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The GOP attempts to suppress illegal voting

Incorrect. The GOP isn't interested in going after illegal absentee voting, even though that's where most fraud occurs.

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

Besides what others have said about AAPS, Gravis Marketing seems to be highly professional at doing polls. Yay!

i get tacos at a great local place and they have a square reader, it reads the mag stripe on my chip and pin without complaint.

as such, i continue to get tacos.

Don't worry, when Trump is elected, those taco places are going to go away.....

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

Only if you ignore all the evidence that says that people actually use cash to improve their lives and not spend it substantially on drugs or alcohol.

If he's saying "energy revolution" he invites you to project "trump is making america use green technologies". But he is proposing exactly the opposite: http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-...

Quoting his press release https://www.donaldjtrump.com/p... , he wants to:

Cancel the Paris Climate Agreement (limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius) and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs.
[...]
Save the coal industry and other industries threatened by Hillary Clinton’s extremist agenda.

And for the coal workers: At one of his rallies in west virginia he has said this:

Let me tell you: the miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, which was so great to me last week and Ohio and all over, they're going to start to work again, believe me. You're going to be proud again to be miners.

I don't know whether it qualifies as "projection" if you are just quoting his words as he says so much, but show me the quote where he said the thing about the new energy system.

The Clinton email scandal has been overhyped. You all know what the top secret info actually was, right? Seven drone strikes that were public knowledge and a conversation with the president of Malawi. If this info had leaked, it might have meant exactly nothing. There was no security risk to the USA.

It is mind-boggling that all of this effort has been spent hyperventilating about the "top secret" emails, and almost no one except Kaplan in his Slate article have bothered to write about the actual information content of the emails.

There are two types of federal campaign limits. Those to candidates and those to political action committees (PACs). Candidates have some limits, but PACs lost those restrictions in the suprime court ruling known as Citizens United. While candidates and PACs can not coordinate, many politicians have their own PACs dedicated to their pet interest. Another pernicious effect of Citizens United is that disclosure rules do not apply to most of these organizations. The truth is we no longer have any idea how money is being dumped into US politics. We do know that the Koch Brothers had planned to spend $899M on the US elections this year, but the republican primary did not turn out to their liking so they be spending a bit less than planned.

Here's the latest evidence that the latest evidence that Russia was behind the DNC hack.

The Universe has been around for 13.8 billion years.

We humans are so cute, thinking we know so much, with such certainty.

Actually, the age of the Universe is 13,820,000,003 years. We figured out that the age was 13.82B, but that was back in 2013, hence the additional 3 years.

So a liberal on MSNBC claims he heard somebody say Trump asked these questions

Joe Scarborough is a liberal??? He was one of Trump's biggest proponents early on in his campaign. He only recently reversed course in May.

Hoo, boy! Another winner! You trying to compete with *That Other Guy's* tossed salad? I have to grant, you're doing a mighty fine job of it. Let us know when you come back to earth, okay?

Putin's no good guy but he's on the right side of the fight against Islamic jihad. I would think he'd want Trump in power because Trump will join with Putin against ISIS, unlike Hillary, who destabilized Syria in the first place by arming the moderate beheaders and seems far more concerned with toppling Assad than beating ISIS.

You are missing the point. Yes, ISIS is bad. Needs to have its ass kicked. But they are not a superpower, and they will never become one. The real conflict - the one for trillions of dollars and global domination - is between the superpowers: the United States, Russia, and China.

Why do these three countries care about what happens in the Middle East? Because there's a fuckton of oil there. Yes, all three superpowers have their own fucktons of oil on their own respective territories -- but if you're a superpower, wouldn't it be nice to have influence over the rest of the oil market too?

