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This message is brought to you by Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin and Paul von Hindenburg!

It wasn't the hydrogen that was the major problem.

Go to
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/previous_seasons/flash/flash.html

click on The Hindenberg, and go through the little Flash info.. (Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like you can watch this entire episode online.)

According to this year's annual report on cyber-crime, Verizon found 96 percent of the world's cyber-espionage, stealing trade secrets and intellectual property, came from one country: China.

Security specialists say China is using theft as a national development strategy, pilfering software for wind turbines, fiberoptic cable technology, blueprints for weapons systems like the Joint Strike Fighter.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec13/cybercrime_07-08.html

Despite all the revelations of NSA spying they are not gathering trade secrets and handing them to American companies. Since neither Cisco nor Huawei is focused on the consumer market your argument takes the wrong perspective.

For society as a whole, we single payer countries tend to see better results. But per person, the healthcare in the US is the best. Assuming you have a good health insurance plan.

So...for the 1-5% who can afford platinum-level insurance plans, the US is the best healthcare system in the world!!!!!

But then there's the rest of us shlubs, who apparently just aren't worthy of being cared for.

(Here's a tip for you: the US, overall, has worse health care than other developed countries. For instance, the average life expectancy is about 1.3 years lower. And we pay vastly more. It is simply not possible for a system to both be worse for society as a whole, and better for all the individuals within that society.)

Dan Aris

They are restricting. I think we are starting to abuse the core of what is censorship. I did a quick google search and found a variation on the word. One for example

Act of changing or suppressing speech or writing that is considered subversive of the common good.

I would not take Amazon's (by inclusion B&N) actions to reflect that type of censorship no more then a store restricting access (No shoes, no shirt, no business). Is that censorship or restriction.

WHat about this one

The term "censorship" comes from The Latin, censere "to give as one's opinion, to assess." The Roman censors were magistrates who took the census count and served as assessors and inspectors of morals and conduct.

In contrast to that straightforward definition from Roman times, contemporary usage offers no agreed-upon definition of the term or when to use it. Indeed, even whether the word itself applies to a given controversy in the arts is often vigorously contested.

Then from the same article

Censorship
1. The denial of freedom of speech or freedom of the press.
2. The review of books, movies, etc., to prohibit publication and distribution, usually for reasons of morality or state security.
--Oran's Dictionary of Law

In each example (and others in this article there is nothing that strongly portrays Amazon's actions as censorship. Amazon is not denying the public access to material, they are just not going to sell it. Amazon is not petitioning the State to ban these types of books, they are enforcing a policy which the submitting authors knew, just circumvented.

When a State states that such and so material is not allowed to be publicly (or privately) displayed or read, enforcing it by confiscation... that is censorship whether it occurs at a school, local, state, or federal level. When a book stores says it will not sell x type of literature, and pulls any book found from the shelves and dumps them on the street...that is not censorship, that is business (good or bad). Do not dilute the definition of censorship least it get abused.

I would point out that, outside of Alaska, the US has 6 times as much land in national forests as national parks. The national forests (and BLM land) are more like what the grandparent post imagines - you generally don't pay to enter, dispersed camping at random places is allowed, and they are not closed during a shutdown. National Parks are something else - they are singular and irreplaceable natural treasures, which at the same time draw much more visitation (and thus damage). As such it makes sense to more actively protect them.

This video shows the beginning of this mess and I expected the GTA-style driving I saw in the video. I would say that the shooting shown in that video was warranted. If she had been killed at that point, I would have dropped the discussion.

My concern was based on news reports that claimed she was killed at the end of the chase after she had left her vehicle. At that point, she would be genuinely unarmed - at least according to the stories. That one needs looking into even given her reckless and criminal behavior to that point. Though I would, if I were on a jury in trial for these officers give a considerable benefit of the doubt because of this behavior.

Reading this PBS story, it appears that most (but not by any means all) of the law enforcement involved was Capitol police. My impression is that organization would have more appropriate training for the situation at hand. That eases my concerns a bit as well.

It wasn't essentially slavery. At worst it was essentially debt bondage.

There are lots of terms thrown around for putting people in a situation where they are effectively forced to work and their freedom is removed. "Debt bondage" is one. "Serfdom" and "indentured servitude" are others, and there are more. Yes, I agree there are distinctions to be made about exactly how the systems operate, but in many cases these systems have effectively very similar results as slavery. And I'm by no means the first to use this term to refer to the practices of company towns.

Slavery means a personal is held as property by another person and is made to do work with no pay. That simply wasn't how company towns operated.

I agree that the workers were not legally "owned" by the company, and therefore according to the standard definition of "slavery" they were not "slaves." But note that I did say "essentially a kind of slavery," not slavery per se.

