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They never supported a 2,000 mile wall that would cost billions to build much less maintain. But keep on with your strawmanning.

According to Wikipedia,

Congress put aside $1.4 billion for the fence, but the whole cost, including maintenance, was pegged at $50 billion over 25 years, according to analyses at the time.

Why wasn't the fence built? According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security canceled Boeing's border fence program Friday [January 14, 2011], putting an end to a five-year-long project long plagued by delays and technical problems.
. . .
It was originally envisioned to stretch the 1,969-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico but initial phases of the $1 billion project took longer than anticipated to complete and covered just a small portion, 53 miles, since the project began.

This web page lists everyone who voted for the "Secure Fence Act of 2006. Notice that the "Yea" votes include "Biden, Joseph", "Clinton, Hillary", "Obama, Barack", and "Schumer, Chuck".

https://www.stltoday.com/busin...

These workers had walked off the job, hadn't come to work in a week, and had been told that their actions would push the company into bankruptcy. But you are right, somehow the company wasn't compassionate enough to give them unearned money that didn't exist.

https://www.stltoday.com/busin...

Yeah yeah, blame Trump for everything. Here is an example of Obama-era legislation designed to destroy US industry. This company was polluting for decades and finally got their act together and actually met the tight standards. Then the administration tightened the noose again to destroy the company. There are no smelters left in the US now. Which raises the question.

Would you rather have industry here and regulate it so that it can exist under regulations, or would you rather have industry overseas completely unregulated where the effects are hundreds of times worse?

Face it, people. We export our pollution to other nations. You can't have an industrialized civilization without some amount of pollution, so why not try to keep those numbers small?

The problem is that the little bubble world they live in in college IS a "safe space." The worst personal injury that the coddled little brats have to worry themselves with is hearing the word "nîgger" yelled by some passing rednecks from a pickup truck. So many of them come from middle-to-upper-class families with nice homes and fancy granite and stainless steel kitchens. Oh, make no mistake, when I say they're wealthy, I mean some of these bratty college snots are "affluenza" grade wealthy.

What these innocent little spoiled babies need is to be real-world assaulted, real-world mugged, rendered real-world homeless, or otherwise real-world harmed in some way a few times. They need a cold hard understanding of what actual strife in this world is like. Ever wonder why you see a metric ton less 30-somethings behind this social justice horseshit than 20-somethings? It's not because of generations, it's because once you need a real job and try to start a real family, you get to experience the harsh reality of having actual problems. This cycle tends to repeat with every generation since World War II and millennials are being picked on because they just happen to be the current "young people." We are living in an era of unprecedented comfort and simultaneous infantilization of adolescents and young adults. Is it really any wonder that we now have "adults" in college (some of which are old enough to drink alcohol legally) demanding that they be treated like they are little children? No. No the fuck it's not.

Regardless of employers doing some things to accommodate the resulting mental damage from being a self-traumatized brat, they will face reality when hiring time comes. No one who wants to get a job done to make money for their mortgage and to feed their family likes these bratty little social justice warriors. They will eventually have to integrate or fuck off and be unemployed.

Right, because a "Tekesy" driver would never shoot a passenger in self-defense.

If a delivery truck has a mechanical failure, it's just dead on the road No harm done to the cargo.

Provably false.

No, BLM is recognised as a Black Power movement.

By who? Is there an accreditation board somewhere? What criteria did they meet? Mysteriously, you don't identify any.

93% of Black homicides are committed by black people (84% of homicides against white people are committed by whites; while this is only a 10% difference, in the population sizes, a vast amount more white people are killed by non-whites than the other way round.

Mysteriously, you use percentages, not numbers, otherwise you'd have to admit a vast amount is....around 300.

Easily explained by the difference in population, and not particularly meaningful. No matter how much you want it to be.

If Black Lives Matter, then to get the biggest return, they need to address the (probably cultural, gangsta, edgy, which is so popular it's practically mainstream) issues in their own community first.

