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Wouldn't surprise me. There was an article on Slate about scentific research on whether being spayed/neuered affects animals' happiness.

One of the happiness measurement tests on mice is to hold it by the end of its tail and measure how long it takes to stop squirming. (The happier they are, the longer before they give up.)

Now, I don't know the net impact that neutering has on a pet's happiness ... but I'm pretty sure they don't like being held by their tails until they give up...

The reporters also calculated that recipient banks and other borrowers benefited by approximately $13 billion simply by taking advantage of the “spread” between their cost of capital in these almost interest-free loans and their ability to lend the capital.

The banks got loans from the Fed totaling $7.7 Trillion at 0.01% interest, loaned or - and here's the kicker - invested a lot of it back into in Treasury Bills, either at a higher interest rate than the secret loans. In the cases where money was invested in T-Bills, the US government was (or the taxpayers were) effectively paying interest - to the banks - on the loans they made to the banks.... <foreheadsmack>

Our landfills are not in any way "filling up quickly" or "running out".

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_lantern/2011/02/go_west_garbage_can.single.html :
"Analysts from the Environmental Protection Agency and the landfill industry assure us that, despite having fewer landfills, total capacity has increased. That is, landfills are getting bigger, on average, faster than their brethren have disappeared."

Where this myth started:
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/01/13/freakonomics-radio-the-economics-of-trash/

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2003/04/the_poetry_of_dh_rumsfeld.single.html

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Did you just post that as flamebait or have you had your head in the sand for 20 years ?

Just to refresh your memory

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/2/newsid_2526000/2526937.stm

Iraq invades kuwait.

https://www.google.com/search?q=north+korea+missile+test&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

North Korea's missile tests.

and just in case

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2003/05/what_kind_of_terrorism_does_north_korea_sponsor.html

Just some examples of No Ko's terrorist activities.

Now in case you missed it there was also this large country called China, that is forcibly occupying Tibet ? Continuously making moves to threaten Taiwan and backs the nucking futs regime in North Korea.

Also in case you missed it, there is this other large county called Russia. That views the former Soviet Socialist Republics as pieces that belong back in the puzzle that is mother Russia. They aren't above poisoning leaders of these countries, reporters that point out that they are up to no good, and anyone else that happens to be nearby.

And yet they sometimes do hand out verdicts that might as well be random. Just look at the Bush v. Gore decision where they decided that one man one vote meant that enough votes were left untallied to effectively hand the election to Bush because they were concerned that too much attention was being paid to those particular ballots.

Or Connick v. Thompson where despite Connick's own admission that the prosecutor's office failed to turn over all of the evidence to the defense that there wasn't a Brady violation. And despite Connick's own admission that he had failed to train his staff as to what would constitute a Brady violation.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2011/04/cruel_but_not_unusual.html

According to Slate, professional assassins are basically a Hollywood myth.

He very well may be.

I think a better model is presented here. Basically, each time a patent is granted, an auction is held (more specifically, a third-bid auction). 90% of the time, the state buys the patent for the price found at the auction and puts it in the public domain. 10% of the time, the entity who won the auction buys it. Either way, the inventor is given what the market thinks the patent is worth (he can of course bid at the auction, so if the market values the patent at less than the inventor, he will get it 10% of the time). That way, we get 90% less patent monopolies, but inventors get rewarded non-arbitrarily.

I mentioned to friends of mine who were new parents of twins and had discovered "Baby Einstein" that I didn't think television was a good thing for early developing minds. Specifically, I was concerned with 3D perception developing from looking at a 2D screen.

  This was where I learned to be very careful commenting on others child rearing decisions.

  I guess I really stepped over the line when I wondered about the possible correlation of TV's in households to Autism...

A quick search brings up more than speculation.. here's a 2006 Slate article that begins in the same place I did.. with speculation:
TV might really cause Autism

Corporations shouldn't be taxed, period. Money that comes OUT of that corporation through stock dividends and wages and bonuses and perks should be taxed. And that should all be taxed as plain old income, not special kinds of income like "capital gains" that has lower rates to compensate for corporate taxes already taken out.

