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One of the more positive things that has happened recently is that they got starved for victims so they started attacking their own political camps. They were basically doing purity tests. Once everyone is a liberal how do they justify their existence? well... they then ask "how liberal are you"... and they just start goal posting moving to make sure they have enough people to be outraged with at any given time.

So anyway, they were doing that and eventually they hit a segment of their own political contingent that fought back. And now they're a little baffled because a lot of the wind has gone out of their sails. They're getting attacked from all sides now and they're losing credibility rapidly.

Its funny because they're such dogmatic robots that they don't really understand what happened.

We'll see... they'll either be suppressed to the general good of society or they'll osterize most of their political base which will lead to a structural schism in the faction which will weaken them collectively.

Hit. Nail. Head. I wish I had mod points today. What's happening with liberalism today is a case study in self destruction. All we need to do is sit back and watch it play out.

Like those ideological purity tests...if we started measuring conservatives on the basis of how conservative are you, it would surely mark the beginning of the end. Liberal purity tests have pushed their kind so far to the extreme, they're now attacking themselves. And their tactic of keeping one constituency or another outraged at any given time has totally backfired.

I don't really blame liberals for being baffled. They've spent so much time in an echo chamber, they've lost touch. When reality finally slaps them in the face, it is only natural for them to try to figure out what happened. The question is, do they have the capability to make the necessary changes in order to correct their course?

Somehow I doubt it. Liberals are so

One of the more positive things that has happened recently is that they got starved for victims so they started attacking their own political camps. They were basically doing purity tests. Once everyone is a liberal how do they justify their existence? well... they then ask "how liberal are you"... and they just start goal posting moving to make sure they have enough people to be outraged with at any given time.

So anyway, they were doing that and eventually they hit a segment of their own political contingent that fought back. And now they're a little baffled because a lot of the wind has gone out of their sails. They're getting attacked from all sides now and they're losing credibility rapidly.

Its funny because they're such dogmatic robots that they don't really understand what happened.

We'll see... they'll either be suppressed to the general good of society or they'll osterize most of their political base which will lead to a structural schism in the faction which will weaken them collectively.

Hit. Nail. Head. I wish I had mod points today. What's happening with liberalism today is a case study in self destruction. All we need to do is sit back and watch it play out.

Like those ideological purity tests...if we started measuring conservatives on the basis of how conservative are you, it would surely mark the beginning of the end. Liberal purity tests have pushed their kind so far to the extreme, they're now attacking themselves. And their tactic of keeping one constituency or another outraged at any given time has totally backfired.

I don't really blame liberals for being baffled. They've spent so much time in an echo chamber, they've lost touch. When reality finally slaps them in the face, it is only natural for them to try to figure out what happened. The question is, do they have the capability to make the necessary changes in order to correct their course?

Somehow I doubt it. Liberals are so

"Deprived of the ability to omit or retouch the truth, under penalty of being caught by an army of inquisitorial eyeglasses, society would feel nearly uninhabitable. The permanent confrontation with a verifiable truth will turn us into overly cautious, calculating, and suspicious people. The apparent truth of what we are and say will be derived not from personal perceptions, particular intuitions and social judgments, but from complex calculations made by algorithms and computations based on the way we use our voice, turn our nose to the right, or incline our mouth to the left.

It will be a mechanical and mechanized truth.

We run the serious risk of losing, little by little, our spontaneous humanity, appearing more and more like the predetermined algorithms that observe and judge us."

By not being able to think one thing and say another, our identity will become monochromatic.

They literally have whole cities just lying around idle. I mean, Spain's got one, sure, but they have several. The economy never developed sufficiently to employ people in jobs that would permit them to live in developed cities in a capitalist society... so the places rot.

You are quoting gloating "China is fallin - see?" populist Daily Mail-grade articles which have little to no relevance to reality.

I.e. OMG LOOK AT THIS GHOST CITY! Silly Chinese peoples. Don't they know any thing? Their stupid, stupid brains.

Meanwhile, in reality...
It's a case of combined schadenfreude over someone's perceived failure and a situation akin to when a small turnip farmer from Lower Bumfuck comes to a BigCityTM and starts despairing at the sight of a construction yard which will surely fail cause there is no chance that 50-storey building could ever be filled with people.
He could have planted turnips there.

