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Though candidates have attempted a run from the grass roots activism of race baiting, the success enjoyed has never rivaled what this guy is doing.

Why? What has changed? Perhaps the Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, Eric Garner phenomenon has resonated poorly with some segments of society.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01...

OK, lets assume that Trump is in it purely for his own benefit. What agenda do you think he is going to push that is going to benefit him? He doesn't need money - he could pull out of the race right now and pay the bills with the change he lost in his couch. So what exactly do you think he's trying to do to benefit himself that he isn't already capable of acquiring on his own?

"Trump Is a Near-Perfect Example of Needy Narcissism" http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2...
"Donald Trump’s Epic Neediness" http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03...
"Needy Trump Melts Into Putin’s Warm Embrace" http://bluenationreview.com/ne...

Nearly everybody has a driver's license.

No, actually, large numbers of people don't. Many Americans don't drive. I know that many middle-class suburban Americans are shocked to learn that other Americans live differently, but it's true. in fact some Americans are entirely unable to obtain government issued IDs.

The effort to recover radioactive material from the satellite was dubbed Operation Morning Light. Covering a total area of 124,000 square kilometres (48,000sqmi), the joint Canadian-American team swept the area by foot and air in Phase I from January 24, 1978 to April 20, 1978 and Phase II from April 21, 1978 to October 15, 1978. They were ultimately able to recover 12 large pieces of the satellite. All but two of the fragments recovered were radioactive. These pieces displayed radioactivity of up to 1.1 sieverts per hour, yet they only comprised an estimated 1% of the fuel. One fragment had a radiation level of 500 R/h, which "is sufficient to kill a person ... remaining in contact with the piece for a few hours."

source

Even "Readers Digest" had a very good story on the incident.

could not find, but good stuff

nyt, 5 Jan 1983
nyt, 24 Jan 1983
Jan, 2013
Nov, 2015
Apr, 2015"

The effort to recover radioactive material from the satellite was dubbed Operation Morning Light. Covering a total area of 124,000 square kilometres (48,000sqmi), the joint Canadian-American team swept the area by foot and air in Phase I from January 24, 1978 to April 20, 1978 and Phase II from April 21, 1978 to October 15, 1978. They were ultimately able to recover 12 large pieces of the satellite. All but two of the fragments recovered were radioactive. These pieces displayed radioactivity of up to 1.1 sieverts per hour, yet they only comprised an estimated 1% of the fuel. One fragment had a radiation level of 500 R/h, which "is sufficient to kill a person ... remaining in contact with the piece for a few hours."

source

Even "Readers Digest" had a very good story on the incident.

could not find, but good stuff

nyt, 5 Jan 1983
nyt, 24 Jan 1983
Jan, 2013
Nov, 2015
Apr, 2015"

we will not allow any individual, group, or nation to sabotage American financial institutions or undermine the integrity of fair competition in the operation of the free market."

LOLs that's hilarious right? What integrity of fair competition: when favored HFT is practically insider trading

The SIP time stamps aren't just false when delayed—they are always false. The SIP applies a time stamp that is always later than the actual time of the quote, generally by the millisecond or two it takes for the quote to travel from an exchange to, and be processed by, the SIP. The trading advantage enjoyed by insiders is larger than subscribers may be led to believe.

And where also is the fair competition when favored flash traders get $$$$$$ unhindered while the small fry get charged/prosecuted?
The Trader as Scapegoat
Norwegian traders convicted for outsmarting US stock broker algorithm
p.s. yes I know the Norwegians got acquitted in the end but they got convicted first and had to appeal etc.

This isn't surprising. Some states are calling for more funding of STEM and less funding of the humanities. If the degree doesn't lead to a high-paying job, it shouldn't be funded.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/business/a-rising-call-to-promote-stem-education-and-cut-liberal-arts-funding.html

A lot of "STEM jobs" are not actually "high paying" jobs. Check it out yourself.

The endless push by central planners to get more people into tech is nothing more than State sponsored labor allocation for large corporations and it's getting old. The obsession with "STEM" needs to come to an end.

