Slashdot Mirror

It's their future (and their past thirty years), not mine. Just tossing in a reference to one of the longstanding repeating acts on everybody's favorite radio variety show.

Actually, if you look at medical costs over the long haul you discover an interesting fact. Until 1965 medical costs rose at the same rate as inflation.

Indeed they did. They also rose at the same rate as inflation from 1965 all the way to 1982!

Since 1965 medical costs have risen much faster than inflation. In 1965, Medicare and Medicaid were first implemented. The evidence suggests that Medicare and Medicaid are distorting the market for medical care in such a fashion as to disrupt the normal price feedback mechanism of a free market.

Woefully (and inexcusably) misinformed or simply a brazen liar? You be the judge.

The mysterious 17 year lag after Medicare before the health care cost explosion began completely destroys the claim you make. Some other changes in how society functions, beginning, oh, around 1981 perhaps would seem to be the cause. Oh, whatever could that correlate too?

So Attila you going to cop to being grossly in error or a liar? Or you going to recycle this lie again in the future? It is one thing to have a different opinion and real facts to support it, it is quite another to go Fox News on this site and just throw at lies hoping they will stick.

They want people to quit. The jury's still out on whether e-cigs help with that, but they clearly don't hurt... and from a harm reduction standpoint, they're about a hundred times better.

I'm reminded of what I heard on NPR last week, talking about how in a single year e-cig use has doubled by high schoolers. Unstated is whether it's displacing real cigarette use. Certainly stated is a fear that it'll lead to smoking 'real cigarettes'.

What I didn't know is that some state laws are set up such that e-cigs are legal to the sub-18 crowd.

Anyways, From the anti-ecig stuff I've heard I get a feeling of 'if a solution isn't perfect we shouldn't do it', and 'smoking is evil; anything resembling smoking is also evil, therefore e-cigs are evil!!!', even 'We can't have people switching to a safer nicotine delivery system, they might not quit!'.

Everyone knows ketchup is a vegetable

Stories like this have come out previously but maybe this time it will get traction as it is happening in a big important city in CA. The city of Minneapolis MN has tried to get the data they have been collecting classified as non public data for a while now and this legislative session it was made private. This is the article that broke the story but doesn't mention how long Minneapolis had been doing it but the neighboring city of St. Paul has been doing it since 2008. At the time of the article Minneapolis had eight mobile vehicle cameras and at least two stationary cameras and St. Paul had 10 mobile units but those numbers are from about a year ago. For those of you who wonder why this type of thing is a bad idea there is the MPR article about just how some people used the Minneapolis license plate DB.

Ya know the way he did such a huge 180 on...well pretty much every thing he believed in? makes me wonder if that old Bill Hicks joke didn't have some truth: "Ya know why they always change once they get in the white house? The CIA sits them down and says 'you should watch this film and maybe rethink your position' and then plays him a film they shot of Kennedy getting offed in Texas, complete with the actual shooters. Once they see how easily they can be replaced? they read from the cue card just like the last guy".

I think this is more or less correct. Jesse Ventura said that after he was elected governor of Minnesota he had a meeting with the CIA and other unidentified agents (unidentified as in, they refused to identify themselves) where they asked about his campaign and his agenda as governor. Bill Clinton was interested in UFO's when he first became president. But he refused to release any information he got because he said he didn't want to end up like Jack Kennedy. At the higher levels of government I think people know that if they color too far outside the lines and start getting attention, some aspect of the System will act to maintain the status quo.

Honestly after all the shit we have found out, from Gulf Of Tonkin being a false flag to Fast & Furious? It frankly wouldn't surprise me, not one bit. Hell the only truth we get anymore is from whistleblowers, our MSM makes Soviet era Pravda look anti-establishment, and both parties seem to be in a race to see which can use more plays in the dictatorship playbook than the other. Anybody who hasn't seen the lecture I just linked to really ought to watch, Naomi Wolf lays out how many of the same plays used by Franco, Stalin, the crazy Austrian, are being used right here and the scary part? The video is from 2007, its much worse than that now. Even scarier? She is on the watchlist now for this lecture and one she did on what rights you have under the constitution, how is that for fricking scary?

The treatment of people like Naomi Wolf puts the lie to the claim that all of this surveillance and security is about stopping terrorism. It's not hard to find examples of these powers being used to stifle dissent and against people with undesirable political views or who try to inform the masses about the crimes of the powerful. Sure they can be used against terrorists, but their deeper purpose is maintaining the status quo against whomever might want to change it.

