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How do you know he didn't care about climate change?

[On Global Warming, in response to Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General James Milkey's correction of Scalia's reference to the stratosphere]

Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I'm not a scientist. That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.

Massachusetts vs. EPA, 05-1120 (30 November 2006).

More info here

If you ever saw a Californian phone bill, you would see that there are about a dozen taxes all tacked onto the phone bill. Some pay for 911 services, others pay for universal service (federal), then there's the state sales tax, local sale tax, state excise tax, local wireless 911, state wireless 911, and a few others.

Even if you buy a new cellphone, you'll find that theres a state code that requires that all cell phones are taxed on the full retail amount, not the actual discounted purchase price.

http://www.sfgate.com/business...

Cut it with the indignant act. You said " A typical person's faeces contains 30% microbes". No, it's not. It's 70% water. Just say "I made a mistake" or "I could have been clearer" and let it drop.

30% of dry weight, which is what I said.

No, it's not what you said. Perhaps it's what you were thinking of writing, but it's not what you wrote.

Irrelevant, highly variable, and less less if the recommended amount of fibre is ingested.

It's absolutely not irrelevant. If the human body would digest 99,9999% of a meal, leaving 0,0001% left over in the feces, then even if bacteria made up 100% of the mass of the remainder they'd still have only eaten the tiniest fraction of the meal.

Not a significant amount of which are chemically other than fats, carbohydrates, and proteins.

Really - you've never heard of, for example, cellulose? And the rest of the category "fiber" which, by definition, is indigestible to humans?

yet fibre processing gut flora is rare in humans.

Except, of course, that it's not. Most intestinal flora can digest fiber, at least soluble fiber.

And why are we even arguing about this? I gave you a link backing up the claim.

Ignoring the hypothetical scenarios, the question boils down to this: what do we actually gain from all the added complexity that this tech will add to the gun? Is the perceived increase in safety only nominal or is it substantial? Does DRM for a gun make the gun more or less useful? I'd say that that DRM for a gun always makes it less useful, EVEN if it stops a perp from stealing a gun and using it against the owner.

Perhaps we should just start calling a spade a spade here. It's not "smart gun technology", it's DRM for your gun.

Leave us not forget the "gun lobby", in the form of the NRA, won't even permit addition of taggants to gunpowder or other explosives, to allow identification. https://www.nraila.org/article...
Leave us not forget the "gun lobby", in the form of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (the NRA's less reasonable sibling, based most ironically in Newtown, CT) won't even permit microstamping technology to be mandated, wherein the brass casing gets imprinted with the serial number of the gun when fired, to enable tracing after a crime has been committed. Hard to figure exactly how that would make it harder for lawful people to acquire firearms, lead to government confiscating your guns, make using the gun in non-criminal situations more problematic, or even add much to the cost. The guy who has the patent has said anyone could use it free. Apparently it's just way beyond the bounds of current technology. Who knew? http://www.sfgate.com/news/art... Even though it turns out Tasers leave their IDs behind when they're used. (Who knew?) https://news.vice.com/article/... Even though it's been demonstrated. http://microstamp.blogspot.com...

Let's see... Typical refrigerator has a volume of approx 16 cubic feet on the refrigerator side, or 453 liters. Figure 1/3 of that is take up by food or held in drawers. That gives approx 300 liters of chilled air which falls out as you hold the door open looking at the contents.

Figure room temperature is 20 C and the refrigerator is 2 C. At this temperature range, air has a density of about 1.25 kg/m^3, and a heat capacity of 1.005 kJ / kg*K. We have (1.25 kg/m^2) * (0.3 m^3) = 0.375 kg of air. (0.375 kg) * (20C - 2C) * (1.005 kJ / kg*K) = 6.784 kJ of energy which is lost every time you open the refrigerator door (well, added to the interior of the refrigerator). Since the air is chilled via a heat pump, this isn't its actual energy use. The best refrigerators typically have a real-world COP (coefficient of performance) of about 3, or 1 Joule of electricity us used to pump out 3 Joules of heat. So 6784 Joules of heat represents 2261 Joules of electricity used.

If the camera and associated circuit board use 2 Watts while active, then opening the refrigerator door uses as much energy as keeping the camera powered up for (2261 Joules) / (2 Watts) = 18.8 minutes. If the screen uses 20 Watts, then the total 22 Watts consumption means you'd have to stare at the screen for 1.7 minutes to use as much energy as opening the door once. If it uses 0.1 Watts while idle (around what a smartphone uses), then opening the refrigerator door once is enough to power it for 6.3 hours.

