Slashdot Mirror

The NYT is about three steps ahead of you. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08...

Mitch McConnell cosponsored a resolution in 1997 demanding commitments from China. http://www.nationalcenter.org/... Now, when President Obama delivers the deal he asked for he backpedals. http://www.nytimes.com/politic... He was for commitments from China before he was against them for sure. Seems like he is a lot like Boehner who can't deliver on deals either.

This in an accord to present a united position in Paris in 2015. Apparently, since the Framework Convention on Climate Change has already been ratified, this will just count as an update. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08...

Here is Secretary Kerry's take: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11... Now, he just needs to deny the Keystone XL pipeline permit.

Ummm... why? You think it's preposterous that software exploits are bought and sold?

"It is common for individuals or companies who discover zero-day attacks to sell them to government agencies for use in cyberwarfare." - Zero-day attack

References:
- Zero-day exploit in Apple’s iOS operating system 'sold for $500,000'
- Nations Buying as Hackers Sell Flaws in Computer Code
- How Spies, Hackers, and the Government Bolster a Booming Software Exploit Market
- Cyberwar’s Gray Market

Here's one:

Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination (NBER Working Paper No. 9873).

Studies like that have been done repeatedly for decades. I expect that if you read the NBER study, they'd have a bibliography of older research.

Each one repeatedly demonstrates actual discrimination against blacks in hiring. I don't know how anyone could avoid that conclusion. Employers are more likely to hire a person with a white name than a person with a black name with the identical resume. It's not just socioeconomic disadvantage, inability to do the job, lack of qualifications or laziness.

I don't know if anyone has done a similar study in tech fields specifically, but it would be a good thing to do. If you're taking a black studies course, you could get a good paper out of it. Send out 100 resumes to Monster.com from Greg and 100 resumes from Jamal.

If you want to know generally why there are so few minorities in science, Science magazine has had many articles.

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/ca...

http://www.nber.org/digest/sep...

Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination (NBER Working Paper No. 9873).

Employers' Replies to Racial Names

"Job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback."

Now a "field experiment" by NBER Faculty Research Fellows Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan measures this discrimination in a novel way. In response to help-wanted ads in Chicago and Boston newspapers, they sent resumes with either African-American- or white-sounding names and then measured the number of callbacks each resume received for interviews. Thus, they experimentally manipulated perception of race via the name on the resume. Half of the applicants were assigned African-American names that are "remarkably common" in the black population, the other half white sounding names, such as Emily Walsh or Greg Baker.

To see how the credentials of job applicants affect discrimination, the authors varied the quality of the resumes they used in response to a given ad. Higher quality applicants were given a little more labor market experience on average and fewer holes in their employment history. They were also portrayed as more likely to have an email address, to have completed some certification degree, to possess foreign language skills, or to have been awarded some honors.

In total, the authors responded to more than 1,300 employment ads in the sales, administrative support, clerical, and customer services job categories, sending out nearly 5,000 resumes. The ads covered a large spectrum of job quality, from cashier work at retail establishments and clerical work in a mailroom to office and sales management positions.

Here's more:

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/200...

Study: Black man and white felon – same chances for hire

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12...

In Job Hunt, College Degree Can’t Close Racial Gap

"A more recent study, published this year in The Journal of Labor Economics found white, Asian and Hispanic managers tended to hire more whites and fewer blacks than black managers did."

"There is also the matter of how many jobs, especially higher-level ones, are never even posted and depend on word-of-mouth and informal networks, in many cases leaving blacks at a disadvantage. A recent study published in the academic journal Social Problems found that white males receive substantially more job leads for high-level supervisory positions than women and members of minorities."

Tax avoidance schemes are remarkably common among large successful coporations. Other successful U.S. tech companies exploit the "Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich" loophole. Ikea pays almost no tax by incorporating in Holland and exploiting its permissive rules for non-profits.

Which raises two questions:

- Are tax rates so high that it is necessary to engage in complicated tax avoidance schemes in western democracies to be successful in business?

