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Hello time traveler from 96, let me tell you about 9/11 and fukushima. In reality land one can get a Barebone for $200 follow the little pictures or the nice little video where they walk you through putting it together (I swear they hold your hand so much now a grandma could do it) and add a $100 copy of Win 7 HP along with a nice cheap mid range game card and voila! Gaming PC for $380. Or if you don't want to DIY you can just pick up a prebuilt for $550 that is plug and play, or you can just go to any mom&pop shop and hire a guy like me that will put together any design your little heart desires.

Anybody that pays $900 for a gaming PC has a very tiny penis and is trying to make up for it with an ePeen. That or they are one of these idiots that think they have to do everything on a laptop, even if they don't actually go anywhere with the damned thing so are just spending a shitload of money on a really compact desktop with higher priced shittier parts.

As for TFA...do they have purple ponies and She Ra in candyland where OnLive lives? because I would like a ride. in case they haven't gotten the memo the greedy bastard ISPs are going to caps which kinda kills their magical service deader than Dixie. hell in my area neither the cable nor DSL has moved an inch or upgraded shit in damned near a decade, and that is with a huge college right in the middle of town. That would cut into profits you know!

It doesn't matter we already paid to the tune of 200 billion for nationwide broadband and all we got was a nice picture of Goatse from the CEOs who pocketed the cash or spent it on coke and hookers, or that in areas like mine (and large chunks of the country) that only have a monopoly or duopoly we are being royally ass raped on prices as it is (in my area it is now up to $75 for 2Mbps cable or $135 for the bundle with TV and phone) because they have to show Wall Street they can make iMoney and keep those profits rolling don't ya know?

OnLive trying to get this service off the ground now would be like offering a car for the masses that gets 5 MPG. The era of unlimited broadband, at least in the states, is coming to an end, it is like 8 tracks and muscle cars a thing of the past. Sadly I've seen the future and it is teeny caps and $1.50 per Gb if you go over, which means just one gaming session could cost you more than just going out and buying the game if you go over your cap.

Exterior of a computer skills classes, which are obviously important in their own right, all this tech does is increase student distraction. I'm a bit surprised they aren't tracking a DECLINE in test scores in all other areas of learning, really.

I'm sure having a laptop provides quite a bit more than distractions. I, for one, would have loved to have a 3lb laptop instead of hauling around 50lbs of dead tree edition school books when I was a kid. I have a permanent curvature in my right collar bone as a result of that crap. I also think their laptop's graphing calculators will be quite a bit more advanced than my old TI-81 ever was.

You're surprised by a lack of decline? I wonder how the kids in this country could get any dumber. US public education is in a state where a mid-19th century children's book is now considered 9-12th grade reading material. That is thanks, in no small part, to people who blame the best tech we can provide these kids for those kids failures.

I don't wonder why patent clerks can't come up with ground breaking physics like the Theory of Relativity anymore. It is no surprise to me that men like Tesla spoke eight languages and produced inventions in the early 1900s that today's brightest minds can't figure out.

The kids aren't distracted. They're fucking bored.

I really don't think you understand evolution at all, or at least the principles of evolution.

Yes, the evolutionary pressures upon the current generation of children are not necessarily to survive against infectious diseases, being able to smash the skull of a potential opponent inside out, or to be able to successfully hunt for food by running after it all day long. Instead, the evolutionary pressures are to be able to operate a complex machine at relatively high velocities (60 mph/100 kmph) which has an overall mass on the order of about 500kg-2000kg where you must not only watch for similar machines like this but also be able to cope with natural forces (rain, snow, high wind) or some people being total jerks. That is but one of many kinds of evolutionary pressures put upon children today, and sadly there are many who fail to meet that test as well.

In that sense, by using your own argument here that because the environmental pressures are substantially different than several generations ago, that the rate of evolution is actually quite rapid at the moment.