Based on these back of the envelope calcs, I'd say the camera + monitor uses less energy than opening the refrigerator door. I should note though that 2261 Joules is 0.000628 kWh, or about 0.0075 cents worth of electricity. So we're really picking over minutiae (unless you're in a habit of holding the refrigerator door open long enough for food to start warming up). The convenience of the camera and remote monitoring is a bigger factor, though I'd probably lose the built-in screen (the most expensive part of the system) and rely on a phone or computer to view the contents.

But I'm still waiting on how you make Mexico pay for it..

While not a fan of Trump, I recognize that as a business person he starts with a more out there proposal which he can then back off from during negotiations... which this sounds to be too.

The only ways I've come up with involve military force or some kind of new tax/tariff etc.. Just sending them a bill marked "over due, please pay now" is unlikely to be effective.

You aren't thinking creatively enough.

If $23 billion is in fact being sent from the US to Mexico... just tack a 20% 'wall' tax and you pay for a $49 billion dollar wall in just 10 years.

Granted, such projections are based on more or less static accounting and discounts any changes in behavior.

Like I said, if you are not willing to recover the cost of the wall by force of arms, all you can do is add a tax or tariff on economic activity.

But as others have pointed out, putting a tax on money transfers to/from Mexico really doesn't solve the problem because then folks would change their behavior and just send cash directly...

But I'm still waiting on how you make Mexico pay for it..

While not a fan of Trump, I recognize that as a business person he starts with a more out there proposal which he can then back off from during negotiations... which this sounds to be too.

The only ways I've come up with involve military force or some kind of new tax/tariff etc.. Just sending them a bill marked "over due, please pay now" is unlikely to be effective.

You aren't thinking creatively enough.

If $23 billion is in fact being sent from the US to Mexico... just tack a 20% 'wall' tax and you pay for a $49 billion dollar wall in just 10 years.

Granted, such projections are based on more or less static accounting and discounts any changes in behavior.

Texas also tried to change references of African Slave Trade to Atlantic triangular trade. Stop trying to defend these privileged, gerrymandering racists.

Steve Jobs lived for 11 years after a diagnosis whose prognosis is 18 months to live with aggressive treatment. Just sayin'.

Talking out of your ass. Jobs lived 8 years after his cancer diagnosis, and the prognosis for the type of tumor Jobs had, pancreatic islet cell tumor, is actually very good compared to other pancreatic cancers.

"One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them."

Zuckerberg has been conditioned to believe that there are poor people in Palo Alto, where the median income is $163,000. It is the 3rd richest city in America, behind only Bethesda, Maryland and Greenwich, Connecticut.

If he wants to help "low income students", he picked one of the worst possible places to start.

Although CA governor Jerry Brown just signed a bill requiring warrants to search electronic devices (and has signed simular such laws in the past), there's still that dumbass Proposition 69 bill that the CA public actually voted into law-- an unforced error-- in 2004. It basically says that if you are ARRESTED (not convicted, arrested), when they do the whole fingerprint thing, they can also grab your DNA and add it to their database. So you know, arrested for political protesting? All your DNA belongs to US.

Another problem is that driving in SF can can very confusing, draining driver attention. Try to make a left turn onto Market Street on a busy day.

A few months ago, SF made private vehicles turning onto Market Street illegal. Today, biking home, I saw half a dozen cars flout those new laws.

So why don't you do what Las Vegas did with Fremont Street and actually made it so that it's no longer a road? Raise the surface, install curbs and bollards, make it real damn obvious that a car cannot turn there. Just putting a sign up doesn't cut it, at least once a week in Chicago I'd see someone driving the wrong way down a one-way street, sometimes it was truly by accident and other times it was just being an idiot.

Another problem is that driving in SF can can very confusing, draining driver attention. Try to make a left turn onto Market Street on a busy day.

A few months ago, SF made private vehicles turning onto Market Street illegal. Today, biking home, I saw half a dozen cars flout those new laws.

As part of Vision Zero SF, the SFPD have pledged to Focus on the Five (PDF, sorry) "violations that are most frequently cited in collisions with people walking. These violations are"

• Driving at unsafe speed given conditions of roadway
• Red light signal violations
• Failure of driver to yield to pedestrian at a crosswalk
• Failure of driver to yield while making a left or U-turn
• Failure to stop at a STOP sign limit line

I cannot tell you (yeah, yeah, anecdote) how many times I've encountered while riding my bike motorists speeding through the streets of SF as if they were Karl Malden in a 1970s era TV cop show.