As to how "company towns operated," the company often did in fact make a person "do work with no pay." Workers were often rewarded only with company scrip rather than money for their work, which frequently meant that they could only redeem their "pay" for items available at company-owned stores and separate company-owned town businesses. Prices were generally inflated to ensure that workers rarely were able to "save" anything (and even if they did, they couldn't spend it outside of the town, so it would be effectively worthless). In more extreme cases, companies would deliberately structure their "prices" to ensure workers were in a state of continuous debt.

The net result: a person is forced to continue working for a company indefinitely, with little hope of ever accumulating any meaningful "pay" that could ever be spent in the outside world.

Sorry, but that's SLAVERY without the technical legal "property" aspect. Workers may not have been "bought" and "sold" in the way slaves were, but in most other respects, they could be bound to serve their master. Remember also that the company towns mostly flourished before modern workers' rights, so while workers may not have been abused to the extend that slaves were on the worst plantations, they could still be made to suffer significantly.

Now, of course, many company towns weren't that bad. But many slave plantations weren't that bad either. Many companies treated their workers benevolently, and many slave owners paid for their slaves to be educated too. Conditions varied significantly for both groups. I'm not saying these two things are equivalent -- but debt bondage is still "bondage," which is another common word for slavery.

I encourage you to seek to set the historical record straight but I implore you not to exaggerate and by doing so treat another group - in this case management of company towns - as fallaciously as the group you are championing has been treated.

I appreciate the politeness of your response. But I'm frankly not sure what "group" I am supposedly "championing." I'm trying to get at the historical reality of how bad conditions COULD BE (not everywhere, maybe not even in most company towns). I do not mean at all to disparage those company managers who did indeed treat workers fairly and benevolently. But there were plenty of places where workers were abused and effectively put into "debt bondage" as you put it (a topic I actually linked to in my original post).

But to me, in extreme cases, whether or not we call that tantamount to slavery is just a matter of semantics -- someone who doesn't have freedom to make significant choices about his life and is forced to work for someone else is, to my mind, a slave. Whether the government recognizes him as "being owned" by someone else is a legalistic quibble that serves to excuse heinous practices while technically outlawing "slavery."

Had you RTFA, you might have noticed that the very next paragraph after the sentence you quoted goes into what you accuse it of "omitting".

Umm, I did RTFA, and I still think the image of the historical "company town" brought up there is pretty skewed.

The development conjures up memories of so-called "company towns" at the turn of the 20th century, where American factory workers lived in communities owned by their employer and were provided housing, health care, law enforcement, church and just about every other service necessary.

Aww, that sounds really great! My company gives me everything! Well, let's go on to that next paragraph that you claim fills in the details:

Spending more time in the clutches of the company sphere isn't necessarily positive. One reason the old company towns eventually disappeared was that they could be overbearing to workers.

And that's it! Nothing else to say critically about this historical company towns brought up in comparison.

Sorry, but there is a lot of "omission" here. Some historical company towns were lucky enough to have reasonable benefactors running things. But in many cases, they were just slavery by another name.

Sorry, but "could be overbearing to workers" doesn't quite do justice to the historical reality.

It COULD be used to screen for undesirable traits (but that's eugenics)

if eugenics means eliminating debilitating genetic disorders then i'm in. when you get mutations in the standard code that defines us as humans, you get serious health problems.

it WILL be used to screen for 'desirable' traits - that's money.

unless you are choosing really simple traits like hair and eye color, you are going to have to wait until we figure out how our DNA really works. there are a ton of changes that occur just for things like height which we still dont fully understand. genetic testing for traits gives results in probability based on their pool of knowledge from other people that provide information.

if you are really interested in this topic, watch NOVA's Cracking Your Genetic Code which is on netflix, your local torrent site or on their website which doesnt work for me.

Correction: Stuxnet was the repercussion, it was Iran's nuclear program that was the provocation.

Repeating Big Lies doesn't make them true, it just makes you a bigger liar. Because even the IDF and Pentagon will tell you Iran doesn't actually have the nuclear weapons program that both countries are threatening to bomb Iran for having.

But even if Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons, that would be the "repercussion" for Israel's 200+ nuclear warheads.

This Washington Post bit (hopefully you don't need to sign on to your Amazon account to get access to it :-)) says

But while the spy chief seemed to enjoy a Captain Kirk-worthy facility at Fort Belvoir, Va., which was reportedly the creation of a Hollywood set designer, it turns out that the command center was already in place when he took the job. It was built, sources tell our colleague Ellen Nakashima, in 1998. Alexander took over the post in 2001.

assuming the "sources" are actually telling the truth.

Still a bit WTF, however.

Bullshit.

