Slashdot Mirror

Here is a sampling:

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, 17 Works of Art That Will Hang In George Lucas's New Museum

''Vanity projects'' are nothing new in America, where the arts are driven primarily by private, not public, funds. Old-school, philanthropic museums were themselves public monuments to their founders' savvy. They were also, a tastemaking project by nouveau riche American tycoons: When the Industrial Revolution triggered fears that the growing immigrant workforce would prevent America from developing a highbrow culture like Europe's, the wealthy fought the perceived onslaught by funding institutes filled with old-world classics to educate the people's taste, to help them identify with the values of the successful industrialists.

Today's benefactors buy and preserve what they consider purely American art. Private collectors in the past few decades have been stealthily accumulating valuable holdings in order to tell their versions of the country's art history. Each in their own way are making a bid to define what art is in America and what it has been in the 150 years.

There's a fittingly egalitarian spirit to this latest wave of museum openings. The Rubell Family Collection opened shop in Miami's rundown Wynwood neighborhood to display the kind of avant-garde works usually found in high-end art galleries. Perhaps even more daring is Crystal Bridges, Walmart heiress Alice Walton's passion project that brought Lichtenstein and Warhol to a small town in the Ozarks. Costing a reported $1.2 billion to open in 2011, Crystal Bridges doesn't charge for admission, a fact that conveys the belief that art, like music and literature, is not a recreational luxury or the purview of the rich. Rather, it is an essential tool that helps awaken and direct talent whose development is essential to society, especially a democratic one.

George Lucas's Art Museum: His Best Idea Since Star Wars

The actor was actually a union boss that took on the studios for the benefit of the actors, and won.
   

So, which of these links is the original article the large excerpt is from?

I really wish OA was linked separately at the top or something. Why was it the 3rd link? Why not anchor it on "The Atlantic" in the first line?

http://www.theatlantic.com/tec...

Thanks...

What's the difference between your last line and any religion?

http://www.theatlantic.com/tec...

... and there are other more dangerous sites.

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

This is why it’s “secret”.

The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations—like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America—are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement. [...] More than two months after receiving the proper security credentials, my staff is still barred from viewing the details of the proposals that USTR is advancing. We hear that the process by which TPP is being negotiated has been a model of transparency. I disagree with that statement.[94]

Corporations don’t want the hassle of people complaining and/or some members of congress doing something about it.
That tells you right there it’s a bad thing.

Here’s something else.

they are concerned that the TPP focuses on protecting intellectual property to the detriment of efforts to provide access to affordable medicine in the developing world, particularly Vietnam, going against the foreign policy goals of the Obama administration and previous administrations.[79]

Read the entire wiki, then read this article to see exactly what might happen to who gets to set foreign policy.

Then. read this.
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

If you cannot show harm

Oh, for chrissake:

http://omicsonline.org/open-ac...

http://www.theatlantic.com/hea... (this one is notable because the author received death threats immediately after publication)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05...

then you are in exactly the same position as anti-vaxxers.

Did I call it or what? My first post in this comments section predicted that I would be compared to anti-vaxxers. If I were to continue, I guarantee I would soon be compared to racists, Nazis and worse.

Look, I don't care if there are GMO plants. I just want it to be spelled out, right in the "nutritional data" that is already on the label, that this food is the product of a patented organism.

I find it interesting that all these "pro-Science" people are so vehemently opposed to this one bit of truthful information being given to consumers. For some reason, the believe there is a fact that consumers don't have the right to know. Further, there have been industry lawsuits attempting to stop companies who do NOT use GMOs from labeling their products as NOT containing GMOs. Go figure. I guess "Science" is fungible when it comes to people's right to know what they're eating. Since when has "Science" been in favor of people not knowing something.

Feeling's mutual, bub. Maybe Switzerland will try it, and we'll see how it plays out.

Mod parent up.

Obligatory link to Atlantic article exposing the link between leaded gasoline and crime rates.

http://www.theatlantic.com/nat...

If public safety is his concern, there are many more dangerous things than terrorism :
americans-are-as-likely-to-be-killed-by-their-own-furniture-as-by-terrorism
us-police-murdered-5000-innocent-civilians-since-911
more-killed-by-toddlers-than-terrorists-in-us
Dead right you should think of the children. They're dangerous.

"The pot of money is up for grabs, for any runner, anywhere in the world."

Really?? The post fails to mention the most important factor in running long distances fast: being Kenyan, or specifically, being Kalenjin.