Anthony Watts of the infamous Watts Up With That website also claims to be a meteorologist. And he spews falsehoods every week. The only thing I can suggest is that meteorologists don't know as much about climate as you might expect.

Another good example is John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, who doesn't believe a word of AGW.

Paul Douglas has presented the opposing view.

They still aren't really comperable. Even with this sweeheart loan deal, you are going to be out 85 grand in an "investment" that will depreciate down to nearly $0 in 10-15 years. In the mean time you get transportation that you could have had with a couple of $5-10K used cars. That's a whole lot of money down the toilet.

For the student loan, you get an education, which cannot be taken from you by a bankrupcy court either, and is a ticket to the upper 60% of the job market, culminating in 1.6 to 3 times the expected lifetime earnings (depending on how much education you get).

If you have to pick only one, take the student loan.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/polinaut/archive/2013/02/poligraph_klobu_4.shtml?refid=0 Unfortunately, most of the media and legislators are ignorant about the subject (as with many other subjects), so they accept whatever press releases they get from the executives, immigration lawyers and their lobbyists.

That's not true.

As compared to President Obama and a democratic majority in the Senate who create no budgets and spend $1 Trillion in deficits each year, yet can't manage to fund planetary science. Who has credibility then?

Except budgets are started in the House per Federal law, which has been packed with Teaparty & Teaparty wannabes the last 2 years. Also, the Senate has enough Repubs & Teapartiers to fillibuster a call to vote for lunch and the 'Democratic majority' doesn't have the votes to get them to shut the fuck up. Nice strawman. Try again.

Except that the House HAS passed a budget the past couple of years.

Guess who won't let them come to a vote in the Senate?

Dingy Harry Reid.

And get this:

Ryan raising cash at Mpls. event

...

Polls show that President Barack Obama is ahead in Minnesota, but Republican Party officials say they believe GOP nominee Mitt Romney has a shot at winning the state. If he does, he would be the first Republican to win Minnesota since 1972.

Officials with Obama's campaign say they believe the state is still competitive and are taking nothing for granted. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have no scheduled campaign stops in Minnesota over the next three weeks.

Sooo, Romney is competitive in Minnesota, a state even Ronald Reagan didn't carry in 1984's crushing landslide?

What's that tell you about who's gonna win in a few weeks?

Hint: it ain't the empty chair.

Oh, yeah, and regarding Clint Eastwood's empty chair? Given that the latest New Yorker cover is Romney schooling and empty chair in a debate, I gotta say Clint NAILED Obumbles with that, didn't he?

I'm loving the PANIC on the Dem side, too. Even Hillary! is getting thrown under the Obama bus.

What? NOBODY in the White House knew what was going on in Libya? THEN they made up a bald-faced LIE about a demonstration instigated by a two-bit YouTube video? Yeah, that just screams "competence", doesn't it?

It is in area news, but it hasn't hit the national airwaves yet. However, the local news doesn't describe it as a "state of emergency" like the BBC does. Maybe though they just don't want to get people overly scared. What is happening is pretty much the same as what happened in New York a couple years ago.

Hasn't hit the national airwaves yet? I heard about it this morning on NPR, and the report stated that the locals have claimed it a "state of emergency", presumably for receiving/requesting emergency funds to combat it.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/npr.php?id=158911307

Given what I have seen in the news I would bet a fair amount are innocents. The pray and spray method seems to be preferred by gangs and criminals. A recent and tragic example from here in Minnesota where a 5 year old was killed while sleeping in a house by stray bullets fired from outside. It was reported that around 13 shots were fired at the house (not a specific individual that the shooter actually could see) and the shooter/s were trying to hit someone who may have been at the house the previous day. Then there is this story from about 6 months ago where a 3 year old was hit by a stray bullet that was fired from an alley about 120 yards away from a semiautomatic handgun. And about a decade ago there was the case where Tyesha Edwards who was shot during a drive by shooting against the house next door, she was at the dinner table doing her homework. These are just the stories from Minneapolis that involved children being accidentally shot, there are probably more stores that involve adults, but those don't make the news like ones with kids do. If gangbangers want to kill other gangbangers I could care less. I say we build a reinforced concrete structure where they can go and shoot at and kill each other over turf battles, rivalries, or what ever the fuck else they shoot at each other for. I would even let them get away with murder in there so long as the only killing happens in there.

