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But as long as there are not so many problems as to damage their bottom line, they can just blame the incidents on the passengers

Maybe passengers can take the blame for fighting incidents. But probably not other problems that may arise... like medical issues.

It's long been known that flying in cramped conditions leads to a much higher risk of blood clots and deep vein thrombosis, particularly on longer flights.

The most common recommendation to avoid these problems is to move around more -- both actually getting up and walking around and doing various exercises to move your legs around while you are sitting. Making flights more cramped makes it more difficult to both -- when it's harder for people to maneuver in and out of a cramped seat, they are less likely to do it as often to walk around (particularly for older folks or those with more difficulty moving around, who are more at-risk for these problems). And if you are tall, these new seats may make doing any kind of leg motion in your seat nearly impossible for exercise.

This is not a minor issue. Average treatment costs for a year after a diagnosed case of DVT are $20,000-30,000, not to mention potentially life-threatening complications.

Right now the incidence is significant but still relatively low (maybe 1 in 4500 people who fly). It will be interesting to see if further restricting motion and cramming people in will increase these risks.

And if it does -- then the cost of cramming people into tighter seats is more than just the potential for some disagreements and fights. We may be talking about serious expensive medical problems, potentially resulting from airlines squeezing one more seat in here or there.

That is nonsense. The US government provided arms to the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government lost control

The US began arming Syrian rebels with small arms and other supplies almost a year ago.

Back then your MSM still had you cheering for the "Arab Spring" and Assad was the bad guy. Remember that? The narrative then was the noble and oppressed peoples of the Middle East rising up to topple puppet dictators and NPR et. al. were thrilled. So we gave these noble fighters weapons.

Yay!

Predictably, however, the Islamists started filling trenches with the bodies of infidels. The "Arab Spring" meme had to be quietly abandoned and now you're taught to fear the terrors of ISIS.

ISIS, IS, or whatever, are the exact same violent atavists we were arming twelve months ago; they move freely across the Iraq – Syria border, pursuing their Caliphate using both weapons we've supplied directly to them and weapons they've managed to capture.

It's also going pear shaped in Libya, the place we "liberated" from the Qaddafi regime with airstrikes. Soon those Islamists will start filling trenches with infidels and photos of Hillary posing with them will vanish when we start dropping bombs.

Watch for it.

Many of us understood all of this back when the "Arab Spring" started. The elites took a little longer to figure it out.

There are no recent examples of extended power-sharing or peaceful transitions to democracy in the Arab world. When dictatorships crack, budding democracies are more than likely to be greeted by violence and paralysis. Sectarian divisions — the bane of many Middle Eastern societies — will then emerge

These are cultures that can not govern themselves peacefully. They indulge Islamic extremism and they're not slaughtering infidels only when a dictatorial strongman wields enough power to keep the imams and muftis under control.

The rulers that prevailed during the Cold War understood this and worked to keep a lid on this mess. Those policies are now believed to be "imperialist" and so we've become schizophrenic; we indulge Islamists as the nobel oppressed right up until their nature is exposed by their atrocities and then we start dropping bombs.

Personally, I hope for change. Real change. Like ISIS, IS whatever overrunning Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya, etc. etc. until they reach the sea in all directions. Then, at least, there will be no more nasty little low-intensity squabbles as we try to referee this crap and all doubt about the threat Islam poses to the species will be gone.

One can dream.

Unlike the U.S., the dirty little secret people in other countries want to keep quiet about, or are forced to keep quiet about, are the people they call "nigger" in their culture.

Chinese has minorities, but unlike other countries, they are doing something about it. They recently announced a policy of paying people to intermarry. If an ethnic minority person marries someone in the dominant Han ethnicity, they can receive a payment of 10,000 RMB per year for the first five years of their marriage. If they encourage enough mixed marriages, they may be able to eliminate all their minorities in a few generations. They won't have to worry about Tibetan separatism if there are no more Tibetans.

It would have been MY mistake to assume it must take an entire culture to destroy valuable archaeological sites. But I didn't so fuck you very much.

Okay I'm glad you are aware of that. It really wasn't clear from your reply.

A more appropriate statements of the fact would have included something like "Some Egyptians Muslims" or "Extremist Egyptian Muslims" or "Egyptian Religious Radicals".

Adding "some" would not make it more appropriate, it's redundant. Adding "some" to every reference of a group is stupid.

Adding the word "extremist" is problematic. Extremist from whose perspective? From my perspective, even mainstream Muslims are extremely religious compared to what I'm exposed to. Extremist from the perspective of mainstream Muslims? Which Muslims? American Muslims? Egyptian Muslims? Do you actually KNOW the proportion of Egyptian Muslims who support the closure of Western tourist attractions like the pyramids? If you're going to attach the word "extremist" to them then you better have some idea. If it's more than a few percent it's not really extremist.