From http://www.wnyc.org/story/how-... :

"""Kenyan Wilson Kipsang won this year's [2013] Berlin Marathon in 2 hours, 3 minutes and 23 seconds [...]. It was easily the fastest marathon time ever recorded [...].

But perhaps equally remarkable was that his fellow Kenyans also came in second, third, fourth and fifth place in this major international race. On the women's side, Kenyans placed first, second and fourth.

Two weeks later in Chicago, Kenyan runner Dennis Kimetto broke the course record there -- after only having run for four years. Next in line behind him? Three more Kenyans. [...]

while we tend to think of Kenyans as really good distance runners, all these runners are actually from the same tribe of Kenyans known as the Kalenjin. They number around 5 million, making them a small minority, even in Kenya [...]

"There are 17 American men in history who have run under 2:10 in the marathon," Epstein says. "There were 32 Kalenjin who did it in October of 2011." """

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

"""In 1990, the Copenhagen Muscle Research Center compared post-pubescent schoolboys there to Sweden's famed national track team [...]. The study found that boys on the high school track team in Iten, Kenya, consistently outperformed the professional Swedish runners. The researchers estimated that the average Kalenjin could outrun 90% of the global population, and that at least 500 amateur high school students in Iten alone could defeat Sweden's greatest professional runner at the 2,000-meter.

A 2000 Danish Sports Science Institute investigation reproduced the earlier study, giving a large group of Kalenjin boys three months of training and then comparing them to Thomas Nolan, a Danish track superstar. When the Kalenjin boys trounced him, the researchers -- who had also conducted a number of physical tests and compared them against established human averages -- CONCLUDED THAT KALENJINS MUST HAVE AN INBORN, PHYSICAL, GENETIC ADVANTAGE."""

What's truly amazing is how people try so hard to find any excuse to deny the genetic evidence. "Eugenics deniers" are far worse than "climate change deniers" in that the scientific evidence for eugenics is far greater than even that for anthropomorphic global warming.

Idea that we live together in groups, is that group offers benefits to a person

That may be a fine idea — for some. Those, who prefer to not belong to any group — for whatever reason, rational or otherwise — shall not be coerced into one. Not in a society, that considers itself free (whether that also means "civil" or not).

And to say that the principle, by which groups take care of individuals that are unable to do so by themselves, exists only for the last 100 years is in the very least extremely narrow in definition.

Yes, the narrow definition of forced charity. Though personal and organized charity existed for centuries, the idea, that it should be funded by taxes (which are, by definition, collected at the point of a weapon), is fresh... And disgusting.

And I have to say that so far I have only ever heard people complain about these systems when they were healthy. Pretty much never, when they had to go into a complicated surgery.

Then you haven't been paying attention. Certain "complicated surgeries" may not even be available to certain kinds of patients under government-provided health-care.

For example, right now we have prominent government officials arguing, it is "anti-social" to live beyond 75. If the matters were left up to such people — and some matters are already up to them — some patients will be referred to the "End of Life Counseling" instead of those "complicated surgeries" you were talking about. Because what is merely labeled "unethical" now, may become outright illegal in the next generation.

Even if we stipulate, that that's better for "a society as a whole", it is not better for the individual involved — unless the choice is theirs rather that of some death panel. And I really do prefer a society, where an Individual — with all his faults and occasional irrationality — is valued above the (Glorious) Collective.

Really depends if you can read something all the way through and accept a challenge to your world-view, and be open enough about it to start looking for common patterns.

http://www.theatlantic.com/tec...

I didn't mean that an actual church or religion is behind Mars One, but that the whole "space colonization" stuff is heavily motivated by much the same thinking as a religion.

If it were actually possible, it would have happened already, we've been at it for half a century. Columbus didn't spend 50 years sailing in circles near the harbour and yelling about the water.

As we all know, there's no problem in the labor market that can't be solved with more education.

As President Obama says at the official White House web site, "Earning a post-secondary degree or credential is no longer just a pathway to opportunity for a talented few; rather, it is a prerequisite for the growing jobs of the new economy." Because, as he notes, "With the average earnings of college graduates at a level that is twice as high as that of workers with only a high school diploma, higher education is now the clearest pathway into the middle class."

To help sustain this middle class, the President has proposed policies that will:

- Help Middle Class Families Afford College
- by Keeping Costs Down
- Strengthen Community Colleges
- Improve Transparency and Accountability

Therefore, earning a PhDs must not be enough. What we need is a new credential. Something beyond PhD. A... "Super PhD" that will help high achievers stand out to those employers seeking only the best. Of course, that means longer class schedules, more lab training, in short... more education.