- Is it best that companies do avoid taxes? Do we trust Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Vinod Khosla and Bill Gates to invest efficiently for the betterment of society more than we trust Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? And I would ask the same of the Republican counterparts of those politicians. Though that the comparison is somewhat unfair to Republican politicians because it is their objective to reduce the concentration of wealth under their own control by shrinking government, regardless of the political persuasions of those who would benefit from that dispersal of wealth. I have never understood why, for those who believe wealth is dirty, that its transfer to the political class is somehow purifying.

...how can a publicly traded company possibly justify such investments to stockholders?

Most of google voting stock is owned by company insiders. I hear 3 people basically control the voting rights to the company. Modern stock issues are a scam.

The new Class C shares have no voting rights. The Class A shares have one vote each, but collectively those votes are dwarfed by the 10-votes-per-share Class B shares. Those shares, which do not trade in the public market, are owned by Google insiders, who will also get Class C shares in the distribution ...----... The split was first proposed nearly two years ago as part of a plan to "preserve the corporate structure that has allowed Google to remain focused on the long term." ...---.... As originally proposed by the company, the move would have made it easy for Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and the chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, to cash in a large part of their holdings without giving up their voting control. But that ability has been limited after the company settled a class action suit filed by angry (Class A) shareholders, and reached agreements with the three top officials to limit their sales.

Basically they want the benefits of a public corp without the responsibilities. So yeah, they don't have to justify jack to stock holders. Remember, if you don't know who the sucker in the room is after 5 hands, the sucker is you.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/03/investing/google-stock-split/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.... http://www.businessweek.com/ar... http://investorplace.com/2014/...

Plus, first world countries also have poor people.

A fun fact: the average income of the poorest 5% of all Americans is about the same as the average income of the richest 5% of all Indians.

In the 1950s, brave American scientists shunned by the climate establishment of the day discovered that the Earth was warming as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, leading to potentially devastating natural disasters that could destroy American agriculture and flood American cities. As a result, the country mobilized against the threat. Strong government action by the Bush administration outlawed the worst of these gases, and brilliant entrepreneurs were able to discover and manufacture new cleaner energy sources. As a result of these brave decisions, our emissions stabilized and are currently declining.

Unfortunately, even as we do our part, the authoritarian governments of Russia and China continue to industralize and militarize rapidly as part of their bid to challenge American supremacy. As a result, Communist China is now by far the world’s largest greenhouse gas producer, with the Russians close behind. Many analysts believe Putin secretly welcomes global warming as a way to gain access to frozen Siberian resources and weaken the more temperate United States at the same time. These countries blow off huge disgusting globs of toxic gas, which effortlessly cross American borders and disrupt the climate of the United States. Although we have asked them to stop several times, they refuse, perhaps egged on by major oil producers like Iran and Venezuela who have the most to gain by keeping the world dependent on the fossil fuels they produce and sell to prop up their dictatorships.

We need to take immediate action. While we cannot rule out the threat of military force, we should start by using our diplomatic muscle to push for firm action at top-level summits like the Kyoto Protocol. Second, we should fight back against the liberals who are trying to hold up this important work, from big government bureaucrats trying to regulate clean energy to celebrities accusing people who believe in global warming of being ‘racist’. Third, we need to continue working with American industries to set an example for the world by decreasing our own emissions in order to protect ourselves and our allies. Finally, we need to punish people and institutions who, instead of cleaning up their own carbon, try to parasitize off the rest of us and expect the federal government to do it for them.

Please join our brave men and women in uniform in pushing for an end to climate change now.

-- Five Case Studies on Politicization

Slashdot may usually be progressive technologically (sometimes even too progressive in some ways), but it can be backward/conservative in other ways (especially regurgitating mainstream medicine's party line, which is why your amusing-to-me over-generalization got modded flamebait). Obviously, there is still a lot of variety here, so this is just an observation on trends...

