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Which studies are these?

This New York Times blog from 2011 clearly shows the opposite: Americans in higher income brackets give away a larger percentage of their income to charities than those in lower income brackets.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/which-americans-are-most-generous-and-to-whom/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

You are obviously not from the US so let me explain this to you. Our Constitution guarantees a right to a speedy trial.

I'm from the US too. Our Constitution guarantees a lot of things. But the authorities who run this country don't let you have those rights. Especially non-citizens.

In the US federal prosecutors can lie. They can falsely tell the judge that they have information that proves you're a criminal, but they can't disclose it because that would be a national security threat (even when it isn't). As they did for example to Rahinah Ibrahim. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04...

We have a Constitutional right to hear the charges against us, cross-examine witnesses, and rebut those charges. But we can't get those rights any more when the government doesn't feel like it. And they don't feel like it in national security cases.

And you can be tried before a rubber-stamp judge, or a hanging jury of federal civil servants from Virginia.

You're claiming that Julian Assange should trust a system like that?

You sound like the fox in Aesop's fables.

Comcast will just bribe the FCC again

America was fun while it lasts, but if people can keep being bribed to do favors, corruption can inevitably kill a country. We have laws that you can't buy a vote. That seems noble. But the fact is that politicians can accept campaign contributions which is just a fancy word for a bribe. Who needs to buy votes when you can buy a politician?

Again, I love America, but corruption unchecked can destroy any nation no matter how strong. And with campaign contributions running rampant, the game is rigged in favor of the corrupt.

Wait, it didn't take you 7 years and $4 million dollars to get off the list?
What are you complaining about? :)
You are not on the No Fly list, because you wouldn't be
able to fly. Like 8 yr old Mikey Hicks, you are probably on a second or third tier
flight list which requires extra screening, but you can still fly:
NY Times:Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List

Mostly the problem with nutritional studies is the impossibility of doing large scale, long term, controlled trials. See http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...

Possibly. A lot of Chinese people, in China, are apparently offended by any reminder of the "June 4 incident." Look up what happened when Cirque du Soleil used a pic of Tank Man in a background video in one of their performances:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08...

So maybe they have become their own censors and Bing gives them what they want.

Microsoft search always did this, and this has been reported before. This blog post is from 2009.

I know that your question is derisive, but the Wall Street Journal provides some pretty valid reasons:

"There’s a historical view to this. In the past, other markets migrated for two reasons. First, there were higher fraud rates in some other markets, and they wanted to make this move [to chip and PIN] to combat fraud. Second, this system can operate in offline mode – the card and the terminal can authorize a transaction independent of communication with the bank’s systems. In some other markets they struggled with robust telephony networks, so this offline capacity was attractive. Both those factors were not driving factors here in America."

To put that statement into context, as of 2010, merchants were experiencing losses from credit card fraud at a rate 6 cents per $100 of credit card charges (in the US, merchants pretty much always bear all costs of credit card fraud). So for a busy retail location that did $10,000,000 in card transaction per year, card fraud losses would be $6,000 per year. Even in the highly unlikely event that moving to chip and PIN would cut fraud in half, that would be a savings of $3,000 per year. That's hardly compelling, since it's at least an order of magnitude less than what a store that size would lose from employee theft alone. From a practical, financial perspective, credit card fraud is just not an issue in the U.S. It's only important in terms of public opinion.

The WSJ article also mentions the very large size, maturity, and complexity of the American card network relative to other markets, and a certain amount of weirdness caused by the way the Durbin Amendment forces processors to handle debit card transactions.

I would also add that, as I alluded to earlier, end consumer protection from card fraud in the U.S. has always been extremely strong - it's very, very unlikely for the cardholder themselves to lose money from fraud. This meant that there was little impetus from consumers for a switch. There was also some worry that moving to chip and PIN would be used as an excuse to shift some of the liability for fraud to the cardholder, so ironically the old system was seen as safer (for consumers, at the merchant's expense). As the American chip and PIN system has been rolling out, it's becoming clear that this last concern is a non-issue.