What issues are those, and why do you think they matter? Maybe you should address how people think it is a fabrication?

But that'd not get any political points and headlines. So nobody does it, or is even allowed to speak about it.

What are you talking about? It gets headlines, and lots of political points. Mysteriously, of course, you want to complain about that because it gets you political points. And you know what, people talk about it.

Maybe you should stop with your talking point where you claim they don't. Those points aren't even worth it.

Now if they allow crowd funding for legal funds of black people accused of murdering other people, with this weight of observable evidence in the public domain, then they get strung up for hypocrisy, as you rightfully put.

You'd also have to string up the folks who complained about money given to support Mumia Abu-Jamal. I wonder how many of them changed their tunes. Mysteriously.

Seems Wells Fargo has helped out both Hillary and the Clinton Foundation.......that money has to come from somewhere, doesn't it?

"Those giving between $100,000 and $250,000, according to the Clinton Foundation list, included Washington University, the Wells Fargo Foundation (Wells Fargo Advisers is headquartered in St. Louis); and Joyce A. Aboussie, a longtime Democratic operative and adviser to former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-St. Louis."

http://www.stltoday.com/news/l...

"Wells Fargo, both the bank and its foundation, have given generously to the Clinton Foundation over the years. The bank has given between $10,001 and $25,000, and the foundation has given between $100,001 To $250,000. In 2011, former President Bill Clinton gave a speech to Wells Fargo for $200,000."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

they'll try this, i guess. http://www.stltoday.com/news/l...

Don't blame Trump. Boeing has had some problems with quality recently.

In 2005, FIA (run by Boeing) was partly canceled. The New York Times called it "perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects." From space.com, "But Boeing quickly ran into troubles on the highly ambitious and complex FIA program, which fell years behind schedule and overran its budget by billions of dollars."

In 2011, the SBI Net program was canceled. "It was originally envisioned to stretch the 1,969-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico but initial phases of the $1 billion project took longer than anticipated to complete and covered just a small portion, 53 miles, since the project began."

According to Wikipedia, the Joint Tactical Radio System (JRTS) project has had major problems. "The JTRS program was beset by delays and cost overruns, particularly Ground Mobile Radios (GMR), run by Boeing."

The Dreamliner had major problems, including fires. From Wikipedia, "The FAA issued a directive in January 2013 that grounded all 787s in the US and other civil aviation authorities followed suit. After Boeing completed tests on a revised battery design, the FAA approved the revised design and lifted the grounding in April 2013; the 787 returned to passenger service later that month."

This usatoday article, titled "Some of Boeing's programs have problems", lists other problems with Boeing. For example, "V-22 Osprey. The tilt-rotor aircraft, made in partnership with Bell Helicopter, is under congressional scrutiny because of concerns about its high cost of operation, reliability and safety." and "Joint Tactical Radio System Cluster 1. Boeing's management of the project for the military was so bad it received a stop-work order from the Defense Department. Eventually, the program was restructured rather than canceled but with Boeing in a diminished role."

I wonder if some managers are looking at these problems, and deciding that Boeing isn't the best company from which to order planes and services. That would hurt Boeing's sales.

This. These people are trying to sell AV products and will present their data to tell the story they want to tell.

You would be surprised how often "news" sources royally screw up demographics with respect to St. Louis. This is because St. Louis city and St. Louis county are different entities. (They 'divorced' from each other over a century ago.)

Those St. Louis tech companies listed?
  Suddenlink: Creve Coeur, Missouri.
  World Wide Tech: Maryland Heights, Missouri
  Graybar: St Louis County (Unincorporated)

St Louis City proper, which does not include the above, has only 320,000 people. The greater St. Louis area, which does include the above, has almost 3 million. Confuse the two and your per capita demographics suddenly are way off.

Also it is common for people in the surrounding counties to just use "St. Louis" as their city when filling out forms or sending mail. I fully expect most people in Maryland Heights Missouri would specify their city as "St. Louis" when registering their anti-virus product.

