally-enforced limit on global population levels dictated by production and distribution capacity as restricted by a hard cap on Ag land expansion and maximum total carbon output to preserve the environment'. Any given definition reflects a different set of priorities.

The bottom line is that with respect to sustainability, it is not at all obvious or necessarily likely that organic farming is even a step in the right direction.

Five seconds of Googling find some juicy cases of suicide by IRS. The first link: here.

So unfortunately, it's not just in movies.

Now, remember, I am not saying that the evidences cited in TFA are fake or incorrect. I am just citing precedent to show what is at stake here.

This was not started by Russia.

Yeah, it's just sickening how Georgia was sure they had an easy conquest in taking on a tiny country like Russia.

As much as I think Russia is a despotic bully that eventually will have to be checked, in this situation Georgia takes the blame, too, for their aggressive attempts to retake South Ossetia (most of the inhabitants of which would rather be separate from Georgia).

Here's a good article on the situation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/technology/13cyber.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

In terms of total annual CO2 emissions, US ranks first with a CO2 emissions of 20% greater than China (which ranks second).

Those data are from 2004. China has just passed the US in CO2 emissions according to many measures (e.g. here), although some others project it won't happen until next year; it's hard to estimate accurately. This is due mostly to its massive construction of coal fired power plants. The US is still way ahead in per capita emissions though. (According to the above link, we're at 19.4 tons per person per year. Russia is 11.8, the EU 8.6, China 5.1, India 1.8.)

Living in a green city would be awesome.

Unfortunately, most of its denizens probably go off to jobs that contribute to the "not so green" China industrial frigate @janderson China is usually full of "plans" that never actually materialize so I'm not holding my breath on this one. If it does happen, however, don't be surprised when there are full of holes in their "all green" initiative.

I must say the whole Communist system they have (if you can still call it that) is VERY efficient at getting government public works done. Don't want to move? We'll just throw you out of your house http://en.epochtimes.com/news/8-5-15/70674.html. Your building looks ugly to the Olympic visiting public? We'll build a wall around your storefront http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/sports/olympics/29beijing.html.

Good beef is grass-fed, and that is still a large percentage of it.

Umm, McDonald's doesn't serve grass-fed beef, so by definition a large percentage of beef isn't grass-fed. For a more typical picture of how cattle is raised see Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler.

Quote:

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan - a Camry, say - to the ultra-efficient Prius.
Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

And:

The world's total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over that period. (In the developing world, it rose twice as fast, doubling in the last 20 years.) World meat consumption is expected to double again by 2050, which one expert, Henning Steinfeld of the United Nations, says is resulting in a "relentless growth in livestock production."

Mod parent up. Here's a piece by food writer Mark Bittman in the NY Times on the devastating environmental and health/social costs of our current meat consumption:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.htm

we didn't clutter up useful orbit space with a bunch of debris when we were done

Just how was that achieved?

When we (the US) shot ours down, it was in a rapidly decaying orbit and it fell into the atmosphere after being blasted. The Chinese satellite, however, was still in a maintained orbit and when they took it out, it was the "largest recorded creation of space debris in history with at least 2317 pieces of trackable size (golf ball size and larger), thereby increasing the total number of currently tracked objects in earth orbit by more than 22%.." Source.

No, HVDC isn't really any more costly than AC, and over long distances it loses less power even with loses due to inverters.

The problem is that we continue to use AC power.

Originally we used DC. Thomas Edison's power company in NYC was DC. It was only after Tesla pushed for AC, backed by Westinghouse, did AC become dominate. Edison even tried to electrocute an elephant in the War of Currents to discredit AC. Unfortunately the elephant was made to suffer by being electrocuted a number of tymes, Edison wasn't successful in killing the elephant at first. It wasn't until 2007 before all the DC power in NYC was changed to AC. However NYC's Subway system still runs on DC. And people who build their homes Off the Grid, and there are more and more people doing it, all use DC.

Solar power is a great advancement, but it simply cannot provide the energy needs of the country at this time. Supplemental use is good but the infrastructure needed to support wide scale solar use is simply too inefficient and expensive.