Bin Liden's falling out with Saudi Arabia was over their invitation of American troops to defend them from Iraq after the initial invasion of Kuwait. Bin Laden publicly denounced Saudi dependence on the U.S. military, arguing the two holiest shrines of Islam, Mecca and Medina, the cities in which the Prophet Mohamed received and recited Allah's message, should only be defended by Muslims. Bin Laden's criticism of the Saudi monarchy led them to try to silence him. They subsequently revoked his citizenship and he relocated to Sudan.

He declared war on the United States in August of 1996 because after defeating the Iraqis, the U.S. left troops in The Kingdom. His fatwa was titled "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places" and explicitly states that the highest prioriy is pushing the unbelievers out of the Holy Land.

What al-Qaida really wants ranks right up there with my son wanting a pony. Neither is ever going to get remotely what they state, nor are they capable of really trying. al-Qaida knows they have to defeat the "near enemy" -- all of the autocratic rulers of the Middle East -- to form their beloved Caliphate before they can think about dealing with the "far enemy" -- the West. Notice how little progress they've made on that front. What, Iran? Anything else?

Considering bin Laden ranked the Shia right there with Infidels and Jews, I'd say he had his hands full with formenting a Muslim civil war before getting anywhere else.

al-Qaida's weapon on 9/11/2001 was surprise, and you know it. SOP for dealing with a hijacking was sit back and wait until it was over. That'll never happen again. al-Qaida has virtually no ability to strike the West with any force. They also have their hands full with all of the "Arab Spring" issues to even think about dealing with the "far enemy" at all.

If the Islamists can't even hold Egypt when it was handed to them on a silver platter, their so called "demand" that the U.S. convert to Islam ranks somewhere just below them all getting ponies for Christmas.

They can't even get Sharia implemented in places like Egypt, Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon and Jordan, much less anywhere outside their home turf.

Reading their Christmas wish list and taking it for gospel is disingenuous. Especially when it looks like it isn't going anywhere near according to plan. Egypt shows that just because the autocrat was out doesn't mean anyone really wants the Islamists in. Just trading boots.

After petting and being pet, humans and dogs both experience elevated levels of oxytocin, the same chemical measured during other forms of affection. I wonder if the dogs experienced any elevated oxytocin levels after interacting with the robots.

I saw on an episode of Nova that dogs have some human communication abilities that even "smarter" and more closely related animals like apes don't have and can't learn, like responding to pointing. From TFA, they made the robot unlike a human except for a gloved hand, with tests pointing with a hand, but the Nova episode also showed the dogs would make eye contact and the trainer could indicate by pointing with just their eyes. Maybe an experiment could create a robot with eye-like indicators.

Bin Laden, as head of al Qaida, declared war on the US in 1996. They attacked the US for years before the US took effective action.

300,000 repairs? The man was a machine himself. RIP.

I wonder if he liked this?

The Typewriter for Orchestra, by Leroy Anderson

There may be growing interest in typewriters. Maybe they will be the office equipment analog to the return of vinyl records or vacuum tubes for music.

The Typewriter Movie trailer (In the 21st Century)

They could certainly still be handy to have around.

They have never denied having them. They just denied using them until recently. Just as the U.S. has them as well.

Syria has repeatedly denied having chemical weapons. And when they haven't denied it, they haven't acknowledged it, either.

2003
2013

That's nice for you, here in central AR, in the middle of a college town no less, you can get the cable home line for $35 a month or get business for...$150 a month! That is nearly 5 times the price for just a doubling of the cap! Want more? Its $1.50 a GB as there are no more tiers after business!

The simple fact is the prices are so high because we were robbed of over 200 billion because that is what we gave the teleco/cableco duopolies in return for nationwide broadband and what did we get? A low rez Goatse while the board stuffed their pockets. We should give them 90 days to pay up WITH INTEREST and if they don't? WE the people control the last mile. They want a monopoly? Any place they run FTTH that isn't already being served with fiber they can have a 15 year monopoly, 25 year if they run it to places that haven't had any service.

But even the libertarians should support such a plan, because we have seen time and time again that monopolies and regulatory capture are cancers on the free market, ONLY by having actual competition will things get better. Until then get used to nastier and nastier caps as they wring max profit from the existing lines.

Frontline's Sarah Childress writes:

Whites who kill blacks in Stand Your Ground states are far more likely to be found justified in their killings. In non-Stand Your Ground states, whites are 250 percent more likely to be found justified in killing a black person than a white person who kills another white person; in Stand Your Ground states, that number jumps to 354 percent.

When compared with black on non-black crime it appears that not enough non-black people are defending themselves appropriately.

