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Milton Friedman was probably the biggest free market economist in the world. You know what he had to say on this issue?

The issue is patents. The issue is a government-granted monopoly and whether that, how extensively the rights that are granted for that purpose extend. The real issue is not really re-importation. The real issue in my opinion is the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA in the United States has followed policy, which means that it costs roughly $800 million to bring a single new drug entity to the market. And the question is where is that $800 million going to come from? The answer that we have given, whether the right answer or the wrong answer, the answer we have given is that it's going to come by giving the producer of the drug a patent, a monopoly privilege to sell that drug, to exclude others from the sale of that drug.

And the question is, are you going to enforce that exclusion? The only way in which that $800 million can be raised is by charging very high prices to some people. Now, the question is given that you're charging those high prices to some people, is it okay to charge low prices to some people? This is a standard case of a monopoly which engages in price discrimination as a way of maximizing its income. It charges high prices where the elasticity of demand is low, it charges low prices where the elasticity of demand is relatively high to the citizens of other countries.

[...]

But the purpose of the law, the purpose of the patent was to enable the patent owner to make enough money to pay for the cost of producing the drug. And that's not going to be possible unless you have price discrimination. And price discrimination adds to human welfare, it permits a larger number of people around the world to have the drug than it could otherwise do so. (from http://www.techcentralstation.com/020204D.html)

I think the key statement is [Price discrimination] permits a larger number of people around the world to have the drug than it could otherwise do so.

A good place to go hunting is techcentralstation. It's nothing but paid ads. Check the Energy and Environment page. Articles like this one sound like they have some sponsorship behind them. Interestingly enough, the author is also a proponent of intelligent design.

One reason behind the ODF adoption is the aggressive Public Diplomacy funded by Microsoft and their continous bashing of France. France is sensitive. France always understood very well how dangerous ressource dependencies are.

Or think of the European Parliament. Who was the supporter of the freedom of software development and opposed Microsofts aggressive lobbying groups? Michel Rocard, former French prime minister.

DCI also runs Tech Central Station, a website frequently referred to by Slashdot and its readers. DCI's client list includes AT&T, Intel, Microsoft, and many others. According to their own website, they specialize in "Corporate Grassroots Campaigns" and "Internet Communications and Mobilization". They helped the Swift Boat attacks on Kerry and now this astroturf attack on Gore. To TCS' credit its not like they hide who owns them.

The lesson is, be skeptical. Don't trust someone or somebody unless they give you a good reason to do so. Don't trust me - click the links above.

I want to go a kick some Korean butt!! If I can program these guys for remote control I'm totally going to save thousands of dollars and spend that on programmers to teach this bot Pride Fighting. Oh, they are so going down!!!

Didn't Star Wars Episode III teach you anything? The Korean Clone Army will totally kick your Droid army's ass.

He loves to spout off about the evils of corporations and IP, but he's made himself into a brand to be marketed and consumed by the masses at a premium price. What a fucking sellout. Like all good wealthy liberals who want to keep you dirty serfs in your place, he also supports an estate tax while he's made his own estate untouchable.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/1019055.html

If you ever plan on retiring, you'd best not believe it either.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/1019055.html

WP is not classified as a chemical weapon because it produces thermal burns, not chemical burns. This is nothing more than the latest attempt by liberals to try to defang the U.S. military and render it harmless. Liberals hate the military because the need for a powerful military flies in the face of their humanist utopia everybody-stand-in-a-circle-and-sing-kumbaya ideaology.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/111705D.html

you know, those autistic savants that stare at x-ray screenshots of people's luggage and look for bad shit.

Temple Grandin, "an autistic woman who was recommended for institutionalization as a child, [...] went on to become an influential expert on animal behavior and inventor of humane systems for handling livestock. [...] Grandin, in her book, notes that autistics have ably performed quality-control jobs that draw upon their detail orientation, and score exceptionally well on tests that involve finding a hidden shape inside a picture. She suggests that autistics be tried as airport screeners, to spot guns, bombs and the like amid the cluttered images of x-rayed luggage. Is anyone in the Department of Homeland Security working on this idea?"

Source: http://www.techcentralstation.com/091305C.html

I agree. Fetuses shouldn't be used for research. Especially when adult stem cells avoid the entire controversy, are more useful, and have actually produced treatments that are in human trials right now, unlike ESC. Proponents of embryonic stem cell research mostly seem to be trying to fight a proxy war for abortion by saying,"Look, Science tells us to kill babies!" For a very well written article that expresses how I've always felt about the stem cell issue, and mentions points about it that most people are unaware of: http://www.techcentralstation.com/102405D.html The article does neglect to mention however that not only do ASC lead to more promising treatments, but that they don't even have to deal with tissue rejection in any of their therapies, unlike ESC.

well my point is not some appeal to the authority of the collective science community, its that there is no actual scientific work done on it. Thats what you have to do to even consider it to be science. And I would have to say, in 1870 general relativity was not science. Its science now, precisely because Einstein published papers and put up falsifiable hypotheses about it. But back in 1870 it would just be me or you talking about some crazy notion about curved space and mass. It may be true, just as ID may be true, but its not scientifically true until its passed scientific tests. I think this is a good article that better eulicidates my reasoning.

"The H5N1 strain of avian flu has led to the death from infection and culling of tens of millions of birds across South-East Asia. It has also infected 112 people in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia, causing 57 deaths.

Scientists are concerned that the H5N1 strain of avian flu could mutate so that it is passed easily from one person to another. If that were to happen, it would have the potential to trigger a lethal pandemic on the scale of the the 1918-19 Spanish flu in which 20 million to 40 million people died."

Many of the voting recommendations have more to do with politics than patents; when it has little to do with patents, it might be worth disobeying the recommendations in order to make a real vote, rather than simply boosting an arbitary choice.