Leaders of the Salafist and Wahabi parties have called for the destruction of pagan idols and the pyramids, and they won about 25% of the seats in 2012. So calling them "extremists" is totally accurate for me and you (hopefully, I don't know you) but that's not the same as "unpopular" or "non-representative."

If I see some White dude with Nazi tats screaming vitriol against minorities, I'm not going to say "White People call for race war".

That's a stupid analogy. If the KKK won 25% of Congress, it would be totally appropriate to say "white people call for race war" even though many or most white people didn't. It's enough.

If you have deluded yourself into thinking only a handful of Muslims in Egypt have a problem with the glorification of pre-Islamic society, that's your problem. It doesn't make you sound smart though.

I never stated that it must take an entire culture to destroy the pyramids. What I said had nothing to do with such a claim.

You said "A few radicals =/= an entire country/culture" in reply to "Egyptian Muslims have already called for the destruction of the pyramids and the sphinx."

What was the relevance of that rather obvious fact if it has "nothing to do" with what we were TALKING ABOUT... the destruction of the Egyptian pyramids?

Look, I'm guessing you just weren't aware of how much support there was in Egypt to destroy the pyramids. It's not 0.1%. It's a pretty big proportion, and it's largely an urban vs rural issue because cities benefit more from the tourism dollars. People out in the country are like "You are making money by glorifying pagans and selling alcohol to infidels, that should stop."

In 1994 there were 23,730 homicides in the USA source.

Isis are responsible for way more than 23,730 deaths source.

Read in to that what you like :)

In 1994 the US population was 263 million. (1.6billion / 263 million) * 23730 = 144365, almost bang on middle of the estimate range in the Wikipedia article you linked.

But you're using the world's Muslim population for the crimes of ISIS but only the US population for the crimes of the USA. A more realistic figure would be the number of Islamic state (100,000) rather than the whole muslim population, or inlcude all murders by Muslims anywhere in the world.

In 1994 there were 23,730 homicides in the USA source.

Isis are responsible for way more than 23,730 deaths source.

Read in to that what you like :)

 
  In 1994 the US population was 263 million. (1.6billion / 263 million) * 23730 = 144365, almost bang on middle of the estimate range in the Wikipedia article you linked.

Here comes the parade of Samsung fanboys to make up memes that downplay the significance of the patents in question, because clearly Samsung has never violated laws in order to take over a market...

In 1994 there were 23,730 homicides in the USA source.

Isis are responsible for way more than 23,730 deaths source.

Read in to that what you like :)

Hey, don't call him a dictator. He was legitimately elected! People in the country love him to death. For example, he got 99.89% of the vote with a 99.59% turnout in Chechnya, which is obviously totally legit! In some parts of Grozny, as many as 107% of voters turned out to vote for the "Butcher of Grozny".

Totally legit!

Not really

My guesses:
1. More walking/cycling.
"The average distance travelled per person per year by car ranges from 6,190 km in Japan to 23,130 km in USA."
( http://www.fiafoundation.org/p... - p.3)
Of course, this could also mean that stuff is generally closer to the average Japanese person than to the average USian.

"The data collected showed that Americans, on average, took 5,117 steps a day, far short of the averages in western Australia (9,695 steps), Switzerland (9,650 steps) and Japan (7,168 steps)."
( http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/... )
I'm not sure about obesity rates and diet in Australia and Switzerland, though.

2. Societal pressure
Very few words need to be said about the pressure of Japanese society on its inhabitants. Be(com)ing fat is probably not easy in Japan.

3. Portion sizes
It takes quite some effort to go from 'eat until your plate is empty or you absolutely cannot eat more' to 'eat until you feel satisfied'. It can be done, but it is much easier to just start out with less on your plate. As I believe the Japanese do.

4. Different food flavoring
Very interesting and easily grokked graph:
http://www.nature.com/srep/201...

Not an exhaustive graph, but it's fairly clear that traditional Asian cuisine uses very different ways to add flavour to dishes. I wouldn't be surprised if the effects of consuming higher levels of soy (sauce) affects some obesity-causing mechanisms (insulin production, feelings of satiety, etc.).
When it comes to insulin production, milk also has a special place:
" In one study (PDF), milk was even more insulinogenic than white bread, but less so than whey protein with added lactose and cheese with added lactose. Another study (PDF) found that full-fat fermented milk products and regular full-fat milk were about as insulinogenic as white bread."
( http://www.marksdailyapple.com... )

"The daily per capita consumption of milk is about 105g, roughly one third of the daily per capita consumption in England and Denmark, and less than one-half of that in the U.S. and Australia"
( http://www.dairy.co.jp/eng/eng... )

People who avoid carbohydrates and eat more fat, even saturated fat, lose more body fat and have fewer cardiovascular risks than people who follow the low-fat diet that health authorities have favored for decades [emphasis mine -mi], a major new study shows.