Don't worry, our financial institutions are here to help. Banks will be happy to lend you more with government backed student loans. It's the least they can do for a beleaguered middle class too uneducated to succeed in this high tech economy.

America is that Shiny City upon a Hill, a place where gleaming gold coins lay scattered about ripe for the picking. You only need more education to find them. A new life awaits you in that shining city on the hill. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure! So come on America, become a go-getter and land that Super PhD! The Sciences are just filled with Gold Coins of Opportunity in this Shinny City on a Hill for those with the right education.

Growing up on the mythology of Apollo (the space program not the god) I was shocked to read the things found in the quite below. But mythology is one thing and history is another.

As a Senator Kennedy did not believe in manned space flight, he thought the money should be spent on social programs. He was more open to less expensive robotic missions.

As President he was still not interested in manned flight. The "new frontier" was actually of little interest to Kennedy. What did get Kennedy behind the Apollo program was, payback to Vice President Johnson for his support and more importantly Cold War politics.

Shockingly, here is NASA's portrayal of Kennedy's motivations:
"Kennedy as president had little direct interest in the U.S. space program. He was not a visionary enraptured with the romantic image of the last American frontier in space and consumed by the adventure of exploring the unknown. He was, on the other hand, a Cold Warrior with a keen sense of Realpolitik in foreign affairs, and worked hard to maintain balance of power and spheres of influence in American/Soviet relations. The Soviet Union's non-military accomplishments in space, therefore, forced Kennedy to respond and to serve notice that the U.S. was every bit as capable in the space arena as the Soviets. Of course, to prove this fact, Kennedy had to be willing to commit national resources to NASA and the civil space program. The Cold War realities of the time, therefore, served as the primary vehicle for an expansion of NASA's activities and for the definition of Project Apollo as the premier civil space effort of the nation. Even more significant, from Kennedy's perspective the Cold War necessitated the expansion of the military space program, especially the development of ICBMs and satellite reconnaissance systems."
http://history.nasa.gov/Apollo...

Another interesting and shocking bit of trivia.

"Consistently throughout the 1960s a majority of Americans did not believe Apollo was worth the cost, with the one exception to this a poll taken at the time of the Apollo 11 lunar landing in July 1969. And consistently throughout the decade 45-60 percent of Americans believed that the government was spending too much onspace, indicative of a lack of commitment to the spaceight agenda."
http://www.theatlantic.com/tec...

Just because most women that play video games are ugly

[citation required]

Way to go, insulting your natural allies (women who play games).

58% of minecraft players are women. Are they mostly ugly? Somehow I doubt it.

As I originally wrote, the definition of "gamers" has to be changed. The old view that all gamers are fat nerdy males needs to be abandoned. Either update the definition to match today's reality, or come up with a new word to describe people who play video games that is more inclusive.

It's that YOU women are invading our hobby

All I'm saying is make things more realistic. We already have a world where girls have poor body images because they see photoshopped images of women on magazine covers that are literally impossibly thin unless you're anorexic. Even Barbie is getting some more realistic competition because the old one had a ridiculously impossible physique, so bad she wouldn't have been able to stand.

This bill was intended to protect the people of Compton from 24/7 surveillance. He can veto it, because they're all black.

Is it possible to have socialists ideas before the term socialism was coined? It doesn't matter what you were referencing, the idea you were conveying is a socialist one.

So you're saying that the proletariat of France were socialists before socialism was cool? What hipsters! For the record, proto-socialist ideas started popping up in France distinctly after the revolution. I suppose that these distinctions are lost on you, though, since you're using the word in a prejorative sense, not a technical one.

Did you read below that I will repeat it since you missed it, if you are saying they had it equally as good you need to find something that made up for a serf's lack of technology, like cell phones, clean drinking water, indoor plumbing, living quarters without livestock, cars, laundry facilities,... What area did the serfs have it better then migrant workers to make up for all those things I listed.

First, I'll reiterate my objection that those aren't things that migrant workers have, generally speaking. Second, I'll reiterate the response I offered earlier: leisure time and living space.

If they are only given enough not to riot then they are way over compensated.

Your "they" refers to people risking their capital, according to the rules of English grammar. There is no meaningful risk of them rioting, so that interpretation of your words doesn't make sense. I don't think you meant to refer to the poor either, since then you'd be saying that they should be paid less so as to cause riots. Riots are generally undesirable for a society, so that interpretation doesn't make sense either. I can't think of any other ways to parse this statement, so I'm genuinely not sure what you're trying to say here.