So that's what the real battle is about: TPP is our attempt to keep the rest of Asia trading with the US, and not be dependent on China. Ukraine is about Putin's attempt to retake territories and resources formerly held by the USSR before its collapse. And NATO is our attempt to integrate those same territories and resources into the West. Israel and Turkey are our "sorta friendly" airbases. Syria is Russia's "sorta friendly" airbase. The prize in the middle east is control of the oil of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and a shot at Iran's oil. ISIS is merely the excuse the superpowers are using this year.

Putin absolutely wants Trump to win -- not because of Trump's policy on ISIS, but because he knows Trump, having no foreign policy experience of his own, will be easier to influence and manipulate. Especially with folks like Paul Manafort (this guy has a long history of working for dictators, and his last big contract was working for Putin's Yanukovich before the Ukraine blew up) on Trump's team telling Trump exactly what to think.

Geopolitically speaking, this election isn't about Trump vs. Hillary. It's about whether you want US foreign policy to be directed by Americans (however crooked one of them might be) or by the Russians (however strong they might make their voters feel). Given that choice, I'd suggest voting for the crook: it's important.

What a brand can report in public based on its own internal numbers might not be the all that "public".
Other methods, NSL can sway any data reporting. What Country Monitors Communications the Most: U.S., U.K., Canada, or Australia? (July 18 2012)
http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...
..."it is being replaced by more covert, unaccounted forms of surveillance. Favored methods may include social media monitoring or, as National Security Agency whistle-blowers in the United States have alleged, dragnet interception systems that function outside the law."
..."as a single interception request may sometimes include dozens of individual targets."
...."with a single communications data order garnering information on hundreds, even thousands, of individuals"

-the abuse is largely a myth as always has been. the famous "welfare queen" Reagan talked about? a single middle class white woman who was caught and sent to jail. though the image in most conservatives minds is an unmarried black women with a dozen kids (re: racism). in reality, for the reasons state above, she actually isn't like to be receiving any TANF.

Linda Taylor was a white con artist probably posing as more than 80 people who was also into child kidnapping and possibly murder. She has never been convicted of anything if the following internet article can be believed.

Those people have two basic choices- starve to death or steal the money from the rich.

False dilemma. We are importing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants today, because — we are told — we must fill jobs, that Americans, allegedly, "just will not do"... Am I supposed to sympathize with your hypothetical "starving unemployed", who'd rather rob me, than take an honest job, which an illegal immigrant is happy to take?

History has shown us, starving people WILL rob & kill the wealthy to survive.

Has it shown us this? Citations?

But stipulating for a second it has... Your idea is to stave off such murders and robberies by paying off all of the potential robbers in advance? Is that, how you you'd advise all blackmail victims to react?.. What was that about surrendering an important liberty for the sake of temporary security — and losing both and deserving neither?.. Do you recall?

But, fine, since you are — refreshingly as well as commendably — not wrapping yourself in the flag of fake charity, let's discuss the hard cold numbers. Since waging the "War on Poverty" over 50 years ago, we've spent well over $20 trillion tax-dollars (inflation-adjusted) on various poverty-fighting programs. That's well over $400 billion per year on average in today's dollars. We are also losing about $200 billion each year to crime and crime-fighting.

Now, how much of a crime-increase will the complete abolition of the government's anti-poverty efforts cause? Even if it flat-out doubles the crime-rate — thus doubling the crime-related costs — we'll still save about $200 billion every year. But, of course, the crime will not "double" — just as it did not halve, when we started this ill-fated "war". If anything, it increased back then...

Which society do you want to live in?

I want a society, where criminals are harshly prosecuted and the innocents aren't compelled to pay them off, thanks for asking.

JFK's election in 1960. Daley handed Chicago over to Kennedy. On a silver platter.

Hmm. From slate article that one doesn't even seem clear cut, but even if it was, would not the guilty party be a guy and those in his organisation?

