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Since when has traveling by car and plane been comparable? For long distances, I suppose. I'm not going to drive between NYC and LA. But on a daily basis it is not.

The issue, I imagine, mostly has to do with environmentalists' concern about the inefficiency of plane travel in general. Environmentalists tend to criticize speakers who jet around the world frequently for example. For another example, I've seen a number of conferences in recent years that have tried to encourage "remote participation" via Skype or some other video conferencing tools to avoid perceived waste for travel.

For many such people, traveling medium-length distances by car has traditionally seemed the more "environmental" choice. They may not drive from NYC to LA, but they might drive between cities in the Northeast rather than fly if driving were "better for the environment." I think the common perception for decades among environmentalists is that "flying is always bad." TFA suggests that is probably an inaccurate generalization, though it's not a new observation.

In a free country, businesses don't get massive government subsidies and de-facto monopolies.

That's absolutely true. And Libertarians fought those things tooth-and-nail too.

But a government's folly of subsidizing a business does not give us the right to take it over. We don't own Internet infrastructure any more than we own Tesla's wonder-cars.

Also, in a free country, governments can decide no business serves their constituents well and decide to serve their constituents directly.

Huh? Can you elaborate on the logical chain that lead you to this statement? What sort of freedom is it, that allows the Collective to arbitrarily prohibit an Individual to offer a service?

Wow, I was honestly hoping for better! Of everything you can pick from the Bush administration, that's the best you can come up with?

First of all, where's the "toxic" revolving door here? I understand that you disagree with the decision that the Bush FCC made regarding unbundling (though the article you linked to is completely incoherent), but that's not at all what this discussion is about.

Secondly, if unbundling was so disastrous, why has gigabit internet rapidly proliferated around the country over the last decade? If it was such a bad decision, decreed by a "toxic" individual, why has the Obama FCC shown zero interest in changing the rule? Here's a thought: "...by the time Barack Obama took office in 2009, [unbundling rules] had become so discredited that the FCC didn't try to revive them."

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/26/8117489/conservatives-winning-net-neutrality

Here, btw, is a Slate take on Michael Powell, who they call "an earnest technocrat, out of place in the politically calculating Bush administration. ... Powell is the closest thing to Al Gore in official Washington today. ... But Powell's not a fire-breathing conservative and shill for big business. Like Gore, he's a wonk with an abiding interest in policy minutiae and a deep faith in technology."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2003/02/the_real_michael_powell.html

Toxic revolving door? Hilarious.

It says Stellarwind was illegal. That they knew it was illegal. That the FBI hid the details using a team '10' to scrub any mention of it, that the judges were misled, that Gonzales misled Congress, that it didn't work, that they misused NSLs, field officers said the info was garbage, their tests showed the results of random fishing were totally worthless, Yoo suggests Ashcroft hide it from [redacted] (likely Congress or the courts),

Ashcroft was ready to resign over it. He was hospitalized and incapable of acting as AG. James Comey, his deputy, showed up in the hospital room that night. Alberto Gonzalez (at the time, the White House's lawyer, no DoJ affiliation) was racing to get to the hospital to get Ashcroft to sign off on it. Ashcroft refused.

The story reads like an episode of 24. The tl;dr is that the Administration hired its own lawyers Yoo and Gonzalez to tell them it was legal. Then tried to browbeat an incapacitated Attorney General into signing off on it. Then, when that didn't work, pressured his deputies to sign off on it. John Mueller, then head of the FBI, also freaked out when he heard about STELLARWIND:

> Comey testifies that there was something of a line to resign that day: Mueller; then Comey's chief of staff; and then Ashcroft's chief of staff -- who asked only that Comey wait until "Ashcroft was well enough to resign with me"
- http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2007/05/pulling_the_plug.single.html

That's not American jurisprudence, that's not even Russian jurisprudence. What happened in that hospital in 2004 was on a par with Soviet-tier "jurisprudence." Then it was legalized in 2007 because nobody in Congress was allowed to know what they were legalizing. And it's been with us ever since.