Attacking terrorists that are fighting against the US and Afghan governments isn't terrorism. The terrorists can thank Bin Laden's leadership for their predicament since he declared war on the US on their behalf. They then proceeded to attack the US for years, killing many hundreds and wounding thousands, before the US really got serious about fighting back.

Bin Laden's Fatwa

Pakistani General: Actually, The Drones Are Awesome

The Osborne Effect is at least partially myth.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2005/pulpit_20050616_000856.html
(The Wikipedia article gives more citations.)

Prosecutors didn't fail to pursue charges, they knew they could not charge him with a crime, so they didn't.

He shot another human being dead. Even professional police officers face inquiries when they do that.

It was entirely a politically motivated hatchet job pushed by Holder's DOJ in pursuit of the Obama Administration's gun control agenda and to mollify the Democratic party's black constituency.

The trial was a necessary step. When one person takes another person's life, the government has a responsibility to ensure that killing is justifiable and, if not, remove the killer from society.

I'm not arguing that the justice system didn't work here, because I think it did -- but it needed that kick in the pants. It needed a court proceeding. When someone's dead, you can't afford to just take the killer's word for what happened.

A lot of people want to believe in some fantasy narrative where Zimmerman is hunting black kids

I'm not one of those people, because I don't think Zimmerman's doing anything of the sort. Whether the justice system is doing that, however, is another story. Frontline's Sarah Childress writes:

Whites who kill blacks in Stand Your Ground states are far more likely to be found justified in their killings. In non-Stand Your Ground states, whites are 250 percent more likely to be found justified in killing a black person than a white person who kills another white person; in Stand Your Ground states, that number jumps to 354 percent.

Stand Your Ground laws are a Wild West solution looking for a problem. As I believe you point out, the law wasn't even relevant here -- and that should argue strongly to how unnecessary the law really is.

I dispute that these vigilantes should decide what should be "declassified" or what isn't.... I just strongly object to the methods being used by the anti-secrecy crowd, and I don't trust their motivations at all.

That is a fair enough opinion and nobody can argue with it, it is good to have a healthy dose of skepticism about any information that is presented to us via any channel. However what is more difficult to dispute is when a leaked document reveals heinous war crimes - should focusing on the messenger still be more important than a message of that significance? Also remember that Washington leaks information all the time (for example the Bin Laden operation) - why are leaks that expose crimes be worse than leaks that make the president look good? To most people that just reeks of hypocrisy.

The usual reply to this logic is "what war crimes, there were no war crimes exposed - but look over there - Assange is a narcicist and Manning is a traitor!!". However even a basic search and read of the documents they destroyed their lives to bring to us show that this claim is absolutely false:

Revelations from the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs detailed the use of paramilitary death squads, complicity in the torture of Iraqi citizens, the indiscriminate killing of civilians by private military contractors and many other abuses. Meanwhile, the leaked State Department cables brought to light scores of secret drone strikes in countries we are not even at war with, and uncovered the collusion between the U.S. and Yemini governments to lie about American responsibility for the massacre of 41 people in the Al-Majalah region. They also revealed U.S. interference with judicial efforts in Spain to investigate the Bush administration's torture practices. In Tunisia, leaks exposing the opulence and corruption of Ben Ali's government were a catalyst for the revolution that brought down the repressive regime and ignited other pro-democracy movements throughout the Arab world. The list could go on but the point is simple: it would have been a disservice to democracy to withhold this important information.

Doesn't one have to love science for its inquiry nature.

http://www.pbs.org/parents/childrenandmedia/article-when-introduce-child-smartphone-tablet.html

http://www.thestar.com/life/technology/2012/11/29/smartphone_addicts_start_early_in_south_korea.html

http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/singapore/story/kids-using-gadgets-earlier-age-being-exposed-risks-study-20130605

And as you also brought the TV into the mix, of course, that too.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130505/education/Effects-of-TV-computer-games-and-smartphones-on-children.468339

You know, it is 10 years now I do not watch TV, I don't have a TV set at home. I watch the occasional when I go to visit my parents or some friend, but that is because the TV is on all the time everywhere I go and I can not shut my eyes. I read a lot, and I do mean a lot. Everyday two hours at least, the time one would spend in front of the TV. I do not want to seem arrogant, but I am considered the guy with lots and lots of imagination among my friends. I think there could be a correlation with my aTV-ism, it, but I will say there is not, thus making you happy and easier to move along.

Sorry to reply to my own post, but a citation helps.

And to add to my previous post:

For persons in families, the three most commonly cited causes, according to a 2008 U.S. Conference of Mayors study (pdf) are:
Lack of affordable housing
Poverty
Unemployment

For singles, the three most commonly cited causes of homelessness are:
Substance abuse
Lack of affordable housing
Mental illness

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/526/homeless-facts.html

Funny how none of the major causes are "chose to be poor".