Stop trying to lump things together that do not need to be lumped together. It dilutes all of it to the point of mediocrity.

This isn't surprising. Some states are calling for more funding of STEM and less funding of the humanities. If the degree doesn't lead to a high-paying job, it shouldn't be funded.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/business/a-rising-call-to-promote-stem-education-and-cut-liberal-arts-funding.html

So you're claiming that a company who specializes in helping government break into phones and do a forensic analysis on phones would rather take a meager bug bounty than potentially earn millions by aiding government spying and investigation? Yes that makes perfect sense. Do these NYT authors know that NASA is hiring rocket scientists?

You're asking the New York Times to live in the real world?

The same paper that, just a few weeks ago, lambasted Donald Trump for stating that Brussels has a problem with militant Islamists who refuse to integrate into European society?

THAT New York Times?!!???!

BWAAAA HAA HAA

You're adorbs.

I will see your gov lie and raise you more.

You seem not to realize: Christians and Jews and Yezidi and if you want I google for the other Abrahmic religions: are not heathens.

True or not, this is not relevant. The point was, Muslims are compelled by their faith to actively spread it — including, even if not always, by violence. This makes Islam worse (to an objective observer) than Christianity or Judaism.

a) they are poor and have nothing to lose b) someone killed their family

That may be true about people in Afghanistan or Iraq, but it is decidedly not true about the terrorists in the West. Even Washington Post agrees. Najim Laachraoui — the maker of the Paris and Brussels bombs — immigrated from Morocco, grew up in Belgium and graduated a university. He was well off and his family was safely in Europe. The two homicide bombers also grew up in the rich Brussels (with all the "safety net" of a European country). Like millions of others, they had criminal records, but no prior ties to terrorism — no one in their family were killed. They got radicalized by something — but poverty is not it.

The San Bernardino murderers were also wealthy Americans. Tsarnaev brothers moved to the US at young age, but weren't poor. They did immigrate from a war-torn region, but had no one in their immediate family killed — and, if anyone was, it was not by the US.

So, your attempts to blame poverty and desire to avenge family thoroughly debunked, you are left with the two choices I gave you before: a) skin color; b) religion.

Your middle part was just nonsense.

The grace, with which you surrender your positions, continues to astound. It seems, we are done here.

"but they had failed to take into account a number of factors (the most notable being the change in performance characteristics when exposed to cold temperatures), leading to the last-minute warnings as they realized the potential for disaster."

Bzzt wrong. The managers took the cold temps into account, and ignored the pleas of their engineers to delay the launch because previous damage sustained from temps that were not even as extreme on that day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02...

There is risk, and then there is stupidity/negligent manslaughter. Thiokol management should have been put in prison and ruined.

You talk as if terrorists were some kind of fixed number, like that some tiny fraction of the population will mentally snap and kill someone. That if we just don't draw attention to it, it won't really be much of an issue. And if they were so mostly lurking in the corners, extremists sharing their views with other extremists or lone wolves with twisted perceptions of reality I might be inclined to agree. But they've long since stepped out of the shadows, raised their flags and ceased vast areas with fucking armies. They recently stopped a shipment with 20000 uniforms for IS and terrorists are their "special forces".

At the risk of invoking Godwin, Nazi Germany didn't start out that way. It took years of radicalization, indoctrination, shaping a society around der Führer whose authority shall not be questioned. What Germany did in the 1930s is what IS is doing right now, in fact Hiterjugend was never this militant. Do you realize that IS controls Mosul, that originally had 1.8 million inhabitants and would be bigger than Philadelphia? Currently estimates are uncertain but it's probably roughly a million left which would put it around top 10 biggest cities in the US. They'll find collaborators and sympathizers, stomp out rebellion and dissent. People will hear propaganda, more propaganda and it will work.