A couple things on that tangent:
http://www.disciplined-minds.c...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09...
"They say they believe in freedom and share our values. They say a few bad apples shouldn't bring down judgment on their entire kind. Don't be fooled. Though they walk among us with impunity, they are, in the words of Henry Farrell, a political scientist at George Washington University, "a group that is notoriously associated with terrorist violence and fundamentalist political beliefs."
They are engineers.
Farrell, of course, was kidding. He posted that comment on a blog shortly after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (confessed Al Qaeda operative and engineering student) tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit last winter. But the satire was rooted in a statistical fact: in the ranks of captured and confessed terrorists, engineers and engineering students are significantly overrepresented. Maybe that's a numerological accident. The sociologist Diego Gambetta and the political scientist Steffen Hertog don't think so. ...
Gambetta and Hertog found engineers only in right-wing groups -- the ones that claim to fight for the pious past of Islamic fundamentalists or the white-supremacy America of the Aryan Nations (founder: Richard Butler, engineer) or the minimal pre-modern U.S. government that Stack and Bedell extolled.
Among Communists, anarchists and other groups whose shining ideal lies in the future, the researchers found almost no engineers. Yet these organizations mastered the same technical skills as the right-wingers. Between 1970 and 1978, for instance, the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany staged kidnappings, assassinations, bank robberies and bombings. Seventeen of its members had college or graduate degrees, mostly in law or the humanities. Not one studied engineering.
The engineer mind-set, Gambetta and Hertog suggest, might be a mix of emotional conservatism and intellectual habits that prefers clear answers to ambiguous questions -- "the combination of a sharp mind with a loyal acceptance of authority." Do people become engineers because they are this way? Or does engineering work shape them? Itâ(TM)s probably a feedback loop of both, Gambetta says. ..."

Much of medicine is filled with ambiguity (if you ignore nutritional missteps being at the root of much chronic disease that plays out in a variety of different symptoms). Much of the rest of disease is related to lifestyle or environment (e.g. leaded gas causing the past few decades of increasing crime, now dropping as leaded gas has been banned). As Dr. Fuhrman says, genes may give us weak links, but whether they get pulled on to the breaking point is a function of diet and lifestyle and environment. That is not the sort of thing engineers are going to like to here... They want a quick answer prescribed by an authority like a drug. Dr. Fuhrman calls prescriptions for drugs like blood pressure medicine or diabetes-related medicines for type II diabetics as "permission slips" by authority to continue with current bad behavior regarding diet, lifestyle, and environment. Likewise, getting the label of "bad genes" is another permission slip for misbehavior... Not saying some people don't get dealt a much worse hand of cards in terms of genes, family habits, and environment than others... Still, consider how so much of life is what we make of it:
"An Afternoon with comedian Brett Leake '82"

They're just playing the game that's being played, they all do it. For example: Apple's Tax Strategy

No, much of their local competition in book sales etc (not being international companies with multiple subsidiaries in the EU) are not doing this. Apple etc's competitors are generally multinationals who also play these tricks. But in many cases Amazon's are not, and the effects of tax abuse are that much more problematic as they don't only affect tax revenue but also distort the market.

They're just playing the game that's being played, they all do it. For example: Apple's Tax Strategy
They'd be incompetent if they didn't. You can order your own tax sandwich here (pdf)

However, the referenced NY Times article does indicate:

"As a result, the desert state of Dubai brings sand for its beaches all the way from Australia."

However, I can't find any good references to back this up.

Also, the NY Times article is an opinion piece from a history professor....additional evidence required.

Pieces of various weapons have apparently been found in junkyards around the Middle East (Jordan for one), some with UN tags and some without. A quick Google finds this but there's other information out there including some pictures if memory serves.

http://www.worldtribune.com/wo... A poor citation for sure but there have been others.

Here's a more recent article about weapons being found http://www.nytimes.com/interac...

Another http://cjonline.com/stories/09... Seems a few missles and chemical processing equipment were shipped out. the answer isn't so black and white it seems.