Therein lies the problem, I made the mistake myself in not talking about distributed power generation. Most people including you want the next big thing to solve everything. If instead of building large power plants and relying on the infrastructure of large powerlines transmission wouldn't be such a big problem. In California almost every building could have PVs installed on the roof providing some power. While Washington may not be a good place for solar, it's great for wind. And a 5 megawatt wind genie on 5 acres can provide power for a number of families and small businesses. With power generation closer to where it's used large powerlines aren't needed as much. Places like Boeing's factory in Seattle will need more power than the site can provide, but those place are few and far between each other.

Falcon

As a result various software firms lost my custom and my dollars. I say this not to whine, as I firmly believe that businesses should have the right to run as they wish, and my life is less because I do not play games, but simply to state that if your aim is to sell general entertainment, you can't piss off your audience. That is not entertainment. It is like the whiny pussy stuntman they used to run before movies complaining that his family cannot eat because of piracy. Well, if no one wants to pay for the product, perhaps one needs to think about why, and not feel all entitled to a profit for a product few are willing to pay for. Perhaps a whiny stunt men, or silly ads, or expensive food is why people do not go to see movies and instead resort to piracy so that they can see the movie that is so heavily advertised that if they don't see it they feel culturally insufficient. Just a possibility.

But in the end, I think most people who pirate games are young people, because young people are the ones who play games, and young people often yet do not have a lot of money, or at least enough sense to budget their money, or at least enough money to fill all their wants, or at least enough, or likely not enough maturity to distinguish between a want and a need, so they end up doing arguably unwise things like breaking into cars for beer money and pirating games.

The solution to this may be developing games for the just-out-of-young-adult age range, when money tends to be available, and some wisdom has set in. Of course, it can't be so copy protected as to add to the daily annoyance of kids and the hated job.

From NPR: $100 million A low estimate for the cost of the opening ceremony. That's about $476,000 per minute and almost $8,000 per second and more than twice the cost of the 2004 Athens opening ceremony.

There are many places in the world thirsting for precipitation of any sort and the Chinese are firing rockets to stop rain just so that the opening ceremony of their PR stunt can be free of dampness. I guess that they wanted to guarantee their hundreds of millions in pyrotechnics weren't ruined. Of course, the firing of rockets does nothing to help with global climate issues.

Meanwhile droughts and floods ravage other areas of China. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEED7113BF93BA15753C1A96E948260

I would have assumed, perhaps falsely, that the invasion of any soverign country by another, whether monarchy, dictatorship, oligarchy or whatever else is inherently wrong.

One can try to justify it, of course, by saying magic words like "WMD", or "they did it first, we're just retaliating", "they're evil, we're good", "if we don't kill a few of them now many more will die later"... really the options are endless. Sometimes perhaps even justified.

Basically I'm wondering whether you believe it's OK to make fun of invasions of non-democratic countries?

While I'm bothering to post. How democratic is democratic enough... would Zimbabwe qualify for example? Technically Robert Mugabe was democratically elected. The whole beating people to death if they planned to vote for Morgan Changarai (sp?) taints the process but really it's about where the line is. Finding people willing to say that the opposition leader is homosexual (Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia.. twice!) is a less physical approach but potentially equally damaging to the democratic process.

Of course if true you could argue it is of benefit to the public to be familiar with all the facts... no doubt this is why many governments are loosening the freedom of information rules about sitting members. No wait... the other thing...

How long before this method is applied in political campaigns, if it isn't already, in the western world.

I'm going to get modded offtopic aren't I?...

about HIV is that it (currently) cannot be transmitted except by very personal means - which is to say, extremely intimate contact with an infected human being and/or injection of their bodily fluids directly into your body.

Until a mutated "airborne" variation of HIV occurs, the reality is that the vast majority of cases were entirely preventable. While research into how to "treat" the disease is good, actual research into better methods of preventing infection to start with is just as important - both in a medical and sociological sense.