There's plenty of voter fraud and it's been going on under reported and under prosecuted for decades. Just google voter fraud in St. Louis for plenty of recent stories like this one http://www.stltoday.com/news/l... In my opinion early voting is a massive problem nationwide and should be restricted instead of expanded.

How can you have 1.5 children per household?

2 children in one household and 1 in another. Even so, I wonder how it felt for photographer Kevin Michael Connolly or acrobat Jennifer Bricker or Jeanie Tomaini or plenty of others to grow up as the .5 child.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/l...

Surely you meant "conspiracy theorem"

People make terrible mistakes. It happened to people close to me. Extraordinary, loving parents, good people. Certainly not idiots.

Murder charges were contemplated but (eventually) dropped when it became clear even to the police that this wasn't on purpose.

Thank God their son didn't have to lose his parents to jail for the same mistake.

No. Nobody fucking did! Why? Because there weren't any! If there were, he would have gone to the fucking ambulance and had them treat him instead of standing around.

How inconvenient for you.

Darren Wilson told investigators he was trapped in his car by Brown, New York Times reports

Wilson told authorities Brown reached for the officer’s gun during a struggle inside his police SUV, the Times reported. The gun fired twice inside the car. One bullet hit Brown in the arm and the other bullet missed him, the Times reported. Brown was unarmed.

Brown’s blood was found on Wilson’s gun, uniform, and the inside of the vehicle door, the Times reported. Wilson said Brown “punched and scratched him repeatedly, leaving swelling on his face and cuts on his neck,” the Times said.

-------

I deny jack-booted thugs the right to offense!

No, you seem to be supporting Brown who demonstrated himself to be a thug by attacking the store clerk while stealing, fortunately it was captured on video.

Do you deny the fact that you're a fascist asshole?

Yes. Fascism isn't compatible with my philosophy. Of course I am often attacked by "fascist assholes," so if the shoe fits ....

You have more logical fallacies in your post than you do sentences. ... TFA and my argument was regarding the establishment abusing power in order to control the narrative. Officer Wilson's alleged injuries are not relevant.

You seem to be suffering amnesia. Do you remember this statement in your post?

Back on point, they have already said that the cop that shot Michael Brown would probably not face any charges, even what should be obviously excessive use of force.

You are making a specific claim that the force used by Officer Wilson was excessive, a potential criminal offense. Furthermore, you state that it was "obvious." So let's continue to examine your statements.

Officer Wilson's alleged injuries are not relevant. Worse, the officer was not reported to be harmed at the scene, received no medical treatment on the scene, or even after he was removed from the location.

You have it backwards. Officer Wilsons injuries are a critical point. If Wilson was attacked and injured he was legally justified to defend himself from the attacker. As is your custom you either ignore or are ignorant of the relevant facts of the matter, to wit:

Darren Wilson told investigators he was trapped in his car by Brown, New York Times reports

Wilson told authorities Brown reached for the officer’s gun during a struggle inside his police SUV, the Times reported. The gun fired twice inside the car. One bullet hit Brown in the arm and the other bullet missed him, the Times reported. Brown was unarmed.

Brown’s blood was found on Wilson’s gun, uniform, and the inside of the vehicle door, the Times reported. Wilson said Brown “punched and scratched him repeatedly, leaving swelling on his face and cuts on his neck,” the Times said.

Well, it seems you are wrong, he was attacked and injured. That puts your unfounded claim of excessive force into the realm of falsehoods.

So you start with a Strawman and cum hoc ergo propter hoc, then move to Argumentum ad verecundiam and appeal to assertion.

No amount of spurious application of Latin phrases can create missing facts, remedy false claims, or compensate for your mistaken ideas.

Argumentum ad populum, or perhaps argumentum ad numerum. No you don't know, and no the populace does not agree with you.

In your case it would be false argument ad nauseam.

