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"If he wants to address diversity in our field, he needs to look at those entering the program. If he wants more people in the job, help give them the proper educational background and other certifications required to enter the field. "

The affirmative action policies Jackson supports actually reduces the number of blacks who end up with engineering degrees.

Even when black students are interested in STEM careers, affirmative action puts them in a position where their white and Asian classmates are much better prepared and capable to handle difficult STEM classes. As a result they get poor grades, feel demoralized, and transfer to easier majors. This is called the "mismatch problem."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03...

Recently, economists from Duke studied the effects of Prop 209, comparing undergraduate graduation rates for blacks, Hispanics and American Indians before and after the ban. In a paper being considered for publication by The Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Duke economists conclude that mismatch effects are strongest for students in so-called STEM majors — science, technology, engineering and math. These subjects proceed in a more regimented way than the humanities, with each topic and class building on what came before. If you don’t properly learn one concept, it’s easier to get knocked off track.

The Duke economists say that lower-ranked schools in the University of California system are better at graduating minority students in STEM majors. For example, they conclude that had the bottom third of minority students at Berkeley who hoped to graduate with a STEM major gone to Santa Cruz instead, they would have been almost twice as likely to earn such a degree.

and

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sc...

More Evidence that Admissions Preferences Discourage Minority Students from Majoring in STEM

Recently Science Careers commented on Mismatch, a provocative and persuasive new book that examines the effects of giving large admissions preferences to minority college students. One of the unintended consequences of such measures, write authors Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., is to steer minority students away from majoring in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This happens, they argue, because large preferences encourage students to attend colleges where their academic credentials place them toward the bottom of their college classes. Science majors, however, overwhelmingly come from the upper end of their college classes, regardless of where they go to college. Students admitted with large preferences--as many African American and Hispanic students are--are therefore deprived of the realistic opportunity to earn STEM degrees.

"The problem with affirmative action is it assumes that a given percent of every race is interested in x career or y school, but that just doesn't reflect reality one bit. "

It's not just this. Even when black students are interested in STEM careers, affirmative action puts them in a position where their white and Asian classmates are much better prepared and capable to handle difficult STEM classes. As a result they get poor grades, feel demoralized, and transfer to easier majors. This is called the "mismatch problem."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03...

Recently, economists from Duke studied the effects of Prop 209, comparing undergraduate graduation rates for blacks, Hispanics and American Indians before and after the ban. In a paper being considered for publication by The Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Duke economists conclude that mismatch effects are strongest for students in so-called STEM majors — science, technology, engineering and math. These subjects proceed in a more regimented way than the humanities, with each topic and class building on what came before. If you don’t properly learn one concept, it’s easier to get knocked off track.

The Duke economists say that lower-ranked schools in the University of California system are better at graduating minority students in STEM majors. For example, they conclude that had the bottom third of minority students at Berkeley who hoped to graduate with a STEM major gone to Santa Cruz instead, they would have been almost twice as likely to earn such a degree.

and

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sc...

More Evidence that Admissions Preferences Discourage Minority Students from Majoring in STEM

Recently Science Careers commented on Mismatch, a provocative and persuasive new book that examines the effects of giving large admissions preferences to minority college students. One of the unintended consequences of such measures, write authors Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., is to steer minority students away from majoring in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This happens, they argue, because large preferences encourage students to attend colleges where their academic credentials place them toward the bottom of their college classes. Science majors, however, overwhelmingly come from the upper end of their college classes, regardless of where they go to college. Students admitted with large preferences--as many African American and Hispanic students are--are therefore deprived of the realistic opportunity to earn STEM degrees.

Care to back up your claim that labor is a significant portion of food prices?

Fair enough.

Here's a few hits from Google. This is interesting because they both agree on the data, but draw different conclusions. The first one says eliminating immigrant workers would result in a 5% cost increase in the stores, which is devastating.
http://www.fb.org/index.php?ac...

The other says the same thing, around 3.6%, but thinks it is a good idea anyway:
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfor...

I find lots of articles claiming that organic is more expensive because it is more labor intensive, but few numbers to say how much. So the impact may be much greater there.

Overall, I've never met a rich farmer before. That's not to say there aren't large multinational corporations who buy and sell food profitably. But that is a long way from farmers. Farmers often only survive because of government subsidies. Today, family farms are vanishing because a strip mall is more profitable per acre. Some family farms vanish because the estate can't pay the inheritance taxes. It's a tough industry.