They can melt down the gold case a year from now when it's an obsolete model of the iWatch.

Ha.

Apple developed a new low-density ceramic gold alloy that meets the legal definition of 18-karat gold, but contains far less gold than a normal 18-karat gold alloy.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/mon...

So not only are you paying $17000 for the watch, you get very little gold for your $17000 - much less gold than any other 18k gold watch.

I wasn't here 40 years ago. ;-)
But anyway, yes, it's better. You should read Pinker. It's not as bad as you think, grandpa.
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

I think it's more likely to be because people under 35 are the first generation that have no memory of the cold war. People born before about 1980 lived in a world where there was a very strong, clear delineation between us vs them and that divide was seen as an existential struggle between good and evil. Merely by being born into a certain country, you too could take part in an epic ideological struggle between right and wrong. It is perhaps not surprising that people who lived most of their life in such a world instinctively support a strong, authoritarian state and react badly to a "traitor who gave our national security secrets to the Russians" or whatever garbled version of the story they received via Fox News. There's definitely a clear and strong tendency in older populations to support our side regardless of what that side actually does, and things that seem to bring back old certainties strongly appeal to them. Hence the desperate need of the establishment to make "the terrorists" to new Big Evil.

Contrast to people under the age of 35 who don't remember the cold war and have never lived in a world where there were clearly defined conflicts between us/them or good/evil. Instead there has been a series of endless wars started by us against dramatically weaker foes, based on vague and uncompelling justifications, the results of which have mostly been bedlam. Older people love this because it's an attempt to bring back the old certainties they remember. It leaves young people cold because they don't care about the old certainties, as they never had them to begin with.

Combine all this with the fact that the average software developer is 30 years old and the average age of Congress is 57 ... nearly double their age .... you have set the stage for an epic showdown between the technology industry and the political establishment. Which is exactly what's happening.

at least I saw an improvement in them while they were lightly stoned..

"lightly stoned"?
The last time anyone was lightly stoned in the US was, oh, the late 80's.
The strains of cannabis that have been developed in the last 20-30 years are VERY STRONG.

And, while we are at it, our (taxpayer's) investment in Tesla was even worse than in Solyndra.

Interesting article. It does make a good point about the government not getting its due returns on such an investment, yet ignores the complications of government ownership in a business and how that might lead to interference one way or another. I think it might be a good idea for the government to have loan requirements that payback proportionally more if the company's value grows, or stock held in some escrow like account that is not managed by the government, but pays out to them at predetermined times. Somehow, the government ownership part needs to be avoided.

More competition is better

Only if it is free market competition. When you allow government to pick winners, it is no longer Capitalism, but Crony Capitalism — which is to the real thing, like Westborough Church is to Christianity.

Because government officials do not put their own money on the line and a successful businessman must know, how to play politics — to the inevitable detriment of running his business instead...

And, while we are at it, our (taxpayer's) investment in Tesla was even worse than in Solyndra.

Virginia is still imprisoning an almost certainly innocent man—even after he did the time.

Of all the maddening stories of wrongful convictions, Michael McAlister’s may be one of the worst. For starters, he has been in prison for 29 years for an attempted rape he almost certainly did not commit. For much of that time, the lead prosecutor who secured his conviction, the original lead detective on the case, and more recently, the current Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney, Michael Herring, have argued that McAlister is innocent and that someone else—a notorious serial rapist with the same MO as the perpetrator of the crime for which McAlister was convicted—is in fact the real criminal. “I think our justice system is one of the best on the planet,” Herring told the Richmond Times-Dispatch last week. “But this case makes me ashamed of it.”

Here are the facts: In 1986, McAlister was convicted of attempted rape and abduction with the attempt to defile, after a 4½-hour bench trial. The only evidence presented was the victim’s identification based on her partial glimpse of her assailant’s face, much of which was covered with a mask. The photo array she was shown by the police did not include a picture of Norman Derr, a serial rapist who had already attempted to attack another woman in the same apartment complex. But it did include a photo of McAlister, and the two men looked astonishingly similar.