For one example: the US's frighteningly high incidence of AIDS in female blacks is due almost entirely to promiscuous, non-monogamous bisexual black males who've been infecting a large portion of the female black population over the past few decades. Efforts to combat this and get the men to use condoms and regularly get tested - and to stop having sex after they know they are infected - have run into walls in black culture. The problems in Africa in this regard are even worse, with some men actually believing that the "cure" for aids is to have sex with a virgin - and then going and raping young girls, emotionally scarring them for life as well as infecting them.

If AIDS is going to be combatted, medicinal "cures" and "treatments" are half the battle - they do nothing against the spread of the disease if you can't also convince at least a majority of the infected to stop engaging in activities that will spread it.

I can point to societies (often very wealthy societies) that were historically set up more or less the way libertarians advocate (at least from an economic standpoint); and show that the underclasses suffered greatly in those societies.

Libertarianism isn't just an economic system but a political one as well and I can point out socialist societies that killed many people, NAZI Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, and Mao's ROC come to mind. The same ones I listed before. On the other hand there are countries that once the economic system was opened many more people were helped. China being a good example, while I disagreed with almost everything Nixon did he was right about opening up trade with China. And while China isn't fully open, they are opening up slowly. With more people making enough to live on they are pushing for government that's open as well.

And I believe if the US were to end the embargo on Cuba the same thing would happen there. Unfortunately Cuba has disadvantages China didn't. Such as the sugar cane growers around Lake Okeechobee, Florida. If Cuban sugar could be imported into the US those farmers would be hurt financially. That's while Brazilian sugar and ethanol isn't imported, high tariffs.

You cannot, I don't think, point to a liberal

What definition of "liberal" are you using, the original meaning? Or the one socialists use?

modestly socialist society in which major atrocities were perpetrated upon the people.

Ah, the socialist meaning.

Libertarians advocate a completely market driven economy in which the government takes a hands off approach and provides few if any social services.

That's right, we've seen what happens when government controls the economy, or regulates businesses. Because of regulations it's hard for someone to start their own lawn care business. The big lawn care businesses want these regulations to keep out competition. Growing up I used to cut neighbors' grass but it's getting to the point where a teenager will need a license now, I wouldn't be surprised if it got to where a person had to have a license to cut their own lawn.

I advocate a government with very limited powers in the areas of personal freedom, but authority to make and enforce economic policy and provide services to those in need

If you don't have economic control you don't have personal control. Nor can you start your own business and create jobs. A sister of mine started her own business years ago, she and friends of hers are Certified Public Accountants, CPAs, and they started an accounting firm. When she did I chatted with someone in Germany and he said it would hard to start an accounting business there. First, he said a lawyer had to start it. Then because of employment laws, if the business hires someone and they don't do the work they were hired for it's virtually impossible to fire them. As if it's better to drive someone out of business than it is to fire a bad employee. That's what those riots by youth in France a couple of years ago were about. The government wanted to make it easier for businesses to fire bad employees, so many youth rioted. However if employers could easily fire bad people they would be more willing to hire people to begin with.

Simply, government laws and regulations are used by established businesses to keep out competition.

Falcon

I can think of a certain Boeing 767 sold to China to serve as the presidential jet, complete with dozens of bugs aboard.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1382116/China-finds-spy-bugs-in-Jiang's-Boeing-jet.html

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9807E6DD113BF936A25757C0A9659C8B63

So, this announcement has been brought to you by the words 'pot', 'kettle' and 'black'.

Sorry if there any errors, or omissions, I am trying to be accurate. A lot has happend in a little over a week.