I wish in fact that NoSoftwarePatents.com had made no recommendation when the was no patent-related issues for that candidate. Such block-voting recommendations also make it easier for people to write this kind of idiocy.

The heck it doesn't - nothing else drives per capita growth in a positive direction while a population is increasing!

Arnold Kling is author of Learning Economics. From his article at TCS: "Labor productivity is perhaps the most important statistic in the economy. Over time, output per worker is what drives wage rates and the standard of living."

"Technological innovation is what drives productivity growth. Kurzweil argues that the rate of technological innovation is doubling every decade, which to me would imply that the rate of productivity growth will double every decade. If annual productivity growth was 3.5 percent in the decade ending in 2005, then it will be 7 percent in the decade ending in 2015 and 14 percent in the decade ending in 2025. By that time, productivity would be more than 7 times what it is today. Thus, if average income per person is $35,000 today, then it will be over $250,000 per person (in today's purchasing power) in 2025."

From an article at Federal Reserve Bank: "The performance of productivity in the U.S. economy has delivered some big surprises over the last several years. One surprise was in the latter half of the 1990s, when productivity growth surged to average an annual rate of over 3%, more than twice as fast as the rate in the previous two decades. A bigger surprise has been the further ratcheting up...productivity growth averaged around 3.8% for the 2001 through 2004 period."

From TCS: "Annual economic growth in the eurozone has averaged less than 2 percent since 2000. The unemployment rate has averaged 9 percent thus far in 2005, compared to 5.1 percent in the U.S. Half of Germany's unemployed are classified as "long-term" compared to just 12 percent in the U.S."

"Confessions of an Engineering Washout" by Douglas Kern

I am an engineering washout. I left a chemical engineering major in shame and disgust to pursue the softer pleasures of a liberal arts education. No, do not pity me, gentle reader; do not assuage your horror and dismay at my degradation by flinging a filthy quarter into my shiny tin cup. Instead, hear my story, and learn why the United States lacks engineers ....[continued]

Recommendations based on memories twenty-years ago:

+ Professors/Instructors/TAs should watch a video tapes of themselves giving lectures or providing assistance during office hours

+ Professors/Instructors/TAs office-hours should occur at reasonable science & engineering times (e.g. immediately after class & late in the evening)

+ Professors/Instructors/TAs should verify that the curriculum at 'SmartyPantsU' is self-consistent. For example, does 2nd year calc really assist with 3rd year electro-dynamics and why the one year gap between learning the subject matter (vector calc) and applying the subject matter (E&M vector calc)?

+ Professors/Instructors/TAs should be engaged in small-lab research that can actively utilize the services of undergrads

+ Continued employment of Professors/Instructors/TAs to include metrics (1) post graduation surveys of alumni at one-year, five-year, ten-year points (2) subject matter GRE scores of graduates (3) end-of-course critiques (4) ???

+ Eliminate Tenure???

"Confessions of an Engineering Washout" by Douglas Kern

I am an engineering washout. I left a chemical engineering major in shame and disgust to pursue the softer pleasures of a liberal arts education. No, do not pity me, gentle reader; do not assuage your horror and dismay at my degradation by flinging a filthy quarter into my shiny tin cup. Instead, hear my story, and learn why the United States lacks engineers ....[continued]

Recommendations based on memories twenty-years ago:

+ Professors/Instructors/TAs should watch a video tapes of themselves giving lectures or providing assistance during office hours

+ Professors/Instructors/TAs office-hours should occur at reasonable science & engineering times (e.g. immediately after class & late in the evening)

+ Professors/Instructors/TAs should verify that the curriculum at 'SmartyPantsU' is self-consistent. For example, does 2nd year calc really assist with 3rd year electro-dynamics and why the one year gap between learning the subject matter (vector calc) and applying the subject matter (E&M vector calc)?

+ Professors/Instructors/TAs should be engaged in small-lab research that can actively utilize the services of undergrads

+ Continued employment of Professors/Instructors/TAs to include metrics (1) post graduation surveys of alumni at one-year, five-year, ten-year points (2) subject matter GRE scores of graduates (3) end-of-course critiques (4) ???

+ Eliminate Tenure???

Observe: http://www.soundexchange.com/rates.html (down at the bottom of the page, the last entry)

As far as on the front end - SDARS providers (XM in particular) have not exactly been acting in good faith. For example: XM has deployed a network of terrestrial repeaters that theoretically could be used to deliver local content - the NAB agreed to allow this provided XM committed not to deliver local programming... then turned around and set up local traffic service for dozens of markets.

More info: http://www.techcentralstation.com/011404E.html

I suspect the RIAA feels the same was as the NAB did about local programming - it was far outside the scope and spirit of their existing agreements, hence their panties being in a wad.

When I first saw this headline - I assumed it was because the RIAA was going after XM and Sirius for their flagrant DMCA violations. The DMCA is utterly ludicrous in terms of what it requires (particularly in regards to the "performance complement" restricting the number of songs by the same artist or on the same album in a given time period - but it is in fact the law and the SDARS don't appear to even be trying to conform to it. I wonder how long until the RIAA goes after them for that.

Looks like Princeton. (I was hoping to say, "a quick Google finds...", but it wasn't quick at all.

--
If it makes you feel better, he has little more respect for his law school:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/062204E.html

Read sample of their "journalism" here:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/070505Q.html
Read about Mr. Glassman here:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/031 2.confessore.html

The present article is all noise too - which University? Which research supports author's observations? What about other universities? And, if any students were his seniors, wasn't it only him having problems? Etc, etc.

Free Republic is a news aggregator. There was no "Free Republic author", the article is from Tech Central Station: http://www.techcentralstation.com/091605F.html.