A really interesting video on the topic has been produced by PBS and has been airing this past month on a local PBS station if you can find it: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/becoming-human-part-1.html

One of the interesting things pointed out in this mini-series (three videos total as a part of Nova) is that mankind has adapted to an evolutionary environment of almost constant change in environmental conditions, where eastern Africa in particular has undergone so much and so frequent environmental changes that mankind simply needed to adapt to those constant changes. My argument is that we are undergoing those evolutionary changes again, particularly in a shift from a largely agrarian peasant society to a largely industrialized society. That is still happening in many parts of the world, and those evolutionary pressures resulting from that shift still are being placed on the children of today in sometimes a horrific fashion.

More to the point I was originally making, that evolution hasn't stopped and suggesting that it has is being simply ignorant. It is merely different than it was in the past and the "fitness" selection is substantially different too.

I think things like this speak for themselves:

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/photos/antarctica-gallery/

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/07/mongolian-herders-feel-change-in-climate.html

http://www.amazon.com/National-Geographic-Masters-Arctic-Ice/dp/B000R7I4AE

Masters of the Arctic Ice recently had a showing on PBS, and it was really disturbing to see that not only is the Western ice shelf melting, but the Eastern shelf is also showing signs of rapid deterioration from the bottom, and not from the top.

If both shelves go, it will put the ocean water levels up by approximately sixty feet or more world-wide.

It looks like the mobile industry is using strategies from the consumer lending playbook...get people in with cheap services and make the penalties extremely high if you go over your limit/late payment. This is a money-making strategy that took the consumer lending industry by storm. Watch this: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/creditcards/view/

Are there scholarships "for black kids"? Are there scholarships "for white kids"?

Furthermore, just google "college entrance scores for black people" for a range of views on the subject... there is lots of supporting evidence and opinion and a little denial too. (Interestingly, this page says there's not a significant difference in test scores while that page says the difference is quite significant indeed.

And the fact that lower scores are allowed for entrance is well established. There are, indeed, racial quotas in college admissions and there are unspoken quotas for graduation as well.

I think this is a rare time when I am to be considered right-wing -- typically, people accuse me of being strong- or even extreme-right. Not sure if I should be appreciative of or offended by that.

http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

Compressed air, thermal storage in molten salts, and pumping water are all workable solutions for storing power, as are improving batteries and hydrogen production. There are solutions. The big issue is that we don't make coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear pay the true cost for pollution costs, health damage, defense costs, climate change, or meltdown risk.

So, for example, I can't eat fish caught locally in the North East US because of mercury pollution from coal burning power plants in the Midwest US. So, I've lost something valuable, for what in exchange? US Republicanism in practice is the worst sort of socialism -- privatizing gains but socializing costs (not to say US Democrats are often that much better). Thirty years of this worst sort of socialism has done a lot of damage to the USA (might as well have real "socialism" instead, IMHO, because it is hard to imagine everyone having medical care and free college and reliable infrastructure would make things worse at this point):
"Reagan insider: 'GOP destroyed U.S. economy'
Commentary: How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts. Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline"
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/reagan-insider-gop-destroyed-us-economy-2010-08-10

Not to say we were not warned, like by Jimmy Carter:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/carter-crisis/
"We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem."

They are also abstracted from the time-frames that it took to come up with those big ideas in the past. They read a history book and see "soandso invented suchandsuch" and think, gosh, if it was only that easy. Except it wasn't that easy. Soandso was building up the research of others that was prevalent at the time, and he spent many years coming up with excruciatingly iterative steps to get to where he ended up. Much of the public, who doesn't follow all those iterative steps gets a light bulb one day, and thinks it's amazing, but wasn't privy to the years of research and the number of people behind it.

The PBS special "Absolute Zero" is a good look at a start to almost finished look at discovery and invention. The chart here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/milestones-in-cold-research.html shows the major milestones, note the time between those milestones are many years apart. It sounds a lot more thrilling when you can read all the discoveries in 20 minutes out of a history book.

this is good, bringing a little more green-ish stuff to the world

I really hope so, as opposed to being shipped off to some unfortunate third-world scrapper who'll slowly poison dozens of children in outdoor sweatshops.