Derr is currently serving three life sentences. He was caught after the brutal rape of a woman in 1988 and is now linked to six other violent offenses through DNA cold-case testing. (There was no biological evidence from the crime McAlister was convicted of, and thus nothing to implicate Derr and exonerate McAlister.) But the similarities between Derr’s crimes and the alleged McAlister assault are remarkable: Derr attacked women with a knife in apartment-complex laundry rooms, wearing a plaid shirt and a stocking mask. These details all match the crime for which McAlister is still in prison. Subsequent police affidavits reveal that Derr was already being trailed by the police in 1986 and that he had in fact pulled on a stocking mask and approached a female undercover cop in the same apartment complex in which McAlister allegedly later assaulted his victim. Several other laundry room attacks happened after McAlister was already in jail but before Derr was caught.

McAlister was set up. He was asked to wear a plaid shirt in the photo lineup, and he was the only one in a plaid shirt. His release date has passed, but he continues to be incarcerated because he was convicted of a violent sex crime. There is no exculpatory DNA evidence. He has already done 29 years for a crime that the prosecutor in the case thinks was a wrongful conviction.

What was that about the system being perfect again?

I hate that movie. I haven't seen it, but the advertising has put me off. The man is so important, but not once during any of the ads I saw for it, did they mention his name.

There are many possible reasons to not like the movie, but this isn't one of them. The movie itself doesn't in any way hide his name.

This, for example http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/n... or this http://www.slate.com/blogs/bro...
might be reasonable excuses to not want to see the movie.

Monica Lewinsky?

Hillary Clinton was responsible how exactly?

Before Independent Counsel Ken Starr had uncovered incontrovertible proof of the Clinton/Lewinsky affair- Monica's blue dress with Bill's semen stain- Hillary falsely accused Republicans, alleging that, in her own words, a "vast right-wing conspiracy" was behind allegations of her husbands serial infidelities and molestations. So one problem with Hillary's conduct vis-à-vis Monica is that it revealed Hillary to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist.

An interesting bit of trivia, President Clinton's portrait in the National Portrait Gallery contains a hidden reference to the infamous blue dress, as reported here at Slate.com.

But then there were the 10,000 or so people that are estimated to have been killed by poisoned liquor during prohibition...

You're both right, but you managed to shift the goalposts with an incredibly misleading statement.

What is true is that the population of women, on average, makes 80% of what the population of men makes. The reason this is INCREDIBLY misleading is it does not look at "pay for equal work"; it utterly disregards what industries men and women respectively tend to be in and just assumes that all women are in the same industries as all men and thus that 80% figure is indicating sexism.

This 80% number is so notorious that it has been widely slammed, by such publications as Politifact, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Slate. That is, its SUCH a misleading statement that it is derided by publications ranging from neutral to liberal to conservative.

Indeed, The Washington Post notes,

June O’Neill, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who has been a critic of the 77-cent statistic, has noted that the wage gap is affected by a number of factors, including that the average woman has less work experience than the average man and that more of the weeks worked by women are part-time rather than full-time. Women also tend to leave the work force for periods in order to raise children, seek jobs that may have more flexible hours but lower pay and choose careers that tend to have lower pay.

Indeed, BLS data show that women who do not get married have virtually no wage gap; they earn 96 cents for every dollar a man makes.

They [economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis ] noted that women may prefer to accept jobs with lower wages but greater benefits (more flexible parental leave) so excluding such fringe benefits from the calculations will exaggerate the wage disparity.

So yes: Technically, 77 cents on the dollar. That is, if you're attempting to push a political agenda by boiling down a really complex comparison to an inflated and highly controversial figure.

http://content.time.com/time/b...
http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
http://www.consad.com/content/...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...
http://www.slate.com/articles/...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/th...
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/...

Actually, there was a real welfare queen that fits the details of the urban legend.

Her name was Linda Taylor. And welfare fraud was probably among the least of her crimes. It's a fascinating story.