Which more or less ignores the fact that the old-timey notion of paying a stock dividend which even approaches net corporate profits gave its death rattle in the 1990s and has not come back despite record corporate profits.

Instead, corporations choose to amass extremely large liquid asset positions for purposes that are questionable even by modern business standards.

Yet you propose to eliminate taxes on corporate profits while increasing taxes on corporate dividends and long term capital gaings (note: capital gains are irrelevant unless attributable to a stock buy-back, since other stock appreciation is merely an increase in the price that another buyer is willing to pay a seller). That would tend to silo even more wealth into the de facto treasuries that have grown up in the 90s and 00s, as opposed to directing wealth into the hands of individuals (the beneficiaries of the funds typically holding stock) and, partially, the government.

I'm reasonably certain that corporations benefit from and directly use government services. There is no philosophical reason why a corporation that is earning a long term average profit should not be subject to taxation in order to pay for those benefits and services, yet natural persons earning non-trivial incomes should. The "fair share" argument has very little to do with anthropomorphisis, and quite a bit more to do with a sense that the seemingly accelerating trend of externalizing the corporate share of the costs of running our society cannot continue.

What you're advocating is that "everything" (yes, not literally everything) be paid for by personal income taxes or consumption taxes as opposed to personal income taxes, corporate taxes, and sales taxes. What you're failing to consider is the effect on investment and wealth distribution. Point to a non-trivial nation that has implemented anything close to what you're advocating and look at the effects on that society. Note that the tax havens that spring to my mind, like Bermuda, are trivial nations in the sense that the corporate revenue that is being complained of is more or less disconnected from acutal corporate economic activity in that nation.

The $1 billion cost from pharma R&D has been questioned.

Even if it were true, pharma can easily make that in the patent life of the drug. Let alone the derivatives that they will patent after it.

Or did you think we like to support backwards misogynist despots because they're just like us?

I think it's because their hands are so soft

Flat-out wrong. Two spaces after a period only if you're using an actual, physical typewriter or a monospaced font.

Not really. If you're using typography software (which is the perspective from which your slate.com article is arguing) then using one space is absolutely correct. However, that's only because tyopgraphy software automatically inserts the correct extra space after a period. Have a play with LaTeX sometime, you might be surprised.

For everything else, it's two spaces if you want your stuff to be fully readable. That's your call, of course, and a slightly subjective argument. But if you're arguing from a typography perspective (as slate.com was) then it's the correct one.

To be fair, two spaces after a sentence close is normal

Flat-out wrong. Two spaces after a period only if you're using an actual, physical typewriter or a monospaced font.

Meh, I'll toss in a token 'get over yourself, kid' for all of us grumpy oldsters that were taught to touch-type with 2 spaces after each sentence (. or ? or !). Doublespacing periods isn't a sin. It's not 'flat out wrong'. It's an innocuous habit I still have due to decades of typing and an edge case: I go back and forth between monospace code and publishable material like this post. I could do a lot worse. For starters, I could be a grammar nazi while (squints at screen) typing 2 sentence fragments and a -- sweet web-formatting jesus, did you really use just 12 words to anchor a link while telling us 2 *INVISIBLE* spaces is bad juju?! Get the Hell. Off. My. Lawn.

tl;dr: parent = grammar nazi post that has mistakes. There ought to be a meme for this...

Flat-out wrong. Two spaces after a period only if you're using an actual, physical typewriter or a monospaced font.

What's odd in this case is there there's so little respect for science and the scientists that do it.

The first clue would be that less than 40% of Americans believe in 'the natural selection of the species' (a.k.a. evolution). If people reject something that is so widely accepted in the scientific community, it isn't surprising that they will willingly choose to ignore scientists in other areas when it suites them. Especially if the people they elect (e.g. George W. Bush) are proud of the fact that they are uninformed or selective in what they want to hear.

Completely off-topic, but apparently it's almost impossible to join the mile high club in the US anymore after 9/11 slate has more info. If we cannot have sex on airplanes, than the terrorists have already won.