For all the visibility this will have, I expect that Apple will try to be careful to avoid that. But in the past, many "computer recycling" offers have cut out the hard parts and passed the savings on to themselves.

Wikipedia can show you [wikipedia.org] that since Obama has entered office the rate at which the debt is growing has increased substantially.

And if I were an idiot, I would see that correlation and believe it is causation. Thankfully, I have a memory long enough to let me remember why the deficit is so high. It has to do with the housing market crash and the subsequent recession, ironically caused by rating agencies like S&P rating mortgage bundles incorrectly. The spike began before Obama was even in office, and deficits were projected to reach into the trillions before Obama's inauguration. There is no reason to believe that Obama is the cause of our deficits, other than political disposition.

That is not at all what the TP wanted to do. They wanted to cut spending so that we were still meeting debt obligations but cutting back on everything else.

Is that so? I recall one TP candidate after another 'standing their ground' and demanding the debt ceiling not be raised, despite the fact that not paying your obligations is considered a partial default by credit ratings.

He He, good quote. Neil deGrasse Tyson explained the Pluto story very well in this Nova episode: http://video.pbs.org/video/1425502261/

http://www.jstor.org/pss/3125034

Yes, it's jstor, complete with the idiotic paywall. But, the summary gets right to the point.

You may well ask, "What's that got to do with Ben?" Well - hit this link next: http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l3_wit_name.html

Yes, I really believe that old Ben would qualify anonymity as an "Essential Liberty".

Ever wonder how many fewer women and children would be sold into slavery if prostitution were less tolerated? You think if brothels were legal and well regulated that the sex slaves would be a thing of the past? In Amsterdam on the fringes, many of the women are slaves. Sure, in the legal brothels, the women do it willingly, but if you think the only prostitutes in Amsterdam are in the legal brothels you are naive or stupid. Any place where prostitution is legal or tolerated, there are more sex slaves.

As a derivative, CDS are really under no regulations at this time. They were sold under hedge funds but those in themselves are derivatives. They are supposed to be regulated under Commodities Futures Trading Commission. In the 1996s the head of CTFC, Brookely Born started learning about OTC (over the counter derivatives) which were essentially unregulated. Under the mandate given by Congress, her agency was supposed to regulate them. She got enormous push back from practically all the major players including Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan against any sort of regulation. What got her attention was not so much the market wished to be unregulated was that they fought furiously against any disclosure about big the market was.

Greenspan and the banks, pressured Congress to essentially gut her agency of any regulatory power. Still she warned Congress back then that it had power to take down the financial markets as the banks were not required to disclose how much money they owed or to whom they owed money. In 2008, she was proven right when one after one investment banks like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns started to collapse due to over-leveraging.

Because they are unregulated those that invested in them essentially had no idea how sound the purchase was. At the time of their collapse, Bear Stearns were leveraged $13.40 trillion dollars in derivatives but only $395 billion in assets. It was only after their fire sale to JP Morgan that saved them. Since disclosure was not required, how many funds and companies had money in Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers that they thought were "insured" against risk.

"To not do so would be like attempting to teach mathematics without discussing multiplication, or chemistry without talking about the periodic table, or American history without mentioning the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence."

It's even more profound than that. As Theodosius Dobzhansky titled his famous essay on the subject: Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution

For a lot of people, discovering something new that they didn't know about is part of the enjoyment of reading. If you know exactly what you want, you can order it from Amazon. If you don't know exactly which title, but you are looking for something in a certain genre that you enjoy, or by an author you like, a real-live bookseller can help you find something interesting. This works better for fiction than it would for reference or technical books, but the decline of the large-scale bookstores means that this sort of personal advice will become unavailable to large segments of the population. You can't exactly go look at the table full of new non-fiction or trade paperbacks, pick one up and leaf through the pages, and if you like it, use your 30% off coupon and take it home with you today, if you're sitting in front of your Mac logged in to Amazon.(OK, I know Amazon has this great algorithm for predicting what you'll like based on what you and others have purchased, and you can download and read an e-book immediately, but see my comment about mom's basement, again, and there's this thing about actual books versus having to read it on a gadget.)