Ordos is actually an entire prefecture. Slightly bigger than South Carolina or Austria (86,752 km2).
Population: ~1.9 million.
Urban population: ~582,544, living in the Dongsheng District.
That region has 16% of all coal reserves in China. And a 2nd highest income-per-capita in China.
It has a textile, petrochemical, car, electricity generating and a building industry - all built on the back of all that coal.
And they are using it to rapidly urbanize the prefecture - pooling all those 1.9 million people in one place.
http://www.theatlantic.com/chi...
http://www.vagabondjourney.com...
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes...

China is urbanizing RAPIDLY. At the rate of about 1% per year.
How much is 1% out of 1.35 billion people, yearly? About an entire Los Angeles of people looking for home, food, work, running water, electricity... and generally better living conditions than back in their village.
Year after year after year...

So, China is building entire cities from scratch and half coaxing half forcing people to move there.
Not just dropping apartment buildings or giant towers and sand islands that "someone will surely buy into" either.
Those are planned cities with built-in infrastructure (including all those "empty" parks and highways) to support hundreds of thousands of people with tens of thousands pouring yearly into Ordos alone, on a 20-year urbanization plan.
Many of those people coming in quite literally from the fields.

I asked the men where they had lived before moving to their apartments in Kangbashi. One of them, a 56-year-old man named Li Yonh Xiang, spoke up. "I lived here," he said.

Li had been born and raised just steps from the bench where he was sitting. About half of the 90-acre park had belonged to his family; the government bought the land in 2000. "When we were peasants, we lived according to the weather," Li said. "Now I live in a heated building with six floors. The city is very nice. There are many cars and buildings, but the air is very clean."

By stick and by carrot both.
http://europe.chinadaily.com.c...

China's urbanization program has been forced into motion by a fiscal policy that all but demands local cities expand to remain economically solvent. According to the World Bank, China's cities must fend for 80 percent of their expenses while only receiving 40 percent of the country's tax revenue, so land sales are often used to make up the difference.

Land is bought by cit

This is simply not true. White kids do not wind up with felony records for riding bicycles through a neighbor's back yard. White people can get away with so much more than black people that it's ridiculous.

>

I live in a small, 99.99% white town in upstate NY. Every truck I see up here has a confederate flag on it and some bumper stickers suggesting that if would enjoy universal healthcare that I should move to Russia with the other pinko bastards.
A good friend of mine (white) recently spent some time in jail for resisting arrest. He apparently broke some law by riding his bike, and had no idea why the town cop was detaining him, so he asked "what did I do wrong?" and as he was attempting to dismount his bicycle, the officer took him down to the ground and in the process broke his thumb and index finger, and cuffed him. (this was all captured on the cops dash cam/microphone, and unfortunately the public defender was at least as smart as a glass of ice water) The cop sustained a minor injury to his face when it smacked into the bike. That was all the evidence needed to throw my buddy in jail. Cop had a cut on his eyebrow. My friend is now a criminal with a record. The officer has since been fired for something unrelated albeit exquisitely poetic.

There are some really awful people in the world. Some of them happen to get jobs as police.

True, except for some of the Apollo guys.

Moon Toilet

They might go to a shitty underfunded public school.

The very concept of "public school" is fairly recent. Not only did Aristotle grow up without one, neither Benjamin Franklin nor Thomas Jefferson attended one either. Thomas Edison was homeschooled.

They might get harassed by the police on a regular basis, charged with a felony in a situation where a white kid would get a slap on the wrist, and have their lives effectively ruined by a criminal record.

Even if true, how is this different from what Jews suffered in Europe for centuries?

Why are the supposedly "racist cops" (many of them Black, BTW) today only targeting African Americans? If they really were White Supremacists, wouldn't the statistics for Asian Americans be just as gloomy? Immigrant Blacks are doing much better than the native-born ones too.

A theory contradicting observable facts is wrong. Your explanation is thus without merit. Whether or not there really is "institutional racism" or whatever in America, it simply does not explain the woeful underperformance of African Americans.

It's definitely not as bad for black people as it was 50 years ago, or even 25 years ago

Actually, you are wrong again — it is worse than 50 years ago. Despite — or, more likely, because of — decades of various policies advocated by your kind, the Blacks' satisfaction is lower today, than it was in 1964. Although, yeah, it may be better than 20 years ago...

(Note, that I'm not putting forth my own theories here. I'm just obliterating yours.)