Given what I have seen in the news I would bet a fair amount are innocents. The pray and spray method seems to be preferred by gangs and criminals. A recent and tragic example from here in Minnesota where a 5 year old was killed while sleeping in a house by stray bullets fired from outside. It was reported that around 13 shots were fired at the house (not a specific individual that the shooter actually could see) and the shooter/s were trying to hit someone who may have been at the house the previous day. Then there is this story from about 6 months ago where a 3 year old was hit by a stray bullet that was fired from an alley about 120 yards away from a semiautomatic handgun. And about a decade ago there was the case where Tyesha Edwards who was shot during a drive by shooting against the house next door, she was at the dinner table doing her homework. These are just the stories from Minneapolis that involved children being accidentally shot, there are probably more stores that involve adults, but those don't make the news like ones with kids do. If gangbangers want to kill other gangbangers I could care less. I say we build a reinforced concrete structure where they can go and shoot at and kill each other over turf battles, rivalries, or what ever the fuck else they shoot at each other for. I would even let them get away with murder in there so long as the only killing happens in there.

Given what I have seen in the news I would bet a fair amount are innocents. The pray and spray method seems to be preferred by gangs and criminals. A recent and tragic example from here in Minnesota where a 5 year old was killed while sleeping in a house by stray bullets fired from outside. It was reported that around 13 shots were fired at the house (not a specific individual that the shooter actually could see) and the shooter/s were trying to hit someone who may have been at the house the previous day. Then there is this story from about 6 months ago where a 3 year old was hit by a stray bullet that was fired from an alley about 120 yards away from a semiautomatic handgun. And about a decade ago there was the case where Tyesha Edwards who was shot during a drive by shooting against the house next door, she was at the dinner table doing her homework. These are just the stories from Minneapolis that involved children being accidentally shot, there are probably more stores that involve adults, but those don't make the news like ones with kids do. If gangbangers want to kill other gangbangers I could care less. I say we build a reinforced concrete structure where they can go and shoot at and kill each other over turf battles, rivalries, or what ever the fuck else they shoot at each other for. I would even let them get away with murder in there so long as the only killing happens in there.

nursing shortage?

From the article at minnesota.publicradio.org :

During the growing season, researchers will heat the air and soil inside the open-topped chambers. They'll also raise carbon dioxide levels, exposing plants and trees to the changes.

The chambers aren't biodomes since they're open at the top. This means there will be plenty of fresh air, but temperature and CO2 levels can be raised by adding heat and CO2.

People have tried but frequently courts have ruled they don't have standing. Although the man is nuts former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura has tried to bring a case but it was tossed out because he didn't have standing.

In 1919 Einstein's theory of relativity was confirmed by two expeditions to Brazil and the West African coast to observe the total eclipse of the sun. The eminent British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington led the project. To the amazement of Eddington and the rest of the world, Einstein had correctly calculated that space could be distorted and light curved by gravity. Einstein was on the front page of newspapers worldwide, but when asked what he would have said had his theory not been proven correct by observation, Einstein replied, "I would have had to pity our dear Lord. The theory is correct all the same."

I always smile a little at Einstein's utter confidence in his connection to what makes the universe tick. I guess you would have to be that confident to overturn two centuries of Newtonian Physics.

I come from a family of farmers, some of which have taken advantage of the high price of corn. Well, around Christmas they were talking about two things. One is the serious disregard for pollution standards from most (they said more than just those caught and fined) ethanol refineries. And also the negative effect it has had on farmland in their area. The second was that many refineries were shutting down as these subsidies came to a close (my dad pointed out two abandoned as we drove along) and as a result some farmers had bought up land at high prices expecting the recent price of corn to continue. They had figured they would be getting $6 or $7 a bushel and there was a lot of talk that since the refineries were going down and production was already juiced that this was going to lead to a lot of farmers losing money in these purchases. From what I gathered from folks who have been doing this for many decades: this will be a very painful learning experience for everyone involved and this seems to be the sentiment whether the wind blows right or left.