This link is blatant right-wing propaganda, but funny as hell. Especially the one about fish.

http://www.consumerfreedom.com...

But on a serious note, todays NY Times had an "according to the latest study" acticle about a study that claims that all that stuff we've been told for decades about dietary fat being unhealthly is untrue. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/.... Now since this contradicts several decades of observation, I tend to take "latest study" science with a grain of salt and give more credence to well verified (i.e. long term) science.

The problem with bad science is that it gets reproduced in the popular press (and popular imagination) even if it is later proven false. Case in point: the notorious vacination-autism fiasco. Another example is the "neutrino faster than light" results released a few years back in Italy. As Mark Twain said, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes."

You can never fully discount the possibility that the guy releasing the results of the latest study is an attention-whore looking to drum up sensationalism to have his 15 minutes of fame. Scientiest are human and subject to the same vanities as everyone else.

Bottom line, never trust preliminary results.

That's nice, but you've pulled your stats out of your ass.

Here's one map:
http://www.nytimes.com/interac...

Try this one on page 18 that says the same thing:
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/d...

In short, you're completely wrong, you made up your numbers, and you are, at best, uninformed.

He knew the game was rigged. How else could the @#$%! Seahawks win?

They had a much better defense. If you know nothing else about two teams in the superbowl, root for the one with the better defense.

In fact, Nate actually did predict this, with a 70% certainty the previous year. I guess he forgot. :-)

If that is true, why did California lose representation in Congress with the last decennial census?

http://www.nytimes.com/interac... California's population up 10%, no seats gained or lost.

If only there was a motive for the US to build up or increase the defense budget - or not reduce the defense budget. If there were only something happening which would make some people in the US want to validate their existence.... http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...

You know a woodpecker once delayed a shuttle lunch by a month, right?

If you offered $1M/yr to anybody willing to pick oranges you'd have no trouble filling the jobs

Sure you would because there would be no company able to make an economic profit selling them. No profit = no company = no jobs. This piece of your argument is a strawman.

If you offer $5/hr then nobody is willing to do the job, apparently.

Probably true in most of the US at least. Wages have to be high enough to allow people to pay for necessities of life in the location they live in. However labor costs in Mexico for picking produce are close to $4/DAY so it clearly is not true everywhere.

Chances are if you offered $10-20/hr you'd have no trouble filling the post.

The average wages of a field worker in the US in 2009 was $10.07/hour. (The linked article's conclusions are badly flawed as I'll detail below but the data on wages appears to be close to accurate)

The price of oranges probably wouldn't change much at all - if they could get a penny more for them they already would be doing so.

The price certainly would change if by some means the price of labor went up across the board. However given that these are globally traded commodities we are talking about (you can get oranges from outside the US), it's kind of a moot discussion. Even if we established a higher minimum wage within the US, significant production would simply move to where labor prices are lower. Not all, but significant amounts. This creates a de-facto cap on the price of food products. The cost cannot simply be passed on to consumers even if the consumers were willing to pay more, which they demonstrably are not. (See Walmart) You can place trade barriers but then you are increasing the cost of living for everyone to protect the jobs of a very small group of people.

he guys who own the farm would just make less money.

You are incorrectly presuming several things including that the farm is profitable and that farmers who are profitable are making large profits. Not typically true. Farming is a HARD business that frequently is not profitable and even in the best of circumstances tends to have modest profit margins.

The best data I've been able to get indicates that if you buy an orange for $1, about $0.30 of revenue goes to the owner of the farm and about $0.10 goes to the worker who actually picked the fruit. (Labor costs make up 42% of variable production costs.) The remaining $0.60 goes to the distribution network and various other players including grocery stores. Now that doesn't say anything about profit, just revenue. The farmer has a LOT of cost to their operation so the profits after expenses are negative profit margins for about 2/3 of farms, especially among smaller farms. That means they have zero ability to raise wages - they are already losing money. Bigger farms are more likely to achieve profits and even higher net margins (often >20%) but the profit picture varies wildly by farm. But even among the profitable farms the farmer gets to keep somewhere between $0.02 and $0.07 of the $1.00 you spent on that orange. Many don't get to keep any profit at all.