Wal-Mart is the cause of the decline and fall of small town commerce. Time after time it's been shown that when Wal-Mart builds a store on the outskirts of a small town, business in that town dries up, the jobs at these stores go away (to be replaced by part-time employment at said Wal-Mart), and the money that people would have spent at locally-owned and operated shops goes out of town. All to save a few cents on light bulbs or pickles. (Even big cities are seeing the same thing.) When the town dries up and blows away because there's no way to make a living there anymore, Wal-Mart closes up shop too (another article), and moves on to conquer the next small town. Much has been written about the aggressive tactics that Wal-Mart uses to exact the lowest prices from its suppliers, many of which have had to move US jobs overseas in order to meet these demands, or have even gone out of business because they could not continue to sell goods to Wal-Mart at a loss.

To turn the subject back to books, Wal-Mart happens to also be one of the largest book and music retailers, and they are known to censor what they sell, to the point of requiring publishers to provide expurgated versions of books and CDs. (Maybe it's a good thing we have Amazon, then.)

"16 percent of the prison population can be classified as severely mentally ill, meaning that they fit the psychiatric classification for illnesses such as schizophrenia, major depression, and bipolar disorder. According to staff at city and community jails, 25 percent of the jail population is severely mentally ill. However, when other mental illnesses, such as anti-social personality disorder, borderline personality disorder and depression, are included, the numbers are much higher, and NAMI puts the number of inmates suffering from both mental illness and substance abuse the percentage at well over 50 percent. "

From:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/etc/faqs.html#1

I really struggle with these broad, "America is crazy" type ideas, and all the resulting "It's because of TV!!" type responses. It reminds me of Tom Cruise declaring mental illness a hoax. I can tell you right now that it is not. My father was a severe paranoid schizophrenic, and let me tell you that it is some scary, terrifying shit that cannot be faked, and it's not caused by watching too much television. Until you've looked into the eyes of someone you love and see no recognition, see a complete stranger who's not even aware of their own identity (or you have a disorder yourself), you have no insight into mental illness. Then seeing that person waste away and die in a care home... This is no trivial thing to be diagnosed by armchair doctors, and dumbass actors who worship aliens.

One thing I would be curious to see is how many kids on psych drugs come from broken homes. I come from a broken home (and no I'm not looking for boo hoo hoo's, it's relevant to what I'm saying), and were it not for my dear Grandparents raising me, I would have probably wound up with some kind of psych disorder too. Looking back, before I moved in with my Grandparents, I remember myself on a really bad path. Antisocial behavior, skipping school, smoking dope... After moving in with my Grandparents who actually cared about me and spent time with me, things seemed to be infinitely better in retrospect. So yeah, based on my experience, I could see the 50%ish divorce rate could be part of the problem with the number of people with psych disorders. I've heard "It takes a village to raise a child", and one person is not enough to get the job done right. In my past, I really tie what I think of as early stage psych disorders directly to being in a single parent, single income home. Maybe this isn't the case for everyone, but I can sure see how being a kid on your own could facilitate psych disorders, lead you down a path of crime, etc.

I have a son now, and I can tell you that the memories of my Grandparents have made me a dedicated parent. Without a good parenting role model to look back on, who knows what kind of parent I'd be? So not only is divorce a devastating thing for kids, in my opinion it can be cyclical.

Is there an off the cuff "Dr. Phil" type solution to all this? Hell no. Maybe there is no solution at all. Do I think a lower divorce rate would lower the number of kids on psych drugs? Yes 100%. Obviously a lower divorce rate does not guarantee a healthy upbringing. There are abusers, molesters, and just bad parents even in 2 parent homes. I do honestly believe that if the divorce rate were to somehow drop (like I said, maybe there is no solution here), percentage wise there would be enough of an increase in good home lives to reduce the number of kids on psych drugs.