After looking at campaign contributions from the health care industry to all the primary candidates, I decided that both candidates, Democratic and Republican, were taking money from the same interest groups and both candidates were forming policies to serve those interest groups. Those are primarily the insurance companies, the drug companies, and the hospital chains. Individual doctors are actually less of an influence than they used to be, although the AMA does spend a lot of money.

That's why Obama, as soon as he got into office, took single payer off the table, even though single payer was enormously popular among American voters, and Obama's supporters in particular. Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who was handling this issue, had a meeting with some single payer advocates and called them "fucking retarded" to their faces. Emanuel was also the Democratic Party's chief fund-raiser, so he sees everything in terms of how the White House can reward their contributors.

I think that when Obama reached out to the Republicans, what he was saying was, in effect, "Let's both work together to serve our fat cat campaign contributors, and give them billions of dollars in tax money, so we'll continue to get their campaign contributions, and get rich with jobs as lobbyists and corporate board members after we leave office." (That's what Al Gore did.)

Obama's health plan was literally adopted from a Heritage Foundation white paper. The Democratic strategists thought that if they gave the Republicans enough, the Republicans would go along. There was no significant difference between the Democrats and Republicans on this and most other important issues.

The Republicans told him, in effect, "No, we want it all for ourselves, and we're going to beat you by destroying the federal government so you can't even give your voters these moderate reforms."

This is the best quick explanation that I've seen of what Obama is about. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12182009/transcript1.html It's a panel with Bill Moyers, Robert Kuttner and Matt Taibbi about Obama's health reform. Kuttner is a nice, sincere guy who believed in Obama. Taibbi I think was more realistic (smarter) than Kuttner.

More importantly, he released information in a way that made it incontrovertible. It wasn't some retarded infowars release right after a video about weather control and right after another about reptilian humans.

PBS is retarded?

Klein worked for more than 20 years as a technician at AT&T. Here he tells the story of how he inadvertently discovered that the whole flow of Internet traffic in several AT&T operations centers was being regularly diverted to the National Security Agency (NSA). Klein is a witness in a lawsuit filed against AT&T by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which alleges AT&T illegally gave the NSA access to its networks. This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted on Jan. 9, 2007.

I'm pretty sure that Infowars.com has never had a story about aliens, and I'm also pretty sure Infowars.com linked to pbs.com back in 2007.

Here is a question: What the hell is going on in Syria?

Well, if you really want to know...

So, what's up is that a group of people started protesting against Assad, calling for democracy and elections. These protesters were met with force and so they formed the Free Syrian Army and vowed not to stand down, fighting with whatever weapons they can scrounge up. It's Assad's rockets and bombs vs light arms and whatever the FSA can find... An anti aircraft gun in the video, that no one knows how to even operate... On Assad's side it seems as if they're even firing at unarmed farmers trying to tend their crops (but I'm not positive there were actually bullets in the shot, no one got hit but it sounded like they were shot at -- I don't explicitly trust any media coverage easily faked by dubbing, it's a somewhat credible source though). There's been leaks about possible CIA involvement pulling some false flag operations to escalate things further, but that's not really warranted because the religion of the region is starting to work its magic in the FSA -- Folks calling for 50 years of payback, etc.

What do I think is going on? Dictator has some trouble with stamping out democracy. The folks on either side of the front line in Syria want peace, but Assad's forces are being manipulated through false information and censorship. USA/UN see an opening to squash Assad, but we need a polarizing heinous event that makes headlines (because bombs dropped on schools doesn't sway the heartless assholes world-wide). So, instead of giving the rebels enough guns to fortify their position and perhaps divide Syria the UN chemical weapon experts show up, and suddenly Assad "appears" to have gassed a bunch of folks. Meanwhile the USA can now bring the threat narrative back to congress, and our proxy war with IRAN can begin.

There really is a "righteous side" in this conflict. It's the warlords vs the people. I'm calling the USA, IRAN and other UN nations and Assad as the warlords, and the troops and civilians on the ground the people. This is military industrial complex funding vs the people of the world. It works best in small countries that can't defend themselves very well. Get ready to shell out for more Halliburton pork to buy not even half-assed reconstruction and relief funds. Grow up. This shit will happen even if you have massive anti-war protests, like over Vietnam. Your governments don't give a fuck what you think. Get used to it.

Guns aren't easy to make.

Yes, they are. Zip guns are almost trivial, they were commonly made by juvenile delinquents in the 1950s. Indian villagers with simple tools can make guns, while back-alley gunsmiths in the Philippines today turn out not just simple pipe guns but submachine guns. Resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Poland were also able to set up clandestine gun factories.