Worth noting is that Iraq DID use chem weapons during the first war, Desert Storm. I know someone who wrote a book about it after extensive research and the Govt. did all they could to shut him up. Look up "Gassed In The Gulf", it's pretty well referenced and many of the things he claimed were slowly proven in the years after.

if your new theory is so fundamental, you're wasting time with the more abstract stuff when you could give concrete examples

How many concrete things did GR have, at the start, that physicists could rush out and test? Eclipse data is all I am aware of, at least for the first x years.

I think your comment mostly reflects how you find my theory "shocking"...to you. It is different, very different. I'll give you that. But does it ring?

By the way, I bet these two sentences are ones you wish you could have back:
You briefly discuss implications on the impact on the structure of an atom, then you should be able to discuss calculations on the atomic spectrum. No need then to ramble on about more complex issues or problems associated with measurements in deep space etc., but instead would work with data that at the simplest level can be collected in a high school physics course lab, although has been done in detail to very high precision in better equipped labs.

The first sentence, about how I should be immediately working on "atomic spectrum" stuff, directly contradicts your second sentence. Which assumes I have a well stocked research lab that I should be busy working in...but that would be pointless because others have "done in detail"...my theory?!

Spring-And-Loop Theory came about by my trying to understand how gravity, an "attractive" force, worked across empty space. It is not my fault that it has had other repercussions. I am not deliberately trying to jump all over the place with it. But it is a reimagining of physics, no two ways about it. Again, some will have a harder time with this than others.

GPS would not have helped in either case - both planes were where they were supposed to be.

Well, if you want to be truly serious, none of the other incidents are/were like those poor Koreans. Soviet government knew the plane was civilian, but they shot it down anyway.

In most other cases discussed, the air-defense personnel either didn't expect a plane to be there, or mistook it for a legitimate target.

A possible exception is the crash of the Poland government's plane in 2010. Russia certainly had a motive for causing it — not that anybody ever proved anything, of course.

Whatever its political and economic faults, at least the Soviet Union didn't try to enforce medieval Christian values on people.

Yes, they did. They just used different language, calling it "social deviationism" or such, instead of "sinful." What happend to Yevgeny Kharitonov is one example.

not all rpeublicans are saying that... http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03...

Last week saw the Orbital Sciences Antares explosion on Tuesday, this fatal Virgin Galactic crash on Friday, and a plane crash in Wichita on Thursday that killed 4 (The pilot, and 3 in the building it crashed into).

Hopefully we have some good weeks ahead to balance this.

David Rhodes is president of CBS news. His brother Ben Rhodes is Obama's deputy national security adviser for strategic communication. Brother Ben was instrumental in orchestrating the Benghazi cover up.

From the New York Times:

"WASHINGTON — A newly released email shows that White House officials sought to shape the way Susan E. Rice, then the ambassador to the United Nations, discussed the Middle East chaos that was the context for the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

The email dated Sept. 14, 2012, from Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, to Ms. Rice was obtained by the conservative group Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act request. The subject of the email was: “PREP CALL with Susan.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05...

How's that US spy program using NAZI spies working out for your PR?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10...

Most countries wanted the justice system to review them for war crimes.
The US wanted to protect them so they could spy on and ultimatly smuggle them back to the US and grant full citizenship, then deny they did this.

Fortunately there are reports of police forces specifically rejecting applicants with enough neurons to figure this out:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09...
This happened in CONNECTICUT.

Actually, a Democratic campaign consultant first pushed the idea, after reading an academic study
Published: October 29, 2010

Before the 2006 Michigan gubernatorial primary, three political scientists isolated a group of voters and mailed them copies of their voting histories, listing the elections in which they participated and those they missed. Included were their neighborsâ(TM) voting histories, too, along with a warning: after the polls closed, everyone would get an updated set.

After the primary, the academics examined the voter rolls and were startled by the potency of peer pressure as a motivational tool. The mailer was 10 times better at turning nonvoters into voters than the typical piece of pre-election mail whose effectiveness has ever been measured.