We are rapidly approaching that point where the atmospheric CO2 levels are 100% HIGHER than the prior maximums over this time period.
Levels of methane, another potent greenhouse gas, are approaching 1000% higher than any previous peak on record.

Oh, well in that case, it's a good thing the Bush administration has a plan to significantly reduce the amount of methane being released into the atmosphere.

What's that you say? You haven't heard about this on the BBC, CBC, NPR, CNN or even FOX News? How interesting.

You do not read the article before posting.

You say: "Maybe the author is on to something. Perhaps he would publish in a serious journal, or make the data freely available?"

The whole point of the Micheals' article is that the Science data only goes back to the 70's and that data that goes back longer shows something different.

Free Republic linked to the article in Tech Central Station http://www.techcentralstation.com/091605F.html which used data from the national hurricane center. http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/data_sub/hurdat.html

Michaels is a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, CATO Institute Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies, and visiting scientist with the Marshall Institute in Washington, D.C. He is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. He holds A.B. and S.M. degrees in biological sciences and plant ecology from the University of Chicago, and he received a Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1979. Michaels is a contributing author and reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. His writing has been published in the major scientific journals, including Climate Research, Climatic Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, Nature, and Science, as well as in popular serials such as the Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, and Journal of Commerce. He has appeared on ABC, NPR's "All Things Considered," PBS, Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, BBC and Voice of America. According to Nature magazine, Pat Michaels may be the most popular lecturer in the nation on the subject of global warming.

You are wrong - the article compares frequency to frequency AND severity to severity.

There is a section titled "How Frequent" and there is also a section titled "How Intense".

Plus it's right there in charts in blue, green, and red!

Did you even read the article or view the graphs before posting?

When the title of the graph is "Number of Hurricanes" that is frequency.

When the title of the other graph is "Percentage of Hurricanes" you can see (by reading!) that it refers to the percentage of hurricanes of each (intensity or force or severity) cat1 vs cat2+3 vs cat4+5.

So the article does include comparisons based on severity - but only if you read it!

Uh... friend, you do realize that the column was written for TCS and was just reposted to Free Republic by someone else, right? And that the TCS and Science articles are in agreement about the lack of historical evidence of global warming?

Of course, now that I look for the exact reference I can't find it...

But, here are a few that give the basics of original construction. The Fort that was later New Orleans was built upon the only non-swamp "high ground" at the time. The city was basically set up to be a scam, if you read the history.

http://techcentralstation.com/090305A.html
http://slate.msn.com/id/2125229/nav/tap2/
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal- pe.city04sep04,1,5490304.story?coll=bal-oped-headl ines

The U. of Texas has an EXCELLENT digital map library. The Historical New Orleans are enlightening. Too bad they don't show elevation, though. The one from 1849 shows depth of flooding at the time: 4-6 feet in the western part of the city.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/louisiana.html

Finally, page 20 of this PDF would be nice to own -- if I had $850 to spare.

http://www.arkway.com/pdfs/Cat49.pdf

  -Charles

For example, activists, scientists, and government officials have claimed that global warming will cause ozone to rise in the future. This claim is false. Upcoming large reductions in emissions of ozone-forming pollutants will reduce future ozone levels, regardless of climate change. Even more important, higher temperatures will decrease levels of airborne particulate matter. Thus, to the extent temperatures do rise in the future, the net result will be a decrease in air pollution health risks.[1]

Last year the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) published Heat Advisory: How Global Warming Causes More Bad Air Days. The report claimed that by 2050 increasing temperatures would cause a 50 percent rise in days exceeding the federal 8-hour ozone standard each year.[2] The federal government's 2002 Climate Action Report also cited potential increases in air pollution due to higher temperatures.[3] And the Massachusetts Attorney General, whose bid to force EPA to regulate CO2 as an air pollutant will be argued today in federal court, puts ozone increases near the top of his list of harms from global warming.[4] Even academic and government scientists have entered the debate as activists -- NRDC's Heat Advisory was written by public health professors from Johns Hopkins and Columbia, and atmospheric and environmental scientists from Yale, the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Wisconsin, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some of these scientists also published their Heat Advisory results in the prestigious refereed journal Environmental Health Perspectives.[5]

All else equal, higher temperatures do indeed mean higher ozone levels. But all else won't remain equal. EPA and state regulators have already taken actions that will eliminate most remaining ozone-forming emissions -- volatile organic compounds (VOC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) -- during the next 20 years or so.[6] At worst, warming will cause ozone to decrease slightly less than it otherwise might.

The activists and scientists who claim that higher temperatures will necessarily increase ozone fail to note that a roughly one-degree-Fahrenheit temperature rise during the last 30 years was accompanied by nationwide declines in ozone levels. Where more than 80 percent of ozone monitors violated the federal 8-hour ozone standard during the late 1970s, only about 35 percent do so today. The average number of 8-hour-ozone exceedance days per year has declined more than 70 percent.