The Nazis hid their torture and death camps, IS puts it on YouTube. And despite that, people keep joining their cause. If you don't find that freaking scary, you should. Sure it's far, far away on the other side of the globe right now. But if someone threatens to set the world on fire maybe it's not so good an idea to let them pour the gasoline? I'm sure it seemed Hitler was far away too, but do you really need another Pearl Harbor to see that it's not going to stay that way? Yes, it will get messy as they fight as dirty as they can but the alternatives are going to be even messier in the long run. Pretending there is no problem isn't going to solve it.

90%? 90% of who, exactly? It sure as hell isn't 90% of their customers, or they'd have a really, really small customer base now, wouldn't they?

Read 'em and weep.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07...

Here is one example. There are more.

http://www.foxbghsuit.com/oakh...

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07...

This is a problem not just with GMOs, but also with selective breeding:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06...

That is to say, one of the problems with genetic modification is that we can do it a lot faster than selective breeding and find ourselves in bad places with our food much more quickly. It's not typically irreversible, but it is a concern.

From Dec 2015 debates,

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11...

Cavuto: Mr. Trump, as the leading presidential candidate on this stage and one whose tax plan exempts couples making up to $50,000 a year from paying any federal income taxes at all, are you sympathetic to the protesters cause since a $15 wage works out to about $31,000 a year?

TRUMP: I can’t be Neil. And the and the reason I can’t be is that we are a country that is being beaten on every front economically, militarily. There is nothing that we do now to win. We don’t win anymore. Our taxes are too high. I’ve come up with a tax plan that many, many people like very much. It’s going to be a tremendous plan. I think it’ll make our country and our economy very dynamic.

But, taxes too high, wages too high, we’re not going to be able to compete against the world. I hate to say it, but we have to leave it the way it is.
 

After being reamed for it, he change his mind, but there is no reason to believe he would not change it . He is just running his mouth and will saying anything that will get him elected to president. Who knows what this guy would actually do if he were elected.

A young engineer by the name of Steven Sasson created the first digital camera in 1975 while working for Kodak. It was a completely functional self contained prototype, with batteries, and a cassette recorder to store the images on, and a separate system to load and display the image onto a television screen. He demonstrated what he had made to executives at Kodak, several times. The executives could not imagine why anyone would want to view their images on a television screen, and they had a monopoly on the processed film market anyway, so why would they want to compromise that. That didn't stop them from patenting the technology in 1978.

Steven Sasson took the technology a step further in 1989, creating the first SLR camera, with a 1.2 megapixel sensor and a memory card. Again, Kodak would have none of it. They wanted to sell consumables. The rest is history.

Ironically Kodak still earned billions from digital photography, thanks to royalties earned on the patent granted in 1978. That patent expired in 2007. Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Life's a bitch.

I would say Kodak had THE expertise, they had the first move advantage, they tried their hardest NOT to convert to digital, they refused to compete, and they could have saved themselves every single day since 1975. Kodak fucked up. If the automakers think they can ignore this technology then they will fuck themselves up too.

Sources here, and here.

"Paid for by the corporations through taxes because they put all of the people out of work."

Corporations simple pass any added taxes and costs on to the customer. Thus if you add taxes to a corporation they simple raise the price and pass that added expense on to the customer.

Except that it isn't true. Look, for example, at this discussion by conservative economist, and former Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett.

Some key excerpts:

All economists reject that idea. They point out that prices are set by market forces and the suppliers of goods and services aren’t only C-corporations, which pay taxes on the corporate tax schedule, but also sole proprietorships, partnerships and S-corporations that are taxed under the individual income tax. Other suppliers include foreign corporations and nonprofits.

Therefore, corporations cannot raise prices to compensate for the corporate income tax because they will be undercut by businesses to which the tax does not apply. It should also be noted that the states have substantially different corporate tax regimes, including some that do not tax corporations at all, and we do not observe that prices for goods and services vary from state to state depending on its taxation of corporations.

In 1962, the University of Chicago economist Arnold C. Harberger, published an important article arguing that the corporate tax was borne entirely by shareholders. This was unquestionably true in the first instance; that is, when the corporate income tax was first imposed. The tax simply reduced corporate profits and had to come out of the pockets of shareholders, given that it could not be shifted onto consumers.