So, bottom line, if you raise wages by 50% ($0.05 on that $1.00 orange) you will essentially wipe out almost all profit in farming. I'm all for paying higher wages if we can but it isn't as easy as many are making it out to be.

You misread my post. I have admired the practice of science since I began to read. I am deeply concerned at the actions of scientists willing to cheat to get ahead. One source for my claim is this article from the NYTimes that states "In October 2011, for example, the journal Nature reported that published retractions had increased tenfold over the past decade, while the number of published papers had increased by just 44 percent." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04... . As for Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics being less susceptible to sources of error including deceit I have no breakdown by area of study. Do you?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08...
Germany Backtracks on Tuition
By CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE
Published: August 25, 2013

(German colleges are now free again, like the Scandinavian countries. Under the German constitution, the 16 state governments control finance and education. A 2005 federal court decision allowed them to charge tuition. 8 states, in former West Germany, did, but it was unpopular and they reversed their policy. Lower Saxony charged €1,000 ($1,300)/year. An economist estimated that tuition caused 20,000 potential students (6.8% of all students) to forgo enrollment in 2007. Denmark, Norway and Sweden have free tuition, although Germany, with 2.5 million students, is the largest. Britain raised its tuition caps to £9,000 ($14,000). In France, most public universities charge a few hundred euros per year, though the grandes écoles are more expensive.)

US investigators are interested in the Southern ping arc because radar installations along the Northern arc would be hard to evade though some mention is now made of traversing Myanmar on the Northern arc. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03... However, in the graphic, an envelope of 1 hour flight distance is shown for each arc. The envelopes for the North and South arcs don't overlap. In fact it looks like it would take three hours to get from one arc to the other. Drawing radii from the arc ends to the satellite position, it looks like you'd have to get to Sri Lanka before the arc ends are within an hour's travel distance. But, news reports indicate detection of hourly pings. If similar arcs are associated with the other pings, then there may never be time to jump from one arc to the other if they are never consistent with a position near Sri Lanka, so the Southern arc might be excluded on geometric grounds.

The Malaysian military radar showed an unidentified plane without a flight plan fly across their country and over the Indian Ocean. The radar operators didn't notice it. So they missed the opportunity to send up fighter jets to find out what the fuck was going on.

Instead they were were searching the wrong sea, on the east of Malaysia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03...
Series of Errors by Malaysia Mounts, Complicating the Task of Finding Flight 370
By KEITH BRADSHER and MICHAEL FORSYTHE
MARCH 15, 2014

No, I haven't. But with a civilian transponder set to an identification of a delayed flight, for example, a plane could get too close perhaps. Bin Laden did claim to posses nuclear weapons a while back. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11... So, actual contact with the deck might not needed.

If the plane was hijacked, the hijackers might know about the weaknesses in Malaysia's air defenses. See the article "Series of Errors by Malaysia Mounts, Complicating the Task of Finding Flight 370".

The article says, "a [Malaysian] four-person air defense radar crew did nothing about the unauthorized flight. ... As a result, combat aircraft never scrambled to investigate. The plane, identified at the time by Mr. Najib as Flight 370, passed directly over Penang, a largely urban state with more than 1.6 million people, then turned and headed out over the Strait of Malacca."

Because of this delay, we don't know where the plane is. Maybe the hijackers bribed the air defense radar crew to do nothing about the flight, or maybe some of the radar crew members wanted to help the hijackers.

The article does not say why, but perhaps lack of radar contact along the Northern landlocked arc is the reason. Helpful graphic showing remaining fuel range from last ping arc. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03...

A couple of arcs of position are available from the last satellite ping. To the North, the arc is mostly over land in Western China though Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan are also covered. To the South, the arc is mostly over ocean West of Australia but it crosses Sumatra. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03...

Clearly, religion is the key to happiness:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-i...

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/i...

http://media.dumpert.nl/foto/4...

It's because of this.

The biggest jump was 2008-2009, a budget proposed by Bush, not Obama. . . . But I've got no interest in hatchet-job newspaper articles that are more about ideological carping than sound analysis.

Sorry, but the juxtaposition was just a bit too ironic. How about some "sound analysis" rather than "ideological carping" on what really happened in 2009?

• Bush's proposed 2009 budget (not passed by Congress): $3.1 trillion.
• Obama's proposed 2009 budget (passed by Congress): $3.5 trillion.
• Obama's supposed one-time stimulus package that (as I said in my first post) simply became a new floor after the Senate started playing the year-to-year CR game: $831 billion, including a $20 billion USDA kicker that, as I showed above, has never gone away.