About 80% of American millionaires are first generation. Maybe the top 0.01% is static, the rest are probably newcomers. See: http://www.nytimes.com/books/f...

they didn't ignore the data, they had bad data

the last couple of decades has seen the rise of conservative news sources. which is good for morale. you fudge the truth a little, make things look rosier than they really are, and you galvanize your base

the problem is when you start believing your own bullshit

romney was fed the fudges the conservative echo chamber feeds itself, and was kept in the dark. so they were overconfident

there's a respected solid analyst called nate silver at the new york times, who is very good at forecasting elections with his methods

he called the election early, in september, for obama

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.n...

this analysis was pilloried on the right as a propaganda. even though he was just applying cold hard analysis

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

when in fact, the right was the one creating propaganda, and silver called them out on it:

http://www.businessinsider.com...

the decision makers around romney chose to ignore cold analysis as liberal propaganda. romney had a chance to buckle down and maybe do something with his message in october and maybe eke out a win

but just look at rove on election night: he couldn't believe the news about ohio. because the right wing media echo chamber was operating on its own bullshit, and kneejerk rejecting bad news as liberal propaganda

again, conservative media is great for the morale of the average conservative voter. but when the conservative media is depended upon by the decision makers on the right, the right loses, because decisions based on lies are bad, losing decisions

That's what they used to do: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/p...

All the long-time professors that I talk to, including one I had who is still teaching 20-some-odd years later and my uncle who recently retired say that students are getting dumber every year. There's no denying that their selective memory only remembers the best students, but they report being completely unable to have the sorts of class discussions that they used to have only 10-20 years ago. And they can tell students exactly what will be on the test including the exact question in statement form and still half the students will fail the test, whereas 10-20 years ago 80% or more would pass easily.

And let's face it. How many of us could even hope to pass this exam today: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/p...

(Although I have since learned that it was a week-long open-book test.)

Yes, class rank is problematic, however as this article points out so is GPA.

When I was an engineering student some 25 years ago the engineering school Valedictorian had a 3.4 GPA. A C was the the average grade. A's were hard to get.

Now the top 10% of the class has a 4.0 GPA.

Since recruiters are looking for a particular skill set they aren't going to be comparing Applied Physics majors to Art History majors.

Your second objection applies regardless of whether class ranking or GPA is used.

If schools had a consistent policy as to how classes were graded the expediency of using class rank would not be needed. However that's not the case.

Right now class rank is more meaningful.

Sadly I hear nowadays that's under pressure too. Some high schools are awarding Valedictorian to multiple students.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06...

The republicans are either scientifically illiterate

There are plenty of scientifically illiterate Democrats out there as well.

I realize that Big Pharma have a vested interest in their bottom lines but they also are allowed lengthy patents on all of their products, essentially giving them license to print money for years. India on the other hand has no interest in paying for patents when they have millions of people who can benefit from the medications that Big Pharma have produced. That's wrong too and two wrongs don't make a right.

I mean, you can get tons of generic medications, made in India, from all kinds of third party pharmacies all over the world. It's great for the consumer but it undermines IP rights and the research investments that Big Pharma make. Does this hurt Big Pharma? Well yes but I don't see any of them going bankrupt and only in nations where they're allowed to have a monopoly, like the US, would they not be more amenable to reducing their pricing structure? Last year it was reported that just on Medicare in the US Big Pharma netted $711 Billion in profits. That's not exactly going broke.

Why? Well the ACA didn't touch Big Pharma nor did it open the doors and allow more generics to be imported, that was a back room deal but it still remains that while they should be allowed to protect their IP, they shouldn't be allowed to charge outrageous, over-the-top prices for what they produce. Some of these companies even charge less for the same product in other nations than they do in the US. They even have gone so far as to sue Maine for allowing Candian pharmacy imports. If we're going to start reducing healthcare costs worldwide we have to start addressing Big Pharma and their political influence and to come to an understanding that they can't just live off the the ills of the people they're supposed to help. If we could get to that level, then there wouldn't be the need for $15,000 injections nor the need for India to circumvent intellectual property rights to keep their citizens alive nor for everybody else to pay outrageous prices for medications which improve the quality of life.
     

The conspiracy goes deeper than the GOP. The National Academy of Science is also involved - http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2.... How dare they criticize the science of these holy warriors? A pox upon both of their houses.

imagine, indeed...