A person can choose to eat this or that and it is his own responsibility. But, when the government decides, what's good for you (based on some "settled" science), it not only affects citizenry's opinion and makes us less responsible for ourselves, it also leaves millions directly controlled by the government — such as pupils in government schools — without choices at all.

Now, I don't doubt, that some of the stuff removed from schools by our omni-scient and caring Congressmen will never be considered good for anyone again. But they still force fat-free chocolate milk on kids, for example, in seeming contradiction to this new study. Maybe, both ought to be available — and parents, rather than the Federal government, be allowed to control the children's nutrition?

Sadly, the movement seems to be in the wrong direction. Some parents are already being punished for children eating incorrectly. And though in this case (200+ pound 8 year old), it is fairly obvious, that the parents are, indeed, screwy, it is likely to be a "poster-boy" for future interventions in cases less and less obvious.

AC the backdoor aspect is both national and international
"FBI Wants Backdoors in Facebook, Skype and Instant Messaging"
http://www.wired.com/2012/05/f...
".... drafted by the FBI, that would require social-networking sites and VoIP, instant messaging and e-mail providers to alter their code to make their products wiretap-friendly."
Then the world was given more details "Encrypted or not, Skype communications prove Ãoevitalà to NSA surveillance" May 14 2014
http://arstechnica.com/securit...
As for the "nobody on the inside has ever leaked out." aspect try http://cryptome.org/2013-info/...
The "inside" can now be understood by aspects like "Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing N.S.A.Ã(TM)s"
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09...
..."employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987."
How past "parallel construction" and telco support will respond to any new "peer-to-peer and voice calling" will be interesting.
How did the US and UK get to past bespoke crypto telco hardware in the 1950's and beyond? Plain text always seemed to emerge just in time.

Maybe if there is a distracted driving law that you're violating when you do it. Otherwise, probably not. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11... http://blog.sfgate.com/bicycle... http://sf.streetsblog.org/2013...

The Western side of Antarctica has gained some mass but not enough to counteract the much more massive amount the Eastern side has lost. So, a much larger net negative.

What I find most amazing is this: 97% of the best climate scientists we have on earth have concluded that we have a problem. The insurance companies ["How The Insurance Industry Sees Climate Change", "For Insurers, No Doubts on Climate Change", "Rift Widening Between Energy and Insurance on Climate Change", "Insurer's Message: Prepare for Climate Change or Get Sued", "On Climate Change: Get Ready or Get Sued" have concluded we have a problem. But, in the interest of sticking with their political druthers, a significant fraction of the American population has decided that 97% of the climate scientists and the insurance companies must be wrong. These people--Conservatives, essentially--are willing to take a risk that 3% of climate scientists are correct and that the insurance companies and 97% of climate scientists are wrong--merely because it serves their political persuasion.

Do you think that Liberals would be successful at convincing 97% of climate scientists to take our point of view and the insurance companies too if this were bullshit? Yet, all these wiseass Conservatives are willing to take a risk with our frickin' planet just so they can jam a finger in the eye of their political rivals--ignoring the reality that has the potential to end life on the damned planet. In short, WTF is going on in the mind of Conservatives? How do you look at all these insurance companies and think: "It's a Liberal plot!" Can you be so stupid?

Actually, it's astoundingly rare in the US for a motorist who strikes and kills a cyclist or pedestrian to be charged with anything related their death. If there was a DUI, hit-and-run, suspended license or bench warrant involved then law enforcement will diligently follow up on those offenses, but as a member of the NYPD once explained to me (I'm a cycling advocate in NYC so I get into these discussions), it's surprisingly hard to charge the driver with manslaughter in most cases, or anything related to the death. For one, the legal definition rules out any situation where an otherwise-lawful driver can say "Well gee I didn't see them!" and secondly, draconian US penalties for crimes like vehicular homicide tend to make prosecutors recoil at the thought of 'ruining the life' of an otherwise law-abiding citizen by sending them to prison for 15 years, a person who's shoes they can see themselves in. So it doesn't happen unless the perp already had it coming for other huge reasons. It's a legal problem where we lack appropriate sentencing, and a cultural problem where we identify with the criminal. As you can imagine, some cycle-savvy Scandinavian countries have already done a good job of tackling these issues via appropriate sentencing (License revoked or limited for a reasonable period of time, and transportation-related community service) and infrastructure improvements (No death on the road can be put to rest without a thorough analysis of the traffic conditions that caused it and steps taken to correct the problem, such as actual road changes - Something we in the US seem to require a quota of 3 or more deaths at a location before doing).