I responded in the first place because you were just throwing out Obama talking points belied by the underlying numbers. Disappointingly, you did exactly the same thing in your reply.

The biggest jump was 2008-2009, a budget proposed by Bush, not Obama. . . . But I've got no interest in hatchet-job newspaper articles that are more about ideological carping than sound analysis.

Sorry, but the juxtaposition was just a bit too ironic. How about some "sound analysis" rather than "ideological carping" on what really happened in 2009?

• Bush's proposed 2009 budget (not passed by Congress): $3.1 trillion.
• Obama's proposed 2009 budget (passed by Congress): $3.5 trillion.
• Obama's supposed one-time stimulus package that (as I said in my first post) simply became a new floor after the Senate started playing the year-to-year CR game: $831 billion, including a $20 billion USDA kicker that, as I showed above, has never gone away.

I responded in the first place because you were just throwing out Obama talking points belied by the underlying numbers. Disappointingly, you did exactly the same thing in your reply.

You need to call the GOP... I hear they're having real trouble finding ACA horror stories that don't turn out to be utter bullshit after thirty seconds of digging. Your story isn't utter bullshit like all the others, is it?

This is what you're referring to.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...
Health Care Horror Hooey
Paul Krugman
FEB. 23, 2014
(Right-wingers convinced Americans that farms are being broken up to pay "death tax" estate liabilities, but there is not one single example. Now the Republicans are creating Obamacare horror stories, which don't hold up upon fact checking. In the GOP response to the State of the Union address, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers claimed "Bette in Spokane" had lost her good insurance and was forced to pay $700 a month more. Local reporters found the real Betty, and found out [Bette Grenier had a catastrophic plan, and she refused to look on the ACA web site.] In Michigan, Americans for Prosperity, funded by the Koch Brothers, is running an ad about Julie Boonstra, who has leukemia, saying that her new policy will have unaffordable out-of-pocket costs. But Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post found that she will be saving more than she will be paying in out-of-pocket costs. [The Obamacare out-of-pocket maximum is $6,350. Her premiums were cut in half, from $1,100/mo to $571/mo.])
[T]he true losers from Obamacare generally aren’t very sympathetic. For the most part, they’re either very affluent people affected by the special taxes that help finance reform, or at least moderately well-off young men in very good health who can no longer buy cheap, minimalist plans. Neither group would play well in tear-jerker ads.

Here's what Krugman had to say. If you say you did the math, you might be right, but there are a lot of BS health care stories out there. The big benefit of Obamacare is that it limits your (pemium+copayments) to ~$8,000. One big weakness of Obamacare is that when you find an "affordable" plan, it might have a small pool of doctors, it might not have a doctor that you've been using, and it might not have an competent doctors at all. Single payer would have been better, but, as Uwe Reinhardt says, the American political system is too corrupt for that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...
Health Care Horror Hooey
Paul Krugman
FEB. 23, 2014
(Right-wingers convinced Americans that farms are being broken up to pay "death tax" estate liabilities, but there is not one single example. Now the Republicans are creating Obamacare horror stories, which don't hold up upon fact checking. In the GOP response to the State of the Union address, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers claimed "Bette in Spokane" had lost her good insurance and was forced to pay $700 a month more. Local reporters found the real Betty, and found out [Bette Grenier had a catastrophic plan, and she refused to look on the ACA web site.] In Michigan, Americans for Prosperity, funded by the Koch Brothers, is running an ad about Julie Boonstra, who has leukemia, saying that her new policy will have unaffordable out-of-pocket costs. But Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post found that she will be saving more than she will be paying in out-of-pocket costs. [The Obamacare out-of-pocket maximum is $6,350. Her premiums were cut in half, from $1,100/mo to $571/mo.])
[T]he true losers from Obamacare generally aren’t very sympathetic. For the most part, they’re either very affluent people affected by the special taxes that help finance reform, or at least moderately well-off young men in very good health who can no longer buy cheap, minimalist plans. Neither group would play well in tear-jerker ads.

Or no evidence at all beyond what the cops invent. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03...

It would cost much more than $50 Billion to replace that generation capacity. Here are a couple options:

Coal currently produces a ballpark average of 200,000 Megawatts of power for the US continuously (based on the published annual generation totals). So we use that number to figure out how much of alternative generation sources you would need.