Would you care to go another round shill? I do mean shill with all of it's interesting implications, since whether you are paid or not you have a history of arguing as a pro-establishment mouth piece.

Back to ad hominem? I guess you have your "game" back. You have a history of crank theories, false claims, and recently adhering to the adversaries of the US as you've become a shill for Russian aggression. You're a mouthpiece for bad ideas of all sorts. No wonder you are so popular on Slashdot.

Counter-example 1. This guy has tried to get his drivers license back for years now, and he keeps getting rejected.
Counter-example 2. The guilty plea lightened the sentence to 8 years in prison.

Those are just from one metro-area in the US. I'm sure other cities have similar stories. Cops don't always get a free ride.

If you want free rides, look for sports "heroes". Again, from the St. Louis area, Leonard Little (the Rams player) killed someone in a DWI crash and got a 30-day sentence, to be served when he felt like it, a few hours at a time. That's a soft sentence for vehicular manslaughter.

Counter-example 1. This guy has tried to get his drivers license back for years now, and he keeps getting rejected.
Counter-example 2. The guilty plea lightened the sentence to 8 years in prison.

Those are just from one metro-area in the US. I'm sure other cities have similar stories. Cops don't always get a free ride.

If you want free rides, look for sports "heroes". Again, from the St. Louis area, Leonard Little (the Rams player) killed someone in a DWI crash and got a 30-day sentence, to be served when he felt like it, a few hours at a time. That's a soft sentence for vehicular manslaughter.

Pretty much everything you say in your comment is wrong. Heroin is much more addictive than alcohol. (That same link shows that a survey of medical experts rated heroin as twice as physically harmful as alcohol.) People do die from heroin withdrawal. The long term effects of heroin use include gangrene near the injection site.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/o...

if you think any but a handful of emails that aren't sent to or from the a White House are required by the FRA to be archived

Having read the statute, prior to hitting my crack pipe, I see no such "White House" criteria.

You may read the latest revision of the IRS interpretation of the statute here, where you will learn that e-mail — all e-mail — that meets that statutory definition of a "record" must be preserved within either an "electronic recordkeeping system," as defined by the IRS manual and well beyond Lois's broken computer, or "must be printed out and placed in the appropriate record system." Any e-mail communication Lois made regarding the disposition of some non-profit's status would obviously have qualified as a "record" under the plain language of 1.15.6-1.

And yes, we do prosecute people for destruction of government records. Probably not the protected political appointee hatchet-people of the powers-that-be, but it does happen, because it's criminal.

- - - - - I may be naive, but can't students from failed charter schools attend another charter school as well as the conventional public school? - - - - -

I'd suggest reading the series in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the model charter school program in that city. Two sets of articles: the first hopeful and complementary, describing how powerful institutions in the region (universities, medical centers, etc) were going to sponsor each of the five "super charters", full backing of the political class, will fix all the problems and can't fail, etc... Then the second set of articles four years later when the for-profit operator pulled out (no profits), the big sponsors disappeared, and the children were told in June they were going back to their home public school districts (which were in even worse shape after losing four years of funding).

Sure, parents can find different charters. Of course that's a large investment of time, effort, and money for a family which might not have much of any of those to spare. But it is important to keep in mind the effect on the children: pulled away from their friends, their teachers, their familiar building and routine. A school and a teacher can be very large things in the life of a 2nd grader (esp one from a neighborhood where the school might be the only safe place he can go); pulling them here and there by what seems to them a whim is not a good thing. To me anyway.

I would suggest that, but unfortunately last time I checked the STLPD had put up a paywall so those articles may no longer be available. Try google and see if you can get to them though. Here's one link

http://www.stltoday.com/news/l...
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And this is a very good illustratration of one of the BIG problems with such registries: no matter how trivial the crime, people will assume (A) that you're guilty

If you've had your due process and been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt the presumption of innocence is over.