Here, this NYTimes article does a great job of expanding on the issue, despite it's clickbait headline.

Many ultra-orthodox rabbis who demand their followers not use uncensored smartphones or uncensored internet access. In 2012, a big anti-Internet rally for ultra-orthodox Jews was held in New York. "The siren song of the Internet entices us! It brings out the worst of us!" The event was streamed live and is summarized on YouTube.

There are ultra-orthodox ISPs with filtering. The filtering is very stringent, based on a rabbi-approved whitelist. "That's all you get, and nothing else."

There are kosher cell phones. "Kosher Phone has no camera, no Bluetooth capabilities, no memory card slot and cannot be connected to a computer."

That's in the US. In Israel, kosher cell phones are so locked down that only approved numbers can be called. Even rape crisis centers are blocked.

When looking for the WaPo article I linked to I noticed they had added a correction since I first read it:

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the prescription drug overdose death rates. In aggregate, states with medical marijuana laws had higher death rates than those without, though the authors’ statistical analysis did find that the laws were in fact associated with overall decreases in overdose deaths.

Which means that the idea that legalized states had lower death rates is not true.

Also, the author of the study wrote a piece for the NY Times in which he said:

Using death certificates compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we found that the rate of prescription painkiller overdose deaths increased in all states from 1999 to 2010. But we also found that implementation of a medical marijuana law was associated with a 25 percent lower yearly rate of opioid painkiller overdose deaths, on average. In absolute terms, we estimated that states with a medical marijuana law had a total of about 1,700 fewer opioid painkiller overdose deaths in 2010 than would be expected based on trends before the laws were passed.

Since the author states that all states had increases in OD death rates, the summary's claim that legalization led to "a dramatic reduction in overdose fatalities" is also not true. The "reduction" in OD deaths was due to the difference between the statistically expected death rate in legalized states using the non-legalized state death rate trends compared to the observed death rate. In other words, and being very rough with the math, the non-legalized states had their OD death rates increase 4x, but the legalized states only had a 3x increase, therefore the legalized group had 25% fewer deaths than would be expected if they were following the non-legalized trend.

It's rather disingenuous to criticize them for not getting all the way to 100% in one fell swoop.

No it's not, not when they themselves are talking about getting to 100% in one swell foop, about building cars with no steering or brake controls.

Couple of links that all of you should study

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03...

http://io9.com/5908290/during-...

Or is urban blight now a natural disaster in the game? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05...

Amazon's "monopoly/market power" doesn't hurt consumers

He who ignores history is doomed to repeat it.

Wikipedia is about providing correct information, which is unrelated to gender distribution.

The Wikimedia Foundation and numerous commentators in the press disagree. See for example this recent Guardian editorial, or recall last year's controversy about the categorisation of women novelists in Wikipedia. It does affect how information is presented, and what information is presented.

...and Texas also has silly blue laws, so liquor stores are all closed on Sunday, and armed TABC agents rough up customers at locations accused of violations.

I rather prefer the liquor laws in Chicago -- if ever there was a city that learned its lessons from Prohibition...

Nor would it change the fact that people would still bring (founded and unfounded) lawsuits against the police.

Please don't give me that bullshit about "lawsuits against the police." The Republican Supreme Court with its legislation from the bench has made it impossible to sue the police.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08...
How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops
By ERWIN CHEMERINSKY
AUG. 26, 2014
(Summary: Even if a federal investigation shows that Darren Wilson acted improperly in killing MIchael Brown, the Supreme Court has made it difficult, and often impossible, to hold officers and governments accountable for civil rights violation. In Plumhoff v. Rickard, the court found that it was not "excessive force" to fire 15 shots into a car, killing the driver and passenger, after a chase that reached speeds of >100mph. Alito ruled that the driver's conduct posed a "grave public safety risk," and that the police were justified in shooting the car to stop it, and that it “stands to reason that, if police officers are justified in firing at a suspect in order to end a severe threat to public safety, the officers need not stop shooting until the threat has ended.” This is true of any high-speed chase. In Connick v. Thompson (2011), John Thompson spent 14 years on death row because the New Orleans assistant district attorney didn't tell the defense that a crime lab said the perpetrator had a blood type that didn't match Thompson. Thompson sued the City of New Orleans, and was awarded $14 million. But the Court reversed 5-4, with Thomas writing that New Orleans couldn't be held liable because the plaintiff didn't prove that its own policies violated the Constitution. The Court also said that law enforcement officials "absolute immunity" to civil suits, even when they commit perjury or misconduct.)