So, I'm in perfect agreement with you, ShanghaiBill, that a number of downtown SF city blocks should be turned into pedestrian malls strictly controlled for public transportation only.

As a side note, the first week or so Market Street had SFMTA employees keeping private vehicles from turning onto Market Street was the day public transit drivers and cabbies started racing down Market at over 35 miles per hour and jockeying to beat every. Single. Light. and running them if they couldn't.

As far as I know, a court hasn't ever compelled anybody to provide the location of a body. Prosecution has by offering a reduced sentence if they turn it over (in the interest of preventing the possibility of appeals and/or providing closure to the victim's family) but I'm not aware of a judge issuing somebody an order to do so.

For example, Hans Reiser revealed the location of his murdered wife after the prosecution offered him a deal where he'd get a reduced conviction of second degree murder instead of his original conviction of first degree murder. The judge ultimately had to sign off on whether or not the deal was valid, but again, the judge didn't order it.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/...

It is not 6 feet, it is 3 feet.

If you are going to defend cyclists, please don't make us look bad by being ignorant.

http://www.sfgate.com/outdoors...

From the helmet-cam video I counted: 11 motorists driving pre-dawn without lights, 8 motorists failing to signal lane changes

What state are you in? Here, there's definitely no requirement to signal when just changing lanes going in the same direction. It's a damn good idea, and I still do it religiously, but it's not actually "violating traffic law".

http://blog.sfgate.com/crime/2...

It's training people not to let their dogs shit everywhere. After a while, everyone will know that if you let your dog shit on the street, it's going to come right back to you with a fine attached. So why even let it happen? Believe it or not, there are people out there (solipsists) who are convinced the laws don't apply to them. They don't just scoff at laws, they take great joy in breaking them. These little "quality of life" laws sound like piddly shit but they do make a difference in a crowded city. Don't do it and you end up like San Francisco, which has a huge problem with shit lying in the streets. It stinks to high heaven and you can smell it from a mile away.

Comcast is also getting sued over it. http://www.sfgate.com/business...

Q: A couple of years ago you made some comments about privacy -- and the lack thereof -- that were widely printed. That was amazingly pre-Patriot Act and pre-9/11. Do you stick by that notion? Should we not be worried about having lost all our privacy?

A: I never said that, did I?

Q: You said, "You already have no privacy."

A: I said, "You have no privacy. Get over it."

While in fact on monday night 25th of january 1999 a group of reporters and analysts recorded Scott McNealy saying "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."

The body can only absorb element for which it has enzyme for. http://healthyeating.sfgate.co...

There is also some condition, eg. essential fructosuria (inability to process fructose), which will result element to not be metabolized (and in the previous example, you *will* piss fructose).

Desalination requires equipment and sometimes energy, neither of which falls out of the sky.

I'm pretty sure energy does fall out of the sky. Some of these desalination plants use solar power.

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/California-drought-Solar-desalination-plant-5326024.php

For all the fear mongering, the oceans haven't risen,

Yes, they have.

the weather is fine,

Is that a joke?

and life has been carrying on.

Well, except for the mass extinction.

If AGW supporters are correct

AKA "PhD scientists studying this for the last few decades".

then the changes being proposed won't change the outcome by enough to matter.

There is no one grand solution to AGW. There are a lot of smaller steps that added together might make a difference. Failing to do any of them certainly will not help.

Um, yeah, they were sued. http://www.sfgate.com/business... You didn't honestly think Comcast suddenly grew a sense of ethics, did you?

I mean there's this person's account, and this SF Gate article stating that yelp can manipulate reviews for paying customers .

"Freedom of speech". Riiiiiight. Yelp is an extortion racket, plain and simple. Pay your hush money or lose your rating.

Ah, so it never applied to you. You heard their stories and assumed how horrible it must have been when the big bad wolf came for their livelihoods. I am glad they got out of running a business because it is not for the weak. If you are an SP or LLC with pass through, and you are not able to make it with a personal AGI of over $250K, something is very wrong.

Actually, it cost me $132,000 personally. I keep enough float that it's not an issue, but I'm pretty sure I could use that money better than the California government can use it.