I suppose the real question, was there really any evidence of masses of people pretending to be dead people and voting twice? That kind of conspiracy is basically impossible to keep secret. I can buy corrupt officials influencing tallies, and maybe, if they were clever they could use be subtle enough to shift some results without being noticed, but this doesn't really seem to be a problem purging voter rolls is going to fix, although again, purging people that are really dead is fine with me. We just need the controls not to screw it up and of course it shouldn't occur right before an election, but rather right after they actually die.

The vote fraud the concerns me are as follows:
1) First anything that can be done to change the tallies in subtle ways, particularly with voting machines without an audit trail.
2) The hyperpartisan gerrymandering. gerrymandering
3) indirect voting fraud such as conspiring to limit voting machines or purge rolls right before an election, while at the same time making it harder to fix the mess.

but yah, if anyone actually commits voting fraud, I say prosecute them. The actual problem appears to be rare. vote fraud rare

What do you think would Clinton "shake up?" She is the epitome of the status-quo!

There are several shake ups coming in November / January.

Let's look at the Senate. It's likely to swing Blue. This alone won't mean much because the House is likely to remain Red, but it's certainly going to change legislative agendas, which are important. Speaking of the House, with Trump at the top of the ticket, there will be downballot implications, some Republicans are going to have turnout trouble leading to Democrats taking some seats. I haven't seen any polls I believe in, but I think the House stays Red but with a bigger percentage Blue than before. That's a change that means more bipartisan cooperation will be necessary for anybody to get their personal agendas to see the light of day.

I can't see a Hillary executive changing much in terms of foreign policy, so full credit for "status-quo" there. Despite my preferences, she's likely to continue to antagonize Russia with anti-ICBM batteries and unified exercises close to Russia. She stands a chance of using executive orders to continue to shape the immigrant and minimum wage debates. And her ability to sign into law what the new Senate and the increasingly bipartisan House is important.

On the topic of Hillary being status-quo. Based on the rhetoric of the Republican Party for the last 2-3 years, a status-quo is in fact a shake up. All the stonewalling that's been done in Congress, all the scapegoating, all the blaming, and they can't get the American people to put them back into power. Heck, they need to tend to their own house as they realize 12 candidates can't make it through the primaries without a crazy making it out as the candidate. Then if you count that Hillary is almost certain to name at least one Supreme Court Justice in the next 4 years (with some guessing up to three!), this is going to be a "status-quo" that remains in place for a long time. Even if it's only Ginsberg and Breyer getting replaced with younger equivalents, that's a big deal. There's a 54% chance of a conservative justice kicking it in the next four years, so that's an even bigger deal.

They didn't refuse to vote on it.

I stand corrected for using the wrong word.

Stop lying.

I'm a liar because I used the wrong word by mistake? Grow up.

Why BS about something so demonstrably false?

And educate yourself.

That said, some context: Of the 788 amendments filed, 67 came from Democrats and 721 from Republicans. (That disparity drew jeers that Republicans were trying to slow things down. Another explanation may be that they offered so many so they could later claim—as they are now, in fact, claiming—that most of their suggestions went unheeded.) Only 197 amendments were passed in the end—36 from Democrats and 161 from Republicans. And of those 161 GOP amendments, Senate Republicans classify 29 as substantive and 132 as technical.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescriptions/2009/07/this_is_what_bipartisanship_looks_like.html

Slate recently did an article talking about all the improvement about the Dallas Police Department specifically gaining great ground in reducing violence using training in deescalation, so while we don't have all the facts about this specific instance yet, deescalation is definitely on the DPD's mind and has been implemented in their police academy. http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Considering that essentially all of the politicians in Russia have fake PhDs ( http://www.slate.com/articles/... ) I would say that it's fairly likely that they have no idea how the Internet or mathematics or economics or really anything works...

Found it. And here is the full quote you cherry picked from;

Comey also said that investigators had used forensic analysis to uncover "several thousand" work-related emails that were not among the group Clinton turned over to the State Department for recordkeeping purposes in 2014; however, he said, there is no evidence that those emails were hidden intentionally rather than simply having been deleted in the normal course of business or simply missed when her lawyers were sorting her emails into work and personal files.