Guilty of what? Sexting with a fellow high school student? That first childhood romance? Public urination? The words "sex offender" bring up images of rape - forcible, drug-aided, whatever - and other serious sex crimes, but the "sex offender registry" is a lifetime tattoo that puts everyone from serial rapists to "huggy" 10-year-olds in the same basket.

And it also shows why a national registry is an outrageously BAD IDEA. A person who was an offender in one state would face a lifetime stigma, even in other states where the "offending" activity was perfectly legal.

And? If I went to Amsterdam to smoke pot it's legal, if I do it at home I'm a criminal and I'd get a "drug offense" on my record.

If you smoke pot in the US and you're white, you get a ticket. If you smoke pot in the US and you're black, you get 30-90 days in jail. If you mastermind a network that imports and distributes tons of marijuana over the course of a decade, you get 20 years. After you've paid your fine or done your time, you get released and can rejoin society.

If you kissed your high school sweetheart and her daddy got upset, then you are never allowed to live within 1000 feet of a school or (in many areas) a school bus stop. If you kissed your high school sweetheart, your presence will reduce property values for any neighborhood you move into. The marijuana equivalent would be to put everyone from the kingpin to the weekend toker to the kid taking her own adderall on a "drug addict registry." After all, recidivism among drug offenses is nearly 70%, where recidivism among sexual offenders is more than 5%. (actually, if you break the sex-offenders into "high risk" and "low risk," then you can find recidivism nearly 70% within the 1-in-5 minority of sex offender registrants, but that already admits that there are identifiably different kinds of sexual offenders)

The point is that the sexual offender registry, as implemented is bad policy and bad law. Repeated studies have show it has no effect on recidivism or re-arrest rates. If your point is "It's the law: whether it's good or bad, you need to accept it because public opinion is irrelevant," then your point is ridiculous. The Law is supposed to represent a codification of common values. The Law can change based on the public's experience of it, and the way we make that happen is by pointing out the flaws in existing laws.

The use of LIDAR and other sensing techniques is having a powerful impact on archaeology around the world. New finds keep turning up, and there is still a lot of the earth to explore with those sensing technologies. Couple that with the ongoing efforts to digitize old records and the growing use of geospatial information systems and there are some interesting times ahead.

Great article: The technology uncovering humanity's past, and perhaps its future

Checkpoints were conducted Friday morning, Friday night and Saturday night at three different locations in St. Charles County, said sheriff’s Lt. Dave Tiefenbrunn.

...

Tiefenbrunn said even though the survey was voluntary he acknowledged that the public might not have thought they had any choice but to obey the officers. Because of that, he said, his department would not participate in such surveys in the future.

“It doesn’t give the public the impression that it’s voluntary if there’s a uniformed officer out there, so we would avoid that circumstance in the future,” he said.

...

In its statement, NHTSA said that it had been conducting such surveys for more than 40 years in roughly 10-year cycles.

The agency said more than 60 communities nationwide were participating this year, including St. Louis County, where checkpoints were conducted in September.

In 2007, more than 9,000 drivers were interviewed in 60 jurisdictions.

In all of these cases, there is no mention of how much money the jurisdictions involved received from the feds for allowing these actions to occur.

Decline is a choice. Apparently Greenland choses not to accept decline.

Meanwhile, back in the Romper Room, the EPA and the pressure groups have killed off our last lead smelting operation. Doubtless they'll pack up everything except the scrubbers, move it all to China and operate with impunity. The net effect on the environment? Vastly greater damage.

Print faster Ben.

"An employee can be made to pay a chunk of the premium — up to 9.5 percent of the worker’s household income — and still comply with Obamacare."

Source: http://www.stltoday.com/news/special-reports/mohealth/what-does-obamacare-mean-to-business-and-employees/article_f86c9636-ac28-591d-9dff-3c197652cf6e.html

Plus you can find that in many other places. So a company can make an employee making $50,000 pay up to $395 per month for the coverage (employee coverage only). What insurance costs that much? It could be damn near free for employers! Now it may be that it's 9.5% of take home or something (I think it is but you can research it), so let's even say it works out to (35,000*.095/12) $275. Still not too much burden for the company to cover the remaining amount, if any.