Unfortunately, what do you do with the existing "damaged goods"? Our government seems to think budget cuts to mental health programs is the right idea ( http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/01/state-budget-cuts-slash-mental-health-funding.html ). After witnessing the level of care my father received, I can't imagine this will help anyone. This is an "off the cuff" remark, but I really pisses me off that we can hand over 2 trillion in tax cuts to the richest people in the country, and pay for several wars, but we can't find a few pennies for people who are legitimately in need of care.

So what is my answer to "why is America crazy?" Priorities. We are completely fucking upside down in how we see the world. Money is everything, and anything that does not generate income is viewed as expendable. Family oriented social programs, care of old people, sick people, injured vets... It all takes a back seat to our corrupt politicians and the trillions in bribe money we pay to their campaign contributors, and bailouts to criminal bankers. Am I bitter? Yeah. I'm bitter. Watching your dad wither and die in a care home, while my tax money pays for war and lobbyist bribes will do that to a person.

Hour-long, in-depth, commercial-free, national news coverage presented audio-visually: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/video/

Combine with software like Vicomsoft Internet Gateway on an old Mac?

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2005/pulpit_20050414_000849.html

Tell that to the Norfolk Four, watch the PBS documentary.

While I'm not suggesting that's what happened here, I am saying that a confession isn't necessarily definitive evidence that anyone has done what they confessed too. The methods used to solicit the confession, the motivations of those involved, and the persons mental capacity (either at the time, or in general), need to be taken into account.

Hopefully they have substantially more evidence than just a confession. Especially if this person is "creepy", weird, or similar, as he might be the kind of person who would fall prey to this sort of coercion.

Just something to keep in mind when they say "he confessed".

You've obviously never seen College Inc.

The contaminated (evacuated) zone around Chernobyl is the size of Switzerland. If something similar happened in Germany, they would loose a major chunk of their country. Just food for thought.

That's great and all, but a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl would not be possible. It was a fundamentally unsafe reactor design from the start (positive void coefficient, no containment dome, etc)...but even then, they would have been fine, but people who didn't know what they were doing were ordering them to run an experiment in ways that ignored nearly all existing safety protocols.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/chernobyl.html

Without question, the accident at Chernobyl was the result of a fatal combination of ignorance and complacency. "As members of a select scientific panel convened immediately after the...accident," writes Bethe, "my colleagues and I established that the Chernobyl disaster tells us about the deficiencies of the Soviet political and administrative system rather than about problems with nuclear power."

The specifics are new but global dimming is not new. NOVA did a whole show on it:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/

See also NOVA: Dimming the Sun, which discusses, among other things, the effect of the September 2001 air traffic shutdown on weather (not climate).

And criminology is still in the dark ages, and we use leeches and blood letting as the main sources of medical treatment today.

Don't sell them short. The FDA cleared them for medical use seven years ago...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5319129/ns/health-health_care/t/fda-approves-leeches-medical-devices/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/leeches.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-07-07-leeches-maggots_x.htm
http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/videos/leeches-regain-hold-in-medicine

BTW, there was a Nova episode about this
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/photo51/

"All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance -- unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion -- have the full protection of the guaranties, unless excludable because they encroach upon the limited area of more important interests. But implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance.
Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/prosecuting/overview.html#ixzz1QVrlPM12
"
The states can regulate obscenity so long as it has no free speech to protect. If the kid had bought a hustler or playboy and not just a magazine full of naked women, they would have had a pretty solid case to work with as he could have claimed he was interested in the information in it, but since it was deemed as just obscene, they were allowed to to restrict it to minors.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=390&invol=629
I skimmed through it, and they seem to be looking at it as pure obscenity, so the free speech issue never comes up.

Video games on the other hand have a much stronger case for free speech. And once you can prove that it is trying to convey ideas, than it is protected by first amendment

Can you cite your references? There was a recent study that said the complete opposite of what you are claiming. http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html
I believe it was even posted here on /.

Keep the old wives' tales to yourself.

Any who think it's ok for the TSA to do the most insanely stupid things all because "it makes us safer" needs to watch Are we safer? from the show Frontline.

Watch that and tell me we need all this over-reactionary BS that we have. God forbid we profile anyone. No, the TSA uses 95 year old diapered women as a media event to prove the TSA is "Politically correct".