Rote memorization is enough for math, hey? As others have already remarked, that will not work so well with division. Or algebra, or any other form of applied math. Or pure math. But I guess Ohio doesn't need to produce any math prodigies from here on. If you say "well, we can teach math methods so our kids don't have to be dumber than birds" then you have to teach logic (induction/deduction etc) so the kids can do proofs. Logical methods applied to everyday events (why do things fall?) begat the scientific method.

Hurry before the next flood in Thailand, where most of the major hard disk factories in the world are conveniently located nearby each other (hence the price surge of 2011).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11...

From the article:
“Surely one of the inevitable impacts of this is that never again will so much be concentrated in so few places,” said John Monroe, an expert on storage devices at Gartner, a technology research firm.

Yeah, sure.

I expect that it'll be 30+ years before self-driving cars are even close to half of cars on the road, ... can't afford the extra cost of such a car.

There was an incredibly interesting study study where it was found that French people think that most people (in France) are poor even though most people (in France) are actually middle class - whereas Americans think that most people (in America) are middle class even though most people (in America) are actually poor. It was also interesting that when asked which income distribution they thought was ideal, Americans chose Sweden (without knowing it was Sweden).

If the trend continues, it won't just be that our children and grandchildren can't afford the extra cost of a self-driving car, it will be that they can't afford any car at all. The key point of self-driving cars without driver controls is to be individual public transport pods for a future where most people can't afford to own cars.

Individual public transport pods won't be quite as economical as busses or trains but they're much better from a disease transmission point of view. One person with the flu lets out a big sneeze on a bus and half the bus is infected. But in an individual transport pod the infection is contained. Plus you don't have passengers picking their zits and absent-mindedly flicking the zit-cheese away onto the passengers next to them.

When Google designs its self-driving cars without driver controls, it's most definitely preparing for the future (in America) - a future where most Americans are too poor to own cars at all.

Not a bad idea, but there is no guarantee Orwell's books will stay on your phone. The US Constitution may fare no better.

Germany wishes it could start reducing the number of coal plants. To do that, it would have had to keep its nuclear plants open, and eventually build more of them. But in getting "environmentalists" to defend strip mining, and for the dirtiest mineral ever dug up, and in the green hills of a crowded continent that values its open space, and directly in the face of their own fears about carbon-induced warming, I'm not just after neener cred. I'm pointing to a real and emerging problem of energy sprawl.

A high-density energy plant might be controversial to install, but low-density energy occupies a large amount of ground. Replacing a nuclear reactor with windmills means having hundreds of them twirling away across the landscape. Lignite has not much more unit energy than wind, but in the absence of nuclear would be Germany's only 24/7 power source. Photovoltaic can be installed on existing rooftops, but what does a cloudy country without deserts do when that diffuse energy source needs large arrays of ground-mounted panels?

Furthermore, sprawling renewable sources require a whole new generation of transmission lines, routed in different ways than the traditional grid. The transmission lines for Engergiewende are already eliciting protests:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...

Something tells me that the closure of the rest of the nuclear plants will never take place. The high cost of small-source energy can't be concealed in subsidies forever. At some point the ratepayers and the taxpayers are going to revolt.

The problem is that very often someone who thinks he is (or is) completely innocent will talk to the cops, and as a result the cops decide he's committed a crime, prosecute him, and he goes to jail. Here's an example http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10... of the scientist Thomas Butler

For those who don't want to click on the link, it describes a situation wherea man was prosecuted for lying to the FBI, after he caused a major alert by pretending some vials of plague bacteria had been stolen that, in fact, he'd accidentally destroyed.

I'm kind of wondering if that's the example the parent poster actually planned to use, or if he cut and pasted the wrong link. I'd have thought Bulter would have been aware of the consequences of pretending someone had stolen such a thing, that it would result in a major investigation, with a lot of resources wasted.

If the police catches a car thief, they will likely visit anyone buying a car from him. They can't know that you bought his car that he purchased before he started his thieving career, or the car which he purchased himself with money he made from thieving (which would then be legally yours, unlike a stolen car that you bought off the thief), until they ask you.

That's the purpose of interviewing that man - to figure out if he had anything to do with illegal activities or not. Apparently he didn't. So what's the problem?

The problem is that very often someone who thinks he is (or is) completely innocent will talk to the cops, and as a result the cops decide he's committed a crime, prosecute him, and he goes to jail. Here's an example http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10... of the scientist Thomas Butler.

Notice that the cops can lie to you, but if you lie to them, you're committing a crime (and a lot of people went to jail for lying to cops, including the roommates of the Boston bomber).