On human interaction in teaching (physics in college in fact), check out this 2.5 minute video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBYrKPoVFwg . A great study on how this leads to more learning than lecturing is this article from the journal Science: "Improved Learning in a Large Enrollment Physics Class" http://www.cwsei.ubc.ca/SEI_research/index.html . Briefly, they compared 2 novice physics instructors who were trained in cognitive science (and thus how people learn) and who taught with a variety of non-lecture methods to an experienced, well-regarded lecturer. The students of the novice instructors had two standard deviations more learning. Note that the third author is a Nobel Laureate, U.S. Professor of the Year (given for teaching), and currently Deputy Science Adviser to the President for science education. For more on these methods, see "Don't Lecture Me," http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/lectures/ . This work deserves to be more widely known.

Except that buying local can increase your carbon footprint. Basically, for things not involving expensive inputs (e.g. produce), the price of a commodity correlates pretty well with the energy expenditure required to produce it. There is a reason local produce tends to be more expensive--it is less efficient.

That's how the game is played. If a layman wanted to cut stuff, they'd likely cut huge things that they view as money sinks like defense. Give Budget Hero a playthrough or three and you'll get some major insight into this.

They never threaten to cut the things that could easily be cut without hurting anyone but the private contractors who have their hands around a politician's dick. It's always stuff like medicare or social security or something that's actually somewhat useful. Then, the people throw a fit and the cuts don't get made. Repeat as necessary.

And before some people claim BS on some of this there was a recent dust-up here in Minnesota over our current governor's executive order to allow in home private daycare workers to unionize. Now granted this won't exactly be a state mandate for benefits and other things it is a possible mandate for all daycare workers to be part of a union. I say possible as the executive order hasn't been issued and no one know what is in it so it may just republicans making hay.

> Finally now I'm an adult and have heard both sides on all of these topics,
That's your problem right there -- you're listening to other people, instead of ...

No man is an island. You listen to the evidence put forth by others and you weigh it, check it for inconsistencies and flaws where you can, you add your own facts. That's science, it's the best method we have.

> have lived enough to have experience to throw into the mix ... coming to conclusions based on experience. Which experiences??

Life, all the facts you pick up along the way, all things you measure and the things you find that you can't. All the things you proved for yourself or have others prove to you and all the bullshit people try to sell you "on faith" that turns out to be worthless.

The only way to truely know god is to experience her/him. How can you even begin to understand god while you are still ignorant of your Higher Self ??

I need evidence, someone else's "revelations" won't do it for me. My own "revelations" wouldn't do it for me, they are useless without evidence. A great example of this sort of baseless, schizophrenia induced religious experience is the writer Philip K. Dick, he "experienced god and got in touch with his higher self." Human beings can convince themselves of the most amazing bullshit: the placebo effect, hysterical blindness, the jerusalem syndrome. All relatively benign unless they start to pull others into their madness. This is what I want, unless you can offer me that I ain't buying.

They already answered to the suborbital flights part. Regarding orbit, “If there were people sitting in the Dragon capsule today, they would have had a very nice ride,” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/science/space/09rocket.html The main reason they do not fly humans on Dragon (yet) is because it still lacks an escape system (that the Shuttle never had, and would have probably saved the Challenger crew). "Musk: Well actually if our safety threshold was equal to that of the Shuttle, then we could do that this year. In fact the Dragon spacecraft that we flew in December, if we had put someone in there with a seat, they would have had a fine journey. However we think that there needs to be an additional level of safety which is that there should be a launch escape system which the Shuttle does not have. And so that launch escape system will take us a few years to develop and verify all the functionality and so that's why we're expecting our first astronaut flight in about a few years." http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/07/08/pm-elon-musk-on-the-future-of-space-travel-and-exploration/ Apparently they are so ahead of schedule that they will be berthing the Dragon Capsule to the ISS this December instead of waiting for another year as originally planned. Of course the road is still long but I'll make sure to be near Vandemberg to witness the launch of Falcon Heavy, double the payload of the Shuttle and a tenth of the cost. As for the "third world countries" where you think they will be building their stuff: "[E. Musk] also outlines why he believes American innovation will trump countries like China in space –even though that country has the fastest growing economy in the world and lower labor rates than the US" http://www.universetoday.com/85409/elon-musk-why-the-us-can-beat-china/

Did they pay it back? Page 2 of the GAO report: "To date, most of the Reserve Banksâ(TM) emergency loans have been repaid, and FRBNY projects repayment on all outstanding loans."

Did they pay interest? Page 17: "To ease stresses in these markets, on August 17, 2007, the Federal Reserve Board made two temporary changes to the terms at which Reserve Banks extended loans through the discount window. First, it approved the reduction of the discount rateâ"the interest rate at which the Reserve Banks extended collateralized loans at the discount windowâ"by 50 basis points."