Despite a record of decreasing ozone, Heat Advisory's authorsmanaged to manufacture future ozone increases by assuming ozone-forming emissions in 2050 would be the same as they were in 1996. Yet by the time Heat Advisory was published in 2004, VOC and NOx had already declined 50 and 25 percent, respectively, below 1996 levels.[7] Heat Advisory claims to predict how rising temperatures will affect future ozone levels. In fact, the report merely estimates what ozone

For example, activists, scientists, and government officials have claimed that global warming will cause ozone to rise in the future. This claim is false. Upcoming large reductions in emissions of ozone-forming pollutants will reduce future ozone levels, regardless of climate change. Even more important, higher temperatures will decrease levels of airborne particulate matter. Thus, to the extent temperatures do rise in the future, the net result will be a decrease in air pollution health risks.[1]

Last year the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) published Heat Advisory: How Global Warming Causes More Bad Air Days. The report claimed that by 2050 increasing temperatures would cause a 50 percent rise in days exceeding the federal 8-hour ozone standard each year.[2] The federal government's 2002 Climate Action Report also cited potential increases in air pollution due to higher temperatures.[3] And the Massachusetts Attorney General, whose bid to force EPA to regulate CO2 as an air pollutant will be argued today in federal court, puts ozone increases near the top of his list of harms from global warming.[4] Even academic and government scientists have entered the debate as activists -- NRDC's Heat Advisory was written by public health professors from Johns Hopkins and Columbia, and atmospheric and environmental scientists from Yale, the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Wisconsin, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some of these scientists also published their Heat Advisory results in the prestigious refereed journal Environmental Health Perspectives.[5]

All else equal, higher temperatures do indeed mean higher ozone levels. But all else won't remain equal. EPA and state regulators have already taken actions that will eliminate most remaining ozone-forming emissions -- volatile organic compounds (VOC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) -- during the next 20 years or so.[6] At worst, warming will cause ozone to decrease slightly less than it otherwise might.

The activists and scientists who claim that higher temperatures will necessarily increase ozone fail to note that a roughly one-degree-Fahrenheit temperature rise during the last 30 years was accompanied by nationwide declines in ozone levels. Where more than 80 percent of ozone monitors violated the federal 8-hour ozone standard during the late 1970s, only about 35 percent do so today. The average number of 8-hour-ozone exceedance days per year has declined more than 70 percent.

Despite a record of decreasing ozone, Heat Advisory's authorsmanaged to manufacture future ozone increases by assuming ozone-forming emissions in 2050 would be the same as they were in 1996. Yet by the time Heat Advisory was published in 2004, VOC and NOx had already declined 50 and 25 percent, respectively, below 1996 levels.[7] Heat Advisory claims to predict how rising temperatures will affect future ozone levels. In fact, the report merely estimates what ozone

For example, activists, scientists, and government officials have claimed that global warming will cause ozone to rise in the future. This claim is false. Upcoming large reductions in emissions of ozone-forming pollutants will reduce future ozone levels, regardless of climate change. Even more important, higher temperatures will decrease levels of airborne particulate matter. Thus, to the extent temperatures do rise in the future, the net result will be a decrease in air pollution health risks.[1]

Last year the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) published Heat Advisory: How Global Warming Causes More Bad Air Days. The report claimed that by 2050 increasing temperatures would cause a 50 percent rise in days exceeding the federal 8-hour ozone standard each year.[2] The federal government's 2002 Climate Action Report also cited potential increases in air pollution due to higher temperatures.[3] And the Massachusetts Attorney General, whose bid to force EPA to regulate CO2 as an air pollutant will be argued today in federal court, puts ozone increases near the top of his list of harms from global warming.[4] Even academic and government scientists have entered the debate as activists -- NRDC's Heat Advisory was written by public health professors from Johns Hopkins and Columbia, and atmospheric and environmental scientists from Yale, the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Wisconsin, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some of these scientists also published their Heat Advisory results in the prestigious refereed journal Environmental Health Perspectives.[5]

All else equal, higher temperatures do indeed mean higher ozone levels. But all else won't remain equal. EPA and state regulators have already taken actions that will eliminate most remaining ozone-forming emissions -- volatile organic compounds (VOC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) -- during the next 20 years or so.[6] At worst, warming will cause ozone to decrease slightly less than it otherwise might.

The activists and scientists who claim that higher temperatures will necessarily increase ozone fail to note that a roughly one-degree-Fahrenheit temperature rise during the last 30 years was accompanied by nationwide declines in ozone levels. Where more than 80 percent of ozone monitors violated the federal 8-hour ozone standard during the late 1970s, only about 35 percent do so today. The average number of 8-hour-ozone exceedance days per year has declined more than 70 percent.

Despite a record of decreasing ozone, Heat Advisory's authorsmanaged to manufacture future ozone increases by assuming ozone-forming emissions in 2050 would be the same as they were in 1996. Yet by the time Heat Advisory was published in 2004, VOC and NOx had already declined 50 and 25 percent, respectively, below 1996 levels.[7] Heat Advisory claims to predict how rising temperatures will affect future ozone levels. In fact, the report merely estimates what ozone

For example, activists, scientists, and government officials have claimed that global warming will cause ozone to rise in the future. This claim is false. Upcoming large reductions in emissions of ozone-forming pollutants will reduce future ozone levels, regardless of climate change. Even more important, higher temperatures will decrease levels of airborne particulate matter. Thus, to the extent temperatures do rise in the future, the net result will be a decrease in air pollution health risks.[1]

Last year the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) published Heat Advisory: How Global Warming Causes More Bad Air Days. The report claimed that by 2050 increasing temperatures would cause a 50 percent rise in days exceeding the federal 8-hour ozone standard each year.[2] The federal government's 2002 Climate Action Report also cited potential increases in air pollution due to higher temperatures.[3] And the Massachusetts Attorney General, whose bid to force EPA to regulate CO2 as an air pollutant will be argued today in federal court, puts ozone increases near the top of his list of harms from global warming.[4] Even academic and government scientists have entered the debate as activists -- NRDC's Heat Advisory was written by public health professors from Johns Hopkins and Columbia, and atmospheric and environmental scientists from Yale, the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Wisconsin, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some of these scientists also published their Heat Advisory results in the prestigious refereed journal Environmental Health Perspectives.[5]

All else equal, higher temperatures do indeed mean higher ozone levels. But all else won't remain equal. EPA and state regulators have already taken actions that will eliminate most remaining ozone-forming emissions -- volatile organic compounds (VOC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) -- during the next 20 years or so.[6] At worst, warming will cause ozone to decrease slightly less than it otherwise might.