While most criminal firearms in the U.S. today are diverted from the legitimate market, if that source were ever to dry up it would have very little impact on the availability of firearms to criminals. Folks making meth today would turn their labs into machine shops.

And now with 3-D printing, and CNC milling? Fugeddaboutit.

The number one source of guns for criminals is theft.

No, it's not. Seriously, dude, this is one of those times where a minute with your favorite search engine can save you from looking like an ass...

Make it a crime to have your guns stolen,

...but then, if you believe that being the victim of a crime can itself be made a crime, it'll take more than fact-checking to stop you from looking like an ass.

Well Yes and No. No - I don't agree that the subject matter that has been actually leaked was right for governments to have done in the first place. eg: The deliberate killing of innocent civilians in Iraq. That is wrong.

Yes - I do agree that leaking information is harmful to government and beneficial to enemies,

but... what if the "enemies" didn't really exist? What if the people of the countries were just like you and me and didn't want to fight us? What if the most secret secret is that the "enemies" are fabrications of the governments, and without any secrets allowed at all they couldn't trick us into fighting each other?

Take Syria for example. The folks on the front line on each side just want peace, and Assad's forces are monitored and fed only state media and kept from communicating with the enemy... Why? If the enemy were evil, wouldn't they still be shouting evil things? Oh, it's to prevent traitors? But if they were traitors they wouldn't be fighting on the front line...

What sort of "wrong things" do you propose the government stop doing? Perhaps their real enemy is you?

BOO! now SHHH! we can't tell you why they're the enemy, that's a secret.

Pretty close. Actually, it's multi-tiered. AT&T lets a national contract, where the winning contractor takes 90% of the profit out of the contract and sub-lets 5 or six regional contracts, where those sub-contractors take 90% of the remaining profit, and sub-let dozens of sub-regional contracts, who take their 90%, and sub-let the actual work to these 10-man outfits, who can't afford enough gear or people to adequately and safely do the job. Then some free-market idiot like the GP comes along and blames the whole thing on the government. FRONTLINE has done several stories and follow-ups on this phenomenon.

A Frontline documentary last year noted that tower work is done by small contracting companies that allow the big carriers to duck all responsibility, while pushing the firms to build so fast that safety gets shortcutted. Worth watching.

This isn't anything new. If you have worked in the industry, you know about it. The pressure and competition from cell providers to lower the cost of erecting and maintaining towers has pushed the safety margins to very thin levels. Guys climb with gear far beyond their service life and are asked to work lots of hours.

Frontline covered this last summer, I think it provides a good summary if you don't know about the topic:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/cell-tower-deaths/

Ghandi.

Nelson Mandela.

Not saying Bradley Manning is in the same category. But sometimes people in prison do end up as powerful symbols.

There is no evil hoard of bankers sitting atop a mountain of cash

To put it succinctly, bull shit.

I don't know about you but half a BILLION dollars is a hoard of cash to me. And that's just one of the guys that made all that money disappear. Sure they made our money disappear for the most part but in doing so they made sure they they walked away with huge hoards of cash.

It's kinda funny. The Reagan administration prosecuted some 1100 bank officials in the Savings and loan meltdown. The Obama administration has prosecuted 0 in significantly worse crisis.

Not to be outdone, Obama has authorized Voice of America to broadcast to American audiences, in order to ensure that our country keeps the upper hand in using propaganda against western audiences.

</wishiwerejoking>

It is NOT man-made. It is natural.

Sigh. This conversation is pointless, get your education elsewhere.

I wrote the original article - to be clear I was speaking for FRONTLINE, not PBS. anyway I wrote this piece as a follow up http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/labs/more-on-frontlines-android-plans/

You forgot the 25% sales tax in Denmark from your calculations (sales tax a very regressive form of taxation). In the usa the average sales tax is 6%. What you are saying in essence is that the US should significantly increase taxes and then give people these services? so lets put this into better perspective:
A middle class family in the USA (most middle class have some form of health insurance and are paying lets say 400/month employee contribution) vs Denmark for comparison.
Net income of 66k USD (50k Euro) in the usa they will spend about 3k/month on taxable items (50% is housing related the rest is spent ... who saves anymore?). that means in the usa
3000 * 6% = 180
Denmark
3000 * 25% = 750
so you see you are paying significantly more for your health coverage then the average person in the USA ...
that 180 in sales tax in the USA is also going to subsides University, you can not compare the price of a private college to a state university for in state residents. The cost of instate is 8000/year * 4 years = 32000
Lets divide that number over a lifetime say 60 years of paying sales tax will be 45 dollars per month.
So now lets add 180 + 400 + 45 = 625 vs the 750 you are paying ... overall USA is less expensive the major difference is not in quality of care but in compensation when things do not go according to plan. The reason the USA doesn't have universal health care is quite simple ... malpractice to sum up the situation:

Democrats make their money as trial lawyers and many of them made their fortunes on malpractice issues so a federal health care system would also mean no more malpractice claims in the 10s of millions of dollars but more in line with Denmark system:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/video/video-the-denmark-option/16126/

Republicans do not want a federal system they want it controlled by the state ... and thus set by insurance companies (that charge significant amount for that malpractice insurance) that they will lobby for when they leave office.
so in short both Democrats in the USA and Republicans in the USA agree that Universal healthcare is bad for their pockets ...