A reduction in the interest rate by 0.50%. The discount rate was already pretty low IIRC.

What basically happened was all the banks were terrified of lending money to each other because of counterparty risk (banks weren't sure of their counterparties' exposure to credit default swaps). So there was a credit crisis since noone wanted to risk lending any money to each other for daily business operations. So the fed stepped in and offered tons of cheap credit so that the banks could continue to operate.

See http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/05/07/whiteboard-counterparty-risk/

At least here in MN, some rural areas simply don't have the baseline infrastructure (fiber or other large pipes from large population centers) - see this story from last January (MPR News Story):

Grand Marais, Minn. — A phone outage last week in Lake and Cook Counties revealed a potentially dangerous communications weakness along Lake Superior's north shore, prompting local officials to call for an improved network.

Phone and internet service were lost for up to twelve hours Tuesday, Jan. 26, when a fiber optic cable in Duluth broke down, possibly from the heat of nearby steam heating pipes. The disconnect had national security implications, as the U.S. Border Patrol had to set up a radio version of a bucket brigade through three Minnesota counties to relay communications to their North Dakota regional headquarters.

Also, as far as efficiency with stimulus numbers,I don't think many liberals would argue that the federal government is efficient with dollars. However, it's the fact that the private sector was unwilling to take the risk (due to the economic downturn - self fulfilling downward spiral there) in so many areas that necessitated government spending.

JGG

And yet corporate profits are up, corporations have record amounts of cash on hand, economic demand is down, and capcity is idle, inflation is nonexistent, and with interest rates near zero, credit is cheap.

If there wasn't enough money in the economy, then the corporations wouldn't have cash, there would be no excess production capacity, and inflation would be high. None of these are true. Taxes ain't the problem kid. They haven't been for 40(!) years. What is moving production overseas? Labor arbitrage -- the race to the bottom. And no, we don't have to accept this as a nation, and no unions, nor regulations are the cause. Case in point: The world's second largest exporter: Germany.

Well, you should tell that to the Teamsters as they mistakenly believe that they do represent them.

At this point it doesn't really matter so much who developed it. Regardless, we're still potentially collateral damage or potential targets of a fully disassembled/reverse-engineered/built-fresh-with-a new-twist version as well as whatever the original authors might unleash. Whoever made it was shortsighted if they felt that even versions attempting to be very specific wouldn't be analyzed and modified or cause some collateral damage as-is. Pruning target-filtering code seems it would be a relatively trivial task.

Some say Israel had people bragging about it.
http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=10596

Collateral damage adding to some other bad event? You decide.
  I don't think the victims had a clue.

http://www.publicradio.org/columns/kpcc/kpccnewsinbrief/2008/11/officials-unveil-why-yorba-lin.html
http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/yorba-linda-ca
http://www.ylwd.com/fireupdate/pdf/Freeway%20Complex%20Fire%20Report.pdf

Source: A Prarie Home Companion Joke Show from January 22, 2011.

There's a reason one of the longest running USENET groups is alt.aol.sucks.

AOL allows it's userbase unfettered access USENET: Eternal September
AOL merges with Time/Warner: Why it failed
AOL billing practices: Just reverse the charges
AOL layoffs: Keep your bags packed

Good luck HuffPost...you may need it.

I don't know what the relevant difference is between Texas and North Dakota

Crime correlates with temperature. North Dakota is much colder than Texas. Not that I disagree with your post. It's just that North Dakota and Texas are not really the best comparison.

North Dakota, in contrast, has one of the lowest murder rates in the US, and has never employed the practice of killing convicted murderers.

North Dakota executed eight people from 1880 to 1905. They repealed the death penalty in 1915.

If you don't mind a bit of a plug for a good radio station (it's from Minnesota Public Radio so no commercials except the occasional fund drive, they stream over the net too) check out The Current ( http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/services/the_current/ ) they play around half of those artists.

LOL Yeah it was hilarious when people were complaining about being unable to get on Facebook. So funny that people need services to keep in contact with others, it's like why don't you just talk to them in person? I mean like, HELLO, am I the only one getting this? Geeze. If it's so important to you then you should be more redundant with your services, like, everyone knows that!

>If there is a god, and it has any sort of measurable effect on the universe
>then it is within the domain of science. Because we can measure its effects.
>We can test various religions' prayers to see if they get answered at a rate
>different from chance.

