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Worse information, faster

Reddit was a positive feedback loop. Good information may have been amplified-- but bad information was, too.

Quoting from http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/19/17826915-missing-brown-university-students-family-dragged-into-virally-fueled-false-accusation-in-boston "Reddit became overnight 'one of the more ugly and disgusting places that had a lot of traffic ... There were very intense and ugly comments throughout the last 12 hours.'"

Actually, the live threads on reddit were pretty damn fast and accurate.

Fast... but not always accurate.

From the Atlantic's analysis http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/it-wasnt-sunil-tripathi-the-anatomy-of-a-misinformation-disaster/275155/
" The next step in this information flow is the trickiest one. Here's what I know. At 2:42am, Greg Hughes, who had been following the Tripathi speculation, tweeted, "This is the Internet's test of 'be right, not first' with the reporting of this story. So far, people are doing a great job. #Watertown" Then, at 2:43am, he tweeted, "BPD has identified the names: Suspect 1: Mike Mulugeta. Suspect 2: Sunil Tripathi."
The only problem is that there is no mention of Sunil Tripathi in the audio preceding Hughes' tweet. I've listened to it a dozen times and there's nothing there even remotely resembling Tripathi's name. I've embedded the audio from 2:35 to 2:45 am for your own inspection. Multiple groups of people have been crowdsourcing logs of the police scanner chatter and none of them have found a reference to Tripathi, either. It's just not there."

"Be right, not first" certainly failed big time.

In the meantime businesses keep coming here, leaving your state with the takers leeching off of your taxes.

Yessir, that business-friendly climate really improves the quality of life over there

Oh, that part's certainly true. I didn't really mean to take a side in the recent Chomsky v. Norvig et al wars, more just that the specific research program of universal grammar has "blocked the box" so to speak for some decades, despite relatively little progress.

I do agree with his critique that statistical NLP is a good engineering tool but not something that gives us scientific insight. One can analogize it to a function approximator in machine learning: you can approximate a lot of things with a sum of weighted gaussians, but that doesn't mean the underlying process was actually generated that way, or that you now understand the underlying process. It just means you've approximated it well enough for practical use in a particular application.

For example.

Current U.S. law doesn't have a specific altitude, but instead a more subjective requirement that the flight must be high enough to be safe and not unreasonably interfere with the owner's use of the property. What height that would be depends in part on how high the owner has built up: flying over a suburban house at 2000 ft might be legal, but buzzing the observation deck of a 1900-ft skyscraper by passing it at 2000 ft probably isn't.

A bit more here.

Of-course this is IRS, they are above the law, they don't have to comply with any laws, their entire operation is completely lawless, not based on any laws. They are used to violating your private property rights, that's what income taxes are - a violation of your private property rights. They are used to discriminating against people, that's what graduated ('progressive') income taxes are - discrimination against individuals, the laws are not applied equally. They are used to taking away your freedom of movement.

Saying that your email is not private is not something out of character for IRS.

Just because some third party hosts your emails it doesn't mean they are not your property, there is your NAME on it, the company gave you your space. Is your BANK ACCOUNT your property?

This would be a more convincing Both Sides Are Equally Bad if both sides were even remotely equally bad.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/ukrainian-attack-dolphins-on-the-loose/273943/ "Update: Ukrainian Military Dolphins Not Actually on the Loose"

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/ukrainian-attack-dolphins-on-the-loose/273943/

It is estimated that 5-10% of the population is gay.

Errr...actually it's less. A lot less. As a matter of fact would you believe the real number stands at slightly less than 2%?

Don't worry, almost no one in America gets this one right...

Whoops, forgot slashdot's auto-editing. The article I was pointing to when I said "see" was http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/corporate-profits-are-eating-the-economy/273687/

When Clinton was president the budget deficit was a big deal too. Then what did Clinton do? He fucking balanced the budget. We could have started paying down the debt then and there. Gore ran on a platform of doing just that. Bush ran on a platform of trillion-dollar tax cuts, increased spending, and wars in the middle east
...
Don't blame Democrats, this is 100% a Republican-created crisis. Republicans are as fiscally-irresponsible as they come.