Considering business get to deduct their expenses, it sounds like poor planning on their part, being over stretched with debt.

Uh, how in the HELL do you PLAN for a RETROACTIVE tax?!?!?

As a small business owner myself, I don't have sympathy for those that run companies on the edge because anything can happen to wipe you out. They should have gone to their bank and tapped their line of credit or gotten a bridge loan. If they are not in the financial position to have access to either of those sources of cash, they should not have gone into business.

Obviously, you don't run a cash flow business; you don't run a small car mechanic, or a hair salon, or a laundromat or a Subway or Quizno's franchise.

Tech companies offer the 401k for retirement purposes. RSUs are used as form of incentive compensation. If these people are using an RSU for retirement purposes, they need to find a competent financial adviser. If people don't understand the risks with RSUs and sign the grant agreement, they only have themselves to blame. Worst case, reject the grant.

You can't possibly retire in California on a 401K, or even a 401K + social security. If they raised the contribution caps SUBSTANTIALLY, then yes, maybe you could, but unless you are a total fiscal idiot, you have to realize that 401K + SSI is not even going to cover the property tax on a home in San Francisco.

Wow, that is some type of crazy. This is the sky is falling trope that the conservative and libertarian groups like to throw around. The wealthy have not left in droves. Elon Musk still lives in Bel Air, Tim Cook still live in Palo Alto, Larry Ellison still lives in Woodside. The people leaving the state in droves are in the bottom 50% and those hitting their retirement age, and this is due to the cost of living.

The people you are citing have more money than God. They aren't "millionaires", they're billionaires, and they can take the hit, since most of their income is sheltered anyway.

But where's Eduardo Saverin living again? Oh yeah, he gave up his US citizenship because he was (effectively) paid $67M by the state of California alone to do it (and another $30M or so by the fed).

Other people moving out of state due to taxes:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/20...
http://www.sfgate.com/business...

250 companies:
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/fin...

Small business and family consequences:
"It's really going to hit the small business owners and the young family that's trying to accumulate enough to raise a family, maybe send their kids to private school. It'll kick them in the teeth."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

Historical study for "millionaire tax" in Maryland:
"The Change Maryland study found that the tax cost Maryland $1.7 billion in lost tax revenues."
http://www.cnbc.com/id/4812044...

Actual numbers (scroll down past

"Cheap junk food" is more expensive than "expensive healthy food".

Equally murky is whether being poor leads to obesity. Cawley's own research didn't quite find causality

Foods purchased in grocery stores typically have much lower costs per-serving than fast foods.

It warms my heart, however, to see the money I must pay for the tax on air putting panels on the homes of other people.

Did you RTFA? I'm going to assume not, so here's the link again

The program is paid for by cap-and-trade - namely, companies creating environmental waste, not you, are the ones paying for his solar panels. There are plenty of reasons to complain about the CA government misappropriating the tax money you personally give them, but this is not one of them.

They didn't, last time an Uber drive struck and killed someone.

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/ar...

Exactly. I haven't seen this specific show, but every other crime drama on TV seems to portray the cops as being able to go snatch information from just about anything they can get into, through any means, without any discussion of a warrant.

That's correct. Barring one or two exceptions, crime drama on TV also seems to portray cops as wanting to get to the bottom of murders.

When in fact, it's quite the opposite in real life. Cops who get promoted, classify murders, as suicides, or as death by natural cause. That's the most politically expedient solution. That's the cold hard truth of our society. In San Francisco for instance, it took international pressure from the French government to reopen a case where the death of a French man was ruled as suicide despite the fact that he was stabbed repeatedly and that the knife was never found.

Also, I know someone who works as a CSI in Florida. She said to me that CSIs are not criminal investigators, they're more like social workers. They're there to process dead bodies, not to try to inflate the official rate of murders in their jurisdiction. So forget that notion of super detectives, they're not super detectives (as most of us already know of course), but take it even a step further, they're not even allowed to be detectives since the entire bureaucracy is only incentivized to ignore murders (instead of investigating them).

So if these TV shows inspire any young people to get into these professions, those young people are in for a very rude awakening one day.

My SQL Server instances ...

So do enter data do I telnet in a VAX server, and hit Stop-Control-A on my SparcStation 10 to access the records? Or is there some user interface that is no more complicated than Excel that a non-programmer could get up and going?

Plus who wants to hire IT guys, it's not like the neighboring city of San Francisco has had much luck with IT staff.