"Your screen size argument affecting the overall experience requiring fine-tuning for each size clearly shows your vast inexperience with Android development. While that may have been the case 15 versions ago for the SDK, it is not even remotely the case with the latest builds of the SDK.

In addition, you only need to support Android 2.2 (2.5% share) and higher, 1.5 and 1.6 and those in between devices are long gone and only a micro-fraction of a micro-fraction of the existing devices in use today. The reality is Gingerbread 2.3.x is around 30%-35%, Ice Cream Sandwich is around 20%-35% and Jelly Bean is around 30%-35%.

If either of your points were valid, we wouldn't have half of the professional apps we currently have and enjoy on our Android phones, and I assure you, a lot of them are a lot more complex than your FRONTLINE App would ever be and run just fine on Gingerbread 2.3.x. If Netflix can do it, PBS can do it.

I would suggest consulting an avid Android developer that despises Apple to get the real facts. Any Apple fan is going to tell you it is too much of a burden to develop for Android ... which in turn makes you look foolish.

I've been developing on Android for years and can tell you I could make a single FRONTLINE App that would work on both phones and tablets from Android 2.3.x on up seamlessly and with little effort to do so." link

the NSA is denying

People keep speaking of the NSA as one monolithic organism.

I think it's quite possible that many people in the NSA (including it's spokespeople and PR people) are kept in the dark about what goes on in other parts. One step further, it seems possible that the entire NSA doesn't know everything about what the contractors it outsources to (like the one Snowden worked for) are doing.

For example in these interview: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/july-dec13/whistleblowers_08-01.html At around 5:23 into this the NSA General Counsel denies collecting content (as opposed to metadata); and at 6:00 the NSA's inspector general states that the "as [he] understand[s] it and from what [he] know" NSA sticks to what courts authorize it and only collects telephony metadata.

Yet Snowden's leaks clearly suggest that Booz Allen at least had far greater capabilities than what the NSA leadership was apparently aware of.

TL/DR: maybe they're being sincere when they deny knowing what's going on. Not sure if that would be disturbing or re-assuring, though.

No horrible mess? For REAL?

Perhaps you should more closely look into what actually initiated subprime mortgage crisis.

The prevailing theory is that the repeal of the Glass-Steagall, and the implementation of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.

Taken from this source, Then president clinton officially stated publicly that Glass-Steagall was no longer appropriate, and began measures to repeal it.

DENNIS KELLEHER, Better Markets, Inc.: In the old days, Wall Street and the finance industry financed things that got done, be they the railroads or the interstate system. All of that has to be financed. Thatâ(TM)s what finance is supposed to be about.

What has entirely changed is that theyâ(TM)re in the business of making money for themselves. If it happens that they can also finance something along the way, OK, but thatâ(TM)s really no longer part of the core business.

LARRY SUMMERS, Clinton Administration Treasury Secretary: Now it gives me great pleasure to introduce the President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton.

NARRATOR: The changes were formalized in the late â90s, as the last of the Depression-era reforms were liftedâ"

Pres. BILL CLINTON: The Glass-Steagall law is no longer appropriateâ"

NARRATOR: â"and traditional commercial banks could merge with trading-oriented investment banks. Trading activity and bank profits rose quickly.

[www.pbs.org: The rise and fall of Glass-Steagall]

Later, After doing so, then president Href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000">Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 into law.

So, what mess indeed!

And, we've discovered that certain kinds intervention before age 18 is really effective at decreasing crime rates among these people. And notably, in spite of the fact that we have all these awesome criteria, less than 10% of those who meet our best criteria ever really do anything wrong. NOVA had a fascinating documentary about it. (I'm at work and can't verify that's the right video). If we could trivially split people into categories of "future murderer" and "non-murderer" it wouldmake life easier, but we cannot.