The activists and scientists who claim that higher temperatures will necessarily increase ozone fail to note that a roughly one-degree-Fahrenheit temperature rise during the last 30 years was accompanied by nationwide declines in ozone levels. Where more than 80 percent of ozone monitors violated the federal 8-hour ozone standard during the late 1970s, only about 35 percent do so today. The average number of 8-hour-ozone exceedance days per year has declined more than 70 percent.

Despite a record of decreasing ozone, Heat Advisory's authorsmanaged to manufacture future ozone increases by assuming ozone-forming emissions in 2050 would be the same as they were in 1996. Yet by the time Heat Advisory was published in 2004, VOC and NOx had already declined 50 and 25 percent, respectively, below 1996 levels.[7] Heat Advisory claims to predict how rising temperatures will affect future ozone levels. In fact, the report merely estimates what ozone

For example, activists, scientists, and government officials have claimed that global warming will cause ozone to rise in the future. This claim is false. Upcoming large reductions in emissions of ozone-forming pollutants will reduce future ozone levels, regardless of climate change. Even more important, higher temperatures will decrease levels of airborne particulate matter. Thus, to the extent temperatures do rise in the future, the net result will be a decrease in air pollution health risks.[1]

Last year the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) published Heat Advisory: How Global Warming Causes More Bad Air Days. The report claimed that by 2050 increasing temperatures would cause a 50 percent rise in days exceeding the federal 8-hour ozone standard each year.[2] The federal government's 2002 Climate Action Report also cited potential increases in air pollution due to higher temperatures.[3] And the Massachusetts Attorney General, whose bid to force EPA to regulate CO2 as an air pollutant will be argued today in federal court, puts ozone increases near the top of his list of harms from global warming.[4] Even academic and government scientists have entered the debate as activists -- NRDC's Heat Advisory was written by public health professors from Johns Hopkins and Columbia, and atmospheric and environmental scientists from Yale, the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Wisconsin, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some of these scientists also published their Heat Advisory results in the prestigious refereed journal Environmental Health Perspectives.[5]

All else equal, higher temperatures do indeed mean higher ozone levels. But all else won't remain equal. EPA and state regulators have already taken actions that will eliminate most remaining ozone-forming emissions -- volatile organic compounds (VOC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) -- during the next 20 years or so.[6] At worst, warming will cause ozone to decrease slightly less than it otherwise might.

The activists and scientists who claim that higher temperatures will necessarily increase ozone fail to note that a roughly one-degree-Fahrenheit temperature rise during the last 30 years was accompanied by nationwide declines in ozone levels. Where more than 80 percent of ozone monitors violated the federal 8-hour ozone standard during the late 1970s, only about 35 percent do so today. The average number of 8-hour-ozone exceedance days per year has declined more than 70 percent.

Despite a record of decreasing ozone, Heat Advisory's authorsmanaged to manufacture future ozone increases by assuming ozone-forming emissions in 2050 would be the same as they were in 1996. Yet by the time Heat Advisory was published in 2004, VOC and NOx had already declined 50 and 25 percent, respectively, below 1996 levels.[7] Heat Advisory claims to predict how rising temperatures will affect future ozone levels. In fact, the report merely estimates what ozone

For example, activists, scientists, and government officials have claimed that global warming will cause ozone to rise in the future. This claim is false. Upcoming large reductions in emissions of ozone-forming pollutants will reduce future ozone levels, regardless of climate change. Even more important, higher temperatures will decrease levels of airborne particulate matter. Thus, to the extent temperatures do rise in the future, the net result will be a decrease in air pollution health risks.[1]

Last year the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) published Heat Advisory: How Global Warming Causes More Bad Air Days. The report claimed that by 2050 increasing temperatures would cause a 50 percent rise in days exceeding the federal 8-hour ozone standard each year.[2] The federal government's 2002 Climate Action Report also cited potential increases in air pollution due to higher temperatures.[3] And the Massachusetts Attorney General, whose bid to force EPA to regulate CO2 as an air pollutant will be argued today in federal court, puts ozone increases near the top of his list of harms from global warming.[4] Even academic and government scientists have entered the debate as activists -- NRDC's Heat Advisory was written by public health professors from Johns Hopkins and Columbia, and atmospheric and environmental scientists from Yale, the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Wisconsin, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some of these scientists also published their Heat Advisory results in the prestigious refereed journal Environmental Health Perspectives.[5]

All else equal, higher temperatures do indeed mean higher ozone levels. But all else won't remain equal. EPA and state regulators have already taken actions that will eliminate most remaining ozone-forming emissions -- volatile organic compounds (VOC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) -- during the next 20 years or so.[6] At worst, warming will cause ozone to decrease slightly less than it otherwise might.

The activists and scientists who claim that higher temperatures will necessarily increase ozone fail to note that a roughly one-degree-Fahrenheit temperature rise during the last 30 years was accompanied by nationwide declines in ozone levels. Where more than 80 percent of ozone monitors violated the federal 8-hour ozone standard during the late 1970s, only about 35 percent do so today. The average number of 8-hour-ozone exceedance days per year has declined more than 70 percent.