"last year, Judge Boasberg ruled against the Department of Homeland Security, saying it had to release documents explaining a secret policy about the government's ability to shut down commercial and private wireless network services in certain circumstances. The Obama administration has appealed the ruling."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...

Someone has to pay the bill.

Glaxo spent more than $350 million over 25 years to develop [a malaria] vaccine for military personnel and travelers and expects to invest an additional $260 million to complete development. But Glaxo was reluctant to pay for pediatric trials in impoverished nations on its own, so the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided $200 million through the nonprofit PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative to drive development and testing over the finish line.

Hope for a Malaria Vaccine [Oct 1013]

Of course all of the water usage you are citing in comparison is sent back into the water supply system. A lot of fracking fluid is injected into deep disposal wells and does not re-enter the water system. The industry is trying to move to more recycling but is complicated and costly due to the chemicals and minerals in the fracking water.

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

One of the big differences in water use with fracking wells is that the water is contaminated with many dangerous chemicals including benzine as well as natural elements like salt. That water is so nasty it is hard to reclaim back into water that can be used again. Therefore most fracking fluid water it is taken out of the water supply system forever in many cases by injecting contaminated water into deep wells for permanent storage. In other words the fresh water is contaminated for a one-time-use and then stored in deep wells forever (hopefully). Contrast this with other uses of water such as agriculture where the water does re-enter the water supply system - abet not free of agriculture contaminants but certainly not locked away in deep wells. So in this very arid regions water is being consumed and never returned back into the water system. Not good.

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

There is some movement in the industry to reuse fracking fluid but of course that drives up costs and this is an industry no known for spending money when not required to do so.

Until Rupert Murdoch took it over.

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

Under Murdoch, Tilting Rightward at The Journal
By DAVID CARR
Published: December 13, 2009

Mr. Baker, a neoconservative columnist of acute political views, has been especially active in managing coverage in Washington, creating significant grumbling, if not resistance, from the staff there. Reporters say the coverage of the Obama administration is reflexively critical, the health care debate is generally framed in terms of costs rather than benefits — “health care reform” is a generally forbidden phrase — and global warming skeptics have gotten a steady ride. (Of course, objectivity is in the eyes of the reader.)

The pro-business, antigovernment shift in the news pages has broken into plain view in the last year. On Aug. 12, a fairly straight down the middle front page article on President Obama’s management style ended up with the provocative headline, “A President as Micromanager: How Much Detail Is Enough?” The original article included a contrast between President Jimmy Carter’s tendency to go deep in the weeds of every issue with President George W. Bush’s predilection for minimal involvement, according to someone who saw the draft. By the time the article ran, it included only the swipe at Mr. Carter.

Accurate, objective, well-selected reporting that I can depend on is easily worth $200.

Propaganda isn't worth the time wasted.

I still subscribe to Science magazine.

But NG is peaking and dispatchable as hell, unlike solar.

Or you could combine the two

I wish the government would work on things that will be a big problem in the future, if we don't start working on them now.

Here's what I think is important:

1) Get control of our national spending and our national deficit.

2) Ensure a water supply. See Wells Dry, Fertile Plains Turn to Dust. We have become reliant on aquifers, whose water supply is dwindling fast.

3) Ensure a food supply. The US used to be a net food exporter. Now we're a net food importer.

4) Preserve our natural resources, including helium.

5) Make a list of things the US must have. Ex: food, machine tools, factories, vital electronics like communication systems, and people who know how to manufacture those things. Then make sure the US has those things and skilled workers.

6) Watch for signs of natural disasters, like being hit by a comet or megatsunami ). Do research, set aside supplies, train people, etc. to prepare for those disasters.

7) Listen to warnings of future medical problems - for example, bacteria that are becoming resistant to anti-bacterial drugs. See Report links antibiotics at farms to human deaths.

8) See what we can do to help Mexico become prosperous and stable. It would be much better for both countries, if Mexicans could get jobs with good wages, in Mexico.

9) The US population is growing fast. What's the largest number of people that can live here, with a good quality of life? As our numbers increase, not only is more food needed, but also farms get bought and replaced with houses, streets, etc. We can't support unlimited numbers of people.