We're supposed to believe that you've purchased 1200 servers, 2400 six core CPUs and all the associated hardware without deciding basic things like how you're going to connect it all or what distribution you're going to use?

Sounds like they got some of that 75 billion dollars per year of anti-terrorism money.
Even though he's dead, Osama still knows how to make it rain!!

In every case I have heard so far, all computers and removable media and USB drives in the residence were confiscated and searched at a government facility.

Personally I have no issue with that when it comes to child porn.

Given what falls under the definition of CP, you bloody well should have.

Consider the following fragment of (bad) prose: "... then I took of her blouse and started playing with her nipples. She had amazing tits for someone 41 years old".

Nothing special, right? Crap like this can be found in paperbacks available in book-stores and public libraries, PG-13 movies, what have you. BUT, reverse the digit order and suddenly just writing a couple of sentences becomes a crime of the highest degree, punishable by ruining the person's life forever.

Think that can never happen? Well, it does in Australia, Ontario, Ohio, etc.

Hell, even federal judges have an issue with the fact that mandatory sentences for possessing CP are harsher than those given to actual child abusers.

So, if I happen to meet you and hear that, in the course of your jury duty, you helped put away a child molester, I will happily treat you to a beverage of your choice. However, if you were instrumental in ruining the life of somebody whose only crime was committing his fantasies to paper, the tone of the conversation will be very different.

I'm not sure you're thinking in the right direction. I personally can't STAND it when I get linked to a site and I get redirected to a mobile site and lose the link. Or the mobile site is severely functionally limited in comparison with the normal site. Or the "back" button doesn't work properly on mobile sites. Or the viewport is set so that I can't zoom in. This covers almost all the "mobile" sites out there. I almost always try to just browse on the regular site, but zealous webmasters often don't make that easy. Why on earth would I want to view a WAP page?! By ActionScript I assume you mean Flash? Over than really terrible restaurant websites, I don't miss Flash.

And yes, the iPhone does support MMS and has for ... 2 years? 1.5 years? Sure they lagged in support, but it seems a strange criticism today.

While it is true, penetrative anal sex, while the most transmissible sexual route, is still not all that likely. The highest studies put it at 1.7%, for unprotected receptive anal exposures. So, even if you are in that demographic, it is still pretty slim when you figure the transmission rate and the number of infected people.

Of course, as we all know, AIDS is natures punishment for our toleration of unnatural sexual practices...specifically...monogamy

Another way you can potentially safe fuel is by turning off the engine at red lights.

http://www.slate.com/id/2192187/

The technology on the Prius that this article mentions seems interesting (automatically putting the engine in a sort of standby mode where you just have to push the gas pedal to start it again)

The teaparty is the ONLY thing standing between this country remaining the USA or becoming the USSA..

Please tell me you are joking.... The very same tea party where 70% oppose Medicare cuts and want the "gubmit to stay out of my Medicare!"? That group of idiots?

You FUCKING Liberals think EVERYTHING is the fault of the Conservatives.. Well let me tell you, the last few "conservative" administrations were no more conservative than Josep Stalin was..

Yes. We didn't start becoming a debtor nation until Reagan took the reigns. Last time I checked, Reagan is held in wide regards by Conservatives.

The last truly conservative administration we've had was Reagan..

Yes, and he piled up $2 trillion in national debt during his terms. Oh lawdy!!!

You assume that equality is tax payment was the intent of the amendment to the constitution which enabled incomes to be collected to begin with, which is just not true. Look at the tax rates from inception of income tax to now. It has ALWAYS been graduated.

WW II was primarily paid for by rich people. The tax rates went through the roof during that time. What happened to taxes during the last 2 wars? they went DOWN. Of course debt was going to skyrocket!!

Lastly, you assume that high taxes on the rich hurts GDP. This is also not true

http://www.slate.com/id/2245781/

Typical Tea Party idiocy.

The Treasury Department can prioritize payments in order to avoid a default

Which means that seniors, people on medicare assistance due to crippling injuries or congenital disorders, and the military would then NOT GET their checks.

In addition, the Treasury could sell some of its assets in order to pay the bills.