On Youtube there's a lecture by a law professor about why you should never talk to the cops without a lawyer present, even if you're innocent (and certainly not if you're guilty). He gave many scenarios, based on real cases, about how that has gotten people convicted of crimes, even falsely.

For example, suppose you go to Pigtown, buy a bottle of milk in the grocery store, and go home. Somebody gets shot around that time in Pigtown. The cops ask you whether you were in Pigtown that day. You say yes.

Then the cops show your picture to Mary Misidentification, who honestly but wrongly thinks that she saw you shoot the guy. You go to court. The cops use your admission to prove that you were in Pigtown that day. They use Mary's testimony that she saw you shoot the guy. Put those together and they send you to jail.

In the Bitcoin case, you may have done something that you think was legal, but was actually a crime. (Or something that they could interpret as a crime.) If you kept your mouth shut, the FBI wouldn't even know about it. But if you admit to doing it, that's a confession, and it's an easy conviction for them. You won't even get a chance to plea bargain.

Unless a crime was committed against you or somebody you're concerned about, talking to the cops can't do you any good, and it can do you harm. So it's foolish to do it.

It's too bad, but the cops are acting like pigs, so you can't do it.

I didn't know what Twitch was. Luckily, the NY Times had an informative article about it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08...

Jesus Christ. Humanity is doomed.

Here, the last-mile providers are acting like Marxists.

They certainly are — thanks to the monopoly-power once given to them by the government.

The solution to this, however, is not creating more rules for them to follow (with more boards and commissions to — ineffectively — ensure compliance) — these only make it harder for a would-be newcomers to appear — but to make this market properly competitive.

So screw the Koch Brothers and their idiot shilling.

While the public anger is (somewhat clumsily, but still effectively) once again redirected against the Koch Brothers, "Big Cable" donates to the ruling party en masse, CEOs play golf with the President and otherwise do the ruling party's bidding. Is it likely, that further monopolization will be blocked?

Assuming these were probably FBI or Secret Service agents, my understanding is that the only record allowed of the interview consists of their handwritten notes. You are not allowed to make a recording. This means that, afterwards, they can put any spin on the interview that they want. If you disagree, they can and will throw you in jail for lying to a federal officer.

I thought you were allowed to make a recording. If I decided I wanted to talk to them, I would say, "I'd like to record this conversation so we have an accurate record. Can I do that?" If they say no, I would say, "I'm sorry then, I have nothing to say."

But I don't think I would talk to them.

I'm not even sure it's illegal to secretly record a conversation. There were state laws, like one in Massachusetts, that made it illegal, but they may have been overturned. IANAL, I don't know.

I remember during the Vietnam war, the FBI came to interview an anti-war activist at his home. He secretly taped the conversation, led them on a long, interesting discussion about politics, and then broadcast the tape over Pacifica radio.

The only possible reply to these officers should be "I have nothing to say to you".

That's right. My line would be, "I've been told by many lawyers not to talk to the police without a lawyer present. Give me a card and I'll get back to you, when (and if) I get a lawyer. I prefer that you send me a list of questions in writing."

If I was ever tempted to be a good citizen and cooperate with the FBI, the Thomas Butler case showed me what happens to people who do that even when as far as they know they're innocent. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10...

If the FBI is going to act like dicks, then people aren't going to cooperate with them.

I went to a meeting where I actually heard my local New York State assembly member, Dick Gottfried, and one from the neighboring district, Linda Rosenthal, denounce Airbnb.

They said that they had never seen lobbying like that before. Everywhere you go in the state capital, you find Airbnb lobbyists. They have a massive lobbying effort.

I told them that we were discussing it on Slashdot and I asked them to elaborate on exactly why Airbnb was wrong.

First, they explained, you could always rent out a room in your home -- but you had to stay there. What you can't do is rent your apartment and leave. That's the housing law. (But most leases say that you have to get permission from your landlord to sublet.)

The big problem is that landlords are deciding to let apartments go vacant rather than rent them to traditional long-term tenants with leases. Instead, they're renting out apartments through Airbnb, and making much more money, as de facto hotels. We have many regulations for hotels, most of them put in for good reason, and they're ignoring the regulations.

Tenants don't like Airbnb because they reduce the rental housing stock. Landlords won't rent to tenants if they can make more from Airbnb. Furthermore, tenants don't like the heavy traffic of anonymous strangers coming in to their building. (Airbnb rentals are popular among prostitutes, or more properly, commercial sex workers.)

In effect, if you visit New York City for a week, Airbnb is cheaper. However, if you want to live in New York City, Airbnb would make it harder for you to find permanent housing.

One of our biggest problems in New York City is that housing is too expensive. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08...