Despite a record of decreasing ozone, Heat Advisory's authorsmanaged to manufacture future ozone increases by assuming ozone-forming emissions in 2050 would be the same as they were in 1996. Yet by the time Heat Advisory was published in 2004, VOC and NOx had already declined 50 and 25 percent, respectively, below 1996 levels.[7] Heat Advisory claims to predict how rising temperatures will affect future ozone levels. In fact, the report merely estimates what ozone

For example, activists, scientists, and government officials have claimed that global warming will cause ozone to rise in the future. This claim is false. Upcoming large reductions in emissions of ozone-forming pollutants will reduce future ozone levels, regardless of climate change. Even more important, higher temperatures will decrease levels of airborne particulate matter. Thus, to the extent temperatures do rise in the future, the net result will be a decrease in air pollution health risks.[1]

Last year the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) published Heat Advisory: How Global Warming Causes More Bad Air Days. The report claimed that by 2050 increasing temperatures would cause a 50 percent rise in days exceeding the federal 8-hour ozone standard each year.[2] The federal government's 2002 Climate Action Report also cited potential increases in air pollution due to higher temperatures.[3] And the Massachusetts Attorney General, whose bid to force EPA to regulate CO2 as an air pollutant will be argued today in federal court, puts ozone increases near the top of his list of harms from global warming.[4] Even academic and government scientists have entered the debate as activists -- NRDC's Heat Advisory was written by public health professors from Johns Hopkins and Columbia, and atmospheric and environmental scientists from Yale, the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Wisconsin, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some of these scientists also published their Heat Advisory results in the prestigious refereed journal Environmental Health Perspectives.[5]

All else equal, higher temperatures do indeed mean higher ozone levels. But all else won't remain equal. EPA and state regulators have already taken actions that will eliminate most remaining ozone-forming emissions -- volatile organic compounds (VOC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) -- during the next 20 years or so.[6] At worst, warming will cause ozone to decrease slightly less than it otherwise might.

The activists and scientists who claim that higher temperatures will necessarily increase ozone fail to note that a roughly one-degree-Fahrenheit temperature rise during the last 30 years was accompanied by nationwide declines in ozone levels. Where more than 80 percent of ozone monitors violated the federal 8-hour ozone standard during the late 1970s, only about 35 percent do so today. The average number of 8-hour-ozone exceedance days per year has declined more than 70 percent.

Despite a record of decreasing ozone, Heat Advisory's authorsmanaged to manufacture future ozone increases by assuming ozone-forming emissions in 2050 would be the same as they were in 1996. Yet by the time Heat Advisory was published in 2004, VOC and NOx had already declined 50 and 25 percent, respectively, below 1996 levels.[7] Heat Advisory claims to predict how rising temperatures will affect future ozone levels. In fact, the report merely estimates what ozone

Not exactly ... technical professionals may be familiar with the phrase "data talks and bullshit walks." Here is some data contradicting your claim that "not even the most strident liberal has accused Bush of directly causing Katrina"

Hurricane exploitation - the quotes

Katrina and Disgusting Exploitation

Threads galore over at the "KosKiddie" website

BTW, here's a neat book about the last USA Regional Disaster Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and how it changed America

Get of your high horse. As editors, they pick out content from submissions. That is editing. You seem to want them to proofread peoples submissions, which is what a proof reader does.

Slashdot is not CNN, it is a nerd-blog. If you want a blog-style news site with excellent editing, proof reading, original articles and corporate sponsors that dictate the contents of the massive political propaganda package, I suggest you read something like TCS. I'm sure it will feel much more like the old media you are used to.

Oh, and you may want to read this recent article- http://www.techcentralstation.com/070605C.html "....That was the case when London's Royal Society issued a statement last month announcing that the national science academies of the G8 nations and Brazil, China and India, three of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the developing world, had signed a statement on the global response to climate change. The statement stressed that the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action and called on world leaders, including those meeting at the G8 summit this week at Gleneagles, to take a number of specific measures. However, it turns out this statement was not supported by the American and Russian Academies of Science. Fred Singer, president of the Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), reported that Bruce Albert, president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences -- whose signature was printed at the bottom of the statement -- confirmed that the Academy "definitely did not approve the Royal Society press release". Albert added that he had sent a letter to Lord Robert May (the drafter of the press release) expressing his dismay at the misleading and political statements made in it. The press release came also as a surprise to the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). As Benny Peiser, a well-known British climate skeptic noted: "The Royal Society appears to have pressured its president, Yuri Osipov, into signing a politically motivated document against the expressed stance of its own organization. The RAS had never seen or discussed the text of the Academies' statement. After having done so, the RAS climate scientists have come to the conclusion that the statement of the Academies is 'lacking scientific proof and having contradictions in logic in its many assertions.' Russian scientists still believe that the Kyoto protocol is scientifically flawed. It is an ineffective way to try to achieve the aim of the UN convention on climate change. They also said it was harmful for the Russian economy. In the meantime, a special climate group of the RAS has requested the president of the Russian Academy of Science to repudiate his signature from the 'Academies' statement."

I think any website that actively exorts its readers to commit sectarian violence against everyone dissimilar to them and provides some sort of way of organizing groups for that purpose is a pretty good target of our security forces.

Of course now some multicultralists are going to try and say that mainline Christianity and Judaism are just as bad as Islam because of things that happened several hundred years ago and that were sponsored by secular governments. To such people, I challenge them to read this and say that Islamist websites are not a very dangerous threat to our societies.

The slipper slope here is not in shutting down Islamist websites, but in allowing Islamists to freely operate. Wahabis in particular will mass murder even Shiites and Sufis in particular. There is a state interest, even in the US, of eradicating Wahabi Islam because even (Church of) Satanism is a better religion in practice than Wahabi Islam for society.

"why is it that people perceive the Japanese as more efficient than Americans?"

