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I'm going to assume that your question was presented because you genuinely don't know.

New Jersey and California have laws on the books that will take this from being an optional feature of a few firearms to being a mandated feature on all new firearms. That's unacceptable to us.

LK

yeah, but we are running out of places to just put trash

No we aren't. America has enough landfill space to last for centuries at current rates. The "landfill crisis" that was all the rage in the 1990s was made up by journalists and never had any connection to reality.

A recent report by Centers for Disease Control (CDC) states "“almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year.” (Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2013.)

I've never seen a gender breakdown of defensive gun use, but with a lower bound of a half million annual, the 250K number is not unreasonable. Even the extremely anti-gun Violence Policy Center estimates average annual defensive gun uses at around 67K.

None of the electronics went off before their last communication. Where is your source for that? There were alot of blogs that assumed that since the last Acars signal was at 1:07 am and the last communication, "Good night Malaysian three seven zero", was at 1:19am it was turned off. However that means nothing since Acars works in 30 min increments so it's next message wouldn't have been till 1:37 am. The system could have failed anytime between 1:19am and 1:37am.

Cell phones would not have been able to work at that distance and speed.

The flight's satellite phones wont work if eletronics are off.

No, the entire patent system needs to be thrown out. It's not just broken, it's not really ethical to allow forcibly banning second inventors from independently inventing.

Also, it's not an exaggeration to say the patent system is killing people. E.g.:
- http://archive.mises.org/15365/update-patents-kill-compulsory-licenses-and-genzymes-life-saving-drug/
- "Why Aren’t There More Cancer Vaccines? Blame America’s lousy patent system."
- A case to abolish patents - Two authors from the Federal Reserve lay bare the patent myths

I probably won't even bother checking this out. Here's why.

True, it is not a critical review, though it is by someone who is willing to admit mistakes in the face of evidence. Care to share links to some serious reviews "written by the skeptical contingent of climate scientists"? (An honest request, I'm not trying to imply there are none...).

This report is also reviewed over at Slate by the Bad Astronomer.

Missing link and words When even a modest house is $1,000,000 in San Francisco, you don't have to wonder.....

Cold, hard facts like those where the ones that quickly disabused my wife and I from the notion of relocating our entire family to the Bay Area.

Missing link and words

  When even a modest house is $1,000,000 in San Francisco, you don't have to wonder.....

I have a house of the same square footage as that San Fransisco example, which cost me 16% as much just outside of Chicago and you know that house in San Francisco doesn't sit on a half-acre lot either.

Missing link and words

When even a modest house is $1,000,000 in San Francisco, you don't have to wonder.....

Hate to be the one to point out the obvious... but the solution is not in changing the meat it is in reducing and/or eliminating the meat.

Slate recently had a decent article examining all of the impacts of a world that's entirely vegetarian. Interesting stuff.

(My family is vegetarian, even my kids. People stopped asking "where do you get your protein?" when they see my kids, who each were tallest in grade school. My youngest daughter was 5'6" at age 10.)

You're partly right. Here's an article on the pepsi challenge that says some of it is advertising, but there's a stronger component to it: People always prefer sweeter things in blind tastes tests, but we prefer the less-sweet things when we have them all the time. That's why New Coke failed.

Happy to.
First, we could start with the absurdities in every Farm Bill, ever - in which $billion$ to giant agro industries are sustained for no good reason, barriers to imports of sugar, etc are lifted/strengthened to defend US agro firms, etc.

Second, we could look at the US Schools Lunch Programs which are largely mandated by the USDA...hence the furious lobbying going on there. http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_...

Heck, even the "Food Pyramid" we all learned about in school was the product of lobbyists and special interests, not nutritionists:
http://healthwyze.org/index.ph...
(I have no idea if this site is a tinfoil hat one, etc - but the comments there from nutritionists about the gov't handling of the issue are instructive.)

Finally, the failure of our government to understand that one cannot spend more than one makes on an extended basis, means that "marginal" entities are defunded, despite widespread agreement that it's one of the core functions of the Federal government: http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

Well, maybe I've been misled by the report mentionned by this other interesting article about Chernobyl wildlife (two parts, see at the bottom of part 1, continued on part 2).