In New York City, most of us believe that poor and working-class people should be able to live here, because it offers them a way up. That's our values. In Houston or Atlanta you have other values. That's your privilege.

We've worked out ways to do it, including rent control, public housing, and housing subsidies. It's not the perfect solution, but it works. Airbnb would disrupt this system. Retired people were paying $500 a month for a subsidized apartment and subletting it for $200 a night. Taxpayers don't want their subsidies to go for that.

You may believe that the free market is a panacea that solves all problems. You may believe that we have a moral obligation to have a free market. In New York, we believe that everybody is entitled to his opinion. However, lots of people who don't understand how things work here come to New York and try to sell us on some new scheme. People like that don't usually get far in New York. I hear they have problems elsewhere too.

As soon as money changes hands it is no longer a "private arrangement". When you charge for a place to stay you are now a hotel unless it is on a month to month basis then you have a roommate. If you are providing the same service as a hotel you are operating a hotel. It is not a "public safety" issue.

This summary is inaccurate - it is a "public safety" issue. In the Nigel Warren case where he rented out his room on Airbnb in NYC, the judge levied a fine of fine of $2,400 after ruling that they were operating an unlicensed hotel.

The law on which the decision was based, Bill S6873B-2009 states:-

JUSTIFICATION:

The Multiple Dwelling Law and local Building, Fire and Housing Maintenance Codes establish stricter fire safety standards for dwellings such as hotels that rent rooms on a day to day (transient) basis than the standards for dwellings intended for month to month (permanent) residence. There are substantial penalties for owners who use dwellings constructed for permanent occupancy (Class A) as illegal hotels. However, the economic incentive for this unlawful and dangerous practice has increased, while it is easier than ever to advertise illegal hotel rooms for rent to tourists over the internet ... It endangers both the legal and illegal occupants of the building because it does not comply with fire and safety codes for transient use.

I.e. The reasoning given for the law was to protect public safety, specifically to ensure compliance with fire and safety codes.

According to this data chart [kff.org], about 30% of physicians are female.

As time go on, this will even out. While the ranks of older physicians are male-dominated, females make up just slightly under half the medical school class in the US. In parts of Europe, they already make up the majority:

women make up 54 percent of physicians below the age of 35 in Britain, 58 percent in France and almost 64 percent in Spain, according to the latest figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03...

Tim Cook once said: “If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock."

Besides, your faith in boards is disturbing.

"And these "things" run computers in them."

That sentence doesn't even parse, but no. On a completely unrelated note, please look up the definition of computing*. The intelligent members of the universe thank you. * I'll even give you a hint. Cars aren't computers!

That's true. But How many computers are embedded in cars?.

If the entire student body doesn't shut down the school, or at least picket the office and generate some arrests, they should be horribly ashamed.

At the University of Virginia, the Board of Visitors fired the president in an unwarranted way. Student protest helped get her reinstated. If student action can do that, I'm pretty sure it can get such an absurd policy overturned. You just have to have the brains to recognize it, and the balls to pursue it.

Anyway, shame on the students if this is allowed to stand.

And you know what? We've got "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" who will fight you tooth-and-nail to defend that, in spite of their own interests.

This. Further, there's the tortured logic of libertarian theology where taxing those who can pay is immoral, and that as a moral people, we must not victimized these poor, poor, wealthy people.

The wealthy and powerful, on the other hand, have no problem voting their own interests as well as hiring pied pipers to convince the masses to vote against their own interests through propaganda. There's a reason why nominal wages haven't risen significantly in over thirty years while the stock market has: someone is making money and it ain't us.

As that culture changes for China, they will make the exact same mistakes the other industrialized countries have made.

Very unlikely as their management of their currency and the investments in third world countries show.

Yes, chances are they will make their own mistakes.

One big problem they've got is an inverted population. The 1-child rule has created a situation where there won't be enough young workers to support the elderly pensioners. To the best of my knowledge (which isn't very comprehensive), that is a new problem for a developing economy.

Another problem is their sex-ratio is really out of whack, an indirect result of the 1-child rule. When there are more men than women, there is usually excess violence. Not to be reductionist but when large numbers of men don't get laid on a regular basis, they get frustrated and angry. One way to fix the problem is to go to war and kill off the extra men. Let's hope that doesn't happen.

Carbon Credit farmers?

Since the United Nations program began, 46 percent of all credits have been awarded to the 19 coolant factories, in Argentina, China, India, Mexico and South Korea. Two Russian plants receive carbon credits for destroying HFC-23 under a related United Nations program.

Seriously? The chance to cause global disasters and a million war deaths (by the most off-the-wall-extreme measures for the US's war on terror) and the like are not preferable to Africa's situation?

Let me count some of the tragedies in recent years in Africa.