People are breaking the law just for the opportunity to go work as a migrant worker, that is a long way away from a revolt.

I'm glad you think so. You may think the distribution of wealth in this country is just fine, but 92% of Americans would disagree with you, despite the fact that a majority of Americans actually underestimate the actual inequity in wealth distribution. See aforementioned Forbes link as reference for this claim.

I repeat, yet again, this thread got rather long. I don't like that. The last time I participated in a thread this long, it got way too long. The lesson I learned there is that some people have trouble communicating with me, and that it takes a considerable amount of effort to resolve the issue. Since I'm not willing to dedicate sufficient effort to accomplish that in this thread, I think this is as good a time as any to throw in the towel.

The disclaimer I've added to the end of my last three posts (as well as this one) has been rather prophetic, don't you think? Perhaps you're interested in breaking the 76-post-long-thread record I set with bingoUV? That would be even more impressive with this disclaimer in place the whole time. I totally think you should go for it.

The latest recession was never called the mancession.

How is this rated informative? It is plain wrong.

You could find the same few examples (among many others) with a simple Google search, but since that is obviously too much work ...

Mancession Definition
The Mancession
Thanks to the “mancession,” metrosexuals have become “manfluencers”
One Mancession Later, Are Women Really Victors in the New Economy?
Economy: The Man-cession and the He-covery
It's Not Just a Recession. It's a Mancession!

I think I saw this article about the ethics of self-driving cars posted here.

This also shows where a liberal arts education may come into the STEM world later, I have to admit my philosophy and engineering ethics courses were more cognitive than I thought they would be.

Thankfully enough, I'm merely a gun owner, not a member of some 'gun community'. I've never heard of Hugh Hewitt, but with a name like that, radio is indeed the right place for him.

Perhaps Hugh Hewitt meant to say automatic, not semi-automatic, since automatic weapons are more useful for for suppressive fire (which has limited need for proper aim) as opposed to destructive fire (which does indeed require proper aim).

Wikipedia is about providing correct information, which is unrelated to gender distribution.

The Wikimedia Foundation and numerous commentators in the press disagree. See for example this recent Guardian editorial, or recall last year's controversy about the categorisation of women novelists in Wikipedia. It does affect how information is presented, and what information is presented.

To support your point: http://www.theatlantic.com/hea...
"In a touching Medium post a few days ago, the writer and programmer Paul Ford shared what he thinks is the secret to his politeness. In conversations with new acquaintances, Ford asks plenty of questions and lets the other person do the talking. He tries not to ask what they do for a living, but if it comes to that, he responds to their job description--whatever it is--with, "Wow. That sounds hard."
"Nearly everyone in the world believes their job to be difficult," he writes. He describes how this process once worked with a woman whose work is not something most people would consider taxing:..."

Also cited here: https://news.ycombinator.com/i...

Posted the below to: http://ibiblio.org/pjones/blog...
---
For all that, here is a recent Atlantic article and related slashdot discussion on why email is not going anywhere, which makes much the same points as I have here previously (email is decentralized, standards-based, non-proprietary, interoperable, ubiquitous, extensible, mobile-friendly, etc.):
http://www.theatlantic.com/tec...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

I'd agree it would be good to have something even better than email (a social semantic desktop?), but closed-source proprietary centralized walled garden solutions like you repeatedly profer don't seem like a general improvement. And what do you do if these platforms close up shop? Why notfigure out how to build something better for knowledge exchange on email or other open web standards? Still, WordPress with Akismet is an excellent platform for exchanging knowledge -- but it still relies usually in practice on email for push notifications.

Ultimately, what are your "requirements" for a better platform?

It's good to see this discussion becoming mainstream. Back in 2009, Alan Cox wrote in the Atlantic, "One sometimes wonders, in this era of Market religion, where the skeptics and freethinkers have gone". There's been an assumption in recent decades, since the USSR went down, that capitalism is the only possible system of economic organization. That's starting, cautiously, to be questioned.

In the Great Depression of the 1930s, all sorts of "isms" were proposed. Communism, socialism, technocracy, and others now forgotten had substantial followings. WWII ended those discussions, and the postwar boom made them irrelevant. Now, few people even know that alternatives to capitalism are possible.