You may be interested in the results of the "Mantra trial" where the power of prayer was measured in a medical/scientific setting. Depending on your particular bias with regard to religion, you could find data to support the position that prayer was influential or that prayer was not influential. Both effects are measurable.

Schrödinger's cat anyone?

You can find the podcast here. After the introduction, the relevant parts run from 40:40 to 44:25 for the impatient among you.

I'm confused, how are they competing again? They're making people get private insurance... There's no government health care plan (a la Canada, UK, AU, Sweden, France, &c, &c...).

My sarcastic point was that many politicians bitch that the private sector is better, more efficient and cost-effective than government alternatives, yet this guy implies that the private sector cannot compete with those alternatives.

As for health care, the US has universal health care plans for two of the three segments of the population: Medicare for those 65+ and TriCare for the military. One of the ideas for last third was to extend Medicare to everyone, but some people complained that private insurance provided better care, was more efficient and cost-effective (which it isn't - Medicare's overhead is just 2%).

A poll in 02/2009 here and here shows that +60% favor giving anyone the option of signing up with Medicare. In addition, another poll in 05/2009 shows those with Medicare overwhelmingly like it better and get better service than those with private insurance:

• Medicare beneficiaries are more satisfied with their insurance coverage. Only 8 percent of elderly Medicare beneficiaries rated their insurance "fair or poor," in contrast with 18 percent of individuals with employer-based insurance. Thirty-two percent of Medicare beneficiaries had at least one negative insurance experience, compared with 44 percent of those covered by an employer plan.
• Medicare beneficiaries report easier access to physicians. Ten percent of Medicare beneficiaries' physicians did not accept their insurance, compared with 17 percent of respondents with employer-sponsored plans.
• Medicare beneficiaries are less likely to report not getting needed services. Twelve percent of elderly Medicare beneficiaries reported going without care, such as prescribed medications or recommended tests, because of cost restraints. Of individuals with employer-based plans, 26 percent reported experiencing these cost/access issues.
• Medicare beneficiaries are sicker and poorer but report fewer medical bill problems. Elderly Medicare beneficiaries were more likely to rate their health as fair or poor than the employer-coverage group (28% vs. 11%); more likely to have multiple chronic conditions (38% vs. 11%); and more likely to have incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level (51% vs. 27%). Yet, Medicare beneficiaries were less likely to report a medical bill problem than those covered by employer plans.

I'm not saying that Medicare (or a state-run ISP) is absolutely and/or always better than the private sector, but the reverse isn't a given either. As for Medicare, there may be fraud and waste - by the users - but there's also probably not the greed and lack of compassion of the private sector. You might get denied something my Medicare, but it's probably because of the rules, not concern for the quarterly profits.

Personally, I think the lack of universal health care is a crime against our general population perpetrated by the rich and greedy - who can afford private health care. For the rest of us, it's a carrot and stick used by our employers to keep us in line.

This is not a new discussion... there have been people thinking about this for some time. In March of 2006 I wrote an article on my blog about it (reproduced below) which eventually led to me consulting with Public Radio on a show they were doing at the time about online public information (you can listen to an archived copy of that at October 12, 2007: Your Exposed Life on MPR

My Original Article 3/24/2006:

I've often wondered who will be able to run for political office in forty or fifty years. People, especially youg people, seem to be so naive about posting things online. For years online forums and message boards have been a place where people vented. Now sites like Myspace, Facebook and others are creating such a low barrier to entry that almost every middle and high school child in the United States has some kind of web presence. What many fail to understand is that once something is posted or "said" on the internet it never goes away...ever. The internet is also quite easy to search if you know what you're doing. This dangerous combination means that everything you write to a message board can be found at some point in the future and "can and will be used against you". Any kind of off-color comment or joke you ever made online, even if your intention wasn't to hurt anyone, is public knowledge.

Employers already know about this. BusinessWeek recently ran an article called "You are what you post" that talked about some of the implications for job seeking but I think the arena where this will really get the consultants salivating is politics. There are so few people who are able to hold their tongue and never offend anyone. In the past politicians have relied primarily on obscuring and making it difficult to find embarrassing things about their past. When today's teens start running for political office these things will only be an internet search away. Remember that posting to that email discussion list about STDs you made when you were 15? How about that time someone on a message board got you mad and you called them a racial slur? You may have forgotten these incidents but the internet has not and neither will your enemies.