I'm especially concerned about our food and water supply about 30 years in the future. The US will have an even higher population - more people to feed and to supply with water. There will be fewer farms, because some farms will have been replaced by housing. Plus the aquifers in our midwest will be empty or almost empty, which will hurt our food supply as well as our water supply. (How will the midwest farmers water their crops?) Plus temperatures will be higher, which will place even more strain on our water supply, as well as possibly killing the crops. (Remember 2012, when a lot of crops in the Midwest died from high temperatures and lack of rain?)

I wish politicians talked about these things in their campaign speeches.

Income Gap Grows Wider (and Faster)

INCOME inequality in the United States has been growing for decades, but the trend appears to have accelerated during the Obama administration. One measure of this is the relationship between median and average wages.

The median wage is straightforward: it’s the midpoint of everyone’s wages. Interpreting the average, though, can be tricky. If the income of a handful of people soars while everyone else’s remains the same, the entire group’s average may still rise substantially. So when average wages grow faster than the median, as happened from 2009 through 2011, it means that lower earners are falling further behind those at the top.

One way to see the acceleration in inequality is to look at the ratio of average to median annual wages. From 2001 through 2008, during the George W. Bush administration, that ratio grew at 0.28 percentage point per year. From 2009 through 2011, the latest year for which the data is available, the ratio increased 1.14 percentage points annually, or roughly four times faster.

Is it really surprising that imposing massive new taxes and significant new regulations, supporting unions and expanding government like crazy makes it easier for those who already have money and power to accumulate even more money and power on the backs of everyone else?

> The big cost in publishing is the printing, shipping,
> warehousing, distribution of the dead trees

Wrong, wrong, wrong. "Out of that gross revenue, the publisher pays about $3.25 [12.5% of the example $26 book] to print, store and ship the book"

NY Times, May 2010.

Ben Stein had an interesting column objecting to these buyouts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09...

The gist is that management has a fiduciary duty to shareholders, and if they know of a better way to make money for the shareholders, their obligation is to do just that.

Withholding that from shareholders and using that information to enrich themselves violates this duty.

I don't understand what role 'taking the company private' plays in their restructuring plans or why it couldn't be accomplished as a public company.

"I thought smart people came to Slashdot. I didn't realize Fixed News Fuckwits were paid to troll here too."

Yes, because Obamacare has been a blessing, it is all wonder and majesty.

Meanwhile the website still doesn't work, and the law has thrown more people off insurance than it has insured, and Obama administration has promised $1T to the insurance companies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12...

The only "fuckwit" here are softheaded people like you hate real facts about the biggest failure in domestic policy.... ever.

or it could be that this is the alternative to plea bargains.

Strange as it seems, $2 billion is chump change. Look at JP Morgan Chase. They were fined over $20 Billion, last year. http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

And the CEO got a raise. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/20...

Yes, especially in China: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

Which is part of how they have been "Farmers of 40 Centuries": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

I've been interested in this from the point of view of space colonies. Biosphere II did this:
http://www.janepoynter.com/doc...
http://www.globalecotechnics.c...
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11...
http://b2science.org/news/1453
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

As did John Todd at Ocean Arks commercially for towns needing sewage treatment:
http://www.oceanarksint.org/in...

Here is another idea though, grinding up rock to make fertilizer, to mimic the way land around volcanoes remains fertile from the volcanic ash:
http://remineralize.org/

Homages? How about a re-enactment with targeted cellphone ads if you go to Times Square (which is of course nowhere near the actual location of the Bowl*)?

*You can thank Cablevision in part for that.

"Difference being that lots of oxygen in the atmosphere is typically okay, while lots of carbon isn't. You were just explained this in the post you're replying to, and you wonder why you get modded troll? Protip: you're a troll."

Do you know the slightest thing about what you are discussing?

"Carbon" is NOT put into the atmosphere in huge quantities, at least by the Western world. Particulates are strictly regulated.

It is CARBON DIOXIDE, not carbon, that is the alleged culprit here. Do you have these WHOOSH moments often?

But despite the FACT that it is CO2, that is accused by some scientists of being a big problem and carbon is not, this article referenced by OP still tries to imply that carbon, all by itself, is a major problem. But IT ISN'T. Period.