Now obviously, she's the exception, rather than the rule. Most people on welfare aren't creating multiple fake identities in order to bilk the system. And most sure aren't involved in possible kidnappings and suspicious deaths.

Where are the gay store owners declaring that they would like to not sell to right-wing bigots? Oh, right, there are none, because normal people do not question the sexual orientation of members of the public who come into a store to purchase goods.

Sorry for the double post, but didnt see this.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/out...

Gay owners want not to sell to someone who wants a cake that says something THEY find objectionable.

And you are wrong regarding the right to choose your customers. This is a well established legal right with the sole exceptions where protected classes (nationality, race, religion, disability) are concerned. I've posted links in my other comments, but its not terribly hard to google.

Unless, of course, it's the other way around. When gays discriminate they get a pass. The circular logic of this article is painful. http://www.slate.com/blogs/out...

Umm, no.

reason #1

reason #2

reason #3

reason #4 (which obviously wasn't a translation error)

You know how I know you don't know any Iranians?

Know how I know that you cannot respond with facts but instead respond with angry little hysteria?

This is how... and then there's this... ...this... ...and of course this (you may need Google Translate for that last one.)

Mind you, the people quoted are, I suspect, quite Iranian.

But you know, maybe you just forgot to check "Post Anonymously"? ;)

Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party?

A perfectly valid question to ask. Communism is the most murderous school of thought known to humanity — even Hitler bizarre brand of Fascism was but a distant second.

Nothing "paranoid" about it. The above-mentioned Rosenberg was introduced to Soviet spies by a fellow American Communist (Bernard Schuster). Thus, belonging to CPUSA was not only indicative of supporting the Communism (whose murderousness was not as well-known back then), but also of a high likelihood of being a traitor.

I'd say the number of non-threats who were actively and vigorously blackballed

Citations needed.

Then add in civil rights discontent

The civil rights discontent was also actively instigated by the USSR. Both by covert payment to Americans and overt propaganda by the Soviets themselves.

Hover's infiltration of civil right's organizations

That was a covert operation, which is a direct opposite of propaganda.

Hoover was running FBI — federal police — not military. Countering foreign agents and spies is openly and officially within the scope of such establishments in all countries and infiltration is a perfectly legitimate tactics.

"Interesting" my butt.

under the argument that they were aligned with communists.

Many were USSR-controlled (knowingly or not), in all likelihood. Some certainly were.

Not if the "substantial edits" can cite a biased journal or "news" site that support the new claims. Wikipedia has a serious problem with controversial topics because "the rule of Wikipedia is that authority trumps accuracy," and people with big megaphones and too much time on their hands can find or make "authoratative" sources that support their worldview regardless of the facts.

No warming for nearly twenty years.

How do people still believe "no warming" bullshit? There is no pause. Please stop speading misinformation. Thank you.

oh my godsies, parents have to take care of their kids. Wow, that's terrible. Next thing you know they'll have to find them too... tough shit, have a kid, you better be there to take care of them and raise them.

"Being there" and "taking care" of a kid also involves gradually giving them the freedom to make their own choices and do their own things as they grow. If you don't do this, you end up with kids who never learn to take care of themselves and are still living at home in their late 20s or 30s.

Anyhow, this needs to be based on age and maturity level, obviously. But nowadays we can't trust a 10-year-old to play outside with a 6.5-year-old younger sibling or to walk home from a park together (and yes, the parents ultimately were found responsible for neglect), nor can we trust an 11-year-old alone in a car for a few minutes while Mommy goes into the store.

Etc., etc. Sadly, these stories are not uncommon. There are things like this that come up on a regular basis across the U.S., and if you search a bit you can also read some of the harrowing stories of parents who are force to spend months or years struggling to get their kids back or living under draconian state "supervision" by CPS when they do.

Yes, as parents, you need to supervise your kids when they are little, and then you gradually allow them more freedom. It's called "growing up." But nowadays, people call the cops if they see a kid younger than 16 without a parent around, and CPS comes knocking.

You don't think that's extreme?