The "strong safety net" countries (the Scandinavian countries, some EU countries, and Japan) have done reasonably well. The production side is mostly capitalist, but taxes are higher and the consumption side is partly socialist. This works if international competition is limited to stop the "race to the bottom" in wages. The current Doha round in the WTO is stalled because many countries now want more protectionism.

I don't suspect. I know.

This is because: I read.

I highly doubt it, given the government's abject terror of dubbing any right-wing group or action as "terrorist." Remember, terrorists are, by definition, brown people.

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

1- Reports from these cities say the Ukrainian army is bohttp://news.slashdot.org/story/14/07/27/208226/satellite-images-show-russians-shelling-ukraine#mbing indiscriminately in various neighborhoods. These actions has been consistent have been going on for at least 2 months. They are not targeting the rebels, since for the most part, they cannot pinpoint their positions. So they blindly bomb whatever houses/infrastructures to inflict maximum destruction/casualties. They must have learned that from the Anglo-Saxons. Some of today's results: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

And what's your explanation for why the Ukrainians would want to inflict civilian casualties?

>2- Your assertion about separatists being Russians who illegally entered Ukraine is a blatant lie. Most defenders are locals who took up arms to defend their families and land against a murderous and repressive government. Plenty of proof of that.

Bullshit. There was nothing murderous or repressive about the government, they had just thrown out a corrupt president and the current president is a Russian speaker who used to belong to the same party!

Precise estimates on the fighter composition are tricky but there is very significant Russian and non-Ukrainian component.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/...
http://www.theatlantic.com/int...

Even the DPR leaders have been whining all along about locals not doing enough to fight.

3- Your comment about Russia is really sad and says a lot about the level of propaganda in the western media. Had Putin not been so moderate, your sorry ass might have been vaporized by now. But you're too brainwashed to realize what you're doing.

Sure Putin is a moderate, and the passengers of MH17 were slightly inconvenienced.

Food is not cheap. Taking inflation into account, food prices are at an all-time high on a global basis. They're even higher than they were during World War II, when rationing was in place.

The price of food increasing far faster than wages has in fact resulted in more poverty, which has in fact resulted in more obesity is many nations around the world.

The parent post should have said developed countries instead of modern world, because in developed countries food certainly is cheap. In 1900 families spent 43% of their money on food, while in 2003 it was 13%. Food is incredibly cheap by historical standards, about a third of the cost of food 100 years ago. source

Poverty only correlates to obesity in areas where food is abundant. Then the same incapability to delay gratification that causes poverty also causes obesity. One does not cause the other, they have the same root cause.

The largest source of income for the NRA is membership dues

http://www.businessinsider.com...

While that is still part of the organization's core function, today less than half of the NRA's revenues come from program fees and membership dues.

The bulk of the group's money now comes in the form of contributions, grants, royalty income, and advertising, much of it originating from gun industry sources.

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

But around 2005, the group began systematically reaching out to its richest members for bigger checks through its "Ring of Freedom" program, which also sought to corral corporate donors. Between then and 2011, the Violence Policy Center estimates that the firearms industry donated as much as $38.9 million to the NRA's coffers. The givers include 22 different gun makers, including famous names like Smith & Wesson, Beretta USA, SIGARMS, and Sturm, Ruger & Co. that also manufacture so-called assault weapons.

Some of that funding has given the NRA a direct stake in gun and ammo sales.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

One of the NRA's 27 websites calls such donors "corporate partners," while another says the association is "not affiliated with any firearm or ammunition manufacturers or with any business that deals in guns and ammunition."

I'll grant that a plurality of the NRA's funding seems to come from dues, but the majority of its money comes from those with a direct or indirect financial interest in the sale of weapons and ammunition, as inconvenient that is to the NRA's projected public image.

I want to add something else. The 1% is a myth.

No, it's a misnomer.

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

When people complain about "the 1 percent," they're actually complaining about the 0.1 percent.

Because the reality is yea, while you might be well-off enough to qualify as "part of the 1 percent," you're still a dirt-poor worthless piece of shit in the eyes of the 0.1% who really do own/run everything.

What a Muslim American Said to Defend His Patriotism
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/what-a-muslim-american-said-to-defend-his-patriotism/374137/

-"You should be active in your community. And I have done that. The fact that I was surveilled in spite of doing all thatâ"it just goes to show you the hysteria that everybody feels."
-"I've never given a speech where I've said any ill feelings toward the United States."
-"I was a very conservative, Reagan-loving Republican."
-"I watch sports. I watch football. My kids are all raised here. My kids at that time went to Catholic school. It isn't as if I was raising them in a different way ..."