The following takes place between July 29th and August 7th:

August 07, 2008:
Judge rejects student visa injunction sought by H-1B opponents
Tech workers don't have standing to fight Bush administration visa move
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9111963

August 07, 2008:
Jobless claims surge to highest level in 6 years
http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/07/news/economy/jobless_benefits.ap/index.htm?cnn=yes

August 06, 2008:
Bureau of Labor Statistics reports big drop in tech jobs
Almost 50,000 IT positions lost in last 12 months
http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/07/news/economy/jobless_benefits.ap/index.htm?cnn=yes

Aug 06,2008:
Yet another visa, this one allows 5000 Koreans to work in the USA each year
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200808/200808060014.html

August 06, 2008:
Apple sued over treatment of it's tech workers
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/06/apple-gets-sued-indentured

August 05, 2008:
Bogus diploma ring busted
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/content/education/chi-diploma-mill-04-aug04,0,2164133.story

August 03, 2008:
July marks seventh consecutive month of job loses
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/46146.html

August 02, 2008:
Sun to cut between 1000 to 2500 jobs
http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/08/01/sun-us-tech-market-wont-shine-soon/

August 01, 2008:
Gartner's grim IT hiring outlook
http://blogs.zdnet.com/careers/?p=140

August 01, 2008:
Feds charges man for H1-B fraud
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_S_visa01.47edb3e.html#

Jul 31, 2008:
More than 3.7 million Americans had full-time jobs chopped to part time
the largest figure since the government began tracking such data more than half a century ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/business/economy/31jobs.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

July 31, 2008:
Layoffs set for 22,000 California state workers
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_10046324

July 30, 2008:
WTO Doha talks collapse
India's backdoor attempt to allow more H-1Bs into the USA failed, for now
http://www.economicpopulist.org/?q=content/why-you-should-be-thrilled-wto-doha-talks-collapsed

July 30, 2008:
NY gov slashes spending; state said in "recession"
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN3032764920080730?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

July 30, 2008:
China trade has cost 2.3 million U.S. jobs
http://www.reuters.com/article/politic

It didn't post my link. Will try again

Maybe these people need to talk with someone who has actually been enslaved before they claim they were treated the same way.

Reminds me of this:

http://www.instapundit.com/archives/008046.php

March 10, 2003

HERE'S A HEARTWARMING STORY:

        KAKUMA, Kenya -- The engines rumbled and the red sand swirled as the cargo plane roared onto the dirt airstrip. One by one, the dazed and impoverished refugees climbed from the belly of the plane into this desolate wind-swept camp.

        They are members of Africa's lost tribe, the Somali Bantu, who were stolen from the shores of Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania and carried on Arab slave ships to Somalia two centuries ago. They were enslaved and persecuted until Somalia's civil war scattered them to refugee camps in the 1990's. . . .

        Over the next two years, nearly all of the Somali Bantu refugees in Kenya -- about 12,000 people -- are to be flown to the United States. This is one of the largest refugee groups to receive blanket permission for resettlement since the mid-1990's, State Department officials say. . . .

        In Somalia, the lighter-skinned majority rejected the Bantu, for their slave origins and dark skin and wide features. Even after they were freed from bondage, the Bantu were denied meaningful political representation and rights to land ownership. During the Somali civil war, they were disproportionately victims of rapes and killings.

I think it's going to be quite an adjustment for them, and no doubt there are people (nearly all non-Bantu) who are outraged that their traditional ways are going to have to change in the process. I suspect, though, that they'll do better here than they would in, say, France.

The New York Times, however, can't help but make a hash of the story by including this passage:

        The refugees watch snippets of American life on videos in class, and they marvel at the images of supermarkets filled with peppers and tomatoes and of tall buildings that reach for the clouds. But they know little about racism, poverty, the bone-chilling cold or the cities that will be chosen for them by refugee resettlement agencies.

They know little about racism or poverty? Read your own freakin' story -- they've been enslaved because of their skin color, and they're living in refugee camps ! They're encountering running water and flush toilets for the first time! Jeezus. To a certain class of writer, "racism and poverty" can only exist in America, and have no meaning anywhere else.

posted at 07:16 AM by Glenn Reynolds

Capping upper limit on malpractice lawsuits saves everyone money.

That's a poor sort of interference in the marketplace. If a doctor or a hospital creates X amount of damage, they ought to pay for it; the industry should not be shielded from responsibility by buying favorable caps from legislators.

Much better would be getting rid of bad doctors so that huge malpractice suits aren't necessary.