Malchow, a 58-year-old former Mississippi securities lawyer who managed Al Goreâ(TM)s first Senate campaign and went on to start a direct-mail firm, read the academicsâ(TM) study and wanted to put the device to work. But he had trouble persuading his firmâ(TM)s clients â" which over the years have included the Democratic National Committee and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. â" to incorporate such a tactic into their get-out-the-vote programs. All feared a backlash from citizens who might regard the mailer as a threat from someone seeking their vote.

Then, as New Jersey prepared to elect its governor last fall [in 2010], Malchow experimented with less ominous language, an idea he adopted from the Fordham political scientist Costas Panagopoulos.

The article then goes on to mostly talk about liberal attempts to study voter behavior so that they can shape opinions and get people to the polls.

Earlier this week, the NY Times reported that a group of city and leaders, with NYC public advocate Letitia James at the helm, are pushing for a commitment from Comcast to provide free broadband to the city’s public housing and to extend its low-cost Internet Essentials plan (which was created as a condition of the NBC deal). While New York City might be the center of finance and commerce in the U.S., about 1/3 of households don’t have an Internet connection, highlighting the huge “digital divide” between the city’s wealthy residents and those who can’t afford broadband service.In addition to the free service for public housing, the group wants gratis access at shelters for the city’s homeless and its victims of domestic violence.

Looks like, after our tax dollars have been providing little blue pills to the less fortunate, now they are closing the loop by providing free access to pr0n as well. Must be very good to have that "Mission Accomplished" feeling.

from the summary:

Now Kimberly Hefling reports that for-profit colleges who are not producing graduates capable of paying off their student loans could soon stand to lose access to federal student-aid programs.

A secret about those private "not for profit" colleges which the Department of Education exempted from that regulation. They are for profit. Huge profits. The distinction is not that these institutions do not earn profits, but rather that they are exempt from business taxes on those profits and the income accrues to the administration and faculty instead of to business owners.

So I had a friend in college who worked part-time in the payroll office and had access to the campus salary database. From her dorm room. So one evening she asks if I want to know what any of my professors make. Looked them all up. In 2014 dollars the mid-level salary for recently-tenured faculty was about $300,000 / year. Deans, provosts and presidents made much more.

Subsidized college loans have created a glut of education dollars and "not-for-profit" educators are raking them in. They are not opposed to earning huge profits themselves, the just do not want competition from other colleges which are run as business. So they lobbied Arne Duncan to enact a regulation which, for no legitimate rationale, applies only their competition.

Don't believe me? Universities try to keep this information locked away tightly but occasionally it leaks out. Here, for, example, is what Treasury Secretary Jack Lew received as severence pay from New York University:

President Obama’s nominee to lead the Treasury Department, Jacob J. Lew, got a $685,000 severance payment when he left a top post at New York University in 2006 to take a job at Citigroup.

NYU is a private "non-profit". And, as that link indicates, as such they receive additional benefits from the federal government beyond tax exemption.

You're actually completely wrong.

For most visits, you should be paying in cash. A doctor's visit should not require a full time staffer processing insurance paperwork just for a visit and a prescription or two. Heck, even most basic hospital operations (like lab work, fixing broken bones and such) should be payable in cash by anyone who has been mildly responsible with their savings and paychecks.

Price gouging, fraud and EMTALA are the main culprits. My favorite example of price gouging here is a snake anti-venom that costs $100 to make and is sold to patients in hospitals for as much as $30k. If the state is going to prosecute people who charge a 100%-200% markup for a generator after a hurricane, what possible excuse do they not have to prosecute people for a 3000% markup on a drug that is absolutely necessary to the patient's immediate survival? Fraud? How about the trending practice of having one doctor in network and one out of network so that the in-network partner can use the out of network partner to deceptively rape the assets of the patient? Or drive by doctoring at hospitals?

This is a target-rich environment for massive law enforcement clean up. Enforcing the laws combined with efforts to increase access to medical school and some other subsidies on the supply side would force the market to act like a real market, not a state-protected industry.

No, that doesn't follow.