Here's an article that describes the situation.
A good quote:
"The paradox was that in the 90s stories on the front pages of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist were all about how the Japanese manufacturing industries through trade were driving US manufacturing industries into the ground and virtually wiping them out. And of course that did happen in consumer electronics -- the US basically got out entirely in the consumer electronics business. And the steel industry and the automobile industry came very close to being bankrupt, although not all companies in those industries were in that shape. But the industries themselves as a whole were in very bad shape because of, in large part, competition from Japan, which was able to deliver high quality products at lower costs -- yet the GDP per capita numbers at purchasing power parity exchange rates show that GDP per capita in Japan was roughly 30 percent below the US. So how could this be? And the only way to understand that is to look at the productivity of individual industries in Japan. What we found is that Japan has a dual economy. Yes, it does have some selected manufacturing industries that have high productivity, much higher than the corresponding US industries and in fact they have the highest productivity in their industries of any country in the world. And yet, the traded part of an economy is always a tiny fraction of the total GDP. A rule of thumb is that it's roughly at most 15 percent of the GDP. So what that says is that the standard of living is determined because the productivity of the country is determined by what happens outside these traded goods. Productivity of a country in total -- the average productivity -- is the average productivity of every single worker. So in that sense, every worker is equally important. If you have low productivity in the non traded parts of manufacturing and in the huge domestic service industry -- such as retailing and housing construction and so on -- you are going to have low average productivity even though you may have a handful of industries like automotive and machine tools and steel where you have the highest productivity in the world."

Read the whole thing.

The state department is wrong.

Oh yeah, and lets not forget that we could have killed al Zarqawi in the past, because we knew right where he was and we had had him cornered. This was not our agenda however, so we let him live.

Which is also why President Clinton declined to take custody of bin Laden when offered him. Hindsight is always 20/20, ain't it?

I would also like to point out that a "War" is often defined as clashing armies, or states, or coilitions. Not generally civilians.

A war is an armed conflict.

You cannot have a "war" on terror. War simply spreads more terror.

Yes, you can. And yes, it does.

If a people are being oppressed (from their prespective, not ours), they will spread terror against their oppressors.

That's a naive viewpoint. It's hard to terrorize your oppressors when your oppressor can gas an entire village of people and slaughter them all. If revolutions were this simple, there'd be no more dictators.

A man is the most dangerous when you take away his hopes and dreams, and from their perspective this is exactly what we have done (I am sure I stole that quote from somewhere).

*double take* BWUAH!? We have taken whose hopes and dreams? Al Qaeda's? Well, yeah, then good, fuck them. Iraq? How in the world have the hopes and dreams of Iraqis been dashed by the United States?

Lets not forget that only one nation has ever used a Nuclear Bomb during warfare, and it was used on civilians, TO SPREAD TERROR!

Everybody loves to drag this one out. I think the power of the bomb could have been demonstrated without as much loss of life, but I wasn't sitting in the Oval Office in 1945 looking at casualty lists and projecting casualty lists of an invasion of Japan's homeland and trying to make a decision. I think that Truman really thought he was doing the right thing for America. The bomb was not dropped to "spread terror," that was an ancillary benefit.

At least the polls are starting to show that Americans have started to figure out that Bush is evil, however it is too bad it took this long! Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

I don't believe the man is evil. Men like Osama bin Laden are evil. Men like Saddam Hussein are evil. It's a little disturbing how comfortably and easily you draw a moral equivilency between a regime that fed political opponents into plastic shredders and the current American president.

Warning, the article is pretty disgusting. ~Knaldgas

They release it to the public for free (and Free) and keep track of how many copies are in circulation. Depending on how popular it is, they are then paid $5,00,000,000, or what ever, by a central organisation. The consumers have to pay this organisation a set amount each year to cover their costs, but are then free to do whatever they want with the movie/music/software.

Will people be happy being forced to fork out a few grand a year for products? They fork it out already voluntarily.

But that's not all. The consumer of {movies,music,software} will perceive it as free. As a consequence they'll consume more of it than they would if they had to pay for it. This will lead to escalating costs for everyone.

A crazy, poorly formed idea, but one which does eliminate the problem sellers we are now facing.

Glenn Reynolds (i.e. the Instapundit) recently wrote a piece for Tech Central Station on the failure of the Planetary Society's Cosmos 1, which I thought was quite well-said. Here's a quote:

http://techcentralstation.com/062905J.html

Some might accuse [Planetary Society directory] Friedman of putting a Pollyannaish spin on things, but I'd say he's learned the most important lesson of all: It's hard to accomplish much if you're afraid to fail.

The history of success in all sorts of endeavors -- including the early days of space travel, when we were making rapid progress -- is a history of repeated failures. I don't think it's a coincidence that when the failure rate declined, so did our rate of progress. You learn from failure, and you learn from trying lots of different things. Unfortunately, fear of failure -- like fear in general -- is contagious. But fortunately, so is bravery. When people act unafraid of failure, other people may pick up on the message.

The Planetary Society's mission was, really, a failure: It was supposed to test solar sails, and it never got the chance. But, simply by happening, and by having the Planetary Society emerge with its head bloody, but unbowed, it accomplished something useful by opening up (metaphorical) space for others to try risky but low-cost approaches without worrying too much about the fallout. And that's good.

Because, as I've noted before, when you're not afraid of failure you can try lots of different things and figure out what works best. If you're afraid of failing, on the other hand, you build huge, process-laden, documentation-heavy, behemoths that -- in a way -- are already failures before they ever start because they're too hard to change and improve, and because they don't generate enough useful knowledge to allow further progress. (See, e.g., the Space Shuttle program).

The Planetary Society's launch, despite Lou Friedman's views, failed. But the approach it embodied is the only approach that's likely to achieve substantial success in the long run. And that's a kind of success in itself. Let's hope that we'll see more of this sort of thing in the future.

Would we? I don't hear anybody screaming monopoly over other community funded ammenities, like parks, playgrounds, paths, libraries, band shells, riverwalks, public lakefronts, community colleges...

But that's okay, because it's how a representative government with taxation functions. Taxpayers don't get line item funding control over their tax money, but they get to elect like-minded folks to represent their budgeting preferences.