Which assets, pray tell? And what do we do when the question of use of those assets comes up later? You sound like one of those "privatize the public parks and turn them all into Six Flags or Casino properties" fucktards.

There are approximately $2.6 trillion dollars in the Social Security Trust Fund; those assets can be used to pay benefits.

And once we do that, the Social Security trust fund ceases to generate revenue returns, because most of the "trust fund" is actually backing a number of other investments and GENERATING INTEREST.

Furthermore, there is already trillions of dollars of interagency debt that counts toward the $14.29 trillion debt limit. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner could convert that inter-agency debt into publicly-held debt, preventing not only a technical default but also preventing any delay in government payments. While the Treasury cannot use money from the Social Security Trust Fund, it can “disinvest” from other trust funds to pay for benefits. The Treasury Department could also make cash available from the trust fund by “disinvesting” some of the money used to buy government bonds. The disinvesting approach is a temporary accounting device that would help maintain the Treasury’s cash flow.

In other words, you think playing shell games, the equivalent of paying this month's Mastercard bill with a cash advance from Discover Card, is a good idea?

FUCKTARD.

In other words, the debt ceiling being reached will have little affect on seniors, poor people, veterans, military + their families. Also, if I'm not mistaken, Republicans also offered to raise the debt limit as long as the Cut, Cap, and Balance bill was passed, and it is the president who is failing to compromise with them and is waging a mostly emotional political fight that has little to no basis on facts at the expense of not coming to an agreement in time.

You're a fucking fool. The "Cut, Cap, and Balance" bill is one step shy of this level of dishonestycome out of the Tea Party crowd lately.

Also, for god's sake, learn the difference between "effect" and "affect" please. I swear, you Republicans should learn to get beyond your 2nd-grade-equivalent "high school diplomas" with the school administrator's name scrawled in crayon.

No idea if he's actually the one that came up with this idea (and I generally don't like his writing), but I am surprised no one has mentioned the approach that Farhad Manjoo outlines in this Slate article. Basically, you come up with a phrase about each website/system and then type the acronym for that phrase. For example, for Bank of America, "I can't believe that quote from the head of the subprime mortgage division" becomes Icbt"fthotsmd.

It doesn't generate the most secure passwords possible (it's hard to come up with phrases that use symbols or multiple capitalized words), but its a pretty good way to create (and remember!) a unique password for each system.

As an aside, I am still flabbergasted that Citibank's student loan system will not let you have a password longer than eight characters. It occurs to me every time I login.

No credible geneticist believes that mental performance is tied to race.

This statement is particularly ironic because one of the fathers of modern genetics, James Watson, is a notorious racist.

http://www.slate.com/id/2176709/

Extremely poor example. Israeli airport security has no full body scanners or full pat downs. In fact i'm sure the head guy there said that the way america does airport security is all wrong.

http://www.slate.com/id/2279753/
 

I've had the same experience; CFLs in the real world (unheated garage, high frequency operation in hallways, etc.) don't live longer than incandescent lights. They're in the landfill just like 99% of all dead CFLs; on the way to the water table.

LEDs may be the answer. The 'glass orb filled with a cooling agent' part is creepy, but as long as it's passive, never leaks and not mercury it may be tolerable. The LEDs themselves are simple solid state devices that should be inherently robust. Better than fluorescing heavy metals, anyhow.

Except that Tina Fey on Sat Night Live actually said it, not Palin.

Palin actually said that Russia can been seen from one of the islands off Alaska, which is true.

Slate even said so: http://www.slate.com/id/2200155/

because the current accepted theory in law is that it does.

That would be wrong: http://www.slate.com/id/2152487/

So I have read through a lot of the decision, and I have come out of it with some video game "recommendations" from the Supreme Court:

Not Safe For Work, most likely:

15 Lah, “RapeLay” Video Game Goes Viral Amid Outrage, CNN (Mar. 30, 2010), http://articles.cnn.com/2010-03-30/world/japan.video. game.rape_1_game-teenage-girl-japanese-government?_s=PM:WORLD.
16 Graham, Custer May be Shot Down Again in a Battle of the Sexes Over X-Rated Video Games, People, Nov. 15, 1982, pp. 110, 115.
17 Scheeres, Games Elevate Hate to Next Level, Wired (Feb. 20, 2002), http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2002/02/50523.
18 Thompson, A View to a Kill: JFK Reloaded is Just Plain Creepy, Slate (Nov. 22, 2004), http://www.slate.com/id/2110034

Have fun!