I wonder if the politicians of the future will need to be groomed from birth to have no defects and think very, very carefully before ever speaking. On the other hand our society may end up becoming more accepting of faults which would not be an all bad outcome. This remains to be seen but in the meantime those of us who have always tried to think about how what we say today could come back (for better or worse) in the future are going to be much better off than the indiscriminate masses.

Apparently, the Dutch have developed the technology to clean up the oil spill long ago. Unfortunately, for various reasons, they aren't allowed to use it.

You know, I'm SO sick of the total bullshit line of reasoning that people like you keep giving for gross violations of our privacy, not to mention keeping people like me from doing my job.

Okay, so your company has a policy of not allowing me to browse porn on the Internet, woohoo. Why is it that you jump to the conclusion that the only way to make sure this doesn't happen is to monitor every single web site that I browse? Why can't you just have a policy of, hey, if management has some reason to think that KingSkippus might be up to something, then look for something fishy?

Ponder this. I'm pretty sure that my company also wouldn't like me browsing porn magazines at work. They'd probably get quite irate if, in the middle of the day, I pulled a Hustler out and started flipping through those oh-so-sweet pages. So is the only answer now to have security guards posted at every door to pore through all of my possessions as I come and go, making sure that I have no porn in my physical possessions? I also carry a 4 GB USB drive everywhere I go with some basic troubleshooting tools and electronic copies of documents that I like to have on me at all times. Every time I enter the building, should I be strip searched and, when such a thing is found, every file inspected to make sure that I don't have dirty pictures on it?

No, the whole "We must monitor EVERYTHING!" is just a BS policy made because people like you get off on your power trip.

Legally, it's really simple. You create a policy that says that if you're caught browsing porn on the Internet, you get fired. Managers back it up with action by, when people are caught browsing porn, they fire the person who was doing it. There's no need for stupid ass content filters, treating everyone like they're 13 year olds, to ensure this policy, any more than there's a need for strip searches or searches of all physicial possessions. If a company gets sued--and make no mistake, they will get sued no matter what policy they have--they show the judge the policy and their record of upholding it, and that's that.

I defy you to actually cite these throngs of "all sorts of lawsuits from sexual harrassment to violation of ethics laws," especially the ones where the court found a company liable because they didn't have a content filter in place with people like you watching everything everyone is doing instead of enforcing the policy when violations were reasonably found Big Brother-style. As long as we're talking anecdotally, you know who I've heard does the most browsing of porn on the Internet? High-level management. True story: at the company where I work, most of the executives have been given explicit exemption from our content filters. As for the "ethics laws" joke, discover the wonderful world of "situational ethics" and then explain to how you're protecting a company that deliberately puts a clause that says, "From time to time, the firm may waive certain provisions of this Code" in its Code.

The truth of the matter is that my company spends WAY more on content filters and salaries for people to set them up and monitor them, not to mention the cost to the business when they break and the Internet becomes completely unavailable, than it would on bogus lawsuits that would have been brought anyway. The whole "you need content filtering to protect you" is a scam perpetrated by content filtering companies and people like you who would probably lose your job if management figured out the truth and actually cared. (And, more importantly, did their job of dealing with these issues instead of foisting them on the IT group.)

Back in the mid-90s, my boss read an article that explained about how login scripts could be used on Windows 3.11 to do things like delete Solitaire and Minesweeper and replace the desktop background with a forced company standard. The next thing I

You may be listening to the wrong stations, then... Admittedly, the Clearchannel stations are told by the RIAA what they're going to be playing, but there *are* indie/alternative stations in most major cities that will play indie music and promote local artists.

Here's the one I listen to the most: http://live885.com/

Don't get me wrong, there are some good bands here ... and especially the international ones are good. I have CDs of Arcade Fire and We Were Promised Jetpacks but let's not kid ourselves, Pearl Jam has some albums on UMG. Red Hot Chili Peppers is on EMI. From a quick glance at the playlist, a lot of these bands aren't directly on big labels but they're on labels like Island Records which is now owned by UMG. Even the renowned subpop walks a fine line with Warner's half ownership.

If you want a good idea of what I'm talking about, check out the programming at my old college's radio station. It even appears that Minnesota Public Radio has a better mix of both indie and big four than live 885. When I listen to these channels on the internet, I find that I am constantly writing down acts and constantly going directly to their pages to send them $8-$10 for an album. I wish more people took this organic approach to finding out what your music tastes are instead of being force fed commercialized music or trying to align your tastes with your friends'.