Is there even one Muslim country where porn is not outlawed?

Is there even one Muslim country where porn is not found?

No. 1 Nation in Sexy Web Searches? Call it Pornistan

Random connection: Exclusive: Pornography found in bin Laden hideout: officials

Far more troubling than the porn:

"I hope that Kuwait will enact the law for...sex slaves"
"When I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase her"

Pakistan: In the Land of Conspiracy Theories
What explains those crazed conspiracy theories running wild in Pakistan?

But to your point, I finished my BS in CS last year and work in the field now, and to be quite honest the most important classes for me were not Computer Organization, Operating Systems, Programming Languages or even the Crypto/Security classes. Yes I would be less effective on the job without them, but I got much more out of my Ethics, Uptopian Literature, Science and Fiction Literature, Democratism and Anarchism classes. Those classes engaged critical reasoning skills, which surprise, surprise happens to be pretty fucking important in our field, no matter which end you are on Networking, SysAdmin or Developer. Plus Snow Crash and Hitchhiker's Guide were some of the assigned reading in the Lit class, and I never, ever would have even heard of White Noise, He, She and It, The Periodic Table which were also pretty excellent. Sure, appreciation for literature doesn't pay the bills, but you gotta enjoy something right?

I believe that attending a 4 year school isn't a decision to make on a whim as a career booster. Though the market has sort of dictated this, you should only be spending the effort on an advanced degree if the pursuit of knowledge, not a paycheck is what you're after. With such a heavy push on going to college these days the experience is becoming diluted and a lot of people who shouldn't be there are, and are stuck holding the bag of student loans when they're done - see College Inc.

TL;DR: If you want to be a technician that gets paid well for implementation/installation - save yourself the money and go to a trade school, or better yet get a union job. My uncle retired from NYCTA and has a banging pension the likes of which you'll probably never see again in the private sector

two new Intel Macs with huge plasma displays, but with keyboards and mice as options -- literally big-screen TVs that just happen to be computers, too.

This is from four years ago! Apple releases iTV, a bunch of flat-panel MacTV's that contain Mac Minis, etc. Cringely has since, several times, insisted he means a real actual television, and not Apple TV (which he admits he did not predict).

Canada is just one example of socialised health care though. In the UK for instance, private health care will get you a bunch of extras, but doesn't cover primary care at all (see the list of what it doesn't cover), as these are provided by the NHS - and it's usually the same doctors in any case. Which is why it's generally very cheap, and not many people have it - it's a luxury, not a necessity.

I don't know if you've seen it, but the Frontline documentary Sick Around the World's website has overviews of different health care systems from the US, UK, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland, and talks about the costs, benefits and problems with each.

is haiti, somalia

I get upset with Glen Beck for calling everyone he disagrees with a Nazi, so I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't admonish you for going hyperbolic on this one.

universal healthcare is just insurance, that's all it is.

The U.S. plan passed by Obama is just insurance (well, that's the largest part of it). But, that's not what universal healthcare is in general. There are quite a few different systems out there. I think it was Frontline that recently did a pretty good job of dissecting the British, German, Swiss and Japanese systems to compare the different ways that they provide healthcare. It's enlightening to actually see what these countries do and what works well and does not, rather than just listening to U.S. politicians dismissively refer to all universal healthcare systems outside the U.S. as "socialism".

PS: Ah yes, in fact, here's their comparison: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/

When a single-year's volcano eruption (Pinatubo) put out more CO2 than all of humanity, ever?

This alone is already blatant nonsense. Educate yourself.

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/volcanic-co2/#more-3906

Also, if volcanoes were so significant, how come the CO2 graph is rising so gradually every year, instead of showing big steps after each eruption ?

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png

This is even more obvious in a longer timeframe:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/art/graph4.gif

Does the 20th century have a huge volcanic activity compared to all the half-million years before that ?

As someone pointed out: building a fusion reactor, while not trivial, is routinely done by tinkerers worldwide: see e.g. this Instructables guide .