Lets start with Nucular since that is (relatively) simple with almost continuous output: Most recent power plan under construction in the US is Watts Bar 2 (look it up) that will produce 1180 megawatts at a cost of ~4.5Billion. To replace 200,000 megawatts you would need about 170 of those Watts Bar 2 plants at a total cost of approximately $763Billion in today's dollars! Wowser. Also note that there is a fuel shortage looming that makes spinning up new multi-billion $ reactors a potential waste of time and $. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10...

Ok, lets move on to renewables. There are lots of options here...wind, solar, concentrated solar, tidal power, ect. The thing with non-hydro renewables is that most of them are cyclical or random like the weather. So you need huge storage capacity to go with them. Projects like the Bath County Pumped Storage Station are a great solution for this, but for 200,000 megawatts of renewables, you would need about 70 of those at a cost of $100Billion+. Thats just for the glorified "battery" and does not count the cost of the generation facilities themselves which would be hundreds of billions if not $1Trillion+.

Just keeping things in perspective:)

Also, I work in the medical field. You know what Insurance companies are doing?

CLOSING THE FUCKING LOOPHOLES!

For example, physician owned labs are being phased out due to abuse. Doctors would urine screen every patient monthly, rather than random or via risk stratification. For this reason, the practices like ours who do have a random policy will be killed in the process. But they are STILL CLOSING THE LOOPHOLES.

The insurance companies aren't doing a very good job. I went to a physiatrist last year who gave me an unnecessary knee x-ray, and if I had let him he would have given me an unnecessary and dangerous cortisone shot. My insurance company didn't care.

As long as you give doctors financial incentives to do something, most of them will do it. The insurance companies gave us a song and dance starting with the managed care days about how they would impose quality standards, but they botched that up. They usually let Medicare set the standards, and follow along. If you want doctors to follow evidence-based guidelines, then put them on salary. They don't do unnecessary urine tests (and CAT scans) in the VA or in the UK NHS. If you're going to let lobbyists (like the ones at the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons) influence government standard-setting bodies, then of course you're going to have waste, fraud and abuse. We missed our chance with Donald Berwick.

But back to the original question, I suspect that the fraud in the food stamp program is well under the fraud in the private health insurance industry.

On the general question of redistributive programs, Paul Krugman explains it better than I can.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03...
Liberty, Equality, Efficiency
By PAUL KRUGMAN
MARCH 9, 2014

Almost 40 years ago Arthur Okun, chief economic adviser to President Lyndon Johnson, published a classic book titled “Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff,” arguing that redistributing income from the rich to the poor takes a toll on economic growth.

(Income inequality varies greatly among advanced countries. This difference is primarily the result of government policies.)

primary income — income from wages, salaries, assets, and so on — is very unequally distributed in almost all countries. But taxes and transfers (aid in cash or kind) reduce this underlying inequality to varying degrees: some but not a lot in America, much more in many other countries.

(2 studies by economists at the International Monetary Fund found that (1) nations with low income inequality have more sustained economic growth. (2) redistribution has benign effects on growth.)

(Incentives vs. resources. Aid to the poor reduces their incentive to work, and taxes on the rich reduce their incentive to get richer. But in an unequal society, the poor have fewer resources. The slogan that we should seek equality of opportunity, not outcomes, is a joke. 40% of American children live in poverty or near-poverty, and don't have the same access to education and jobs.)

Personally, I find it unlikely that the CIA would do something so ham handed and transparent. And yet, since the War on Terror and the idea that anything goes when the people you're drowning don't wear matching hats, the CIA and the entire IC has lost all credibility, that I can't dismiss the allegation.

That said, Feinstein is a out of touch 80 year-old that thinks mass surveillance is cool, but at the same time gets upset when the IC spies on allies (like everyone else does), and when spy on her.

As a Democrat and a Californian, I say Fuck Feinstein.

A rich person might have taken your job away, and sent it to India or China.

The top 1% made about 24% of the income. http://www.slate.com/articles/...

So it's totally appropriate for them to pay 37% of the taxes (if they did -- I don't know if those figures don't include FICA payments, which conservatives sometimes exclude from the definition of "tax").