Actually, Clinton didn't start balancing the budget until the Republican-led Congress which swept into office in 1994 forced him to. Unfortunately the usual spin (which you've fallen for) is to give Clinton the credit for balancing the budget, while giving Republicans the blame for cutting science and technology research funding. Both are responsible for both.

And the balanced budget during 1999-2000 was more an illusion than a reality. Spending dropped, but not below the long-term historical average for tax revenue. It's just that tax revenue was unusually high during those years because of the tech bubble.

When the bubble popped, tax revenue plummeted with it, putting Bush into perpetual deficits. The average spending (as percent of GDP) during Bush's 8 years was actually about the same as for Clinton's 8 years. The bigger deficits during his years were entirely due to lower tax revenue. (This is not to say Bush is blameless - his tax cuts made it worse, dropping revenue even further. When the stimulus effect of the tax cuts did kick in, the tax rates were so low that revenue peaked at only slightly above the long-term average despite the economy being in a boom due to the housing bubble.)

Would probably end up looking something like this

Funny that the summary doesn't include his initial statement to the French industry official that approached him: "How stupid do you think we are?"

In a word: Very.

CNN observes that Taylor is not only a relic of the 80s' leveraged buyout "corporate raiders" era, he's a hypocrite as well for wanting to make tires in China:

"The U.S. government is not much better than the French. Titan had to pay millions to Washington lawyers to sue the Chinese tire companies because of their subsidizing. Titan won. The government collects the duties. We don't get the duties, the government does," said Taylor.

All of this is beside the point however. US workers have less vacation/break time than anyone else on the planet, in a time where it is increasingly recognized that giving more breaks to workers results in more productivity. The real stupidity comes from failing to notice how well the rest of the world can keep pace with the much-vaunted "American productivity" while maintaining a vastly better quality of life.

It's a simple question.

You are asking questions from the wrong side of the gun... or drone for the matter of hand. In the new incarnation of the Brave New World, it's no wonder you won't get an answer.

It's a simple question. Since Barack Obama decided he doesn't need due process to kill Americans overseas, did he decide he doesn't need due process to kill Americans in America? He won't answer. John Brennan, CIA director nominee, won't answer either.

But the US is the only industrial country with so high a level of gun violence. Maybe it has to do with gun culture. http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/crime/larsgun.htm

Most mammals live for a billion (10^9) heartbeats, humans live about 60 years, twice as long. One theory is the Grandmother Effect. That is having older women share the burden of childrearing aided in the children's survival.

In the 1980s, Kristen Hawkes and James O'Connell spent time with Hadza hunter-gatherers. They noticed that the older women in the society spent their days collecting tubers and other food for their grandchildren. That was the proverbial fallen apple that sparked Hawkes' interest in the Grandmother Theory, which says that humans evolved to live so long because grandmothers were around to help take care of the young'uns.

I suppose it doesn't hurt that Facebook engineers were on Obama's reelection "dream team", along with Google and Twitter.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/

The little voice that asks, Was it a really a dog?
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/the-guilty-conscience-of-a-drone-pilot-who-killed-a-child/266453/

The hell with bedrock! Curiosity has found a piece of metal embedded in rock. Doesn't appear to be Mardi Gras beads either.

They should be tugging on that thing to see what happens!

If you...

If you...

When you...

If you...

So you've laid out a number of hypothetical fantasy scenarios. It seems you think you're constructing an argument, but it isn't clear what that argument is.

The central criticism of this violation of due process is that it is precisely leaving out the important step of determining if anything similar to your hypothetical fantasy scenarios pertains in cases where the person in question is not an "imminent threat" to anyone.

If you wanted to remove yourself from the argument you really couldn't have done a better job of it. Do please come back when you have something relevant to say about the quite clear criticisms that have been leveled at this policy of extra-judicial killing by those of us who support the rule of law.

Or when they happen to be out on the open road, not on a terrorist base.

Or when they're the 16-year-old American son of an alleged terrorist who hasn't seen their father in over two years

How about American Citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki? He was born in Denver, Colorado on August 26, 1995 at 1:16 PM. He was killed by an American drone strike in Yemen on October 14, 2011. He was 16 years old at the time. Does anyone have any evidence that this teenager posed an imminent threat to the US?