Is the case you described the common case, and do you think it precludes the other? There is still a perception that the rich are reasonably untouched by laws :

Look at outliers like the 'affluenza' case http://www.slate.com/blogs/the... or the case of the crook judge who owed lots of taxes and put the screws on poor people who could not pay their fines. http://crooksandliars.com/2015....

Those just cement the popular perception that justice is a luxury item.

I believe you may be suffering from ODS.

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

The GOP introduced over 700 amendments to the ACA before it was put to the floor for a vote. Of those, 161 passed. Compared to the 36 Dem submitted amendments that passed.

To claim that the "GOP had nothing to do with the ACA" is verifiably untrue. To further claim that "They had no power to speak of at the time" highlights a complete lack of knowledge and understanding of how the legislative branch of our government works.

-Rick

It's so sad it's funny.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2008/11/the_tmi_presidency.html

The TMI Presidency
How much transparency do we really want from Obama?
By Christopher Beam
John Podesta and Josh Bolten. Click image to expand. John Podesta and Josh Bolten

Nov. 12 2008 8:15 PM

During a presidential campaign, there's no such thing as over-sharing. Barack Obama promised to run the most transparent White House in historyâ"disclosing donations, shunning lobbyists, and broadcasting important meetings on C-SPAN. Transition captain John Podesta reiterated the point Tuesday when he said Obama's would be "the most open and transparent transition in history." ...

Is there such a thing as too much information? Yesâ"but only if there's no way of processing it. The key to increasing transparency, therefore, is to allow people to interpret what they're seeing. That means not just more documents but better databases, more navigable interfaces, and more visual aids to help people analyze information. If you've got that, there's no such thing as over-sharing.

I think the idea is that is supposed to be more an incentive to not get a ticket, so that the sting hurts everyone equally. It would have to be carefully implemented to not be abusive.

It is probably an emotional response to seeing some rich **** flaunt the law with zero consequence to themselves, where a ticket like that could destroy someone scraping by : see http://www.slate.com/articles/.... I have sympathy for the idea and when I was in Germany, there were similar laws.

It's a bit odd that there isn't more consideration given to the idea of death by nitrogen asphyxiation. It seems to be a fairly foolproof and painless method of execution, if we must have the death penalty.

Or Helium, which has the added bonus of being amusing, plus instantly detectable if there's a leak.

It's a bit odd that there isn't more consideration given to the idea of death by nitrogen asphyxiation. It seems to be a fairly foolproof and painless method of execution, if we must have the death penalty.

Back at you.

Nothing but more theory and anecdote.

"You can reduce the rate of suicide in the United States ... if fewer people had guns in their homes ..."

Total nonsense. The number of households with firearms has been on a multi-decade downward trend:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...

Meanwhile, the suicide rate per 100k people has been quite stable at 10-15 per 100k over the last 60 years:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/...

So where's the evidence that fewer gun-owning households means a lower suicide rate?
The ONLY consistently documented relationship between firearms and suicide is this:

"Some methods have a case fatality rate as low as 1 or 2 percent ... with a gun, it's closer to 85 or 90 percent."

True and I'm sure that in their so-called "study", the 10-15% of people who survived a self-inflicted gunshot wound regret it and claim it was an impulsive act, but that's hardly "proof" that access to firearms was a causal factor in suicide attempts.

This also raises the important question of how many people really want to die and how many are just desperate for attention. The "cry for help" suicide is a well known and documented fact. If you slice your wrists perpendicular to the length of the arm, you're either incompetent or you don't really want to commit suicide. Fire a 12 gauge shotgun in your mouth and there's zero doubt that you're genuinely trying to kill yourself.

Note also that the USA is #30 worldwide in suicide rate, far behind many countries with strict gun control laws. Take Japan for example with a rate of 20.7/100k.

This is just a bunch of leftist academics trying to further the gun control agenda without real evidence. Gun control groups like Michael Bloomberg's astroturf "Everytown" are actually pushing laws requiring that all firearms in private homes be locked up ... where they will be useless for defense. And imagine police getting search warrants and breaking down your door because someone saw a gun on your nightstand? Insanity..

tell me how we are one iota better off today with the democrat in the White House.