Good employers already provide coverage much better than this. We give FREE insurance to those that select employee only (granted we screw those that select family coverage).

Insurance in general is incredibly expensive. It's also a total scam. Go to the ER, get the bill without insurance coverage of $10,000, then route through your insurance and watch the bill be miraculously reduced to $50 below your $2,000 or $3.000 deductible! It's a scam. The real solution is socialized medicine. I don't care what you think of the free market, insurance is not a good reflection of the free market. Again, it's a scam.

Where are you from, the 18th century? He was convicted in California, "debtor's prisons" are illegal in every US jurisdiction.

Are you sure?

How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn't pay a medical bill -- one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn't owe. "She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn't have to pay it," The Associated Press reports. "But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs."

Although the U.S. abolished debtors' prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don't pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff's deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP.

Under the law, debtors aren't arrested for nonpayment, but rather for failing to respond to court hearings, pay legal fines, or otherwise showing "contempt of court" in connection with a creditor lawsuit. That loophole has lawmakers in the Illinois House of Representatives concerned enough to pass a bill in March that would make it illegal to send residents of the state to jail if they can't pay a debt. The measure awaits action in the senate.

"Creditors have been manipulating the court system to extract money from the unemployed, veterans, even seniors who rely solely on their benefits to get by each month," Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said last month in a statement voicing support for the legislation. "Too many people have been thrown in jail simply because they're too poor to pay their debts. We cannot allow these illegal abuses to continue."

Boeing has had other recent problems in quality and reliability, with some recent Boeing-managed programs being cancelled, because they were going so badly.

In 2005, FIA (run by Boeing) was canceled. The New York Times called it "perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects. ... A torrent of defective parts, like gyroscopes and electric cables, repeatedly stalled work. Even an elementary rule of spacecraft construction — never use tin because it deforms in space and can short-circuit electronic components — was violated by parts suppliers. By the time the project, known by its initials, F.I.A., was killed in September 2005 — a year after the first satellite was originally to have been delivered — cost estimates ran as high as $18 billion."

From space.com, "But Boeing quickly ran into troubles on the highly ambitious and complex FIA program, which fell years behind schedule and overran its budget by billions of dollars. In 2005, having concluded that Boeing’s problems were intractable, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence directed the NRO to terminate the optical portion of the contract."

In 2011, the Boeing-run SBI Net program was canceled, because it was going so badly. From stltoday.com, "It was originally envisioned to stretch the 1,969-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico but initial phases of the $1 billion project took longer than anticipated to complete and covered just a small portion, 53 miles, since the project began."

In 2011, the "Joint Tactical Radio System’s Ground Mobile Radios (GMR)" project, run by Boeing, was canceled. From a Bloomberg article: "Based on growth in the unit procurement costs, I am terminating the program," Frank Kendall wrote in a letter to Congress. "... The GMR program last year was estimated to cost $19.5 billion."

And a USA Today article tells about other recent problems with Boeing. For example, "V-22 Osprey. The tilt-rotor aircraft, made in partnership with Bell Helicopter, is under congressional scrutiny because of concerns about its high cost of operation, reliability and safety". And "Joint Tactical Radio System Cluster 1. Boeing's management of the project for the military was so bad it received a stop-work order from the Defense Department. Eventually, the program was restructured rather than canceled but with Boeing in a diminished role."

A Missouri mine for example. The mine is actually active again to an extent.

Their whole network is in the shitter and they don't seem to be doing much about it.

Not doing anything about it?? Why, of course they are. They're bumping up executive pay.