• insufficient bandwidth
• the unreliability of the infrastructure, and
• the especially high cost.

I spent much of my business career at the intersection of business processes and computer systems. I know how business units complain about information systems departments without understanding how large-scale systems evolve. Conversely, I have seen information systems departments try to run the business ("driving from the back seat," as one former colleague calls it). Overall, I have arrived at this conclusion:
Information systems reflect their organizational setting .

If organizational roles and boundaries are not well defined, then computer systems will have gaps and overlaps, also. If a business process is overly complex, then the computer systems will share that complexity. If a management structure has too many layers, then the computer system will be bloated by effort to meet competing demands.

In my experience, problems that are blamed on computer systems almost invariably can be traced back to organizational characteristics. Any attempt to fix the information system without doing anything about the organizational issues is likely to fail. Information system weaknesses are more often a symptom than a cause of an organizational problem.

That is 2018.

I have a real article with actual facts and data:

The Tip of the Iceberg

All you have is a screed that calls people names who disagree with it.

Nah in the long run all the US currency that China is buying would eventually overwhelm China's own currency resulting in economic collapse.

See this article.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/041205A.html

As for accuracy, check out The Faith-Based Encyclopedia's analysis of Wikipedia's page on Alexander Hamilton.

As for completeness, check out Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism. I have to agree with the anti-elitism "problem". And while the optimist in me hopes that the collaborative democratic approach succeeds, what I have seen on Wikipedia is that (a) White, male, USian, geeky topics are covered extremely well, both in depth and quality that (b) controversial topics are fought over and that (c) anything else is somebody's pet-project and at best lacks depth at worst it horribly misrepresents the topic.

As for the controversial topics most of them are undeniably biased, and if you have any doubt just check the discussion page for the topic. (An example would be Pope John Paul II's discussion page)

So, why are we heralding the possibility of articles of questionable quality and completeness being burned on CDs? It seems completely ridiculous to me. At least the topics can grow and evolve on the web. On a CD, any inaccuracy, incompleteness, or bias is maintained and perpetuated as long as that CD is used.

As the submission noted, this work will be building on what Hawkins wrote about in his recent book, On Intelligence. The companion web site for the book is here:

There are also a some reviews of the book:
http://blogger.iftf.org/Future/000605.html
http://www.computer.org/computer/homepage/0105/ran dom/index.htm
(By Bob Colwell, who was Intel's chief IA32 architect)
http://www.techcentralstation.com/112204B.html
http://www.corante.com/brainwaves/archives/026649. html

A quote from his book:

The agenda for this book is ambitious. It describes a comprehensive theory of how the brain works. It describes what intelligence is and how your brain creates it. The theory I present is not a completely new one. Many of the individual ideas you are about to read have existed in some form or another before, but not together in a coherent fashion. This should be expected. It is said that "new ideas" are often old ideas repackaged and reinterpreted. That certainly applies to the theory proposed here, but packaging and interpretation can make a world of difference, the difference between a mass of details and a satisfying theory. I hope it strikes you the way it does many people. A typical reaction I hear is, "It makes sense. I wouldn't have thought of intelligence this way, but now that you describe it to me I can see how it all fits together." With this knowledge most people start to see themselves a little differently. You start to observe your own behavior saying, "I understand what just happened in my head." Hopefully when you have finished this book, you will have new insight into why you think what you think and why you behave the way you behave. I also hope that some readers will be inspired to focus their careers on building intelligent machines based on the principles outlined in these pages. ...

Weren't neural networks supposed to lead to intelligent machines?
Of course the brain is made from a network of neurons, but without first understanding what the brain does, simple neural networks will be no more successful at creating intelligent machines than computer programs have been.

Why has it been so hard to figure out how the brain works?
Most scientists say that because the brain is so complicated, it will take a very long time for us to understand it. I disagree. Complexity is a symptom of confusion, not a cause. Instead, I argue we have a few intuitive but incorrect assumptions that mislead us. The biggest mistake is the belief that intelligence is defined by intelligent behavior.

What is intelligence if it isn't defined by behavior?
The brain uses vast amounts of memory to create a model of the world. Everything you know and have learned is stored in this model. The brain uses this memory-based model to make continuous predictions of future events. It is the ability to make predictions about the future that is the crux of intelligence. I will describe the brain's predictive ability in depth; it is the core idea in the book.

How does the brain work?
The seat of intelligence is the neocortex. Even though it has a great number of abilities and powerful flexibility, the neocortex is surprisingly regular in its structural details. The different parts of the neocortex, whether they are responsible for vision, hearing, touch, or language, all work on the same principles. The key to understanding the neocortex is understanding these common principles and, in particular, its hierarchical structure. We will examine the neocortex in sufficient detail to show how its structure captures the structure of the world. This will b

Hee hee! I LOVE the smell of leftist despair in the morning!

I supported Bush for a lot of good reasons, but the icing on the cake is getting to watch hard-left malcontents like you come totally unhinged. It's like that movie Scanners where people's heads explode. It will be most entertaining to watch you pinko scum suffer through the next four years as the New Deal is demolished.

By the way, if you really want to abandon electoral politics and proceed to armed revolution, bring it on. Have you forgotten how well-armed we fascist hyenas are? You skinny little hippies would last about as long as the smelly Greenpeace filth that invaded the London commodities exchange last month, and got a thorough and well-deserved ass-kicking.

Get used to being marginalized. The masses are on our side now. You and your kind are gathering flies on the dung heap of history. We only tolerate your noisy bitching as a form of entertainment, a demonstration of how truly great and strong and tolerant this country is, that it can allow such nonsense from malcontents and idle dreamers. You're mere court jesters now. The collectivist experiment has failed, and capitalist individualism reigns supreme. Devil take the hindmost.

-ccm