The other neat thing that dogs can do is figure out what you mean when you point at something, apes just can't seem to grasp this. NOVA did a documentary that attempted to qualify ape intelligence by showing the diffrences between human children and other animals. It was eye opening, particularly the use of tools and the crafting of weapons to kill prey by chimps. I think animals are a lot smarter then we give them credit for, anyhow here is a link: http://m.video.pbs.org/video/1200128615/

Since becoming a dog owner I have been surprised by what he seems to understand. As you said, he understands what I mean when I point to something. But he has even followed commands the first time I have given them, with no training. The very first time I told him to go to bed, he hopped off my bed and got in his own. Once when I was walking him in the snow he got cold and wanted to go home. He started down the neighbors driveway and resisted me when I tried to get him to come back to the street. Finally I said, "This is not our house" and he promptly came back over and went down our driveway! I can't explain it, but he seems to understand much more than I would have expected.

Easy fix... put the shoes away. It's all about operant conditioning with dogs. I suggest an e-collar, an alternative him to chew on, and positive reinforcement when he does something you want. I hear imitation also works, you could fetch some of his toys to chew... ;-)

The other neat thing that dogs can do is figure out what you mean when you point at something, apes just can't seem to grasp this. NOVA did a documentary that attempted to qualify ape intelligence by showing the diffrences between human children and other animals. It was eye opening, particularly the use of tools and the crafting of weapons to kill prey by chimps. I think animals are a lot smarter then we give them credit for, anyhow here is a link: http://m.video.pbs.org/video/1200128615/

Or just follow your ferret.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/can-animals-predict-disaster/introduction/130/

http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/HearingRange.html

The Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by the US Congress after 9/11 designates the enemy for the conflict. It is well settled law in the US that such an authorization is legally equivalent to a declaration of war. Al Qaida made their intentions clear in 1996 with Bin Laden's Fatwa which is a declaration of war in their culture.

There are a lot of misconceptions about Guantánamo Bay. This is a couple of years old, and doesn't reflect the most current controversies. It's a big topic, and I'm not going to get into all of it right now. One thing I would say to keep in mind is that you can disagree with what the administration says, or does, but remember that al Qaida trains its members to lie about their living conditions, and many of them are highly dangerous prisoners that regularly assault the guards. The training to lie is documented in captured training materials.

The Real Gitmo

I'd just reckon that the job market sucks no matter what the age even in SF

Outside the little bubble of Silicon Valley, it's a lot worse if you're young than if you're old.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/07/jobless-rate-for-poor-black-te.html

Have any proof of that? That is pure 100% speculation.

I don't think anyone will be able to fault you for fair mindedly ignoring the obvious regarding the behavior of leftist anti-American regimes.

Nicaragua, Venezuela offer NSA leaker Edward Snowden asylum

Maduro said several other Latin American governments have also expressed their intention of taking a similar stance by offering asylum for the cause of "dignity."

Chavez, who hand-picked Maduro as his successor, often engaged in similar defiance, criticizing U.S.-style capitalism and policies. In a 2006 speech to the U.N. General Assembly of world leaders, Chavez called President George W. Bush the devil, saying the podium reeked of sulfur after the U.S. president's address. He also accused Washington of plotting against him, expelled several diplomats and drug-enforcement agents and threatened to stop sending oil to the U.S.

Maduro made the asylum offer during a speech marking the anniversary of Venezuela's independence. It was not immediately clear if there were any conditions to Venezuela's offer.

But his critics said Maduro's decision is nothing but an attempt to veil the current undignified conditions of Venezuela, including one of the world's highest inflation rates and a shortage of basic products such as toilet paper.

"The asylum doesn't fix the economic disaster, the record inflation, an upcoming devaluation (of the currency), and the rising crime rate," Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles said in his Twitter account. Maduro beat Capriles in April's presidential election, but Capriles has not recognized defeat and has called it an electoral fraud.

Doing it for the "dignity" of the country isn't doing it out of concern for the human rights of Snowden. It is to enhance their national self-esteem while hurting the US.

...one of the most powerful, evil, and corrupt governments in the world. ... The US does not have any sort of ethical limits to its actions ...

Really? Really? I think you're overdue for calibration. I strongly urge you to watch at least the first, if not both.

The Soviet Story (2008)
A Portrait of Stalin: Secret Police

As to the following, these are hardly the only examples of this sort of thing.

U.S. Aircraft Carrier Leaving Disaster Zone After Tsunami
The Marshall Plan
The Berlin Airlift

That is why when we tell Europe to jump their only response is a polite, "How high?"

That is clearly nonsense. It is easy to see when you look at things like defense spending compared to NATO treaty obligations, diplomatic relations, trade, national laws, and many other things.

Here's a better example, note the wages:

Lincoln welders are priced competitively. The company is famous for their quality equipment which often lasts decades. (The SA series engine-driven welders are standard in oil field and pipeline use in many countries.)

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/12/yes-to-profit-sharing-and-no-layoffs-for-64-years-in-a-row.html