The handout to the employee enables the corporation to employ workers at a lower rate, and without it they could not -- they would be forced to pay more because their workers would die at the rates they paid them.

The hypothetical handout to the corporation might get it to pay more, but not only would it not be required to, it could have paid that extra money without the handout.

See nbauman's link above: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10

It follows exactly as much as "A government handout to an employee is the same as a government handout to his employer, who doesn't have to pay him as much." does.

The hypothetical handout to the corporation might get it to pay more, but not only would it not be required to, it could have paid that extra money without the handout.

The handout to the employee might get the corporation to pay less (to the employee), but not only would it not be required to, it could have paid less without the handout (to the employee).

Logic isn't your strong suit. Handouts to low-income workers enable employers to pay lower wages in the exact same way that handouts to employers allow them to pay more. Neither handout forces the behavior.

Yeah, someone else bought Motorola Solutions: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/20...

No, that doesn't follow.

The handout to the employee enables the corporation to employ workers at a lower rate, and without it they could not -- they would be forced to pay more because their workers would die at the rates they paid them.

The hypothetical handout to the corporation might get it to pay more, but not only would it not be required to, it could have paid that extra money without the handout.

See nbauman's link above: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10

Considering that this kind of policy is common throughout the world as a pretty uncontroversial part of government, I would say that the burden of proof of that statement is on you.

Are you serious? Every time the US government actually hands out large quantities of money to companies, the majority of people oppose it. For example for the auto bailout:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes....

I mean, it defies belief for progressives to whine and complain about "big corporations" and the need for increased corporate taxes on the one hand and then turn around and shove massive amounts of money into the hands of corporations.

It is not clear to me why `picking winners and losers in the market place' is supposed to wrong. The government is a player in the marketplace with its own motivations.

If I have a million bucks, invest it in a creationist amusement park, and it goes belly up, I am very unhappy and I can't repeat that mistake; people who are bad at picking winners and losers soon lose their money. But if the government invests a million bucks and invests it in a creationist amusement park, and it goes belly up, no government employee hurts or gets punished, and they just raise taxes and do it again the next year.

That's just another act in the marketplace.

No, it is not, because unlike other market participant, government employees don't have anything at stake and governments only go bankrupt after the entire economy has been destroyed.

No, it was a (failed) attempt to make you think about your position.

You need to think about your position. Here's a good start:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

MacDowels

Yeah, right.

The New York Times compared Hampus Elofsson, 24, who works for Burger King in Copenhagen, Denmark, with Anthony Moore, shift manager at Burger King, Tampa, FL. Elofsson makes 20 an hour, time and a half for overtime and Sundays, has enough for a night out with his friends and a savings account (plus government health care). Moore makes $9 an hour for a 35-hour week, gets $164 a month in food stamps, is behind on his bills, can't buy clothes for his kids, and can't afford Burger King's health plan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10...

"except under oath"? Don't tell that to Mark Furhman, who perjured himself in the O.J. Simpson trial, and was fined $200

I would not tell him that, alright. What's your point? That punishment for perjury could range from nothing to a small fine to impeachement? Nothing new here — my point was, such lying is illegal — not what the punishment for it is (or should be).

You gotta admire the chutzpah. Even as they are saying to the FCC that they can be trusted with the authority to be the gatekeepers of the Internet, they put on a public display of their intent to inhibit public policy debate on the very issue of Net Neutrality itself.

It's not chutzpah, this just shows you just how solidly they have the political system locked up. They have the politicians and regulators so firmly bought and paid for that they are not worried about those stooges one tiny bit, D or R. Good hell, they're even going after Attorneys General with lobbyists to stifle lawsuits.

I noticed one difference between US public schools vs schools that work. When my step-daughters were in elementary school, there were three weeks out of five that were "special". The first week was Mexican culture week and they spent their time singing Mexican songs, making Mexican food, and learning Mexican dances. That was enriching, perhaps. A couple of weeks later was black history, and then "world diversity " or something. That's all fine and well, I understand the value of such things. I strongly suspect, though that Japanese students spent those weeks learning reading , writing and arithmetic. My stepdaughter can make enchiladas, but can't read so well. A good trade?