Five days ago, when SFGate reported this story, it was made quite clear that Tusch's friends were not in on the hoax and took it quite seriously ---

and that someone reported it to the police independently of Facebook.

A mans fake suicide post gets him detained

There you go, bringing facts into a /. discussion. How are we to have righteous indignation over the Man's actions when you go and do that? Think of the /. posters, damn it.

The police have to treat such a threat seriously. Given the situation and his age he falls into a risk profile that says he might be serious about this, and according to TFA he didn't tell police he was just "testing" FB and failed to convince them he wasn't serious about committing suicide.Just because he posted on FB people seem to think it was different. Well, his friends reacted to it just like he had written a note and left it at a party and took action to try to get him help. I'd do the same if it were a friend of mine.

Finally, he says he was exercising his First Amendment Rights. Separate from him having no FA rights on FB; the government didn't violate his FA rights since ehe was still free to post his treat without the government trying to stop him, they simply took action after he made the threat. The FA doesn't say "and shall not be held liable for anything stupid they do while exercising this right..."

Five days ago, when SFGate reported this story, it was made quite clear that Tusch's friends were not in on the hoax and took it quite seriously ---

and that someone reported it to the police independently of Facebook.

A mans fake suicide post gets him detained

Seven Year Old San Francisco Girl Struck and Killed By Uber Driver; Uber Denies Responsibility http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/...

Boston Uber Driver Charged with indecent Assault and Battery http://www.bostonglobe.com/met...

Off-Duty LA Uber Driver Accused of Sexual Assault http://www.bizjournals.com/los...

Chicago Uber Driver With Felony Conviction Charged With Battery For Allegedly Hitting Passenger http://www.forbes.com/sites/el...

Writer and Activist Reports Being Choked in DC; Uber Denies The Event and Responsibility http://valleywag.gawker.com/ub...

DC Uber Driver Allegedly Assaults Customer for Burping http://www.washingtoncitypaper...

San Francisco Uber Customer Claims Abuse and Assault by Uber Driver (Pando) http://pando.com/2013/11/25/ub...

Passenger Struck In Head With Hammer by UberX Driver http://www.forbes.com/sites/el...

Uber Driver Pulls Gun on Valet in Atlanta http://pando.com/2014/09/08/at...

Uber Driver Punches Passenger in Oklahoma http://newsok.com/oklahoma-cit...

Lyft Driver Attacks Pedestrian in San Francisco http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news...

Lyft Driver Brandishes Knife in Los Angeles http://www.laweekly.com/2013-0...

Uber Customer Sues for $2M over Alleged Driver Stabbing in DC http://dcinno.streetwise.co/20...

DC Uber Driver Allegedly Rapes Customer http://betabeat.com/2013/03/ub...

Uber Driver Charged with Fondling Passenger in Chicago http://valleywag.gawker.com/ub...

DC Uber Driver Arrested for Alleged Rape But Not Charged Despite Strong Evidence http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Another DC Uber Driver Accused of Molesting Uber Rider http://valleywag.gawker.com/an...

Passenger Struck In Head With Hammer by UberX Driver http://www.forbes.com/sites/el...

Uber Driver in India Accused of Rape http://www.bbc.c

And back in 2007 you'd be telling us the iPhone would present no threat to BlackBerry. And before that you'd have told us that the iPod would pose no threat to other mp3 players. The sheer amount of fault predictions that Slashdot nerds have made about Apple are hilarious.

You're revising history as much as Apple revises their products. A $599 phone (with no subsidy discount), locked to one carrier, that can't run 3rd party applications, doesn't support MMS, has poor call quality and no 3G support was no threat to Blackberry. A $399, Mac-only, MP3 player that lacks USB was no threat to other MP3 players.

The iPod didn't become a genuine threat to competitors (and a runaway success) until hell froze over and Windows support was added. The iPhone didn't become a threat to competitors until Apple allowed AT&T to subsidize it. By the time the products had overcome their respective major roadblocks to widespread adoption, the current versions resembled their initial predecessors in name and physical appearance, but most of the missing capabilities the nerd peanut gallery derided them for, had been addressed.

If anything, this is a cautionary tale that while the Apple Watch may eventually be yet another blazing success story for Apple, the model that goes on sale on April 24th will be nothing like the updated version that catapults it to mainstream popularity. Of course, it could also flop. As they said on Mythbusters, "failure is always an option." Either way, it will be an amusing show, and I'm sure plenty of people will have their own revisionist history to write when it succeeds or fails.