It'll be OK when Trump is president because he loves the Jews and Israel.

http://time.com/4392387/donald...

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

http://www.politicususa.com/20...

I believe that the food itself is probably OK for human consumption although GMO food (especially tomatoes) does seem to have much less and/or odd flavour.

The flavour problem is not because of GMO, it is because the industry does not care about flavour at all. http://www.slate.com/articles/...

The Main Problem With Patented GM Food Is The Patent, Not The Fact That It's GM

Roundup Cancer

Genetically Monetized Food

And my own skepticism. Genetically modifying food on the molecular level is not the same as breeding. You will never see in nature where mechanical and chemical means are used to cross species like it's done in the lab.

So, those of us with concerns about GMO crops have legitimate skeptical and informed reasons for being so. And I realize that there are some great things about GMO crops..

So, comparing us to uninformed ignorant people who don't want to hear the actual facts is completely unwarranted.

"Satya Nadella explores how to do an even worse job with Microsoft than Ballmer..."

Is Satya Nadella competent? His LinkedIn comments give the impression that the answer is no.

The Partnership of the Future "By Satya Nadella" does not seem to be written by the same author.

Temperature rises have been within the 2 sigma range of temperature predictions, sea level rise has generally been greater than predicted.

Temperature rise is at the low end of those "2 sigma" predictions, consistent with a lower than hyped temperature forcing from CO2.

As to sea level rise, I don't buy that it is "greater than predicted". For example, we have this prediction from James Hansen:

The studyâ"written by James Hansen, NASAâ(TM)s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fieldsâ"concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, brings new importance to a feedback loop in the ocean near Antarctica that results in cooler freshwater from melting glaciers forcing warmer, saltier water underneath the ice sheets, speeding up the melting rate. Hansen, who is known for being alarmist and also right, acknowledges that his study implies change far beyond previous consensus estimates. In a conference call with reporters, he said he hoped the new findings would be âoesubstantially more persuasive than anything previously published.â I certainly find them to be.

Here's an example. Suppose you smoke marijuana at some point. Your doctor asks you about that and mentions it on your medical record, because it's clearly health-related, significant and part of a good medical history.

20 years later, you have knee surgery and you're left with severe, intractable pain. The only thing that controls it is opioid drugs. Your doctor looks at your medical record and sees that you have a history of marijuana use. There are "risk scales" that define that as "drug abuse" (for example, the opioid guidelines of the Texas Medical Society). So instead of simply treating your pain with enough opioids to control the pain, your doctor makes you sign a "pain contract" which requires you to take regular drug tests, and has the provision that he can abandon you and expel you from his practice if you fail a drug test or violate any of the other provisions in the pain contract. Instead of controlling your pain down to 2 on a scale of 10, he only controls it down to 5 or 6 on a scale of 10, and leaves you to suffer in pain. These are the actual provisions of "pain contracts," and a history of marijuana use in your medical record can cause a doctor to define you as a drug abuser, and make it difficult or impossible for you to get drugs to control your pain.

http://journalofethics.ama-ass...
Veterans Health Administration Policy on Cannabis as an Adjunct to Pain Treatment with Opiates
Michael Krawitz
AMA Journal of Ethics.
June 2015, 17(6):558-561.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03...
Patients in Pain, and a Doctor Who Must Limit Drugs
By JAN HOFFMAN
New York Times
MARCH 16, 2016

Your medical record contains information about all kinds of aspects of your personal life.

For example, a good medical history would include information about your sexual practices. In some states, normal teenage sexual behavior would be a felony, and some anti-abortion prosecutors have subpoenaed medical records of teenage girls who got abortions, and women who had late-term abortions, in order to find somebody to prosecute. http://www.slate.com/articles/...