You are displaying exactly the misconception I was talking about in my first comment. Get it through your head: CARBON is not an atmospheric pollutant we need to worry much about in the Western world. Particulates are already strictly regulated. And in most of the rest of the environment (i.e., other than the air) it is simply not a significant problem at all.

Somehow you managed to completely skip over the issue of selling US government debt and how that is used to finance deficit spending when there isn't enough tax revenue. You skipped over the US government borrowing other people's money and paying them interest.

Please read the writings of Warren Mosler, and on the topic of Modern Monetary Theory.

Mosler?

Warren Mosler, a Deficit Lover With a Following

Mr. Mosler’s ideas, which go under the label of “modern monetary theory,” or M.M.T., are clearly on the fringe, drawing skeptical reactions even from many liberal Keynesian economists who agree with some of his arguments. But they have attracted a growing following, flourishing on the Internet and in a handful of academic outposts, as he and others who share his thinking have made the case that austerity budgeting in the United States and in Europe is doing irreparable harm. .....

“They deny the fact that the government use of real resources can drive the real interest rate up,” said Mark Thoma, an economics professor and widely followed blogger who teaches at the University of Oregon. After delving into the technical details of modern monetary theory for a few minutes, he paused, then added, “I think it’s just nuts.” ....

“These ideas definitely aren’t disseminated through published academic journals,” said Stephanie Kelton, an economist at University of Missouri-Kansas City, who coined the term “deficit owls” to distinguish modern monetary theorists from “deficit hawks.” “It’s all on the Internet.”

Show me the numbers from a credible source. Meanwhile the EU madness of no spending high taxation (which takes money out of the private sector) is leading to massive deflation http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...

Hmmm

You're missing some history.

Time Now for a Declaration of Mideast Peace; Doomed Arab Refugees

In ''Semites and Anti-Semites'' (New York, 1986), Bernard W. Lewis quotes (page 270) from the memoirs of Khalid al-Azm, Prime Minister of Syria in 1948-49, listing the factors that led to Israel's success:

.... the summons of the Arab governments to the population of Palestine to leave the country and take refuge in the neighboring Arab countries . . . this collective flight served the Jews and strengthened their position without effort. . . . Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes when we ourselves were the ones who induced them to leave them. . . . We doomed a million Arab refugees, by calling on them and insisting that they abandon their land, their homes, their work and their occupations, and we made them unemployed and homeless.''

on the other hand I can get residential 150mbps internet for $99/mo.

So you overpay for crappy, slow service. Congratulations, you live in the Internet equivalent of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Want to move up to inexpensive ($25-45/month), fast (approaching Gigabyte/second) service? You gotta move to South Korea, 'cause the States are bought and paid for by the megacorps.

Well, the posting system stripped off my carefully inserted links. WTF, slashdot? I'd post the code to illustrate, but it just gets stripped out. Here are some URLS to go with my post:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01... Jane Brody on the hygiene hypothesis
http://www.slate.com/articles/... Broussard article on slate.com

China tends to donate seized counterfeit goods to charity. The US actually sued China at the WTO over this practice, and eventually lost.

Why don't you make that when the Cuban people are free? I can't see certain parts of Europe and the Arab League lightening up on Israel any time soon in the UN. Some people really go off the rails on the subject.

Google said in a filing that they valued the patents at $5.5 billion: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/20...

You need to pay more attention. The NSA's spying on Americans in the USA is absolutely contrary to the 4th amendment. What Snowden leaked shows much, much more than that.

For instance: spying on Russian politicians is part of what our national intelligence organizations are supposed to be doing, and Snowden revealing that Sweden and Norway have helped us to that is worse than unhelpful to every American, as well as being damaging to Sweden and Norway.

Further, his disclosures have shown what the tools and methods used to by the NSA to accomplish their legitimate role have damaged the NSA's ability to collect the intelligence they are charted to collect. Another example: The NSA had put some espionage "malware" onto computers used by the Russian Military, mexican drug cartels, and others (see http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01...) -- how was disclosing this information useful to anybody but our adversaries?