According to this article lawn darts killed 4 people (3 of them children) and injured 6700 before they were banned. The article ranks them as the most dangerous toy.

Apple has roughly 175 billion in cash and Tesla's current market cap is around 35B. If Apple wants to get into the car business might as well jump in feet first. Not to mention you get one of the greatest CEO visionaries Elon Musk, since Steve Jobs. The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Apple is building its one electric vehicle that resembles a minivan.

Why buy Tesla when you can hire them for a lot less:

Musk also said Apple has been trying to poach Tesla employees, offering $250,000 signing bonuses and 60 percent salary increases.

“Apple tries very hard to recruit from Tesla,” he said. “But so far they’ve actually recruited very few people.”

So is Apple making those offers because they think those employees are that valuable to Apple, or to Tesla?

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/...
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.c...
http://www.bizjournals.com/san...
http://www.naturalgasintel.com...
http://www.mercurynews.com/bus...

The killswitches seem to have a much wider effects than realised by these insightful articles.
Murder rate at the same time in San Francisco
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/ar...
and New York
http://gothamist.com/2015/01/0...
seem to have also decined!

You can get "trusted traveler" status in order to reduce the time it takes to cross the border. Less checks, faster throughput - what's not to love? Even the drug smugglers love it as they have been targeting such travelers and attaching packets of drugs via magnets to the bottoms of said travelers cars. And to make it really helpful for the smugglers, the DEA used to issue decals for the windshield - thus making it really easy to target the travelers.

Smugglers using unwitting drivers to carry drugs from Mexico

They are quite rare, but unlike the debunked autism claim, there is not a long delay from the vaccine to the reaction.

For example, anaphylaxis is goiing to happen fairly quickly if it is going to happen.

Disseminated encephalomyelitis (acute or recurring) can be set off by either a viral infection or a vaccine. Since a vaccine shouldn't be given is a current viral infection is suspected, if it happens shortly after a vaccination, it's fairly clear that either the vaccine caused it or that it should not have been given at that time.

The exceptionally rare immune system failures that can happen after a vaccine don't just spontaneously happen.

If a whole lot of a vaccine is bad, statistics do a decent job of determining that the vaccine was to blame. For example, this article where a lot polio vaccine gave the kids polio. Here is a study of DTP reactions.

The fact that the existence of severe reactions is known shows that it is statistically verifiable. Individual cases can never be proven to perfect certainty, but in the U.S. the standard for liability is preponderance of the evidence.

Looked at from another direction, justice requires that if government shields the manufacturer from liability, it must stand in and accept the liability itself.

>Has Uber been involved in a traffic accident resulting in injury of death?

Yes. And a lawsuit is pending. He was dicking around with the Uber app looking for a passenger but wasn't carrying a passenger at the time so Uber claimed he wasn't working for them at the time.

"When the application is on and looking for a ride, they are doing so on their own time."

http://www.sfgate.com/news/art...

He was also charged with manslaughter.

http://time.com/3625556/uber-m...

>can Australians sue a billion dollar US corporation for damages?

I don't see why not.

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.asp

No airline stock was shorted prior to 9/11.

Per the Snopes Article:

"The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the "9/11 Commission") investigated these rumors and found that although some unusual (and initially seemingly suspicious) trading activity did occur in the days prior to September 11, it was all coincidentally innocuous and not the result of insider trading by parties with foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks."

We aren't debating whether the puts occurred, we are merely debating the reason for the puts. See also:

http://www.sfgate.com/business...

I've never understood the appeal of museums. They are the most boring place in the world to be dragged to. It's not like you can learn anything or interact with anything there. It's like people are afraid to admit they are boring because they are afraid to appear uncultured. Does anyone honestly enjoy museums?

It depends on the museum.

For example, the Exploratorium on Pier 15 in San Francisco is super interactive. And the Computer History Museum in San Jose is also very good. For the more "boring" museums, it really depends on who you go to the museum with. If you're not enthusiastic about a particular museum, you need to accompany someone who is enthusiastic about that museum. That person can be your guide. And if you're lucky enough, some of that enthusiasm can rub off on you a little. Just be careful thought, pick someone you like who is genuinely enthusiastic about that museum, not someone who only sees their interest in a museum as some kind of status symbol for them self. That can happen too.