Well, here is a link to an article about a Nielsen study which finds that minorities, including Asians, Hispanics and Blacks are more likely to own a smartphone than whites. Additionally, minorities are found to be more likely to download apps than whites. It doesn't really go into income, but we already know there is some correlation. Frankly, I think smartphones are just another way to keep people who are bad at financial decisions down.
What it means in context of this particular article is that the fact that the streetbump app mainly located potholes in wealthy areas had nothing to do with race or income (in fact it has a negative correlation) and far more to do with how much personal responsibility certain people as a class (on average) tend to take for their own environment.

Yes, and they pulled her from care. You are asserting that cost isn't an issue?

Do you have anything to substantiate that? As of a month ago she was still there. There are newer articles that indicate the same.

The Sad, Scary Saga of Justina Pelletier - March 27 2014 9:17 AM

Justina Pelletier spent the past year in a locked psych ward, even though doctors disagree about whether her condition is psychiatric.

--------

I note the articles that come up are all months out of date, and very little has private, protected medical details that you claim to be privy to.

She's still in the hospital. She is still sick. He illness hasn't changed. The background hasn't changed. If it is reported in the story it is fair game. Perhaps you're just not reading the right stories.

I apologize for being so impartial that I didn't crucify the system based on your random guesses and unsubstantiated opinion. I'll try to be more biased next time.

How would I tell the difference?

The system can suck. The government can be wrong. Doctors can be wrong, especially when pursuing their pet theories.

FTFY.

if this dad asked for help to rescue his daughter by force, I will tell you there are quite a few of us ready to come up to Mass and pledge our rifles if need be.

I'm sure... The crazies always seem to attract more crazies:

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

I'm fully capable of reading at 1000+ words / minute and remembering the information, so next time you want to claim it can't be done, make sure you're not talking to someone who can.

If you're really a person who can do this, PLEASE volunteer for one of these studies, so we actually have some reliable evidence. Because basically every previous study on this stuff says comprehension goes significantly down as reading speed goes up.

Quite a few studies have shown this (some articles summarizing findings here, here, here, here), and the only ones that seem to ever disagree are those designed by the speed-reading course or software people. Even for professional high-volume readers and people who performed well in generic speed-reading tests showed a maximum of about 75% comprehension at 600 words/minute.

And there are loads of cognitive science studies that demonstrate why this must be so. Lots of research on eye movements during reading and the maximum possible speed they can take things in, the way our retinas work and focus, cognitive constraints on the extent and speed of our "working memory," etc.

By the time you get to your claimed speed of 1000 words/minute, I sincerely doubt you're getting anywhere close to 50% comprehension. Therefore, what you're doing is skimming, not reading.

There's nothing wrong with skimming. it's an incredibly useful skill which I really picked up in graduate school. I have used it all the time when teaching and (when preparing for class) needing to re-read an article I haven't looked at in a long time (and don't really remember) or a new article dealing with a subject I'm already familiar with. I can certainly skim at 1000 words/minute and be prepared to discuss a lot of important points of an article, but if a student queries me on something very specific, I guarantee that we'll have to slow down, I'll go back, and take a look at that specific passage. When you're already fairly familiar with the field or kind of material, you can often zoom on essential elements fairly quickly, and your comprehension rate gets higher -- but you're still not reading. And if you were reading something outside of your discipline, the comprehension would go WAY down at such speeds.

So -- sorry, but your claims to read at that speed and retain information have been debunked by many studies along with many other supporting cognitive science studies that basically show why it can't work.

If indeed you are some person with a freakish skill that you can demonstrate under controlled conditions, please volunteer for a study. Otherwise, I (and any other reasonable person here) should assume that what you're actually doing at 1000 words/minute is skimming, and you're probably only getting a small fraction of the total information.

I'm fully capable of reading at 1000+ words / minute and remembering the information, so next time you want to claim it can't be done, make sure you're not talking to someone who can.

If you're really a person who can do this, PLEASE volunteer for one of these studies, so we actually have some reliable evidence. Because basically every previous study on this stuff says comprehension goes significantly down as reading speed goes up.

Quite a few studies have shown this (some articles summarizing findings here, here, here, here), and the only ones that seem to ever disagree are those designed by the speed-reading course or software people. Even for professional high-volume readers and people who performed well in generic speed-reading tests showed a maximum of about 75% comprehension at 600 words/minute.

And there are loads of cognitive science studies that demonstrate why this must be so. Lots of research on eye movements during reading and the maximum possible speed they can take things in, the way our retinas work and focus, cognitive constraints on the extent and speed of our "working memory," etc.