Black youth are given the same opportunities that every other youth is given.

Good lord, what a crock of shit.

They can attend public school.

Rundown, overcrowded, with severely stripped-down course offerings.

They can use the resources of public libraries.

Sure, if they want to take a long bus ride to a nicer part of the city where the libraries have not been closed.

They can better themselves and create futures for themselves, if they are smart enough to do so.

Smart enough, and persistent, and probably very lucky too. Sure, they can do that, but the point is why do we continue to accept that society makes it vastly more difficult? Shouldn't we strive to remove barriers, rather than add them? Shouldn't we provide at least basic, decent opportunities to people who are not "smart enough"???

They even get preferential treatment when it comes to college admission and many jobs.

Ah yes, that old complaint. Boo-fucking-hoo. (I think there's actually an argument to be made that the current system can be counter-productive here, and maybe it's time to start winding it down.)

When a black youth or adult decides to voluntarily get involved with a gang, ends up voluntarily committing crimes and finds himself in prison as a result, it's only his/her fault and his/her fault alone.

Yes, because clearly, at least in your little make-believe world, they had all sorts of great opportunities to get good-paying respectable jobs. Why heck, instead of joining the gangs they should have spent time at the local rec center--oops closed--or after-school programs--oops shut down--or gotten a part-time after-school job--oops no businesses hiring in their neighborhoods, except of course drug dealers.

The same thing happens to whites, Hispanics, Asians and Aboriginal Americans who engage in criminal behavior.

This is simply not true. White kids do not wind up with felony records for riding bicycles through a neighbor's back yard. White people can get away with so much more than black people that it's ridiculous.

It's not an "ongoing program to destroy their lives". It's a sensible system put in place to punish those who go out of their way to engage in overtly harmful behavior, not just once, not just twice, but often multiple times.

There is nothing remotely "sensible" about some of the so-called "crimes" and their punishments.

So put an end to your whiny nonsense about black youth being held back. They have many opportunities to create great futures for themselves. If they refuse to do so, then it is their faults and their faults alone.

That's a huge load of bullshit. (Of course, some of what I'm talking about here also applies to poor whites.)

I say this as somebody who is 3/4th black and 1/4th Hispanic, as well!

Well, good for you. You're a sheltered, entitled, judgmental, unempathetic black person telling all poor black people in this country "I got mine, you could have too, you lazy loser"! Congratulations, asshole!

Start by getting the government out of philanthropy and other benevolence. They suck at it, but insist on spending tax-dollars on it anyway.

But be careful — if you find something, that seems useful, the government may decide to impose it on everyone (at gun-point, which is how government does everything.)

Of course, the Statists would lament:

It's bad news when the government is in such disarray that it needs a money from a billionaire to keep providing services to the country's neediest

but don't fall for it. First of all, such statements are self-contradicting — because it is exactly the money from billionaires, that the government spends on "the country's neediest" even when it is not shut down. Top 20% of the earners pay 84% of the income tax today... But, when a philanthropist chooses to spend his money this way, it is noble and legal, whereas for the government it is a patently unconstitutional thing to do:

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

— James Madison

Yes, boys and girls, "helping the needy" is just as illegal for the state to do as is eavesdropping on your communications or searching your house without a warrant...

Inspired to make a meaningful donation, I wondered: What is the best charitable cause in the world, and was it crazy to think I could find it?

http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

Nice try, if in doubt blame the British?

First, the popularity of the Confederate battle flag being flown over the state houses of US states in the 20th century didn't start until the early days of the civil rights movement. Anyone who thinks it's a coincidence that Mississippi and Georgia and Alabama and South Carolina, etc decided to start flying the Confederate battle flag when black people started fighting for civil rights in those states probably thinks "it's all about states' rights and tariffs", too.

Second, the guy who designed the Confederate battle flag made it crystal clear in his own words:

"As a people, we are fighting to maintain the heaven ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race"

Yessir, those are the exact words written by William Tappan Thompson, the designer of said flag. Not "fighting to maintain states' rights" or "fighting to something something tariffs", but rather, "the heaven ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race". He even referred to it in his newspapers (because he was the founder of the Savannah Morning News) as "the White Man's Flag".

Now who wants to step up and tell me that the Confederate battle flag is not, in 2015, first and foremost a symbol of racism and hatred? The line forms right here in front of my fuzzy ass which is available for your kissing pleasure.