Paul Krugman has explained why income inequality is bad for everybody. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03... Those American billionaires could get along perfectly well at Swedish levels of taxes, and the rest of us would be much better off. It's actually bad for everyone to have 20% or 40% of the population in poverty.

Current:
* http://online.wsj.com/news/art...

Older (after AirFrance disaster)
* http://www.spiegel.de/internat...
* http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07...

Maybe what they should do is mark the high water mark and encourage people to not build below that point. Stones in the ground around the ocean front of the country might work. Then if there is ever another Tsunami then there won't be so much damage! Wait what? They have those already? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04...

Let's see ... you're investigating potential war crimes perpetrated by the CIA, so you store all of the records of the investigation on an air-gapped computer system located at a CIA facility in Virginia. What could possibly go wrong?

Tech startups don't create the kinds of jobs that the 99% actually need. Oh, sure, many of them will eventually hire one secretary, and will pay into their building's contract for one part-time janitor.

That is demonstrably untrue. Both the US Census and the IRS publish income data; so it's not too hard to find where the 1% actually starts. Granted, the data is subject to interpretation. But even with the lower estimates, the bulk of workers fall soundly into the 99%.

According to whatsmypercent.com, the 1% starts at an annual income of $506,553. The New York Times shows the 1% starting at "just" $383,001. (The latter is nationwide aggregate. The NY Times tool actually lets you select via state, or even metro area. The the Bay Area, for example, you'd have to clear $558,046 before leaving the bottom 99%.)

The handful who win the IPO jackpot notwithstanding; I'm pretty sure your average tech worker is not cleating half a million a year, even in the Bay Area.

I'm not sure what you're asking.

In my area (upstate New York), more than 50% of electricity is made by a combination of nuclear, hydroelectric, and "other renewable". (This last is almost negligible.) The remainder is natural gas and coal, favoring natural gas.

Of course, we are one of the cleanest-electricity regions of the country. But we're not the only cleaner-electricity region. For example, parts of Tennessee get most of their electricity from hydroelectric.

Useful links:
EPA eGrid
NYT article on the regional dependence of electric-vehicle cleanliness

but I think a lot of people think the best person for the job should get the job no matter where they come from.

And then you have a nation where 100 million people can't feed their families. See how that works out for you and your egalitarian utopia.

In IT I think people like to compare current salaries to the dot com bubble which is silly.

I think we should compare salaries to 1973. Because they're the same.

It's certainly true that a lot of the types of work we do has been commoditized so that a less skilled worker can complete tasks that were impossible 15 years ago. How should that impact wages?

Clearly all of those people should be fired and dragged from their homes. Who the fuck do they think they are?

Competition is coming and it's silly to assume that US employees/workers are the "best."

You're awfully cavalier with everyone else's standard of living.

Not only that, but FTFA it shows that the Imperial Valley alfalfa growers are getting their water from the All American Canal, which by no means goes over the Sierra Nevada.

Essentially this situation is more of the same fucked up water management of the Colorado River Basin, where uses for the water are illogical and based on greed, cronyism and short term thinking.

Don't worry though, this will change.

I don't understand how businesses are allowed to tack on fees to bills without disclosing these fees in their prices. Somehow they can't quote these fees when you are booking the service, but they can calculate them when billing for the services.

That's right, this should definitely be illegal. Airlines played those games for years and years ($50 ticket fee, but with taxes it works out to $100 or maybe even $300). A rather recent regulation had ended that crap

I would change my diet very quickly and take up jogging:

Is Alzheimer’s Type 3 Diabetes?
http://opinionator.blogs.nytim...

Also, I would look specifically at anti-inflammatory diets, because Alzheimers, like many chronic modern diseases, is linked to chronic inflammation (in this case, in the brain):

> Since the late 1980s, various studies have found hints that the chronic inflammation found in Alzheimer’s hastens the disease process

See the connection?

http://www.webmd.com/diabetes/...

Inactivity and obesity increase the risk for diabetes, but exactly how is unclear. Recent research suggests that inflammation inside the body plays a role in the development of type 2 diabetes.

The good news: An "anti-inflammatory" diet and exercise plan can help prevent and treat type 2 diabetes.

The effects of inflammation are familiar to anyone who has experienced a bug bite, rash, skin infection, or ankle sprain. In those situations, you will see swelling in the affected area.

With type 2 diabetes, inflammation is internal.