By the time you get to your claimed speed of 1000 words/minute, I sincerely doubt you're getting anywhere close to 50% comprehension. Therefore, what you're doing is skimming, not reading.

There's nothing wrong with skimming. it's an incredibly useful skill which I really picked up in graduate school. I have used it all the time when teaching and (when preparing for class) needing to re-read an article I haven't looked at in a long time (and don't really remember) or a new article dealing with a subject I'm already familiar with. I can certainly skim at 1000 words/minute and be prepared to discuss a lot of important points of an article, but if a student queries me on something very specific, I guarantee that we'll have to slow down, I'll go back, and take a look at that specific passage. When you're already fairly familiar with the field or kind of material, you can often zoom on essential elements fairly quickly, and your comprehension rate gets higher -- but you're still not reading. And if you were reading something outside of your discipline, the comprehension would go WAY down at such speeds.

So -- sorry, but your claims to read at that speed and retain information have been debunked by many studies along with many other supporting cognitive science studies that basically show why it can't work.

If indeed you are some person with a freakish skill that you can demonstrate under controlled conditions, please volunteer for a study. Otherwise, I (and any other reasonable person here) should assume that what you're actually doing at 1000 words/minute is skimming, and you're probably only getting a small fraction of the total information.

What a bunch of AOAs (arrogant, obnoxious a-holes). They like to think they're smarter than everyone else, so they don't have to obey the laws that mere mortals have to obey.

Here they're messing up a hospital. In 2012, they posted the wrong address of the guy that tormented Amanda Todd.

Nice going, Anonymous.

I heard about it on the radio a couple of weeks ago. This case is an absolutely appalling abuse of power.

I did some Googling on this case in since I hadn't yet heard about it. Found this article:
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

If it's true that the parents shopped around for doctors to perform surgeries, and had extreme surgeries carried out around mitochondrial disease with no diagnostic based diagnosis that raises a ton of red flags.

If you're going to make your kid get a stomach shunt, you'd at least want to run a few tests first, no? It seems reasonable that the doctors would want to separate the child from her parents if they thought they were unreasonably subjecting their daughter to medical procedures. Worst case: Childrens runs the diagnostics that should have been run in the first place, finds evidence of mitochondrial disease, gives the child back, and there is no harm done. If the doctors are right? Then a child's health may have been destroyed for no reason.

Here is the story:

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

If you believe "the FBI and its team of psychiatrists and psychologists," Columbine was not a reaction to bullying.
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Probably the same thing that spurs paranoia about automated taxes today. The government knows enough about us that they could easily auto-file/fill our forms every year but people are afraid of admitting how much is known about us.

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

quote: the nonprofit Texas EquuSearch regarding its use of drones for volunteer search-and-rescue efforts. (We’ve featured Schulman before for his defense of Raphael “Trappy” Pirker, a drone pilot who was fined $10,000 by the FAA.) Shulman elaborates on the humanitarian use of civilian drones here in the United States. Texas EquuSearch has used civilian drones in its efforts since 2005. In fact, says Schulman, EquuSearch believes drones to be the “single most useful technology that the organization has ever used.” link: http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

There is such a thing as a safe nuclear plant, LFTR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L..., a type of reactor that is walk-away safe. No active safety systems, nothing to power to keep the plant safe, you can walk away from it and it will never melt-down. It doesn't even use the same family of fissile material.

Germany is not the top PV anything anymore: http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

as for storing PV-generated power, good luck with that: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the...

The real problem and that 90% of the people pushing alternatives like PV and such is that they don't understand that scale at which humanity consumes energy. The land needs to build enough PV are staggering, a 1MW facility requires about 7.9 acres of land, not much until you consider that most nukes produce 1200MW on about 100 acres, you would need 9480 acres to get the same capability. The amount of land needed to displace fossil fuel consumption is staggering. Solar PV is fine for your rooftop to help offset grid costs to your household, but it can not scale to satisfy the needs of the world, at least not at the ~9% efficiency they currently have, maybe at 75% or more but not now.

With cheap abundant clean electrical energy you can generate liquid fuels from the carbon in the atmosphere, the best way to get that kind of load is nuclear and the best nuke we currently have is LFTR. The key is displacing fossil fuel use with something that can maintain and grow with our current consumption. PV is not going to cut it.

Back in 2008 when Israel attacked Israel because of foolish Hezbollah misadventures, Condoleezza famously said:

What we're seeing here is, in a sense, the growingâ"the birth pangs of a new Middle East, and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East.