A couple of years ago there was news that women didn't need regular mammograms.

http://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2009/11/annual_mammograms_not_needed_u.html

Then there was the report that men didn't need to get PSA tests:

http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/health/paul-donohue/psa-screening-no-longer-worth-the-risk/article_92d1d8ba-ee74-5a7a-9702-888396c95e66.html

Now suddenly it is vaccinations. All of these things have been proven effective at catching disease early or prolonging lives. Now the media, the government and (Insurance Companies) come up with all these things that surely means an early death for many people.

I am not really one for conspiracy theories, but this is getting a bit suspect.

Yes, but it's actually illegal for them to review the tests, let alone coerce students to change their answers.

I forget where the article was, but I read recently that fraud is very common - teachers changing answers themselves and such...

Here are some to wet your whistle.

Trolls are needed at this forum. It's been overtaken by fundamentalist religious zealots who are trying to impose their beliefs on everyone else. Please consider creating an account and trolling this forum in the name of freedom.

According to this article, it costs $201.70 to make a Kindle Fire (only $2.70 more than the MSRP). I would think the plan is to entice people to purchase Amazon content for use on the Kindle Fire.

Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_and_blades_business_model

Sam Lowry: It's not the machine. There's a mismatch on the personnel code numbers... Tuttle should have had £31.06, debited against his account, not Buttle!

Kurtzman: Oh my God, a mistake!

Sam Lowry: Well at least it's not ours.

Kurtzman: Isn't it? Whose is it?

Sam Lowry: Information Retrieval.

Predator drones do routine domestic duty

Not only does it not harm the economy, it helps us all save money because we're paying for less energy, and we're paying less per unit of energy because demand is lower.

Maybe in California, but some parts of the country have seen almost yearly rate increases, so cutting your energy usage by 30% doesn't help much when they raise rates 30%.

The goggles they do something. I am pretty sure they come with proper eye protection

I didn't realize they came with a pair for everybody else that might get hit by the same beam. Does the laser pointer come with a 30 second advance warning, too?

Or should we all just start wearing them by default - http://www.stltoday.com/suburban-journals/stcharles/news/article_1e221000-e502-56f6-b5e5-90530677a8c2.html - just because some people are irresponsible and some companies are irresponsible enough to sell to irresponsible people?
( yes, I am suggesting that Wicked Lasers, and other companies making a mint on their main market of people abusing lasers for teh lulz, are acting irresponsibly no matter how many warning labels they put up, disclaimers they list, and safety products they sell. )

The general public has no use case for a 1W laser - or even many energy levels well below that. Those who do can go fill in paperwork and registration forms - no different from guns (not that that is working out particularly well in a market that's flooded with the things).

http://www.stltoday.com/news/science/article_3eb9f408-c955-11e0-8349-001a4bcf6878.html

and

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/08/darpas-very-expensive-sci-fi-projects-future/41427/

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/science/space/18starship.html?_r=1&hp&gwh=30EB3709176A86B1A438FEC050C5C291

Billions of dollars are being poured into climate research by tax-payers.

Perhaps because if it *does* happen, *trillions* of dollars will be needed to fix it, unless we figure out how to do so *before* it happens.

That is an order of magnitude more than corporations are spending on the sceptical viewpoint.

When you're the entrenched monopoly (oil/coal/gas) you really don't have to do much to maintain the status quo....

None of that money would be available to these institutions and researchers if the conclusion was, "climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is ~1C"

Really? You know the sensitivity of climate to CO2? Provably? Factually? Didn't think so. That's why you do *research*.

Al Gore has made millions from this fraud.

And Exxon Mobil made BILLIONS. Last quarter alone. What's your point? If you want to talk about catering to a constituency simply to get their money, you might want to take a look at the current GOP candidates....

Try this for reading. Conservative paper lamenting the loss of 'real' GOP conservatives.

How about results at the ballot box? The people who cared enough to drag their asses down to the polling place oppose it by a nearly 3 to 1 margin.....

Do you have references that these constituents "overwhelmingly favor its repeal"?

I guess you haven't been following the news?

You can find the reference to the employee handbook in the comments wrt his latest brain fart.