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

http://mic.com/articles/121082...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

That flag represents the brutal subjugation and slavery of human beings for profit. It is akin to the Nazi swastika.

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

Some are commenting that Google is not removing shopping results for 'swastika'. That's Google's editorial policy. It has nothing to do with free speech or any other individual rights. It is a double standard though.

Why? Never mind the "how" since your type never has an answer to that. Just : "why?"

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the...
http://www.theatlantic.com/tec...

Your dog-whistle of the "gravity well" gave you away as the childish dreamer known as a Space Nutter.

PS: Where's the water or air in the lifeless vacuum between rocks?

http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

"Cheap junk food" is more expensive than "expensive healthy food".

Equally murky is whether being poor leads to obesity. Cawley's own research didn't quite find causality

Foods purchased in grocery stores typically have much lower costs per-serving than fast foods.

Oh come on. The USA ranks very low or bottom amongst developed nations for health, education, child poverty, and homelessness. The figures speak for themselves. But don't let the facts get in the way of your blind patriotism.

Over at the Atlantic Monthly Conor Friedersdorf addresses the same issue, the recent criminalization of circumventing government surveillance, in the context of the prosecution of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Notably, he states, "Prosecutors may suspect Dennis Hastert of serious misconduct, but charging him with trying to avoid surveillance risks criminalizing harmless behavior." Harmless behavior which apparently now also includes the clearing of browser data.

So according to the U.S. Department of Justice, withdrawing money from a bank account in small increments or clearing browser data, in and of themselves, are now criminal acts. But it's just fine to delete thousands of government emails which are under congressional subpoena and which were illegally maintained on a private server.

In the U.S., law is not justice. It is a tool used by powerful thugs to threaten and persecute their political enemies while coddling their allies. Also, it is actually possible to renounce U.S. citizenship and I hear the weather is nice in Chile.

Four years ago the article said: "The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda."

There is not a more recent update as to what has become of that software development effort. But we do know, that in 2011 — when the article you are linking to was talking about America's evil plans in future tense — Russian government's Internet-propaganda machine was already up and running:

A Russian journalist who visited one such comment-mill, the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency, met with a coordinator who said the job was not unlike writing copy for a hair dryer: "The only difference is that this hair dryer is a political one."

Let me guess, USSR's Lavrenty Beria was a normal reaction to America's Joseph McCarthy in your opinion too?

I'm learning Russian at the present time and I can tell you, it's blatantly obvious who the Russian govt internet trolls are on various forums and social media sites. Sadly, we have exactly the same sorts of trolls on the US side. Spend any time at all on a site that discusses Russia, it's culture or language learning/politics and you'll be able to spot them from a mile away... They make outrageous (and obviously false) claims, have the vast majority of their posts focused on anti comments with a few sprinklings of spammy type music video or pinterest style posts. They have TONS of friends, but no interactions with any of them. And yes, they exist on both sides... it's not exclusively a Russian tactic.

Interestingly, the same sort of people (accounts) can be found on various comment sections of political articles and postings within the U.S. You can interpret that how you like...

Four years ago the article said: "The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda."

There is not a more recent update as to what has become of that software development effort. But we do know, that in 2011 — when the article you are linking to was talking about America's evil plans in future tense — Russian government's Internet-propaganda machine was already up and running:

A Russian journalist who visited one such comment-mill, the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency, met with a coordinator who said the job was not unlike writing copy for a hair dryer: "The only difference is that this hair dryer is a political one."

Let me guess, USSR's Lavrenty Beria was a normal reaction to America's Joseph McCarthy in your opinion too?

USA citizens killed by terrorists in 2011? 17 ( http://www.theatlantic.com/int... ). About the same number killed by furniture.

USA citizens killed by automobiles in 2011? 32,479 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... )

We're coming for you, GM...

Though if you want to protect your diamonds...

If you cared about protecting your assets, why would you own them in the first place?

Yucca Mtn is a political fiction, and was never a serious consideration, but a NIMBY compromise. And if you think that solar subsidies even approach the cost of the Manhatten Project, and the subsidies for the development of reactors for the subsequent 20 years, simply, you are wrong, absurdly, outrageously incorrect. Add up all the money ever spent on solar anything, the whole kit and kaboodle for solar, and it will amount to less than 0.1% of the money spent on merely developing nuclear power.