Here is the source.

To this day, the words "New Middle East" is believed by a vast majority over there as a USA conspiracy against Arabs/Muslims. When the 2011 revolution broke out, the first explanation by many was : "It is the USA conspiring against Mubarak, Egypt, Arabs, ...etc."

Now both sides of the political divide in Egypt (pro-Military, pro-Muslim-Brotherhood) point to the other party as an accomplice or agent for that conspiracy.

It is so powerful and pervasive .. no thanks to that ideologue of a Condy ...

First off the wage gap myth is exactly that, it's been debunked a dozen times over:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/th...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/re...
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Second off women are NOT overwhelmingly the victims of domestic violence, they are in fact more likely to be the PERPETRATOR of non-reciprocal violence than men, excerpted from an article on the subject:

"in nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70 percent of the cases," and men incurred significant injuries ('http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/15/31-a') ('http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/97/5/941').

"In addition to the CDC data, a recent 32-nation study by the University of New Hampshire found women commit half of all partner violence and are just as controlling as men ('http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2006/may/em_060519male.cfm?type=n') ('http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID41E2.pdf').

A University of Florida study recently found women are more likely than men to "stalk, attack and abuse" their partners ('http://news.ufl.edu/2006/07/13/women-attackers/').
The University of Washington recently found similar results ('http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070625111433.htm').

In fact, although men are less likely to report the violence - which distorts crime data, virtually all randomized sociological surveys show women initiate domestic violence as often as men and use weapons more than men, that men suffer one-third of injuries, and that self-defense explains only a small portion of domestic violence by either sex. Professor Martin Fiebert of California State University summarizes this data in an online bibliography at ('http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm').

A recent study in the Journal of Family Violence found many male callers to a national hotline experienced severe violence from female partners who used violence to control them ('http://www.springerlink.com/content/a7q0032j88817218/fulltext.pdf').

A University of Pennsylvania emergency room report found 13 percent of men were assaulted by a female partner in the previous 12 months, 37 percent with a weapon, and 14 percent required medical attention ('http://www.aemj.org/cgi/content/abstract/6/8/786').

Everything Colbert says is double dipped in sarcasm. None of it should be taken at face value...

I previously was a Colbert fan, and I fully understand his style of humor and method of message. In this case, I tried hard to find a way to extortionate Colbert, but he provides nothing. It is possible to distill the seriousness from the fake-seriousness in what Colbert says, and Colbert is seriously taking an anti-Snowden position.

Colbert also states (by joking on the square) that his opinion is for sale. "...my conscience is clear, as long as the check clears."

If you have something that indicates otherwise, you may post.

No cutting off power and your locator is the first step in a fire.

That article is as stupid as you are.

MANY real pilots debunked that article, I knew that's where you got your stupid idea from. How can people lack common sense to this degree? It mystifies me.

While H.265 is practically required for 2160p/4k video because it uses about half the bandwidth of H.264, Netflix for example will also save a lot of money in bandwidth costs by converting its library of HD and SD video to H.265.

They have pretty damned good reasons to be upset. Even I have sympathy for them.

The problem with that logic is everybody has pretty damned good reasons to be upset. If you have sympathy for Muslim terrorists then surely you sympathize with people who commit hate crimes against Muslims. After all, think of their world-view, wherein for their whole lives they've seen acts of terrorism against their countries in the name of the Muslim religion.

What exactly do you think a 15-25 year old from Afghanistan has for a world view.

The 15-25 year old Muslims living in 3rd world countries like you're talking about don't have the means or motivation to attack the West. Many of these 3rd world terrorists are bought and paid for as young children and brainwashed to be used as weapons. If you want to read something heart wrenching, look into the stories of the Mumbai attackers from a few years ago. These guys, who genuinely deserve pity (though they still need to be put down.. they are thoroughly broken and cannot be fixed), are not well liked by Muslims unless they carry out their attacks on non-Muslim targets (e.g. India, Kashmir, Southern Nigeria, etc). There is very little support among Muslims for terrorists attacking other Muslims. They are not at all the same as the terrorists in the polls I mentioned, which were about Muslim terrorists attacking the West. I guess you have not heard about these polls.

The Western Muslim terrorists are pretty much the opposite of what you appear to think. They are often university students or graduates. They often have engineering degrees. They often come from wealth and well-connected families.