No, the truly amazing thing here is what I found when I clicked through to the original story (as usual, not linked in the summary):

... here in Reno, we have the University of Nevada-Reno, and I went to the physics department. They offered to give me a bunch of parts, and after I got fusion, they offered to give me my own lab here to work in. So that was very helpful.

Allow me to be the first to say, WHAT THE YELLOW RUBBERY FUCK? In every university department I've ever had experience of, researchers and grad students fight tooth and nail to get funding for anything more expensive than an alligator clip. Meanwhile, these guys have sufficient resources to start handing out equipment and lab space to enterprising teenagers for science fair projects! Hmm, time to start looking for a postdoc position there, I think...

just a warning, libertarianism caused the finical collapse: http://video.pbs.org/video/1302794657

Um, yeah fucking right it did. Government intervention in the housing market is what caused the financial collapse in 2008, and government intervention after the collapse is what put us in a depression.

It may be "Britain's first televised suicide", but PBS made a documentary on this topic before:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/suicidetourist/

Note that it was widely slammed as being some manner of disguised snuff movie. Watch it and make up your own mind.

Personally I think such statements are more indicative of the taboo that still rests on euthanasia (and death in general) than that they have any basis in the film's content or presentation.

American government have no problem stomping on rights of citizens because of the "war on terror" (read: against us, Muslims), surely, they would have no problem restricting them in order to suppress the culture of drugs in US.

You must not have been paying attention: our rights have already been stomped on by the war on drugs, right from the very beginning. You do realize that cocaine was first made illegal because congress was told that "cocaine niggers" (black men who used cocaine) became unstoppable monsters with superior aim with a handgun, right? Shortly after the New York Times published the story detailing how "the cocaine nigger sure is hard to kill," souther police forces began increasing the caliber of their standard issue handguns. Marijuana was made illegal under similar circumstances; it helped that industries that competed with the hemp industry put pressure on congress.

You think your rights have not been stomped on? Take a look around. The United States has police forces that can only be described as paramilitary squads. When the local cops are as heavily armed as a small army unit, we are in serious trouble. If you need something more concrete than the abstract, "militant police forces are a problem," consider this:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/interviews/wald.html

Yes, the obvious reading is the correct one: a police force that pays its own wages by seizing assets from drug dealers. This is not limited to Florida:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91490480

The only reason you do not perceive your rights being stomped on by the war on drugs is that it has been happening for so long now that you and most other people have generally forgotten that they ever had the rights they lost. Remember the days when the police had to obtain a warrant to search your home? Not anymore:

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/05/16/Warrantless-searches-expanded-in-drug-case/UPI-27821305557337/

It has gotten so bad that the DEA can now unilaterally declare a drug to be illegal for an entire year, without congressional approval:

http://www.dosenation.com/listing.php?smlid=8021

You used to be able to make large cash transactions in private; now that is automatically reported to the government, as part of an effort to crack down on drug dealers. Even so much as a misdemeanor drug offense now causes a person's right to buy a gun to be denied. Any company that does contracting work for the government is required, by law, to maintain a "drug free workplace." A drug offense can mean the loss of scholarships for students, regardless of their academic merit.

Your rights were trampled long ago, sir.

Since when was Wikileaks the authorized source of truth? Eyewitnesses and journalists present at the massacre have stated that there was bloodshed at the Square. Why should I believe some anonymous Wikileaks document over other testimony? For example, Chinese-Canadian Journalist Jan Wong wrote about the incident in detail in her book "Red China Blues." Granted, she could have been lying, but give me a reason I should believe Wikileaks over her. A few sources: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/interviews/wong.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTWBDMen7bo

You can watch the Frontline episode on PBS's website.

And many of us now will. LulzSec is about to learn the full force of the Streisand Effect.

FTFY.

You can watch the Frontline episode on PBS's website.

And many of us now will. WikiLeaks is about to learn the full force of the Streisand Effect.

You can watch the Frontline episode on PBS's website. I love how PBS publishes a lot of their TV content online.