What's sad is the fans have passion and tell better stories and understand the source material better that the studio's hired hacks. Look what a farce the rebooted Star Trek has become. Every reboot really.

Funny story: Once a puritan attorney-general decided to shut down the porno movie industry by prosecuting the actresses for prostitution and financers as pimps. He took a test case to court, but the judiciary bukakked all over his face with a finding that made clear the porno movie industry was legal.

It would be funny if Paramount tried to fuck this fan over in court and ended up legitimizing fan films.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... http://www.slate.com/articles/... https://www.hg.org/article.asp... http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/08...

Or in the words of Donald Trump, "congratulations".

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

If the wheels of justice fail to indict her before her inauguration in January, she may be able to pre-pardon herself. Interestingly, this article was written about Mr Clinton in 1998. http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Stolen from YouTube content creators, of course.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2015/07/freebooting_stolen_youtube_videos_going_viral_on_facebook.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/... And that was a trained policeman who shot one of his own by mistaking him for the assailant. Or the admission of someone at the Gabby Giffords shooting who said he came very close to shooting someone who had wrestled the gun away from the attacker. http://www.slate.com/articles/... You really need to stop believing movies are reality. If you don't have situational awareness you hurt more than help. And if your in the thick of an attack you don't have it.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2016/03/25/boaty_mcboatface_mcdreamy_tits_mcgee_and_the_internet_s_favorite_naming.html

Libertarianism needs no help making itself look bad.

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

Perry seized the moment, basically insisting that blind 4-year-olds should be legally permitted to drive without any sort of government imprimatur

as he insisted that 5-year-old children should have the legal right to inject heroin without adult supervision.

The first of these put his cellphone on the lectern, played a song into the microphone, and stripped down to his underwear, shaking rolls of fat in some sort of demented burlesque.

When I pulled this guy aside and asked why he favored McAfee, he began, “My main concern is interstate commerce legislation,” launching a runon sentence that somehow ended, after several minutes and some really surprising detours, with an avowal that “humans will be displaced by A.I. the same way we displaced the whales and the rhinoceroses, and so it’s important to remember that bigotry is better than slavery.”

I used to think Scott Adams was an intelligent and insightful man.
Now I'm not so sure.

Yes, Trump has had a tremendously sexist mysoginst past.

Yes, Trump also has a racist past.

His kids have appeared on white nationalist radio.

Slate has an interesting article on the slowing trend in population growth here:

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

I'm not so sure population is going to be such a problem in the future. But distribution of wealth may still be a problem.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/R...

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

Remember: the first rule of Roko's Basilisk is you must never tell anyone about... oops, my bad.

Door #1: perfectly fine Windows 7 + somewhat tolerable EULA

Door #2: barely improved Windows 10 + "improved" EULA

Microsoft's Windows 10 is a privacy nightmare

In other words, Microsoft won't treat your local data with any more privacy than it treats your data on its servers and may upload your local data to its servers arbitrarily—unless you stop Microsoft from doing so.

First there is the hit to your TCO to have to read and digest this. Then there's the hit to your TCO to research defense against the dark arts (which usually proves to be a moving target). Then there's the hit to your TCO when someone tells you that Microsoft subsequently softened this language, but you're doubtful they softened it all that much, only it's too painful to contemplate having to check it out again so you wallow in rational ignorance until the end of time, a mononucleosis of self-determination.

Don't go there. You deserve better.

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

it's so capricious isn't it

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's 5th Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress estimated that 1.56 million people, or one in every 200 Americans, experienced homelessness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... They really gotta shut that NASA down .

NASA doesn't have a spacecraft capable of launching a pencil to orbit. They are relying on private contractors. The X-37B in the article is a US Air Force project. If you want to see some government funding squandered, look at the military.

Also, quite often, the reason it's illegal is less to do with zoning laws...and more to do with maintaining property borders and right of way for utilities and infrastructure; the apartment building simply won't fit on the plot while allowing for this so, of course, it is not allowed.