Gill correctly perceives that we'll all know what he means when he invokes the characteristics he possesses that would seem to make him less suspicious. The fact that most people internalize these judgments to some degree illustrates how chilling effects work: Americans, especially those who belong to minority groups, formulate a sense of what speech and actions will cast suspicion on or away from them.

Chilling Effects.

I am not saying that running social experiments on random people is a great idea (though it is funny),

Well, if it's so funny, how would you like random "social experiments" tried on you? Read this story from the days before informed consent and review boards became required and still tell me if you think it's "funny". Or better yet, tell the folks who potentially lost life and limb as a result how funny these experiments are.

Why don't you start by telling this guy? He's in our field so, surely, he'd understand all about these "harmless" social experiments and see how humorous they can be.

The Internet, wrote Gates, is one of "the important precursors of the information highway," along with PCs, CD-ROMs, phone networks, and cable systems, but "none represents the actual information highway. ... today's Internet is not the information highway I imagine, although you can think of it as the beginning of the highway."

Bill Gates: More Profit Than Prophet

This seems to be the majority opinion on Slashdot. I won't say it's completely baseless, but if you really want to understand the people who disagree with you (which I'll give you the benefit of the doubt despite your snarky title and assume you do), you need to look at things from a more societal and historical perspective. Blacks were brutally suppressed for hundreds of years. It's not just slavery. Black people were subject to terrorist attacks for minor things like using the wrong drinking fountain or saying the wrong thing to the local shop keeper's wife for a century AFTER the civil war and reconstruction! This is recent. There are people in living memory who can remember times where their family members were publically lynched by smiling whites, who proceeded to take photographs and circulate them as postcards. For a well written and highly accessible overview of just some of the history which has been making the rounds recently, you could read this: http://www.theatlantic.com/fea... Discrimination is not just a thing of the past either. People in current times are still de-facto segregated by race in most places in the United States, even if the laws and the optics of this process were forced to change after the Civil Rights movement. Black people are more likely to live in areas with poorly funded and poorly functioning schools, and to recieve poor police and emergency services. Multiple studies have shown that given the exact same qualifications, black people are less likely to be hired than whites. I mean LITERALLY exactly the same; researchers sent out resumes which were identical except for the names, some of which were "black" sounding (e.g. Tyrone) and some of which were "white" sounding (e.g. Phil). The black sounding names were contacted for follow ups at a significantly lower rate than the white sounding ones. In fact, researchers using the same basic design were able to show that white people with criminal convictions were hired at about the same rates as black people with NO criminal convictions, holding all other qualifications and background available to the employer equal. (If you want to read more about these studies, they are all mentioned in more detail in Michelle Alexander's book "The New Jim Crow," which I also recommend for anyone with the time and interest to read, if my recommendation matters for some reason). This is not an insignificant set of facts, even from a business perspective. This is companies in America leaving money on the table for completely nonsensical reasons. This is a generation of talent being excluded from the market, and the problem will only get worse as the minority population of America grows but white dominated industry retains its hiring biases. Now nobody thinks that most hiring managers are sitting around the table consciously saying "hmm, this one's black, so we won't hire her." But hiring discrimination demonstrably exists anyway, so something is going on, probably subconsciously. Preferential treatment for minorities and women (who have a similar history in many respects as other minorities) is an attempt to put a band-aid over these wider societal problems. It shouldn't be something that has to exist, but there is a case for it because these wider societal problems are not being solved, or even addressed by most Americans who seem to think that everything got solved back in the 60's, and nothing remains of white supremacy. The case that I want to make is that this is demonstrably untrue, and that the fact that this is demonstrably untrue is SIGNIFICANT. This MATTERS, and even if we can't solve the root problem immidiately, some people want to try and address the problem, even though the solutions that are within their power are less than perfect. You don't have to agree with this course of action. Hell, I'm not sure I agree with it. I probably don't, though I vascillate on it depending on my mood. All I want is for the case not to be treated as if it's crazy talk, or "reverse racism".

You actually believe that such a fence would keep people out?

A better question is, would it keep the guns in America?

Mr. Lessig:

Have you read Crispin Sartwell's article in the latest June issue of The Atlantic? Mr. Sartwell seems to make arguments that imply that efforts such as that of RootStrikers and the Mayday PAC are merely nibbling at the edges of the true problem and not addressing it directly. If the hierarchies of wealth concentration and governance are inextricably linked through a Principle of Hierarchical Coincidence, then will you unlink them merely by legislating campaign finance reforms? For that matter, would even a round of revolutionary head-chopping do the job when so many other heads have been groomed and eagerly await the same chance at dominance?