But as time went by, some economists argued that a substantial portion of the corporate income tax was ultimately paid by workers in the form of lower wages...

...The Treasury economists conclude that 82 percent of the corporate tax falls on capital and 18 percent on labor. This is very close to the methodology of the private Tax Policy Center, whose analyses are frequently cited in policy debates. It assumes that 80 percent of the corporate tax is borne by capital and 20 percent by labor.

So no, consumers do not pay that tax. Those with capital, the shareholders do, and to a small extent, eventually, workers. 70% of all shares are held by the top 5% of the population (by wealth) by the way, 42% by just the top 1%. But if productivity gains from automation are being passed on to workers (unlike what has happened since 1972) then their real wages will be rising anyway.

Minimum wage jobs are there for supplemental income and those who are just starting work for the first time.

That seems like a false statement. According to this, 49.6% of minimum wage workers are 25 years of age or older. It's not clear that people in this demographic are only working "for supplemental income" (What does this even mean, anyway? That they're independently wealthy and only flipping burgers on the side for fun?) or "just starting work for the first time". According to this, 54% work full-time, so it's not clear how that could be "supplemental income" either. That second reference claims that "half are older than 30". 27% of minimum wage earners have one or more children of their own.

The link in the summary is to the login of the paywall, which makes no sense. The actual link should be: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/technology/apple-encryption-engineers-if-ordered-to-unlock-iphone-might-resist.html.

Not that anyone reads TFA...

Yes, yes, yes finally someone gets it. Yes, she's more republican than Trump and WAY more republican than Sanders.

I will be modded to oblivion by the Hillary shills, but oh well. When you have someone who starts more conflicts than George Bush, pushes MULTIPLE trade agreements to strip US of businesses and workers, was against gay marriage before she was for it, wasn't always on the minority's side, ran a war room against the women which Bill had hurt then tweeted all women who are assaulted should be heart, and is in bed with Wall Street, yes she's pretty much a Republican.

Election of any RethugliKKKan will mean death of privacy and send a chilling signal to all would-be whistle-blowers.

Oh, wait...

BART already tweeted the reason behind the breakdowns:

From @SFBART:
BART was built to transport far fewer people, and much of our system has reached the end of its useful life. This is our reality.

BART has been continually expanding while deferring maintenance on the rest of the system, and that policy has finally come home to roost -- much of their infrastructure is over 40 years old and they can't defer maintenance forever. But by continually expanding, they've made themselves too big to fail (and they've gotten more counties on the hook to keep the service running), so they'll get bailed out one way or another.

That's a political answer to justify asking for more money - it is not a technical answer that should be accepted on /.

BART already tweeted the reason behind the breakdowns:

From @SFBART:
BART was built to transport far fewer people, and much of our system has reached the end of its useful life. This is our reality.

BART has been continually expanding while deferring maintenance on the rest of the system, and that policy has finally come home to roost -- much of their infrastructure is over 40 years old and they can't defer maintenance forever. But by continually expanding, they've made themselves too big to fail (and they've gotten more counties on the hook to keep the service running), so they'll get bailed out one way or another.

I've been wondering what the FBI did back to solve crimes back before they could hack cell phones. Thanks for reminding me.

The FBI has a long and storied history of taking the low road. Just one example of many:

When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. received this letter, nearly 50 years ago, he quietly informed friends that someone wanted him to kill himself -- and he thought he knew who that someone was. Despite its half-baked prose, self-conscious amateurism and other attempts at misdirection, King was certain the letter had come from the F.B.I. Its infamous director, J. Edgar Hoover, made no secret of his desire to see King discredited. A little more than a decade later, Senator Frank Church's committee on intelligence overreach confirmed King's suspicion.

Agencies like the FBI and NSA are always happy to talk to the press about "trust," "safety," and "security," but they clam up in a hurry when the topic of conversation turns to "accountability."

Please cite as I am unaware that any county has figured out how to go fully cashless.