So it's illegal because it's impossible? Should the government prohibit anything that's impossible? That could lead to some very amusing laws!

It's illegal to build housing in high-pollution areas with an elevated danger of catastrophe that would wipe out those homes, potentially killing the occupants?

So it's illegal because nobody would want to build a house there? Should the government prohibit anything it thinks people wouldn't want to do?

We don't get many supporters of totalitarian governments in Slashdot's comment threads. Welcome!

are you saying there's a necessary correlation between economic status and race? Black people must be poor?

No, I'm saying the perception of that correlation led to us passing discriminatory laws, just as the perception of certain grammatical errors led to creating literary tests that prevented people of certain ethnic races from voting.

Sure, poor people don't live near rich people, but that's because they can't afford the prices...

Exactly, and zoning laws artificially raise the price of housing. For example, why does a poor family who doesn't own a car need a 2-car garage? Yet zoning laws say that for every 'x' rooms, you need 'y' number of off-street parking spaces, and this prices poor families out of middle-class neighborhoods.

Jesus Christ, fine here's a citation:

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

So it works out to be 15k median. Which I think also might be misleading. I think that number neglects people who just don't want to do anything special for the wedding and really just want to focus on the marriage.

illegal immigrants have a lower rate of crime than the average population

This statement — unsupported by any citations, BTW — is irrelevant to my point. Even if they are less crime-prone on average, they are a source of crime anyway.

We can not get rid of native criminals by deporting them anywhere, but we can deport the folks, who have entered this country illegally (and already have this "original sin" to their name).

But yeah sure, a wall will stop that.

It may not stop that entirely, but it will reduce it, that's for sure. 15 years ago, when Israel was building its much derided wall, similar predictions of failure were made.

But the walls work:

The number of fatalities from terror attacks within Israel dropped from more than 130 in 2003 to fewer than 25 in 2005.

According to a 2006 estimate cited by Slate (the article itself is hardly sympathetic to the idea, BTW), an Israel-kind of wall stretching for 2000 miles would cost $6.4 bln (or about 1/3rd the annual cost of NASA). And we may not even need it that high and sophisticated — because, unlike Israel, we aren't facing an enemy bent on our destruction... Nor are there any border-disputes with Mexico — the other complication of their project.

Only an eight year old would ...

My eight year old would already recognize this rhetorical trick as one used only by crooks and liars. Your parents should not have allowed you access to the Internet until you've read up on classic literature...

but... it really isnt.... thats number one, and number 2 you ignored the point of my post completely and switched the discussion. good job

  the point is how can a company claim to be against a state for doing something that is "anti LGBT" while setting up shops in places where even being LGBT is totally illegal.

It is actually not just illegal but unconsitutional. http://www.slate.com/blogs/out...

But don't let that sway your talking points.

Apple refuses to go to NC because a) they can b) it's illegal
I'm sure the next step once Apple sets up shop in India is that they'll push to make things more progressive.

Being LGBT in India is not illegal - it's still being judged link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Homosexuality is mostly a taboo subject in Indian civil society and for the government. Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code makes sex with persons of the same gender punishable by law. On 2 July 2009, in Naz Foundation v. Govt. of NCT of Delhi, the Delhi High Court held that provision to be unconstitutional with respect to sex between consenting adults, but the Supreme Court of India overturned that ruling on 11 December 2013, stating that the court was instead deferring to Indian legislators to provide the sought-after clarity.[1] On 2 February 2016, however, the Supreme Court agreed to reconsider its judgment, stating it would refer petitions to abolish Section 377 to a five-member constitutional bench, which would conduct a comprehensive hearing of the issue.[2]

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

Are you sure about that?

These times are actually signs of a major issue, if the overcapacity of power generation from renewables hits those levels, it means that the variability of the power generation is causing issues.

No, couldn't possibly be that, after all, as we know humans are infallible.