Your justifiable disappointment in both parties leads you to renouncing both of them equally, which is not justifiable in the slightest.

Had a Republican won, we would've still been capturing enemies to be held in Guantanamo — instead of simply killing them. Osama bin Laden would've been on trial, rather than fallen victim to extrajudicial killing .

Putin would not have dared to invade Ukraine. Gaddafi — who has made amends with US after seeing the capture of Saddam Hussein on TV — would've remained in charge of Lybia, instead of that country plunging into chaos. We wouldn't have left Iraq in such haste, which would've kept ISIS in check.

Domestically we would not have had the grossly unpopular Obamacare forced upon us with such vigor, most people — proponents and detractors alike — could not even understand the proposed law before the voting took place.

Republicans and Democrats are an inbred family, sleeping together for the past three generations.

Though the less principled "centrists" or "pragmatists" of the two parties do meet in the middle like stalactites and stalagmites, as those geological phenomena they too come from opposite ends.

The term Trolling is overly broad and implies that if you're a non-practicing entity (NPE) with a portfolio of patents that makes you a troll. With the advent of software patents this has brought more focus onto NPEs but they've been around for a very long time. The problem is that a lot of these patents are very, very vague or as has previously been pointed out, crafted by skilled lawyers to make something appear as "innovative" when it really is obvious. There in lies the crux of the matter, we have lawyers who's job it is to craft patent documents including description and details about the invention, lawyers who specialize in patent litigation and former lawyers who sit in judgement over the entire mess. It's a self perpetuating system that does everything it can to protect the intellectual property rights of a patent holder. So, once you get a patent there are two ways to have it invalidated. 1) present evidence of prior art to the USPTO. 2) Go to court either as a plaintiff or defendant and have the legal process weed through it. All of this takes money and usually a Patent holder or NPE will have enough resources to make any fight costly. Changing the laws to make NPEs bear the costs of litigation is a start but that also means that those Patent Holders with deep, very deep pockets will take the risk and to some extent it cheapens the value of all Patents because then only very well off holders will be inclined to exercise their legal rights.

If you want to fix the Patent system:

1) Make the burden of getting a software patent stricter. Instead of vague things get rid of the weasel words and challenge if indeed the "innovation" really isn't an algorithm.
2) Get more people in the USPTO and get some reforms implemented. http://scienceprogress.org/200...
3) Fix the cost of legal fees in handling Patent cases. Many states have fixed costs associated with Estate Issues, it's time that the lawyers be put on a scale commensurate with the size of the case. If you take away the incentive for lawyers to rack up huge legal bills in the Patent game then you won't see as many frivolous cases.
4) Get rid of the right to trial by Jury and streamline the legal process. There's no reason that a Jury has to hear a patent case. Let the judge hear it and streamline the proceedings for no longer than two weeks of trial. Either the Patent is innovative and isn't subject to Prior art or it's not and it should be invalidated by the court. Done.
5) Respect the Inventors. Most of these patents are owned by large companies who didn't actually invent them but some employee did. Those people have no rights usually and invented something as part of their job. We need to get rid of the company owns all mentality when it comes to this technology and Inventors should have deeded rights to their Intellectual Property, say 10% shared among all inventors on a Patent. If there's licensing or royalties paid 10% goes to the Inventors. Likewise if a NPE sues and wins in court, 10% of the judgement goes to the Inventors.

then I'll care about what "prominent members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate" think about climate change.

Take a look at what James Inhofe (R-OK) who is chairman of the fucking Senate Committee on the Environmentthinks of global warming. TRIGGER WARNING: IF STUPIDITY UPSETS YOU DO NOT CLICK.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

It is your decision ultimately how you want to leave things with your daughter, but I found this anecdote of a woman who felt emotionally overwhelmed by her dead mother's letters from beyond the grave. Be wary that while your daughter may find comfort and meaning in your video letters, she may just as likely feel grief and stress: http://www.slate.com/articles/...