Sweden is almost cashless now, and plans to be fully cashless in the next few years. There are others on the way, too.

So they'll serve as a warning to the rest. If Sweden truly becomes cashless (which is something I highly doubt) then you'll see another form of currency replace it, probably from one of it's neighbours.

Also Canada is a complete misnomer. They recently switched to polymer banknotes and didn't anticipate the extended life expectancy of the new notes. Australia did the same thing and had to cut back on production in the late 90's after fully switching over to polymer notes.

McAfee is owned by Intel Corporation. Former Intel CEO Paul Otellini bought McAfee for $7.6 billion.

Quote from that New York Times story: "There are no immediate synergies that I can see," said Stacy A. Rasgon, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. "It is a strategic deal, and it is a pretty rich price for a strategic buy."

Ohhh. It's a "strategic deal". Oh, well then, that's okay? Why are writers with no interest or understanding of technology allowed to write stories about technology?

My best guess is that's why Otellini was fired.

Stories about John McAfee, who started the company:

1) Meet the harem of SEVEN women who lived with fugitive software tycoon John McAfee before he fled Belize

2) Bath Salts, Orgies, Murder, and Anti-Virus Software

3) U.S. antivirus legend John McAfee wanted for murder in Belize

McAfee is a "legend"? McAfee software was always undesirable, in my experience.

4) John McAfee: Addict, coder, runaway

Quote from that BBC story: "At the time of the raid, McAfee had begun an affair with a 16-year-old ex-prostitute he had met on Belize Independence Day."

She was an "ex-prostitute"? She was no longer a prostitute?

Another quote: "One night Emshwiller took McAfee's gun. She aimed it at his head, squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the trigger. She missed." John McAfee's response: "All she did was burst my eardrum. I'm deaf in one ear now, but I don't have a bullet in my head. Forgiveness is one of the graces that we have as human beings. Can I be faulted for indulging in it?"

Not-prostitute Emshwiller is quoted as saying, " 'One time before, I held him in the corner and I put a knife at his throat," she says.'

Former Intel CEO Paul Otellini got Intel, a hardware company, involved in that by buying McAfee, a software company. Would you use Intel McAfee software? It seemed to me that buying McAfee damaged Intel's reputation, and continues to damage Intel's reputation.

Yes, I studied medical malpractice in some detail. I'm too sleepy now to look up the actual numbers, but the total cost of medical malpractice judgments in the US is about 2-3% (I think I saw that in the New England Journal of Medicine). So the savings would be a fraction of that 2-3% (unless you eliminate all medical malpractice torts, justified or not).

Some tort reformers claim that doctors are ordering useless tests to cover themselves against malpractice claims, but they don't have much data to prove it. Unnecessary tests haven't gone down in Texas. Doctors are ordering useless tests because they can bill for them.

Wikipedia has a decent article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I'd recommend starting with the NEJM references.

Interestingly, interstate competition is legal in a few states, but they haven't succeeded in the free market.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09...

Selling insurance in a new region or state takes more than just getting a license and including all the locally required benefits. It also involves setting up favorable contracts with doctors and hospitals so that customers will be able to get access to health care. Establishing those networks of health care providers can be hard for new market entrants.

"The barriers to entry are not truly regulatory, they are financial and they are network," said Sabrina Corlette, the director of the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute.

Please cite as I am unaware that any county has figured out how to go fully cashless.

Sweden is almost cashless now, and plans to be fully cashless in the next few years. There are others on the way, too.

Remember what happened when that one guy asked to see what they had on him?

They have a scary amount of information on you. And they want more.

Solar in 2015 was 0.95% of total US generation in 2015

When you start from nothing and throw ten billion tax dollars at it, you can do that.

At current growth rates Solar is projected to be 5% of the power grid by 2020 and nearly 15% by 2030.

We shall see, but I think someone is smoking crack. The chances of either number happening are zero in my opinion.

Solar comprises 30% of the power grid in Hawaii right now.