Of course they're not. That's why safety critical systems like cars must be designed to function safely in spite of human fallibility.

the fact that Tesla (claim to) have logs showing exactly what did happen
should be ignored, and this guys word counts for far more.

Don't be silly. Tesla's logs clearly show that the feature was accidentally activated. The question is, why was the feature so easy to accidentally activate?

An extra press of the Park button brings up the Summon dialog letting you select forward or backward. But forward is selected by default instead of "no action." Since there's no need to confirm the action, if that fallible human is momentarily distracted (e.g. because they're doing free advertising for Tesla) they can activate Autopark unknowingly and unintentionally.

This is a UI flaw, not a hardware or software fault.

Or, do you somehow want to put the blame on an inanimate object?

Again, don't be silly. This particular inanimate object was designed by perfectly animated human beings.

as the person in control of the car at the time, he is at fault.. (and yes, he is in control, because it is his responsibility to leave the vehicle safe when he departs).

When will we learn that root cause analysis doesn't end at finding the person "at fault?" I'm reminded of the words of safety expert James Bagain:

if at the end of the day all you can say is, "So-and-so made a mistake," you haven't solved anything. Take a very simple example: A nurse gives the patient in Bed A the medicine for the patient in Bed B. What do you say? "The nurse made a mistake"? That's true, but then what's the solution? "Nurse, please be more careful"? Telling people to be careful is not effective. Humans are not reliable that way. Some are better than others, but nobody's perfect. You need a solution that's not about making people perfect.

So we ask, "Why did the nurse make this mistake?" Maybe there were two drugs that looked almost the same. That's a packaging problem; we can solve that. Maybe the nurse was expected to administer drugs to ten patients in five minutes. That's a scheduling problem; we can solve that. And these solutions can have an enormous impact. Seven to 10 percent of all medicine administrations involve either the wrong drug, the wrong dose, the wrong patient, or the wrong route. Seven to 10 percent. But if you introduce bar coding for medication administration, the error rate drops to one tenth of one percent. That's huge.

I'm really tired of this right-wing meme. Slate did a detailed analysis of this issue, and found that while a disproportionate number of Ninth Circuit rulings were overturned by the Court, an even higher proportion from the Third and Fifth Circuits were overturned. Out of 6,387 on-the-merits decisions in 2006, the Supreme Court reversed 18. That's less than 0.3 percent of their on-the-merits decisions (and, of course, an even smaller proportion of the total Ninth Circuit decisions).

The likelihood of any given Ninth Circuit decision being overturned is vanishingly small.

I am not happy about SLS, but read the party affiliations here and you will not be so sure that a Republican administration will stop it.

I am also not entirely happy with Elon's plan of the week. I wish he'd work on cadence (meaning achieving the 18-launch goal this year) and getting SpaceX to be a profitable low-cost launch business before he started messing with Mars. Humans need cheap access to space more than they need the red planet.

Regarding teaching, I have done a lot of work to put the tools in those people's hands. My next trip is to South Korea, where I will evangelize rather than teach. In general I can inspire more than one teacher that way. If you want me to go to South America to speak get me invited. I don't have limitless wealth, someone else has to pay for the flight, hotel, and food, but I will donate my time if there's a good opportunity to evangelize.

The debate about "autopilot" versus "fully autonomous" is a very real concern, validated by Tesla drivers themselves. You have drivers that stop paying attention to the speed limit, abuse autodrive to violate traffic laws, take their hands off the steering wheel, or just climb into the back seat and let the car drive itself creates not just a danger for the Tesla driver but for every car on the road. This despite Tesla's insistence that people must still stay at the wheel and drive; the technology has advanced enough that people get a false sense of confidence to push the limits even if the technology is not truly ready for it. That's the point that the Volvo engineer is making.

But it's all getting awfully samey just with larger fight scenes.

Not just the superhero movies; most of the blockbusters. See this for the formula that all recent blockbusters have.