My niece is Mexican. I made sure that when she learned about Mexican culture, she learned about Diego Rivera, Mario Molina, and Nora Volkow. Quite a bit of science there. Ever see Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads? She also took a class in black history when she went to college. Ever hear of Madam C. J. Walker?

The Japanese have their problems. A Japanese architect found out that about 80 Korean forced laborers died during WWII making an airport, and their bodies were dumped into a pit. He wanted to build a memorial for them, but he ran into some vicious right-wing nationalist opposition, with death threats, and the town had to back down. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10... In Japanese noodle shops, they sometimes have signs, "No Koreans." (And sometimes "No Americans.") While most educated Japanese embrace other cultures, a loud, dangerous minority don't. Perhaps they could use some American-style cultural diversity.

What's really driving obesity is the engineers in the processed food factories trying to optimize the perfect mix of ingredients that people find irresistible. Because irresistible = profit. And unlucky for the rest of population, irresistible usually involves a high calorie mix of fat and sugar.

And just as importantly, that the food never cause us to be satiated and stop eating. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02... http://www.nytimes.com/interac... When they call us consumers, they mean literally, physically.

What's really driving obesity is the engineers in the processed food factories trying to optimize the perfect mix of ingredients that people find irresistible. Because irresistible = profit. And unlucky for the rest of population, irresistible usually involves a high calorie mix of fat and sugar.

And just as importantly, that the food never cause us to be satiated and stop eating. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02... http://www.nytimes.com/interac... When they call us consumers, they mean literally, physically.

If you cannot show harm

Oh, for chrissake:

http://omicsonline.org/open-ac...

http://www.theatlantic.com/hea... (this one is notable because the author received death threats immediately after publication)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05...

then you are in exactly the same position as anti-vaxxers.

Did I call it or what? My first post in this comments section predicted that I would be compared to anti-vaxxers. If I were to continue, I guarantee I would soon be compared to racists, Nazis and worse.

Look, I don't care if there are GMO plants. I just want it to be spelled out, right in the "nutritional data" that is already on the label, that this food is the product of a patented organism.

I find it interesting that all these "pro-Science" people are so vehemently opposed to this one bit of truthful information being given to consumers. For some reason, the believe there is a fact that consumers don't have the right to know. Further, there have been industry lawsuits attempting to stop companies who do NOT use GMOs from labeling their products as NOT containing GMOs. Go figure. I guess "Science" is fungible when it comes to people's right to know what they're eating. Since when has "Science" been in favor of people not knowing something.

Many older vehicles can even be started(and stolen) with a minimal amount of knowledge and tools.

GM was the last hold-out for two keys. One for the outside and one for the inside. The idea was that someone that managed to match one of the outside keys wouldn't be able to match the inside keys. And you didn't need a "valet key" because the ignition key was the same thing, though a valet couldn't then lock it in their lot, but one would assume they were safe.

Well, back in the early '90s, Texas A&M used lots of GM, and lots of students drove GM as well. So, a group tried all their door keys in the university cars. There was a list of keys to car pairings. Copies were made of the "golden" door keys. Then they gathered the large pool of student keys, and used the golden key for the car to open the doors, and tried all the ignition keys. More copies were made, and the result was that there was a group of students with keys to about half the university's cars, based on GM's shitty security, and using nothing more "high tech" than getting a key copied at Wal-Mart or such.

That knowledge was mainly used for amusment, not harm. Find 10 of the cars (all look identical). Then swap them. The employees would go out, find a university car parked where they left a university car, and find it didn't work with their keys. Much time lost, before they'd figure out they had the wrong car, then came the start of the search for their car. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12...

Honestly, I think that Nixon's stuff is worse. Spying on a journalist is bad - but not personal.

In addition, Nixon's crimes were both for his personal gain and hit democracy at it's heart - elections. Those make it incredibly evil crime.