However,

"One of the big problems with nuclear power is the enormous upfront cost. These reactors are extremely expensive to build. While the returns may be very great, they're also very slow. It can sometimes take decades to recoup initial costs. Since many investors have a short attention span, they don't like to wait that long for their investment to pay off."

source

Nuclear power does not scale. Unless you have $300M, you can forget about that nuclear power plant you want. But if you have $10K, you can build your own personal solar plant or wind farm.

Seriously? Let me know when they start rounding up dozens of people for no reason other than they believe in a different God and then they cut off their heads and post the video online. You fucking idiot, stupidity on the part of a few cops doesn't mean we're living under ISIS. Maybe you'd like to try living in the caliphate. Let me know and I'll buy the ticket if you promise to keep your ignorant fucking ass there.

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol... http://www.washingtonpost.com/... http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... https://books.google.com/books...

The experience of Memphis, Tennessee, as reported in The Atlantic, with breaking up high-crime neighborhoods and redistributing their inhabitants to other places: the bad guys quickly find their feet and begin preying on a broader class of victims, while the decent-but-poor find their social networks shattered.

You are a victim of media manipulation. Here's your sign.

the word "filibuster" does not appear in the article you have linked to

in case you aren't paying attention, he stood up and did this because he is running for president

That's pretty disingenuous, without merit, and without relevance. Paul has opposed these types of government intrusion and civil rights violations for a long time, long before he even entered politics. A passionate dislike for excessive government surveillance is just as likely a motivation for this as your biased viewpoint of him.

he was there for several other occasions when the patriot act was being debated, he did not filibuster any of those times

You are a victim of media manipulation. Here's your sign.

Nah, should be: Academics Build a Hypothetical Framework for the NSA to Beat Before It's Ever Implemented. ... then again I would title it: Academics Continue to Ignore that NSA can NSA can inject exploits into any Tor Exit Node's traffic. You're fucked once the Ferret Cannon has you in its sights. All you need to do is be interesting and access HTTPS:// since the NSA assumes any encrypted traffic is non-USA-ian because they can't prove origin without hacking it.

Aside: This combined with the fact that the TLS/PKI Certificate Authority system is a complete security theater, I find Mozilla's opting for HTTPS only to be the only reason I need never to use their browser again. Think about it: If only HTTPS traffic is allowed then all the govs need to do to silence a site is revoke the cert. Talk about a single point of failure. Personally, I'm thinking that "the web" is dead, Internet enabled applications are better at basically everything. Long Live The Internet, but fuck the web.

Obama's desire to abandon Iraq, to not leave a residual force resurrected ISIS/al-Quaeda in Iraq.

This revisionist history was already debunked in this thread before you decided to repeat it.

Obama wanted to extend the occupation, not end it. All that campaign talk about withdrawing within 16 months was a lie, just like his promises to renegotiate NAFTA, that any health care bill he signed must have a public option, and to close Gitmo.

All this Obama bashing from right-wingers, when he's been one of you all along.

The only thing the splurge did was get more people killed, both occupier and occupied.

and how the insurgency was defeated sufficiently for Obama to call the war over

Obama wanted to extend the war, not end it. But the Iraqis refused to let U.S. forces go on committing mass murder with impunity, so Obama had to adhere to the withdrawal timeline negotiated by Bush.

And who wants to die fighting a retreating enemy?

Saddam had no Nuclear weapons, and the whole story about yellow cake was fabricated by various intelligence agencies to fit an agenda.

There was lot more to it than just the yellowcake story.

Why do some people that believe politicians are stupid, do things from complete ignorance, and do things without understanding all of the possible outcomes?

Because there is tons of evidence. For example, the fact essentially nobody read the patriot act before voting on it. Or all of the non-oversight by the senate intelligence oversight committee.

These guys spend 5+ hours of their workday begging for re-election money. Of course they don't have time to pay attention to their jobs.

What is batshit crazy is believing that politicians have much of a grasp on anything- peripheral understanding sure, maybe some (one-sided) depth if a lobbyists informs them on a specific topic. But an educated opinion on anything else is rare as hen's teeth.

Past bubbles were inflated and popped when small investors rush into the market because they don't want to miss out on the frenzy, not realizing that pros have already made their profits and moved on to something else. The current market isn't being inflated by the small investors, but corporate buybacks that aren't being reinvested back into the real economy.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/kill-stock-buyback-to-save-the-american-economy/385259/

Because, it is better for society to have an educated populace, and not just have the children of the wealthy be able to afford to have one.