Hawaii is a special case and doesn't carry over to the 48 states. They have extremely stable weather, a ton of sun, and sky-high power prices due to being the most remote islands on Earth. About 32 cents per KWh, compared to less than 12 cents for the lower 48 states.

And it isn't as good as you think:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04...

There are significant portions of Texas where power after 9pm is free due to the excess wind production. With periods of free power there will be lots of companies that spring up and use that power to generate hydrogen that they reconvert to power with a fuel cell to fill in the lows.

Call me when that happens. There are many reasons why the above is happening in Texas, it would be rather hard to build a business depending on it for the next 20 years. You're confusing the issue of something being *technically* possible with it being politically possible and reasonable from an economic point of view.

ROI rates are so high most of the companies investing in solar are turning down investment money because they can't possibly spend it. Last round of construction bonding Solar city went after they turned down over $200 million. You would know this if you followed the market as it's been the talk of the market energy discussions for 4 years now.

That is because there are caps and limits on the Dept of Energy incentive programs to fund and subsidize solar. They don't want to install more than they'll get paid to install. I've looked at investing in solar. It has a nice ROI if you assume the government gravy train will never end, but it falls apart otherwise.

Maybe you should study current rates and market trends.

I have, more than you know. Countries like Denmark and Germany are spending huge sums to accomplish things that look impressive in their own nations, but would never scale to the world. And the changes they make don't actually solve anything, since we all live on the same planet.

Frankly, I find most of the "wind and solar will save us all" people to be rather delusional when it comes to the future of this stuff. You're ignoring a number of non-technical reasons why your numbers won't happen.

Example:

http://www.skepticalscience.co...

That is a perfect case study in why it WON'T happen. First, it assumes that we'll hit the target by cutting our energy consumption in HALF, even after accounting for a growing population. It also assumes that by 2050 we'll replace all cars with EVs. Except, that will be nearly impossible unless people have the money to buy a lot of cars, since we'll have to end all gas car production in the next 5 years otherwise. It would take, at current car production rates, 27 years to replace all the gas cars in the world with EVs.

It then also requires and assumes that all the natural gas used to heat homes, power cooking and cleaning, will all get replaced. So somehow there will be money to replace a billion expensive durable goods that use oil/gas/etc. in the next 25 years.

Allow me to quote:

"Accomplishing all of this will require a major effort, but Ecofys has a number of suggestions how we can start:
Introduce minimum efficiency

Black men in the US have a 1-in-21 chance of being murdered over their lifetime. That's a heck of a lot more likely than your lifetime risk of dying from a car accident. So no, not insignificant.

By that standard all study of human behavior is complete bullshit because there's no standard definition of anything. Even legal terms can mean completely different things depending on cultural context. Just ask the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Or hell take Medicine. Whose to say your sharp pain is my sharp pain?

And the obvious rebuttal is that we can measure human behavior by what people actually do as well as a bunch of other objective criteria (like deaths from cause X), rather than what other people feel they did. You give a couple of examples in your reply that illustrate this point handsomely.

Number one, I've never heard of any school (except some particularly conservative Christian ones) that even tries to figure out a prospective students political beliefs.

Didn't you just spend a considerable bit of time telling me about how things perceived by one person are not perceived by another? Just because you didn't hear about it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. This article describes research that claims enormous bias in social studies (social psychology here):

Dude, this is another Non sequitur

The original claim you;re defending has nothing to do with PostDocs or Profs it was: "preferential treatment in college admissions based on ethnicity, gender, and political belief."

You've presented no evidence of preferential treatment in admissions due to political belief, apparently because that was entirely your own delusion.

Here's the thing, if you turn the problem around and ask the question a bit differently all the moral force. Unless black people are stupider then white people you cannot have a fair college admissions system that results in 18% of the applicants getting 5% of the slots.

What is the point of such speculation when you ignore dropout rate? According to this link, we have comparable enrollment in college between Caucasian and African American, but much lower graduation rates (in six years). 60% of the former group graduates in six years, while 40% of African Americans graduate in six years. That indicates to me that enrollment rates for African Americans are too high and/or too ambitious. It makes little sense to speak of fairness of enrollment, when you ignore fairness of outcome.