Do you honestly have sympathy/empathy for, say, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the Underwear Bomber), who was the son of the "former Chairman of First Bank of Nigeria and former Nigerian Federal Commissioner for Economic Development" described as "one of the richest men in Africa" ? What is it about his situation that evokes sympathy in you?

Or more to the point of the article, look at the Tsarnaev brothers. They came here as refugees and were welcomed, given a new life. The younger brother was a student in a US university. He was a citizen. The older brother married an American girl who converted to Islam on his behalf.

I mean... you must be insane to think these guys were somehow forced into terrorism by the unfairness of the world. They were given opportunities on a silver platter. Even their own uncle called them losers and said they brought shame to their family and community. But YOU have sympathy for them? Why?

Forgive the self reply, but I just remembered that this is why everything sucks on TV / cable / streaming.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/low_concept/2014/03/john_travolta_called_idina_menzel_adele_dazeem_what_s_your_travolta_name.html

There's a web-page that can mangle names like what John Travolta did to Idina Menzel by calling her "Adele Dazeem" at the Oscars.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev comes out as Tristan Thompseen
Tamerlan Tsarnayev comes out as Tristan Thozomas

It's not about whether the game is fixed or not, it's about the business's management decisions. Lots of people won't buy EA games, for example, regardless of the quality of the title itself, because of the business's conduct in the past. The simple act of shipping a fixed game doesn't equate to the necessary cultural shift from the developer that would merit returning to the game. It's not as if they've gotten rid of Bobby Kotick as the head of Activision Blizzard, or said they'd commit to a long-term fan-driven model across their titles. It's essentially a boycott.

On top of that, we're talking about rewarding them with more money for what is, at its heart, an old product with some refreshes. Expansion packs and other forms of non-free DLC are only really effective at drawing in consumers when the base product has something the player wants to continue. Many people (myself included) got sick of the repetitive, imbalanced structure of the game a year and a half ago, when it first came out, and we have no desire to relive those memories or anything tightly associated with them. D3 had a breathtakingly uncompelling story; the adventure RPG equivalent of a cookie-cutter save-the-cat blockbuster, only without any character development whatsoever. (Unless you can think of a game with a lamer ending cutscene?) Even without the auction house, crazy elite monsters, terrible loot rates, failure to learn from competitors and clones like the Torchlight and Dungeon Siege series, the total lack of character personalization, and the extensive balance issues, I think the exploitative, sequelitis-infested anti-plot would be enough to keep people away from any continuation of the franchise.

[...]made open threats against the west, repeatedly defied the United Nations, refused nuclear weapon inspections, and ultimately defied UN resolution 1441.

You realise that if you change "West" with "Iran" and make "resolution 1441" into "a bunch of UN resolutions" you get a description fitting Israel, right? And if you change "West" with "India" it becomes Pakistan? With "South Korea" it becomes North Korea? With "Taiwan" the PRC (well not the UN part since they have veto right)? The world is full of militaristic nations threatening neighbours and defying UN resolutions. Cannot see any invasions there, possibly because these countries are either allies, or pose a credible military challenge, or are not sitting on a bunch of oil.

This is why Iraq was invaded by a coalition made of mostly the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, Poland, Portugal, and Denmark with 33 other countries providing some form of troop support.

You are either disingenuous or a complete fool. Iraq was invaded because it was an easy prey, rich in oil resources and with a nonexistent defense capacity. Generals could be bribed off the field. It was an overwhelmingly US operation, with some support from a subservient UK, and only nominal support from a bunch of countries thrown in only for the effect of inflating the number you quoted. Some of these countries did not even have an army (Iceland, Palau, Micronesia, Solomon Islands), others were countries looking to appease the US (most Eastern European countries) or failed states whose leaders could be bought (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan).

The casus belli was that Saddam Hussein was manufacturing WMDs for Al-Quaeda; at least according to Colin Powell. That was a big, fat lie by the US. It was even less credible of a Polish invasion of Germany in 1939 (at least Poland had an army: Saddam Hussein had neither WMDs nor Al-Qaeda), and the execution of the invasion was a textbook war of aggression, the punishment for which in Nuremberg was death by hanging.

SoA bitching about Google

Google bitching about copyright

Apple bitching about Samsung

Microsoft and Google bitching about each other

Sprint ripping off the warrantless surveillance program

University of Phoenix poisoning the student loan program

The Koch brothers and friends are always bitching about the bottom 90% having a sense of entitlement for wanting to be able to afford health insurance when they work full time. I'm a lot more sick of the rich and their sense of entitlement to be a little richer, often with a little government intervention needed to get them there.