Did you go to public school? Did you enjoy the benefits of living in a mostly lawful society? Do you drive on public roads? Do you use any public infrastructure like water?

It is absolutely better to have an educated informed citizenry, especially in a democracy that requires informed decisions through voting to function properly. I think very few disagree with that.

What I disagree on is the need for loans. Loans are all about making money for the financial industry and even the federal government (used by politicians to "balance the budget" on some of their terrible decisions with war, social security, tax breaks, etc.). We should all agree that education is a fundamental investment in our nation, and pay for it out of taxes. Anyone that wants to go and displays aptitude (perhaps some sort of exam, or maybe let anyone in under probation for a first semester or two, no retaking classes on government dime if you fail -- the exact specifics need to be worked out) should be able to go, FOR FREE, because it is an investment in our nation.

There have been analyses before such as this article (though I have seen others as well). Essentially -- the US Gov already pays over $70 billion in loan guarantees and tax incentives for tuition... when we could cut out the middle man financial market entirely and simply pay the $60 billion in tuition directly. Everyone goes to school free, AND it actually reduces federal spending. Holy crap is that a win-win.

Any politician that proposes any continuation of loans as if it is a good thing is out of touch with reality and possibly trying to support corporate overlords. Let's dump them next major election.

Not according to this article, based on studies by the Carnegie Endowment:

http://www.theatlantic.com/int...

I trust the Carnegie study more than the OECD, since the OECD data appears to be a simple compilation of national sources without harmonization of methodology.

Even if you take the OECD data at face value, it also disproves the relationship between availability of public transportation and car ownership that Bruce postulated. Instead, in the OECD data, car ownership simply correlates roughly with wealth.

As if there aren't people on both sides for and against it.

http://www.infoworld.com/artic...
http://time.com/3578255/conser...
http://www.theatlantic.com/tec...
http://www.politico.com/story/...

Monterey has an Amtrak bus link to the Salinas station

Yes, probably adding about 2h to the total trip time.

Boise got its electric street railway in 1890 and it coupled with great intercity lines. All gone.

That's a red herring. The point is that the people of Boise are forced to pay for HSR now even though they are not benefiting from it.

I don't stay in luxury locations (just because I'm not fancy) and in general I am with the common people.

I didn't see that they weren't riding the trains in Europe. Rather, they didn't own automobiles.

You're a victim of various myths there. In fact, car ownership is higher in Europe, and long distance train travel is only a small percentage of long distance trips. The US is also more urbanized than the UK and Germany.

http://www.theatlantic.com/int...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...

This. Luckily I think this (horrible, nasty, awful taste) will help sink the whole Keurig ship.

I prefer strong coffee. Impossible to make in a Keurig, because you don't control the ratio of coffee to water. There is a cup size setting -- I set it to the smallest cup, assuming that would extract the most coffee essence per ounce -- but that still didn't make it strong enough for me. I was also trying it with my preferred blend (in a reusable K-cup) and it tasted bloody awful. I would rather eat my group coffee. Seriously.

I think the only people using these regularly are people without taste buds...and the corporate world where they are happy people aren't spending 10 minutes making a cup of coffee.

K-Cups are a weapon of mass destruction, accounting for 1% of landfill waste.

Hell, you wouldn't ask a psychiatrist to give you an appendectomy, would you?

The only thing I'd ask a psychiatrist is "please leave."

It depends on the circumstances. If I were stuck in this situation I'd trust anyone with some medical training as being better than do-it-yourself.

The Philippines, which had demanded that the US Navy abandon Subic Bay in the 90's, is welcoming the of the US Navy's return with open arms because of the boost to the economy

No. While that might be a nice side-effect. The main reason the Philippines is welcoming the US military is because of China. China has everyone in the area, not just the Philippines, concerned because of their expanding claims on the south china sea.

On the other hand, on balance, I'm not sure the US is getting much out of it; so perhaps Hawaii should be kicked out of the union altogether. We'd sure save a lot of money in subsidies.

I live in Hawai`i (though not a native Hawaiian), and I'd like to know what those subsidies are that other states don't also get. The chart here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

shows Hawai`i ranked 29th in the "givers and takers" calculation, in other words, right in the middle of the pack.