So your response to my pointing out the implication of your argument is that racism is true (as is shown by lower admission rates), is to offer another proof that racism is true (as is shown by lower graduation rates).

And your solution to the problem is not "let's try to figure out what we can do to fix this," it's to say "well I guess racism is true."

Okey Dokey Smokey.

When the actual science majors did the work, they got a 3% non-political number, and none of the 97% of scientists who they put in the "thinks anthropogenic global warming is fucking real and we should do something pretty fucking Al Gore-like about that shit"

First, when I used the term, "fraudulent" I didn't mean it in a metaphorical sense.

Allow me to be blunt:
That's how science works all the time. Everybody always thinks they know how the experiment will go, and they all have a plan to get maximum exposure so that their colleagues will hear their names and their careers will grow. By arguing otherwise you indicate that your uinderstanding of science is based entirely on what your fifth-grade teacher told you.

When a study is done on a political position in science, and the method is to list studies by political position, the only way to refute that study is get statements form a significant number of people who did the studied studies saying th

Under Obama the rules of engagement changed dramatically, the rules now require that there be no known civilian casualties.

You do know that this is achieved by decreeing that all males of military age are automatically considered militants? So the rules achieved "no known civilian casualties" by assuming that if you are killed then you were a militant. (Citation)

The number of civilians killed in strikes has dramatically decreased.

Citation needed -- including who counts as "civilian" in this decrease.

Obama deserves credit for halting the indiscriminate killings with bombs and missiles

Obama has appointed himself as a Judge/Jury/Executioner, and redefined words (such as "imminent threat" or "indiscriminate killings") rather than halted anything. Citation

But what do they mean in the synopsis for the article...saying subsidized?

Is this something Uber is only doing in China?

I've never heard the company subsidizing drivers here in the US???

That part sounds a bit fishy to me....

Wow, is it really that difficult to figure out?
google: uber subsidies china
1st result: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06...
1st two sentences: "Uber is spending money at a breakneck rate to crack the China market — even paying its drivers more than the fares they collect.
Fat with almost $6 billion in venture capital, Uber, based in San Francisco, is doling out bonuses up to three times the amount of its fares, in a bet that its exceptional rise in the United States can be matched in China."

... which means that, by definition, it cannot support open source software.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03...

+4 Insightful? Look, government's position on backdoors is fundamentally wrong, as almost everyone who works in tech knows and almost nobody who works outside of tech understands or cares about. But that debate has nothing to do with open source.

The United States Government is the biggest purchaser on the planet, and we pay their bills. If they want to recycle code across their organization to save us money, great. If they want to open-source their unclassified software, great.

... which means that, by definition, it cannot support open source software.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03...

By that standard all study of human behavior is complete bullshit because there's no standard definition of anything. Even legal terms can mean completely different things depending on cultural context. Just ask the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Or hell take Medicine. Whose to say your sharp pain is my sharp pain?

And the obvious rebuttal is that we can measure human behavior by what people actually do as well as a bunch of other objective criteria (like deaths from cause X), rather than what other people feel they did. You give a couple of examples in your reply that illustrate this point handsomely.

Number one, I've never heard of any school (except some particularly conservative Christian ones) that even tries to figure out a prospective students political beliefs.

Didn't you just spend a considerable bit of time telling me about how things perceived by one person are not perceived by another? Just because you didn't hear about it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. This article describes research that claims enormous bias in social studies (social psychology here):

Unfortunately, new research also shows that academia has itself stopped short in both the understanding and practice of true diversity â" the diversity of ideas â" and that the problem is taking a toll on the quality and accuracy of scholarly work. This year, a team of scholars from six universities studying ideological diversity in the behavioral sciences published a paper in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences that details a shocking level of political groupthink in academia. The authors show that for every politically conservative social psychologist in academia there are about 14 liberal social psychologists.