It's time to abolish patents completely.

Ten, twenty years ago we were hearing all about this 'wonder material' .. then suddenly we stopped hearing much at all, and didn't really see applications come to market. Now we know why. It's been all but killed by this patent minefield. Your children someday might have a terminal illness that could have been cured by some graphene-based medical product? Sorry, they must rather die so that the corporations who control these patents and patent lawyers can sit on the tech forcibly preventing anyone else from benefiting from it. We could help green deserts and make new regions of the planet liveable with cheaper desalination? Sorry, that must be killed by patents. Cheaper solar? Kill it. Potential electronics applications? Kill it.

Unless we abolish patents, our children and grandchildren are going to be living in a world that is scarcely more technically advanced than our own is now.

Even patent attorneys are starting to agree that patents are not or are no longer encouraging innovation, are stifling it, and are imposing a great cost burden on us, both financially and in terms of being robbed of our 'jetson's future'.

This is also the reason we've stopped seeing much real innovation or cost reductions in smartphone development: "There Are 250,000 Active Patents That Impact Smartphones; Representing One In Six Active Patents Today"

Study: Patent Trolls Cost Companies $29 Billion Last Year (that's a conservative estimate)

There is no way to "reform" this system. It's non-reformable as it's intrinsically unethical. It should be thrown out entirely.

You're pointing out a real problem, but drawing the wrong conclusions. People absolutely do care about how boys are doing in the classroom. It takes very little effort to google "Boys in the classroom" and see what kind of reasons people are finding for what's going wrong, and how to fix it. If anything, boys may be acting as canaries for what's wrong with our educational system, and improving things for them is quite likely to improve things for the girls in the classroom as well. Do you really think society is against that?

If anyone is against improving education for boys, it's the same people who are against improving education in general. The status quo is much easier to protect than a valid idea. It's what you're doing right now, after all.

Here's just one article on the subject: http://www.theatlantic.com/sex...

Crying that women are trying to make things better for themselves is not going to improve anything for men, unless you're implying that all men are power hungry, territorial beasts who can't stand the sight of boobs anywhere other than the bedroom and the kitchen.

You could have linked the original article instead of your blog.

Let's not blow the one chance we're going to get to launch a mission to Europa on a coffee can and a bunch of labs-on-a-chip. The over-budget and behind-schedule SLS is in desperate need of payload ideas, and coming up with small potatoes crap like this is not going to cut it.

There was a story last week about how extroverts would be the worst possible people to have along on a multi-month trip to mars in a very small spaceship. That is something that introverts are better suited for doing.

Extroverts Don't Belong on Mars

The issue is that the US has always been an oligarchy of the rich, realistically it came into being due to a tax revolt.
Money out of politics is not only possible, if you look else where in the world with functioning democracies and functioning electoral systems you can find examples:

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

In Canada (with legislated limits)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

or see Frances new laws limiting funding
http://www.loc.gov/law/help/ca...

If you believe that money is the only power then you have already been brainwashed to give up your democratic rights.

The average US Senate seat apparently costs ~ $7 million.

The entire Canadian Election spending per party ~ $21 million.

Obama spent well over $400 million for just his presidential campaign.

Think about what could be done with $379 million to address real problems in the US like education, healthcare etc....

The reason the rich are willing to waste their money is because they have too much of it (mainly because of tax law changes).
The average CEO salary in the US is now $10 million per year! Yet they pay less than 20% in taxes!

Even Warren Buffet thinks its time to tax the rich.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11...

If you did that the money that might otherwise be spent on political campaigns might actually do some good like funding education or public healthcare etc...

But then according to your brainwashing program the only power is money and any country that tries to democratically regulate the market (an artificial construct that only exists because of the enforcement of property laws) must a communist country (Canada) how else can we have publicly funded healthcare...
keep drinking the kool-aid, in the mean time we'll outlive you. Yes life expectancy is higher here, as is quality of life.

Wasn't this whole secret trials system invented in order to hide the scandals that UK was directly involved with the torture of of the prisoners? One of the cases mentioned when this system was planned was the case of Binyam Mohamed, where the torture included making cut to penis and chest with scalpels or razor blades:

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

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

You have to expect that in a country where manual labor is cheap. In other countries, it makes more economic sense to automate or otherwise fix inefficiencies in the manufacturing process.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd like to highlight that there is a second side to your coin. In other countries, it makes more economic sense to automate the manufacturing process so a larger percentage of the profit is converted to profit for those employees that remain, while those who would have done the inefficient manual assembly become unemployment statistics.