>>Notice the data nodes at the year "2011"?

Did our tax rates suddenly change from 2008 to 2011, or did our economy collapse?

In fact, you see a high point in our tax rate by GDP in the mid 2000s, which took place after GWB's tax cuts to the rich - wait, what, tax revenues went up?

>>The chart that you have provided us shows that the federal government is NOT taking in enough money.

Right (if you put in terms of how much they want to spend), but neither are corporations or people. That's why it's called a depr^h^h^h^hrecession.

The point you're missing is that the tax revenues per GDP stay amazingly stable no matter what the tax rate is.

>>If you go back to WWII, you'll find that whenever the tax rate on the top income groups goes above 50%, we have dropping unemployment, greater growth of GDP

Let's test your theory.

From a liberal source: http://img.slate.com/media/86/marginalGrowth.jpg

There again doesn't seem to be any correlation between the highest marginal tax rate and GDP growth. And if you're suggesting returning to the 91% marginal tax rate, you have to remember to reintroduce all the loopholes that made people pay roughly the same taxes as they do today.

http://www.slate.com/id/2295724/

logic is trumping tradition.
 
welcome to the future.

At least not explicitly. They both live on the same side of a road that most of us here chose never to cross, but they aren't the same thing.

Also important in this discussion though is the fact that engineers have been implicated as a group as being especially good violent extremists. (Viz. one , two , three , and of course, four.)

Probably also suited to running authoritarian, quasi-market-based state. Just a thought.

It's probably billing him for the temerity to actually take his case to trial.

You know, exercising his constitutional rights. That's something the "justice" system has to punish at all costs.

Here's some info for you.
Here's more.

Or, to put it in a more sinister way: You get a heavier sentence if you insist on asserting your constitutional rights to a trial, to confront your accusers, to privacy from searches without probable cause, to avoid incriminating yourself, etc.

He had no constitutional right to do what he did. Free speech does not apply in the workplace. Well, it does, you are free to exercise it, but there is nothing that precludes the employer for terminating you for do so. Most employees think they have all of these "rights," but they should quit relying on TV shows. In all states, save Oregon (I think), all employees are at will employees and can be let go for no reason whatsoever. The only "rights" that employees have are those actually outlined by law and free speech, as it applies to an employee does not exist, unless it is with regards to certain other protected things (ie. speaking out against illegal discrimination). Union workers may have something in their contracts to preclude this, but otherwise that is the real world situation.

It's probably billing him for the temerity to actually take his case to trial.

You know, exercising his constitutional rights. That's something the "justice" system has to punish at all costs.

Here's some info for you.
Here's more.

Or, to put it in a more sinister way: You get a heavier sentence if you insist on asserting your constitutional rights to a trial, to confront your accusers, to privacy from searches without probable cause, to avoid incriminating yourself, etc.

Bill Clinton talking about what the truth is! I guess it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is... http://www.slate.com/id/1000162/

WaPo copied Dave Weigel at Slate who wrote about this a day earlier.

From TFA: "For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy"

Burson-Marsteller, Burson-Marsteller... Why does that name sound so familiar? Oh yeah. They were slinging anti-Google propaganda for ICOMP (Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace), which (scroll down to the very bottom) is a lobbying arm of Microsoft.

BM has claimed that the smear job for Facebook "was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies", but it seems to me that it's just business as usual for them. The last time they did this, pitching to business executives that time, they also didn't disclose who hired them ("Others suggested that by not disclosing who Burson-Marsteller was representing, the firm was breaking the spirit of political lobby firms' code of conduct.").