Live 885 has some good stuff and is way more palatable to the average listener but if you could point out a Radio K or even The Current for the DC area where I now live, I would thank you endlessly.

My favorite places are

Icarus
SomaFM
The Current 89.3

all of which are reasonably ad-free and play stuff you won't find on popular radio. There are some really good songs on there that I would never have heard otherwise. (listening to Still - King Communicado, right now).

I used to like some of the stations on AOL radio, but they started blocking Finnish IP addresses, so I found these other stations. Their loss, not mine.

See my post above, but also, Re #2:

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/06/26/methane_digester/

The cost of the setup is here:

The biggest hurdle is cost. This on-farm power plant, called a manure digester, is only the third in the state, and it has a half a million dollar price tag. Federal, state and local grants paid for much of it, but the farmer paid the remaining $100,000.

The savings seem less clear, though he does expect to drive his car for free, power the process for free, and earn $400/week from pumping power back into the grid. Without knowing his costs, it is hard to say for sure how long it would take him to reclaim even his own $100,000.

We can guess though, from this site:

In South Dakota, for example, electricity alone represents 30 cents per 100 pounds of milk.

and

The 200 cows on Jerry Jennisson's central Minnesota dairy farm make 1,100 gallons of milk every day.

Google holds the weight of milk at '4.5 lbs/gallon'... So a little rough math puts the dairy farm's operation at 4950 pounds and $14.85 per day.

Total revenue, from what we know, generated by the digester is something in the area of ($5,420.25 + $20,800) $26,220.25/year. He'd get his money back out in four years, or so, and the total break-even is twenty years. None of this accounts for the other economic factors. There are likely additional positives and negatives to the formula, but at the end of the day it actually does earn money.

Also, this is first-generation tech. Efficiency will undoubtedly go up, increasing revenue and lowering costs. There were only three at the time of the writing, which means they were not being mass-produced, but custom built.

I particularly like the DJs who cover the afternoon and evening weekday shifts and have been introduced to a lot of music through them.

I particularly like the DJs who cover the afternoon and evening weekday shifts and have been introduced to a lot of music through them.

He has reviewed cloud backup and other services, yet never mentioned the legal differences between cloud based service storage and storage on your own in-house machine. That indicates that it's not interesting to his audience, which is telling. NPR recently did an article on how the domain holder of your email service is noticed by your potential job interviewer. Their comparison was between Yahoo! and of course AOL on one side (you're a LUser), and GMail on the other. Guess whose privacy actually suffers the most. This is definitely not understood.

What we really need is a test that can distinguish lizard people from humans.

The lizards are already gathering votes...

Climate change was a reframing by the right as it's a more innocuous term. It was eventually adopted by much of the scientific community as being "more accurate" and easier to understand by lay people i.e; it more clearly encompasses the broader suite of ensuing changes... rather than global warming which accurately describes the increase in mean global temperature due to the retention of energy in the atmospheric system. Joe Sixpack doesn't grok that weather is not climate, and that a single "freakishly cold" winter in Duluth doesn't mean anything to someone sizzling in Sydney or Sao Paolo year after year.

There are masks with braille that work pretty well. I have a friend who is blind and can vote just fine.

But those have to be specially made, and with ballots ranging from Federal, to State, to County to City elections, that takes time to translate and print. Plus, what if you run out or they get lost?

Note, I simply said easier. I find voting easy to begin with, but there's plenty of people who don't understand "Only fill the circle of the candidate you want elected" (more on this later.)

Last time I checked the US had their official language English.

Officially, federally, the US does NOT have an official language. In fact, it becomes a powderkeg of controversy every time someone in Congress hints at it. It varies at the state-to-state level as well. Some have official languages, others don't.

Oddly, this problem (lost ballot boxes) never occured in my country.

Never occured or was never an issue? These crop up during close races and recounts regularly, but never for sure-thing races.

And here's the infamous Minnesota junk. When ballots get challenged, it's up to the courts to decide how someone intended to vote.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2008/11/19_challenged_ballots/

On a personal level, I'd say if someone can't be arsed enough to follow instructions and it's ambiguous in the slightest way, trash it. (If the scanner just fails to read an otherwise flawlessly filled out ballot, those are accepted. Arrows, Xs, comments, those result in a destroyed ballot.) That's not how things work though.