• 1.2 million annual aids deaths
• Over 550,000 Malaria deaths.
• Massiveethnic cleansing and Religiously motivated murders.
• Large areas without water, or without clean water
• Basic democratic process failure

I'm not arguing that first world countries are utopias but to claim Africa has it better or is doing things better is silly on the face of it.

There have been reports of FUD from the Koch brothers, trying to slow down the growth of alternative energy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04...

I wonder who's making sure this gets lots of press, and what the real numbers are.

Time for medicare for all in the usa also the million-dollar heart transplant is loaded with markup where you can likely go out side of the usa and pay way less for it.

also due to court rulings in favor of inmate care you can just go to prison / jail to get one as well.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pr...

Boy, is that ever the exception that proves the rule. In order to get a heart transplant somebody had to sue the California prison system for him.

If they didn't want to pay for it, they could have released him on parole. He was sentenced for burglary and robbery. A patient with heart failure isn't going to be able to commit any more burglaries and robberies. He'll be lucky if he can walk around the block.

Despite this unusual example, prisoners have some of the worst health care in the country.

I read a series of articles on prison health care by Andrew Skolnick in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1998 http://www.aaskolnick.com/new/... and I've seen dozens of articles since then to show that it hasn't gotten any better (it couldn't get worse).

They were leaving diabetic patients to die in their cells without insulin. Dozens of patients died because doctors and nurses simply ignored them and didn't give them their regular medication.

Sue, you say? It's almost impossible for a prisoner or his estate to sue the prison or the private contractor in most prisons, Correctional Medical Services.

There was a provision in a lot of states by which a doctor who was convicted of sexually abusing patients or dealing drugs would get his license reinstated but limited only to treating prisoners, so many of the prison doctors had worse convictions than their patients.

Don't forget, a lot of these prisoners were in because of the war on drugs.

Journalists know that if you want to do a sensational investigative story, write about prison health care. The New York Times did a series a while back:

https://www.google.com/webhp?r...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02...

HARSH MEDICINE
As Health Care in Jails Goes Private, 10 Days Can Be a Death Sentence
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
Published: February 27, 2005

Brian Tetrault was 44 when he was led into a dim county jail cell in upstate New York in 2001, charged with taking some skis and other items from his ex-wife's home. A former nuclear scientist who had struggled with Parkinson's disease, he began to die almost immediately, and state investigators would later discover why: The jail's medical director had cut off all but a few of the 32 pills he needed each day to quell his tremors.

Candy Brown died in September 2000, investigators say, when her withdrawal from heroin went untreated in this Rochester jail cell, shown in a recent photo.

Aja Venny with a photo of her son, Scott Mayo Jr., and the urn holding his ashes. She lives in a Bronx apartment with her husband, Scott Mayo, and their daughter, Skye, who is at her mother's knee.

HARSH MEDICINE
The New York Times's yearlong examination of Prison Health Services, the biggest commercial provider of medical care to inmates, found instances of disturbing deaths and other troubling treatment.

DAY 1: Dying Behind Bars

DAY 2: Lost Files, Lost Lives

DAY 3: Mistreating Tiffany

Obamacare is hardly a socialist program.

Given that Obamacare follows the essential features (mandates and private insurance) of a Heritage Foundation idea. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...

In fact, calling Obama socialist or liberal is a stretch.
Obama, one of the better republican presidents we have had.
Hopefully we get a real liberal next time instead of a poser.

I wanted an FDR and all I got was this lousy Obama.

Yes, Assange was so terrified of those evil Swedes, those American puppets, that he was moving Wikileaks' base of operations there (after alienating the majority of his Iceland team) and applying for a residence permit there, right? That's why he called Sweden's laws and legal system his "shield" in multiple interviews, right? That's why Wikileaks leaked that in 2006 Sweden caused a major diplomatic rift with the US by outright disguising their special forces as airport workers to break into a CIA rendition flight to stop the US, right?

Funny how Sweden only became evil US lackeys after he was anklagad for rape.

While nuclear isn't perfect, the paranoia about potential nuclear accidents means it isn't commercially viable.

In fact, coal processing has killed more humans from radioactivity than nuclear power in the United States and also in the world.

Also, hydro electric dams destroy and threaten to destroy a greater ecological area than nuclear power plants do.

The problem with nuclear power is simple ignorance. Most people don't understand it, and basically just think: Nuclear? as in the bombs? I don't want that in my back yard.

Coal is a far worse fuel. But it's deaths are spread out over the entire world and over decades, rather than all together in one lump sum. Moreover, when we have a coal accident, it kills the wildlife, while when we have a nuclear accident, it creates a wildlife preserve that the animals love: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05...