Not only that, but BM also hired Eric Schmidt's ex mistress/fiancée, presumably connected with their ongoing anti-Google efforts. And they were behind the National Smokers Alliance campaign back in the mid '90s. Plus, if this post is to be believed, they were also involved with a number of other very dubious organizations (I didn't have time to run them all down, but the ones I did check into seem true).


The whole "Facebook and Google are having a spat" thing isn't really news, but I find it interesting how such a scummy company can be considered "one of the top international PR firms out there". Also, I regret that I didn't find this Slate article until after typing this post. It backs up the list of clients in the forum post above (but in case you don't want to follow either link: the Argentine junta, the Nigerian junta, Union Carbide, Blackwater, and Nicolae Ceausescu are among the undeniably bad/evil ones).

The name of the guy who'll be in charge of decontaminating the TiME Capsule before launch,...

Apparently "John D. Rummel" according to this (admittedly a few years outdated) article:

http://www.slate.com/id/2099222/

The relative difference in net income or net asset value has little practical consequence.

That is some impressively wishful thinking. So, control of resources has no effect on others who might have controlled those resources instead? Note that you are making this claim in the middle of thread about people working more hours than they used to, which sure sounds like an effect.

The question is whether poor people today are better off than poor people historically.

Even if there are more poor people? And as compared to when?

That's not the only question, of course. The growing disparity we've seen in the US over the past 40 years has probably had more impact on the middle class - the poor had no economic power to lose, but the middle class has seen it evaporate.

Income inequality is a complex subject - Timothy Noah at Slate spent 10 days discussing it: http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266026/

Welcome to how the legal system works - justice is not a part of it any more.

The sad part is that this kind of shit pervades even the "criminal justice" side.

Traffic tickets? Compare the cost of "just paying" (or in many states, "taking defensive driving") with the cost of defending yourself - lost hours of work on the days you have to go to court, lost time on paperwork or else lawyer fees to subpoena all the records you'll need, and oh yeah, the possibility that the case judge will be one of those corrupt motherfuckers who insist "the police are always right" because guess what, the judge's salary is paid out of ticket fines too.

I had one once where the police officer was obviously just using "pull someone over" as an excuse to hit on the new female recruit. Sat there and watched as he got everything about my car's info wrong on the ticket except for license plate - make, model, even the number of fucking DOORS - because he was too busy trying to "explain how we do this" while sneaking his hand onto her ass.

Didn't matter, of course. The Prosecutors are corrupt, the Judges are corrupt, the whole system is fucking corrupt and the fines and fees are set "just low enough" that most people will "just pay it" because it works out cheaper to do so.

Oh, and no, it's not just on the low side either. The American "justice" system has gotten the "plea bargain" down to a science - you can "plead guilty" to something you know you didn't do, get "lenience" from the court, OR they can tack on dozens of fucking extraneous charges and run you into the ground so that even if you do manage to convince the jury you're innocent on most of it, chances are they'll get one of the charges through, and you'll be fucking bankrupted by the cost of defending yourself anyways.

Kind of reminds me of Obama's state of the union 2011. The new "sputnik moment may not be that far off... can you say "permanent self-sufficient moonbase", and maybe with a good deal of ingenuity and ambition a dockyard for deep space exploration using moon resources?

If they actually manage to pull such a feat despite naysayers just watch the US struggle to catch up.

Old news, but personal power generation has been around for quite a while.
See http://www.slate.com/id/2193827/

You forgot another consequence, when the feds poisoned alcohol to make people think it was more dangerous, and killed its own citizens as a result: http://www.slate.com/id/2245188/

Which they tried again in the 1970's by spraying marijuana fields in Mexico with paraquat. Which failed miserably since paraquat sprayed pot isn't really all that poisonous.

The simple fact is that if shenanigans like this are required to convince people the stuff is dangerous, then it's not dangerous enough to justify federal regulation.

You forgot another consequence, when the feds poisoned alcohol to make people think it was more dangerous, and killed its own citizens as a result: http://www.slate.com/id/2245188/

In fact, Larry once sued his own mother, no really: http://www.slate.com/id/2317/

That's an informative story. The guy's completely crazy. No one would take him seriously.

Uh, except maybe Fox News.