That being said, if the choice is between drinking at a crowded night club, or drinking at a museum, I'd pick drinking at a museum always. Museum parties usually have more space, by that same token they're also less crowded, and they're usually less noisy than bars or night clubs. Also, museums already tend to be in prime real estate areas and city centers, so if they didn't have adult-only parties during those hours, all that infrastructure and all that space would go to waste during those times outside of their regular visiting hours.

Also, if it's between drinking at the museum and drinking at the zoo, I'd pick drinking at the museum any time. At least at the museums, the stuffed animals are not likely to escape their enclosures and kill the drunk assholes that try to provoke them thus ruining the experience for everyone else.

Have a read.

It wasn't finding out specifically that personal policies don't cover the behaviours of Uber drivers - that one's obvious. It was that:

i) Uber drivers appear to have been hiding their change in behaviour from insurers, thinking that they could get away with it, such that insurers have had to introduce procedures specifically to weed out those customers who have chosen to engage in fraud. This is something that a traditional taxi driver could never get away with. This is the same problem we had before taxi regulation: it would attract unethical people as drivers.

ii) Uber is deliberately providing inadequate insurance. The behaviour of an Uber driver and requirements of the car used are going to be different from a driver who does not engage in selling taxi services - indeed, half the work is in being around the right place at the right time. Yet Uber's insurance specifically does not cover people before they've accepted a customer.

Not sure where you live, but where I live, taxi's have to pay taxes. They have to pay social security. They have to pay for meters. They have to pay for insurance with passengers. Also for extra technical testing of the cars. And also for the taxi stands.

If you cut all that out, it is obvious that itwill be cheaper. Illegal, but cheaper. Just as if I would run a sweatshop. Illegal, but cheaper.

I'm willing to accept that the cars might be nicer (though not inspected regularly for passenger service purposes), response time might be better. The issue that bothers me is insurance. , and what happens when an Uber driver is in an injury accedent, and where the liabilities land:

The insurance secret that Uber doesnâ(TM)t want you to know
Leaked transcript shows Geicoâ(TM)s stance against Uber, Lyft
Uber Advises Drivers To Buy Insurance That Leaves Them Uncovered

People think that taxi licencing is all about monopolies and cartels, but there are many other valid issues that regulation addresses.

You people are just smarter

Here's the California Energy Commission STILL saying it. SInce 2010 has passed, as of 2012 they pushed the "underwater by" date to 2050:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2012p...

Perhaps you could point out where they say anything similar to "San Francisco will be underwater by 2050". What I've found are comments that, essentially, extreme tide-related flooding events would become more frequent and last longer.

Here's an "underwater San Francisco" map that GW alarmists were circulating in 1997:
http://www.sfgate.com/news/art...

Asked about the effect on California, professor of climatology at the University of California at Berkeley Orman Granger said in 1997:

There's no date associated with the image. I skimmed the article, though, so I may have missed a non-explicit prediction.

Here's the California Energy Commission STILL saying it. SInce 2010 has passed, as of 2012 they pushed the "underwater by" date to 2050:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2012p...

Here's an "underwater San Francisco" map that GW alarmists were circulating in 1997:
http://www.sfgate.com/news/art...

Asked about the effect on California, professor of climatology at the University of California at Berkeley Orman Granger said in 1997:

      "Climatologic records over the last 10,000 years show that species move north (in the Northern hemisphere) roughly 500km for every degree C temperature increase ... in order to survive they have 100 years to move to Canada".

Being shot by the homeowner is the single biggest fear among would-be intruders, ranking higher than being caught by police.

Unless, of course, you're drunk, forgot your keys and try to break into your own house. A guy who broke into the wrong house that he thought was his own by smashing the patio door got shot once after being repeatedly warned by the homeowner to leave. Nothing worse than waking up in the drunk tank with a bullet wound in the chest.

I would love to see a judge who ruled US protections do not apply have someone use that logic on them.

You want to know something scary?

Alberto Gonzales, the moron who was Bush the 2nd's Attorney General ... he once said that habeus corpus wasn't a right. So the legal advice he was giving Shrub? Entirely based on a complete lack of understanding of the law and the Constitution.

Government has reached the point that if they can get a lawyer to craft an opinion about what is legal, it's valid.

Which is how you ended up with police and governments increasingly doing shit which isn't legal. Because they no longer give a damn about what is legal, or follows a set of principles, it's what you can get some sleaze bag of a lawyer to argue in court.