So far, the NOVA summary is on target. In addition to the pitot tubes freezing, which is an obvious design flaw, it sounds like the pilots reacted improperly to the loss of speed data.

There was a clip of that in the Making Stuff Smaller PBS series.

AC because I suddenly can't log in - my nick has non-alpha characters in it, and that never occurred to the /. coders.

For a very well put together documentary on the irrational nature of economic value, watch this Nova episode, "Mind Over Money". (sorry, US only...otherwise try bittorrent)

One of the funniest moments in the documentary occurs when otherwise intelligent economics students are caused to pay $28 for a twenty dollar bill. The experiment works by causing the losing bidder to forfeit his bid, not unlike the way real markets behave. The dominant economic models today assume that the consumer will rationally act to maximize his wealth (or act as if he is). Clearly the existence of bubbles such as the recent real estate bubble contradict this.

I asked an MBA friend about how someone could pay $28 for a twenty dollar bill. His response was that value was what was defined by the consumer, and that maybe that twenty dollar bill was actually worth $28 to the buyer. However there are some very deep flaws in this argument. If we assume that the price a consumer pays is ALWAYS the right price by definition, then the consumer can never be wrong. When Dutch people in the 1600's bought single tulip bulbs for the price of a house, those prices were rational under this assumption. Assuming that the price a consumer pays is always correct puts the assumption of market rationality beyond falsification. This is textbook circular reasoning. No wonder economics has often been called "the Dismal Science".

Yeah, about paying more:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/culture/video-high-fiber/9263/

We already pay more than what others do around the world (at least in the developed countries).

Is it stupid because it's true and horrifyingly bad or stupid because it doesn't fit into your world of ignorance?

True cost of bailouts: over $12 Trillion.

Wall St. has the most highly privileged position of any industry in the world (including defense contractors and oil companies) and we all pay to keep them from being exposed to market forces of any real substance. They collectively have control over the mechanisms of corporate commerce and the whole money supply. You think that this conglomeration of power is somehow benign or beneficial to you?

Do you think that just because Wall St. is reporting good corporate profits and banks are lending a little money here and there that the real economy is somehow on track? Unemployment is still terribly high, taxes on most of us are higher than ever and climbing and so is public debt. Real incomes for most Americans and Europeans are falling or stagnant. Trillions of dollars were misspent on ridiculously overpriced housing and the asset base of the middle class has been eviscerated.

The sad thing is that most people are never going to wake up to the reality that taxes come in many forms. It's not just what you pay to the IRS and the states. You pay by inflation. You pay by being forced to buy myriad overpriced goods and services (healthcare, banking, insurance, food, energy, housing, drugs ...) which are offered in markets that are heavily tilted by regulation and subsidy. You pay when your family and friends go off to fight and die in unjust, illegal wars to further the interests of the profiteers. And you're not just paying for the services you get. You're paying for wars on drugs. You're paying for corporate welfare. You're paying for the biggest prison industry and the biggest military industry in the history of the world.

So yeah, keep telling the rest of us how stupid we are for making the connections. Don't worry. The economy and government are big and complicated. Keep telling yourself that no one interest or group has enough leverage to push the whole thing in their favor, or that all the little levers pushed by the rich players aren't tilting the whole thing over into an unsustainable landslide that could, and probably will end in catastrophe.

Let me tell you that it's not some giant conspiracy. It's just some rich people looking to protect their assets. They push a little here, they get a little richer. They get more power to push a little harder and over the years, and the layers of corruption get deeper. The harbors of safety for the top players become institutionalized. Every generation of elites pushes a little harder to grow their fortunes and consolidate their advantages. Look at one of the symptoms: big complex tax codes. Another symptom: Banks too big to fail dictating their own regulations.

It doesn't require a huge amount of greed or evil by any one party. It's just the rich and powerful people saying to themselves, "I'm rich because I work hard and I'm smarter than most of these other people and I'm going to use my advantage to make sure I stay rich by screwing the rest of them over just a little." When that happens millions of times for a few hundred years, it leads to what we've got today. A million "just a little" things turn into a big burden for the folks who play by the rules that others make.