Why the imbalance? The researchers found evidence of discrimination and hostility within academia toward conservative researchers and their viewpoints. In one survey cited, 79 percent of social psychologists admitted they would be less likely to support hiring a conservative colleague than a liberal scholar with equivalent qualifications.

Moving on, you then wrote:

Here's the thing, if you turn the problem around and ask the question a bit differently all the moral force. Unless black people are stupider then white people you cannot have a fair college admissions system that results in 18% of the applicants getting 5% of the slots.

What is the point of such speculation when you ignore dropout rate? According to this link, we have comparable enrollment in college between Caucasian and African American, but much lower graduation rates (in six years). 60% of the former group graduates in six years, while 40% of African Americans graduate in six years. That indicates to me that enrollment rates for African Americans are too high and/or too ambitious. It makes little sense to speak of fairness of enrollment, when you ignore fairness of outcome.

When the actual science majors did the work, they got a 3% non-political number, and none of the 97% of scientists who they put in the "thinks anthropogenic global warming is fucking real and we should do something pretty fucking Al Gore-like about that shit"

First, when I used the term, "fraudulent" I didn't mean it in a metaphorical sense. A few years later, emails came out which indicated the evaluation process was heavily political (the article quotes emails from the primary author, John Cook, outlining marketing strategies for a study which hadn't been done yet). For example, he wrote:

This thread is for general discussions of how to market TCP (began in t

Background checks won't reduce gun deaths by a dramatic amount as criminals do not get their guns from legal sources:

https://d3uwh8jpzww49g.cloudfr...

A counter-argument:

* http://www.armedwithreason.com/debunking-the-criminals-dont-follow-laws-myth-2-0-how-criminals-respond-to-gun-control/

About 60% of the gun deaths in the US are suicides:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10...

Additional background checks are unlikely to put a dent in that number as suicidal people use legally bought and lawfully owned firearms to do the deed.

About 24 studies show that a firearm in the home is a strong risk factor for suicide:

* http://www.armedwithreason.com/643/

If you have children, you probably owe it to your family not to have firearms (also search for "suicide"):

* http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/5/e1416.full

About 60% of the gun deaths in the US are suicides:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10...

That just means that legalizing suicide will dramatically reduce gun deaths. Are you listening, NRA?

Background checks won't reduce gun deaths by a dramatic amount as criminals do not get their guns from legal sources:

https://d3uwh8jpzww49g.cloudfr...

About 60% of the gun deaths in the US are suicides:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10...

Additional background checks are unlikely to put a dent in that number as suicidal people use legally bought and lawfully owned firearms to do the deed.

there's nothing illegal about what these companies are doing. See here. The key part is that companies just have to say they are not adversely affecting American workers. That's a loophole you can drive a mac truck full of H1-B visas through. America is technically at full employment. You and I know those stats are bullshit, but judges rule on the side of property. They're part of that class. How do you think they're going to rule? You think they'll just down the program? You think our Supreme court will? Good luck with that.

Reagan? You mean the guy who signed into law the act which made it explicitly legal to read your data if it's stored on someone else's servers for six months? That guy?

... cloning scandal

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05...

... Tizen, the useless OS

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets...

The FBI doesn't have identical fingerprints, what they have is the number of elements of a fingerprint used to "hash" the fingerprint results in collisions. Since identical twins don't have the same fingerprints. That said, an "identical" fingerprint, however unlikely since the fingertip would have to be the same size and shape to begin with, is certainly within the realm of statistical possibility, the likelihood of a person having an identical set of fingerprints would be truly astronomical.

seeing as how they surprised us with their cruise missiles and their history of aircraft creation, I wouldn't be counting any chickens...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10...

I wish this meme would die.

That's not a meme. It's a real strategy that Microsoft was doing as early as 1996.

I think it might be this link. I don't have my WSJ login at work to verify.

http://blogs.wsj.com/totalreturn/2014/09/03/wealth-adviser-serving-the-merely-affluent/

Here's an alternative story in the NY Times that defines the merely affluent as between $114,000 and $394,000, and the affluent as greater than $394,000.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/the-21st-century-silver-spoon/