Also, the word "pussy" is not obscene (no, the poster didn't use the "c" word). The general consensus is that Kurt Greenbaum is a pussy for over-reacting.

There's a difference between vulgar and obscene. As an editor with "27 years of experience", Greenbaum should know this. Then again, what do you expect from someone who is "director of social media" and but doesn't know how to set up a simple filter in Wordpress.

He hoaxed everyone by claiming that the word wos obscene - it's not - and arm-waving about "it's from a school! OMG Children!!!"

And now the truth is out, the story is all over the place, and the net is striking back http://kurtgreenbaum.com/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/kgreenbaum/2852790661/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/kgreenbaum/4029911338/ - and of course the news media are also covering the story.

this guys makes http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/talk-of-the-day/talk-of-the-day/2009/11/whats-the-craziest-thing-youve-ever-eaten-and-did-you-like-it/ and gets annoyed at a vandal, calls up the school the IP came from, kurt brags about the outcome here http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-editors-desk/the-editors-desk/2009/11/post-a-vulgar-comment-while-youre-at-work-lose-your-job/ but backpedals later on here http://twitter.com/kgreenbaum and I have to say, the netadmin at the school is just as much a jerk for outing the user. He had more control than this Kurt guy did.

And then the headmaster of the school calls kurt up to tell him the guy was fired. That's sorta private, too. So it's three dbags trying to out-dbag each other.

this guys makes http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/talk-of-the-day/talk-of-the-day/2009/11/whats-the-craziest-thing-youve-ever-eaten-and-did-you-like-it/ and gets annoyed at a vandal, calls up the school the IP came from, kurt brags about the outcome here http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-editors-desk/the-editors-desk/2009/11/post-a-vulgar-comment-while-youre-at-work-lose-your-job/ but backpedals later on here http://twitter.com/kgreenbaum and I have to say, the netadmin at the school is just as much a jerk for outing the user. He had more control than this Kurt guy did.

And then the headmaster of the school calls kurt up to tell him the guy was fired. That's sorta private, too. So it's three dbags trying to out-dbag each other.

They may not be legally disallowed from calling the poster's employer, but one could make the argument this violates their privacy policy.

We will not share individual user information with third parties unless the user has specifically approved the release of that information. In some cases, however, we may provide information to legal officials as described in "Compliance with Legal Process" below.

In some cases, we contract with third parties to provide services on our behalf, including credit-card and bill processing, shipping, e-mail distribution, list processing and analytics or promotions management. We provide these third parties only with the information necessary for them to perform their specific services. These service providers are restricted from using this information in any way other than to provide services to us, and they may not share this information with any one else nor may they resell this data.

Compliance with Legal Process
We may disclose personal information if we or one of our affiliated companies is required by law to disclose personal information, or if we believe in good faith that such action is necessary to comply with a law or some legal process, to protect or defend our rights and property, to protect against misuse or unauthorized use of our web sites or to protect the personal safety or property of our users or the public.

Umm ... you quote it right there pretty clearly:

"We may disclose personal information ... to protect against misuse ... of our web sites."

So ... what?

Except that's not the excuse he's using, he claims he didn't share private information because he had none to share. Apparently the IP address and timestamp of when the posts were made weren't private information. From the followup post about the issue here: http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-editors-desk/the-editors-desk/2009/11/follow-up-the-case-of-the-vulgar-comment-and-the-school/

Won't help, in the followup post, the guy claims that:

Did I reveal private information? No. I had none to reveal and wouldn’t have if I had it. From me, the school learned three things: 1) That the comments were posted; 2) When the comments were posted; 3) That I knew they came from the school based on the DNS information that accompanied the IP address. The school knows its own IP address. Knowing when the comments were posted allowed them to track them to a specific work station through its own server logs.

So he apparently doesn't think sharing the time and IP address of a poster is "private information". Or he's trying to cover his ass and not lose his own job. Whichever you think is more likely.