No apologies from me for the NSA. They broke the law with respect to the fourth amendment by illegally spying on Americans at home and they should answer for it. Clapper and Alexander lied to Congress and they should be made to answer for that.

I'm sure Kalishnikov made a lot more money selling his rifles than Dr. Neff did from his efforts.

From the NYTimes article...

The general often claimed that he never realized any profit from his work. But in his last years he urged interviewers not to portray him as poor, noting that he had a sizable apartment, a good car and a comfortable dacha on a lake near the factory where he had worked for decades.

Work and loyalty to country, he often suggested, were their own rewards. “I am told sometimes, ‘If you had lived in the West you would have been a multimillionaire long ago,’ ” he said. “There are other values.”

Anyway, if there are any other people who have contributed so much but been recognized so little, I'd love to know about them.

FWIW, there are plenty of practically unknown contributors to the world. Here are a few...

Frank Willis (the security guard that first called the police in some office complex called somekindofliquid-GATE)
Thomas Midgley, Jr (first invented Tetra-Ethyl-Lead and later Freon, probably the man with the most impact on the environment)
Vasili Arkhipov (commander of the K-19 sub AND later the officer that decided to NOT start WWIII during the Cuban missile crisis)
And all the women who had their contributions minimized back in the day when it wasn't proper to recognize their contributions.

I think someone at Rovio is pissed...

At the bottom of this page at the Rovio website...

http://www.rovio.com/en/news/b... ...are four links to further information regarding privacy policies and FAQs, including a link to The New York Times privacy policy page...WTF?

http://www.nytimes.com/content...

If you'll scroll down the section titled "Analytics Technologies", you'll see that The New York Times uses Flurry to track their users, just like Rovio does.

"We use Localytics and Flurry to track and report on the usage and browsing patterns on some of our mobile applications." (my emphasis)

In light of the fact that The New York Times were one of the three media outlets that initially released the Snowden documents regarding Rovio tracking users of "Angry Birds" for the NSA, the irony of their articles only now becomes apparent.

I'm guessing Rovio added that link to the NYT privacy statement fairly recently (like, yesterday), but I don't have a cache of that page to know for sure.

But, yeah...Pot, meet Kettle.

How about Contempt of Congress and / or Perjury? For precedent: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/01...

I wasn't drawing any conclusions, simply stating facts. With his/her comment "I'm going to ignore the law and declare my own law instead" the previous poster seemed to think that Obama was doing something new, unusual and/or unlawful. which is untrue.

The NPR segment on Executive Orders was rather interesting, discussing the types of things the President can and cannot do. He cannot make laws, but in many cases can stipulate how laws will be enforced. The President can also use EO to establish requirements for federal agencies and contractors.

In his State of the Union address tonight, Obama is expected to up the minimum wage for federal contractors (see With Minimum Wage as Start, Obama to Press Past Congress) - probably requiring that contractors provide that wage to be eligible for federal contracts. President Johnson did something similar with Executive Order 11246 requiring non-discriminatory practices in hiring and employment on the part of U.S. government contractors - as did other presidents WRT federal contractors.

Look into the details of how he got the stuff. THEY HAVE NO IDEA.

I completely agree, but he has no idea either. There were simply too many documents for him to possibly be able to know what he had. He is supposedly not in regular contact with the media anymore, except for personal interviews, yet they are regularly making new releases. Clearly they have documents. The presumption is that they have more documents.

October 17, 2013 NY Times:

Snowden said he gave all of the classified documents he had obtained to journalists he met in Hong Kong, before flying to Moscow, and did not keep any copies for himself.

It could easily be a lie, but United States' problem is no longer Snowden, rather it's the media that continues to publish new stories. The US has everything to lose by seeing Snowden die at this point, and that has nothing to do with more documents being released because they are being released with him alive. Honestly, if I were Russia (and therefore a rather established, evil regime), then I would probably make Snowden disappear, which would cast the blame on the US immediately. Frankly, if anyone is going to torture him to find the document store before they're all released it would be them.

But, shy of that, he only needs to fear returning to the US to be prosecuted, or going somewhere that he can be extradited from, because he has nothing left to do.

Lie, even perjure, and bankrupt thousands of home buyers, and get away with it. Because they're rich and powerful. Like the Queen of Mean said, "only the little people pay taxes" and, evidently, the consequences.