Maybe I'm reading into it a bit, but I doubt the guy is so obtuse that he doesn't realize there's enough money to go around for the various forms of locomotion. I think this is just some defensive posturing he's doing in public to try and paint his company's products in a better light against the soon-to-be competition.

Here's what I see:
1) iRobot is a major supplier of defense and security robots currently in use by the US military.
2) iRobot's entire lineup is based on wheeled or treaded robots. There's no indications of them being anywhere close to fielding a walking robot of any sort.
3) Meanwhile, Boston Dynamics, a small company that wasn't yet a credible threat, has been working on both bipedal and quadrupedal robots for DARPA that are to the point where they're being field tested by the military.
4) Then, Google bought Boston Dynamics, meaning it suddenly has far more resources available to it than before, making them a much more credible threat.
5) And now, shortly thereafter, iRobot's CEO suddenly comes out trashing the technology used by the competition, just as that technology is reaching a point where it can start entering the market.

As I said, I might be reading into it a bit, but the timing and notions just seem weird. For instance, going back to the summary (emphasis mine):

The reason it has taken so long for the robotics industry to move forward is because people keep trying to make something that is cool but difficult to achieve, rather than trying to find solutions to actual human problems.

This is pretty clearly posturing on his part, since he has to be aware that none of his Roomba products can navigate stairs, an extremely basic and common component of building interiors. It's obvious that his products are not offering "solutions to actual human problems", or at least not to all of the problems, and he's scared that others will realize it too. It's good that he is, since his company isn't set up to deal with it, from what we know publicly.

Apparently you might even be accused of jury tampering for spreading the word http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02...

I'd recommend you to include a link that explains why that particular case was dismissed (spoiler: the judge basically said: this is free speech).

Apparently you might even be accused of jury tampering for spreading the word http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02...

I'd recommend you to include a link that explains why that particular case was dismissed (spoiler: the judge basically said: this is free speech).

In the US jurors can acquit for any reason and aren't required to say what it was.

Yes, but I hear if you utter the words "jury nullification" during selection, you won't make it into the jury. Might actually be a good strategy if you want out.
Apparently you might even be accused of jury tampering for spreading the word http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02...

PowerPoint Makes You Dumb

This is what "death by powerpoint" looks like

Can you imagine how many people died because some clown thought that that made sense?

You want sin city.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03...

After years of decline, US oil production began to rise again in 2009 with fracking technology and the increases since have been astounding.

This oil boom has kept gasoline prices in check and has probably helped the economy from slipping back into recession.

> spiraling shithole

Since its independence from colonial rule, the country made advances in nearly every index. Go ahead, prove me wrong by finding charts to the contrary.

> Indian parasites

Parasites? Indian diaspora are quite productive and successful. In US, they have the highest per-capita incomes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01...
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org...
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/29/...

Today, an Indian-American runs Microsoft, an Indian-American is Miss USA and Indian-Americans reign spelling bee.

Of course, facts don't matter to you - a vanilla racist bigot.

This is especially problematic given that there is a finite supply of Bitcoins; no central authority can come in and save your Bitcoin "bank" if it is robbed, whereas if my local Wells Fargo down the street is robbed, the FDIC insures my deposits to the tune of $250,000

The FDIC has a finite supply of dollars with which to cover deposits.
The FDIC is a federally chartered independent corporation.
Their insurance fund is built up by fees levied on bank deposits.
This fee increases if a bank has risk factors that make it more likely to default.
All told, the FDIC is only required to hold a bit more than 1% cash to cover all insured deposits.

In 2009 the FDIC was almost insolvent and had to take an emergency fee from insured banks.

(which also comes in handy in case the bank fails entirely, which is an extremely rare occurrence.)

The financial crisis put a lot of banks into FDIC receivership.
I guess these crisis are "extremely rare," but when it rains, it pours.

This way, the federal government can prevent those irritating demonstrations like this ones in Ukraine.

Don't worry about it, the government can already just commandeer the cell tower backhaul network and/or central office. This would be a simple escalation from what they are doing in the Ukraine right now by identifying phones near a protest area and sending them this text message...

"Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a riot."

The whole illusion of being able to use your cell phone when the government doesn't want you is really just a delusion anyhow...

Not only are you hopelessly wrong about Bitcoin not being anonymous, as chill pointed out, but you seem to have also missed the memo that the US government is tracking snail-mail on a massive scale.