This article suggests packed dirt would be OK. http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut... I wonder if the problem would be for continuous use rather than a one time thing? Looks like the landing gear are mounted in the fuselage which is 20 ft wide, so a two lane road with shoulders might work with care. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

Slate is suggesting a circuitous path to near Kyrgyzstan. http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

When anyone tries to claim that the other news networks are just as bad as Fox News, it's always good to pull out the fact that the viewers of Fox News are the worst informed people there are. Worse informed even than people who don't watch news at all. That's either the degree to which Fox News pundits are misleading people. Or simply a comment on how ignorant you have to be to watch them.

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

A rich person might have taken your job away, and sent it to India or China.

The top 1% made about 24% of the income. http://www.slate.com/articles/...

So it's totally appropriate for them to pay 37% of the taxes (if they did -- I don't know if those figures don't include FICA payments, which conservatives sometimes exclude from the definition of "tax").

Paul Krugman has explained why income inequality is bad for everybody. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03... Those American billionaires could get along perfectly well at Swedish levels of taxes, and the rest of us would be much better off. It's actually bad for everyone to have 20% or 40% of the population in poverty.

You might want to check your percentages:
1) deaths by gunfire in US in 2013: > 12000
2) gun owners: roughly 20% of US population, i.e. roughly 60 Million people

Therefore the fraction of irresponsible gun owners in 2013 is around 12 000 / 60 Mill = 0.02%. This is an order of magnitude more than you claimed. The number is certainly not negligibly small as you seemed to try to suggest.

The number is going to shrink a little if one factors in events were several people were killed, but then 12000 is a lower bound to begin with. Taking into account the duration of gun ownership (it doesn't matter whether the killing happens in the first or the twentieth year of ownership) and non-lethal encounters (also irresponsible), we're almost certain to gain another order of magnitude.

restricting the rights of the 99.999% of the people who did nothing wrong.

You might want to check your percentages. More than 12000 people died due to gunfire in 2013. Roughly 20% of americans own guns, i.e. some 60 Million. I.e. the fraction of gun owners abusing their guns: roughly 12000 / 60 Mill = 2e-4 = 0.02%, which is an order of magnitude more than you claimed.

The prize was bogus to begin with, as explained in this Slate article from 2008. In short, it wouldn't be paid out unless the contestant was selling a ton of the stuff in stores and restaurants across 10 states over three months... at the same price as real chicken.

Science prizes are supposed to encourage development of things not yet commercially viable; this was a phony small tip for someone already successful. "Phony", because even if someone had the breakthrough needed on the day after this was announced, there's no way in hell that it could be approved for use and on market shelves in time to meet even the extended deadline.

And then there were the contest requirements, including full disclosure of ingredients and methods (trade secrets), carte blanche use of any- and everything related for PeTA's promotional purposes, rules subject to change without notice, and so on.

This was never a serious offer, just serious marketing, something PeTA mastered long ago. This "prize" retraction just got them some more free air time and, no doubt, some new members & donations... saith an older and hopefully wiser former member & supporter.

If you throw away e-waste, it ends up in a domestic landfill at the worst, recycled in a domestic processing plant at best.

http://www.bloombergview.com/a...

It's actually the used computer equipment that gets sold to the third world that ends up in places like Africa. They do actually end up using most of it, until it either breaks or they find something better, and NOBODY buys their used stuff, so THAT stuff ends up in these photographs you are seeing here. The only way WE can prevent that is to completely deny the third world access to technology, which I don't think is an ideal situation.

But basically this is unwarranted environmental alarmism, exactly like the imagined (and never realized, and never will be realized) threat of so called overflowing landfills:

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

The minimum wage has been raised lots of times and it's never caused higher unemployment.

Idiot. Even most leftists know better than that.

The focus of prisons (from my limited observation) is rarely to rehabilitate.

In the United States, the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 explicitly states that imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation. In other words, according to both Congress and the Supreme Court, prison is useless for rehabilitation, and judges are legally barred from considering prison as a rehabilitative measure. Our official incarceration policy exists solely to punish behavior, never to correct it or prevent future crimes. This has always seemed to me like the keystone of the "Reagan Revolution", with Ted Kennedy and Ronald Reagan allying to fundamentally derail the American Dream of an optimally free society, so it seems very appropriate that it was passed in 1984.

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