Somewhere in between your statement and mine likely lies an ideal.

There's a surprising amount of manual labor involved with making LEDs.

You have to expect that in a country where manual labor is cheap. In other countries, it makes more economic sense to automate or otherwise fix inefficiencies in the manufacturing process.

Snowden is going to be the first person in human history to have a suspicious death at the age of one-hundred and five.

There's a big difference between what these agencies do under cover of darkness, and what they do under the glare of a public spotlight. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia after two decades in exile, whereupon he continued to criticise his homeland for another fourteen years, before dying of heart failure under suspicious circumstances at age eighty-nine.

There's a good reason they get mighty twisted about having their darkness aired: no more summary judgement, no more page 13 obituaries of A-list adversaries.

Hurricane Lolita:

I once read of an interview given by Roman Polanski in which he described listening to a lurid radio account of his offense even as he was fleeing to the airport. He suddenly realized the trouble he was in, he said, when he came to appreciate that he had done something for which a lot of people would furiously envy him.

No, Snowden's exile is something different: a life not envied, not one little bit. That much his button-down steampunk adversaries can manage under the broad light of day.

No, the USA "brings charges against" these guys. "Prosecution" requires a trial before a Judge and Jury. Which in turns requires a defendant who is PRESENT for the trial. We have no legal provision for Trial in Absentia in the USA (hence Kerry saying Snowden should "come back to the US to stand trial").

Barring the occasional executive order to dispense with all that inconvenient legal stuff... for example

The article in the 2nd link (1st link only says "abstract" in the link) is a joke. Well, the people who wrote it are serious, but it's a joke. They honestly cited The Onion as a source for one of their points without mentioning that The Onion is a satirical site. Do they even know that? They offer no alternative. They only say that the whole drone strike idea isn't working.

Ert, ert, shill alert! You just redlined my shillmeter there. What you're doing is a common misdirection tactic that is almost exclusive used by shills: if a source illustrates an otherwise well-founded argument with a light-hearted aside, an opposing shill will never fail to rip the light-hearted aside out of context, claim it's the only source of data the argument is built on, and thereby dismiss the whole article, including all of its other sources. Shame until the 7th generation upon the moderators who modded this turd up.

The real point is to kill bad guys. (...) Killing some of them may convince some people who haven't joined that joining them may be a really bad idea. There's value in that.

Oh please grow up. The real world is not about "good guys" and "bad guys". In fact, bad guys don't actually exist, and killing those who you think are bad only makes them stronger.

You assume thugs need math. They don't.

It takes a few smart folks to set up the systems, and a bunch of dumb ones to follow the flow charts and deploy the automated exploit vectors.

They don't really need hackers at the FBI. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to shill online forums and manage the perception of "national security".

The education system sucks because a well educated public is the hardest to control.

Given this article mere moments ago on /. indicating that Google's autonomous cars have driven 700,000 miles on public roads with no citations, it's difficult to argue that they're not more competent, if not hyper-competent, compared to human drivers (most of whom get traffic tickets, and most of whom don't drive 700,000 miles between doing so).

Article has many good valid points, though, but that point irked me.

You have to keep in mind that to some extent the perfect record may be due to having a human driver that takes control when problematic situations arise. They're not completely autonomous 700,000 miles. We would want to know how many times the human has had to take control and why.

BTW, They have had one wreck, but Google says it happened while the driver had taken control, but did not say why the driver took control.

That topic is covered in this article, and in more detail from the article's link to "That Atlantic" article.
Robot cars, at the moment, have a similarly savant-like range of expertise. As The Atlantic recently covered, Google’s driverless vehicles require detailed LIDAR maps—3D models created from lasers sweeping the contours of a given roadway—to function. Autonomous cars have to do impressive things, like detecting the proximity of surrounding cars, and determining right of way at intersections. But they are algorithmically locked onto their laser roads. They stay the proscribed course, following a trail of sensor-generated breadcrumbs. Compared to what humans have to contend with, these robots are the most sheltered sort of permanent student drivers. No one is quizzing them by sending pedestrians or drunk drivers darting into their path, or diverting them through un-mapped, snow-covered country lanes. Their ability to avoid fatal collisions remains untested.

More detail from this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/tec...