At this point, there's no possibility at all that Greece would be able to borrow more money from the EU to run a primary budget deficits in the future.

We'll see them try within the next 24 hours.

Wow, you're really not understanding the current situation at all.

A good place to start would be the concept of a primary surplus. That's the situation Greece is in now.

I'm under the opinion that philopophy is dead and most Education sucks; If we keep wrapping our children in blankets we're only going keep them immature which is leading to the rotting of philosophy and knowledege. I know what I'm saying is politically incorrect but If children don't find out for 'em selves how are they going to do if certain situations on the internet arise in real life.
I'd say ditch the idea of 'innocence' a virtue spouted by religion and start getting kids educated otherwise bigger shit in the such as war is only going to worse in later years as later generations will want war as they won't even know the true horrors of war and they will just that war is soultion to everything and they probably wn't event question the hroseshit lies of politicans .

I was 15 when I saw the guantanamo torture vids along with collateral murder ; I'm glad I did, I'm 20 now and because of experience watching those videos I understand that war sought only be used in serious situations; I fully understand the hypocrisy of our leaders and the lies that were fed to us at school. If my parents had blocked my access I'd probably been just been just as oblivious as everyone to the true surveillance state of which we live in.

Little Brains cannot be held as innocent forever; as shown here which points out that the age matuirity is increasing because again little minds haven't been exposed to the enough reality. Students today are more like children than adults and need protection.

AI has some really strange false positives. True AI has not been created yet.

If a monkey can't own the intellectual property it generates, nor transfer it to a human, how can a computer? I know that was a copyright case, but when it comes to ownership, aren't we talking about the same basic problem? Wouldn't any patent generated by computer be up for public domain?

Oh, you can know so much about whether strangers have a neurological disorder or not without actually meeting them.

Yes, I can. Especially in light of Asperger's not even being considered a disorder anymore. Sorry, bro, but you don't have Asperger's.

Very few of the people I actually know who claim to be autistic are assholes.

I never said anything about autism. I was clearly referring to the large group of people, especially on Slashdot, who self-diagnosed themselves with the now removed disorder "Asperger's". Maybe you need to re-read my post?

The solution? In my opinion, the CEO of Intuit should be fired.

Let's take it further...

1. Everyone needs to be aware that Intuit lobbied to keep our taxes expensive and complicated. Their tactics included faking bullshit grass roots support for complicated filing, (more here)

2. Although they've fought it tooth and nail, federal law still requires Intuit and others to provide tax software/form filing for free for the public. You gotta make a certain minimal adjusted gross income (which is bullshit to begin with-- this threshhold was unfortunately lowered during the Bush years-- fuck you Intuit), but there are at least 14 different free options to choose from.

Also, there's no interaction here, and this isn't the first instance of computer-generated content making it through human filters. There was an article a while ago about submissions to scientific journals... I think this is the story: http://www.nature.com/news/pub...

In both cases, the content was "complete gibberish," not coherent submissions. These stories don't demonstrate the progress of AI; they demonstrate the low expectations of "meaningful," that judges/editors have in specific circumstances.

That said, there is compelling computer-generated content, such as this: http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

No institution or corporation has more money than the Catholic church; not even close. http://www.slate.com/articles/...

typical conservative, doesn't understand WHY taxis are regulated in the first place.

http://time.com/3592035/uber-t...
http://www.cnbc.com/id/1018488...
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Logically, water can be considered abundant wherever rain is imminent, and under new US definitions of imminent, water is abundant everywhere.

Back in 2006 Tom Brady lobbied hard to change the NFL rules about balls in such a way that would make this 'deflategate' scenario possible.
Amazingly enough, once the rule change went in, the Patriot's fumble rate dropped by half. The league average did not change and when Patriot players went to other teams, their personal fumble rates returned to the average.

That's an awful big coincidence. Awful big.

No, I said Ted Cruz and I meant it.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

We are stupid and will die on this rock before we figure out how to get off it.