One thing that strikes me about all these high profile criminal and civil cases in the financial world is the supreme emphasis placed on not admitting any fault or guilt. They pay a fine, but they don't admit guilt. The explanation is, it seems, that admitting guilt would leave them vulnerable to all kinds of investor lawsuits. This deal being offered to Snowden, in which he starts by admitting guilt, doesn't sound like any deal at all. I think he'd be crazy to accept it. And maybe he shouldn't even negotiate, until US enforcers get serious about making a somewhat reasonable inital offer. An offer that includes admitting guilt smells bad, like they're just playing games with him, testing him to see if he's desperate or stupid or having a mental lapse.

Another thing to think about is how the law treated Aaron Swartz. Threaten him with extreme consequences in order to bully him into making a plea bargain. Prosecutors score a few points for being tough on crime, and Swartz spends a few months in prison, with the option to be held for much, much longer, because, hey, in that scenario he admitted guilt. Instead, Swartz took their extreme threats to heart, and suicided. It was a rotten deal anyway.

Err no he's a traitor because he gave a oath to serve the NSA.. no matter how you cut it he wasn't just a random dude off the street who happened upon a bag of goodies and is now handing them out... he took a oath to protect the bag.. besides it's all pointless banter.. snowden is a CIA Triple Agent http://www.salon.com/2013/06/1... 'leaking' public knowledge to enable the CIA to keep Bashar al-Assad in power http://gulfnews.com/opinions/c... and prepare for war against China by building invade points in north Australia http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11... ...

The hockey stick has stood the test of time. The facts hold. The data continue to support it. Here's Mann recently, and discussion.

Here are myths about the hockey stick debunked.

I'm not denying that the climate is changing, or that we should burn every combustible material we can get our hands on. But we also don't need to throw society a tailspin either. From your link:

after a single study I co-wrote a decade and a half ago found that the Northern Hemisphere’s average warmth had no precedent in at least the past 1,000 years. Our “hockey stick” graph

Which would be pretty scary if the planet was 6,000 yeas old. But it's not, and this type of warming is not new. Even during the time that Homo Sapiens has been on the planet. Also from your link:

James Hansen, who has turned to civil disobedience ... ...in 2011 and 2013 in Washington protesting the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Texas Gulf. He has warned that the pipeline, which awaits approval by the State Department, would open the floodgates to dirty tar sands oil from Canada, something he says would be “game over for the climate.”

This is such over the top hyperbole it's ridiculous. The tar sands in Alberta are going to be extracted whether the XL pipeline is built, or not. IF it's not built, then the oil will be sent by another pipeline to the coast to be shipped to China. It will also be shipped to the US via rail instead of pipeline. Which means more fossil fuels will be used in transporting it by train and ship; and the likelihood of an accident will be increased as well as there will be a pipeline, trains and ships hauling it. .

Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia’s Earth Institute, and other scientists, making a compelling case that emissions from fossil fuel burning must be reduced rapidly if we are to avert catastrophic climate change. They called for the immediate introduction of a price on carbon emissions, arguing that it is our moral obligation to not leave a degraded planet behind for our children and grandchildren.

How scientific of them. We have a "moral" obligation? Yes, very scientific. Even if the planet is warming entirely because of man, there is no definitive proof that it will reach worst case. How do we know it will reach a cataclysmic event(s) if we don't' stop right this very second? I've been hearing that "if we don't fix things right now, we are all doomed" (from one thing or another) for almost my entire life. If that's the case, we're already too late. So if we can't leave our children a non-degraded planet, we must give them a pile of cash? Or who is supposed to get this money?

Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science, who has argued that “the only ethical path is to stop using the atmosphere as a waste dump for greenhouse gas pollution,”

You know what else is a greenhouse gas? Water. So should we support the Stop Dihydrogen Mono-Oxide people too? What about CO2? Do we need to stop expiration by all animals on the planet? Should we all go on the Atkins diet? After all, herbivores expel more methane. Hmm, that's probably very sustainable.

This virulent strain of anti-science infects the halls of Congress, the pages of leading newspapers and what we see on TV, leading to the appearance of a debate where none should exist