The CBS reporter's incident, assuming it is entirely true, does not have these issues. There is no evidence that it was for any one's personal game, nor was it an attempt to circumnavigate political system.

As such, Nixon's crimes are far worse.

Yeah, right. Because Nixon politicized the IRS and set it against his enemies.

No, wait. He didn't. That was Obama.

Sorry, there's not much more fundamentally corrupt than politicizing the tax collector - that can and does take all your assets for no reason at all.

Is there anything Obama does that you wouldn't apologize for?

In the words of SNL's skewering of Obama's entire record of failure:

“Some people want to criticize the way our administration has handled this crisis, and it’s true we made a few mistakes early on. But I assure you, that was nowhere near as bad as how we handled the ISIS situation, our varied Secret Service mishaps, or the scandals of the IRS and the NSA,” he said. “And I don’t know if you guys remember, but the Obamacare website had some pretty serious problems too.”

He said that considering the rest of the second term, “this whole Ebola thing is probably one of my greatest accomplishments.”

To be fair, the IRS is supposed to go after tax cheats.

Honestly, I think that Nixon's stuff is worse. Spying on a journalist is bad - but not personal.

In addition, Nixon's crimes were both for his personal gain and hit democracy at it's heart - elections. Those make it incredibly evil crime.

The CBS reporter's incident, assuming it is entirely true, does not have these issues. There is no evidence that it was for any one's personal game, nor was it an attempt to circumnavigate political system.

As such, Nixon's crimes are far worse.

Yeah, right. Because Nixon politicized the IRS and set it against his enemies.

No, wait. He didn't. That was Obama.

Sorry, there's not much more fundamentally corrupt than politicizing the tax collector - that can and does take all your assets for no reason at all.

Is there anything Obama does that you wouldn't apologize for?

In the words of SNL's skewering of Obama's entire record of failure:

“Some people want to criticize the way our administration has handled this crisis, and it’s true we made a few mistakes early on. But I assure you, that was nowhere near as bad as how we handled the ISIS situation, our varied Secret Service mishaps, or the scandals of the IRS and the NSA,” he said. “And I don’t know if you guys remember, but the Obamacare website had some pretty serious problems too.”

He said that considering the rest of the second term, “this whole Ebola thing is probably one of my greatest accomplishments.”

Thank you. I wasn't aware of it.

Here is environmentalist George Monboit embracing the deployment of nuclear power: http://www.monbiot.com/2013/12...

Here is climate scientist James Hanson calling for the development and deployment of nuclear energy: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes....

In the entire world in the past seven months of the outbreak there has been exactly three cases of someone being infected by someone returning from the infected area. All of those cases were nurses who had close contact with a patient just before they died. All other cases outside the infected area have been people who were infected in the infection zone because the came in close contact with someone dying from the disease.

Read some facts about ebola before you spread disinformation and panic.The measures you propose are an overreaction.

Maybe these fine folks can set you up. They seem to be very good at what they do

You do realize that people aren't, you know, actually, like, supposed to be able to support themselves with the lowest-paid jobs in the country? These are the kind of jobs that used to be done by kids still living at home, not those who expected to make a career and raise a family by saying 'Do you want fries with that?' a thousand times a day?

But with today's fucked economy, that's the only type of job many adults with kids, rent and car payments can find.

Our society has deep structural problems relating to automation that have been ignored for forty years and those chickens are coming home to roost. One of those major problems is that we've given preferential tax treatment to capital gains over income (labor).

We can either have egalitarian democratic society, or we can be like Mexico. I hope the walls on your gated community are high enough and you pay your private security contractors enough not to steal from you.

Yeah, these minimum income guys are out of their minds.

In Copenhagen Airport, passengers have been tracked using Bluetooth for some years. The visible difference for the customers is a display that shows the security waiting time in minutes.

At least compared to these Apple products. (Here's a nytimes link if you don't want to go to a random site)

But seriously I'm glad it's going to be displayed in a museum.