From Publishers Gave Away 122,951,031 Books During World War II: And, in the process, they created a nation of readers:

In 1943, in the middle of the Second World War, America's book publishers took an audacious gamble. They decided to sell the armed forces cheap paperbacks, shipped to units scattered around the globe. Instead of printing only the books soldiers and sailors actually wanted to read, though, publishers decided to send them the best they had to offer. Over the next four years, publishers gave away 122,951,031 copies of their most valuable titles.

[follow title-link for the rest of the article]

People say the average worker isn't making as much as they used to, but I think that people are just buying a lot more stuff than they used to.

That's a statement of median salary vs. GDP, which is only tangentially related to spending (i.e., only in the sense that consumer spending affects GDP). And wages and salaries really have been falling relative to GDP over the past 50 years.

Cellular phones, cable TV, Internet, and computers. None of this stuff existed 50 years ago. Our budgets may be stretched, but a lot of it is because of the things we have decided are necessary.

On the flip side, there are a lot of things that are cheaper today than they were 50 years ago, such as clothing and food (according to this article, those two expenses went from about 42% of the average household budget in 1950 to about 17% in 2003).

I wish Hollywood's influence was limited to the simple-minded "masses." When you get a chance, go ask Justice Scalia about his hero, Jack Bauer.

Last I checked, being a simple-minded idiot doesn't disqualify you from serving on the Supreme Court. You just have to convince congress critters you aren't. Which probably isn't too difficult considering the simple-mindedness idiocy we have serving as congress critters.

Politicians that're smart intelligent people is long gone, it's just a big popularity contest now, and unfortunately, being popular isn't a very good qualification for serving in congress, but most people seem to think it is.

All boils down to: Beware of stupid people in large groups.

I wish Hollywood's influence was limited to the simple-minded "masses." When you get a chance, go ask Justice Scalia about his hero, Jack Bauer.

Let me guess, your search term was "Zionist lies from Slashdot"?

Because a few moments of googling for ME turned up the following links, which certainly suggest that the climate in France is certainly not particularly warm to Jewish people and moderate Muslims:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.theatlantic.com/int...
http://time.com/3694100/france...
http://www.npr.org/blogs/paral...
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb...
http://forward.com/news/breaki...

Please proceed to tell us about how all of these articles are just more examples of crackpot, Zionist activity.

This would have little effect in California since it's wealthy assholes who aren't vaccinating their children.

Two minutes on google, GDP China India before industrial revoltion gets you: http://www.theatlantic.com/bus... http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2... India fell steadily all the way to 5% of the world by 1970. From > 25 in 1800. China fell fro 33% in 1820 all the way to 5% by 1970. Now please go ahead and nit pick India was above 5% at independence etc etc. Over the long arc of history, industrialization destroyed more jobs world wide than it created. Only if you limit yourself to industrialized countries you could argue it created as many as it destroyed.

But this only seems superficially better to me, and possibly worse.

"The proposed definition for âoeaccess without authorizationâ is: to obtain information on a computer that the accessor lacks authorization to obtain, knowingly circumventing technological or physical measures designed to prevent unauthorized individuals from obtaining that information."

The problem is with the word "knowingly," to say nothing of the lack of any standard for a technological authorization method. "Knowingly," is mens rea -- a criminal mind -- and SCOTUS is currently wrestling with two other terrible laws on this very subject. There's an excellent article on this subject over at The Atlantic. The problem is that these laws are vague, probably unconstitutionally so. It's legislative laziness and hand-waving. "Don't do that thing we can't exactly define but you know what we mean!"

If we want a dividing line for criminally accessing a device, and I would argue that we do, then it needs to be directly proportional to damages. Accessing a device is just trespassing, and that's a misdemeanor, and hardly ever worth prosecuting. Taking something of no value from a device is likewise a misdemeanor. Making a copy of something is speculative damages, but probably risks felony levels of damage. Destroying data, or a network, or hardware should definitely be a felony. The circumvention clause is totally irrelevant, and shouldn't even be there.

Maybe those upper middle class parents associate vaccination with third world countries, and they're dark skinned and/or poor and filthy children sitting naked in dirt. Anti vaxxers children are superior to those halve humans. Watch this: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/previe...
http://www.theatlantic.com/hea...
http://www.latimes.com/busines...

Because doing so would distribute the residents of the project all over town. Ask Memphis how well that worked out.