Oh, yes, as Robert Gibbs said in an interview, it was Abdulrahman's fault that his father - who he hadn't seen in over two years - was an alleged terrorist. That's the threat he posed to America, and that's what justified killing him.

An fascinating article i found some time ago on the cuba missile crisis: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190/?single_page=true

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/01/chinas-toxic-sky/100449/

The shot featuring the blue sky on the screen is my favorite...

I don't know about 1990, but we definitely had some pretty nasty air pollution about 40-60 years ago. When I was < 10 and growing up in Ohio circa 1980, I remember that air pollution was pretty much everywhere, even in smaller cities, like the Warren-Youngstown-Sharon area roughly halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. My first "omg" memory of Florida was looking up during recess one day about a month after we moved there, and freaking out because I could see the full moon in broad daylight. That was something you never, EVER saw in Ohio. Or at least something *I* had no memory of ever seeing.

Hell, I spent July 5, 1994 in New York, and remember BARELY being able to see the Twin Towers from Midtown. The whole city smelled like a burning log in a fireplace. Likewise, I spent a week in Los Angeles sometime in August 1996, and remember driving into L.A. on LaCienega drive... I made it over the mountain, and saw the famous vista with LA (well, OK, I guess it was actually Beverly Hills) spread out in front of me... except you couldn't actually see anything except faint rooftops a mile or two away, and a sea of opaque smog. In LA's defense, though, its smog didn't really have any particular odor. It was opaque to a degree I'd never seen in my life, but other than obscuring most of the views, it didn't really bother me.

Anyway, onto the pics:

Pittsburgh, 1948... during the DAY: http://bike-pgh.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/smog1.jpg

Cleveland, 1973: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/CLEVELAND_SKYLINE_IN_THE_SMOG_OF_JULY_20%2C_1973%2C_DAY_OF_POLLUTION_ALERT_-_NARA_-_550190.jpg

New York, 1972: http://earth911.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Smog-1970s.jpg

Los Angeles, 1948: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/jamesfallows/los-angeles-smog_53499058.jpg

Manhattan, 1966: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wavz13/4083896787/

Terrific point about separating an appraisal of the world from general moods.

And after all, some people even like tough challenges:
http://www.papert.org/articles/HardFun.html

As I quote here from "What Dreams May Come":
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
===
"This is their composite mental image?" I asked. Soundless; hueless; lifeless.
"It is," he said.
"And you work here?" I felt stunned that anyone who had the choice would elect to work in this forbidding place.
"This is nothing," was all he said.
===

Howard Zinn also suggested there is always reason for the "optimism of uncertainty": http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm

I agree about the bringing nutrition/lifestyle stuff all together synergistically:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/natural_depression.aspx
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Also maybe of interest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_approaches_to_depression

And:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/12/the-science-of-success/307761/
"Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind's phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail -- but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society's most creative, successful, and happy people."

While Shirky's post has some great insights, I actually disagree with a sentiment implied where he says: "Most of us won't kill ourselves, no matter how bad things get. ... Madoff hasn't killed himself because he isn't the kind of person who kills himself." While perhaps true, it is misleading. I'd suggest depression and suicide could happen in almost anyone's life probabilistically, but that certain circumstances make it more or less likely. Then, if it does, the survivors tend to work backwards from "if only" proximate causes, but overall it is always a network of interacting causes and effects. Genes are one thing affecting probabilities, but so is nutrition, lifestyle, mental outlook, mental habits including gratitude, religions and spiritual upbringing or life philosophy, social networks, physical infrastructure, and many other factors (including what we think about the world) which interact with each other. Or, in other words, a life is like a tree, and whether that tree is blown over by any particular storm in life is about both how big the (perceived) storm is and how deep the tree's roots are (and roots help us grow more roots). For a person, roots are things like nutrition, family, friends, hobbies, community, music, values, habits, religion/philosophy, and so on. See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_psychology

Thanks for the success story of personal growth to grow deeper roots in various ways. Good luck in continuing to grow them as best as is possible in this plane of existence filled with various dualistic tensions, with life at a Yin/Yang interface of

but you can't stop other people writing about the event or newspapers reprinting the photo

Except that you can. There's already been at least one case where a court used the "right to be forgotten" to ban people writing about an event or reprinting a photo:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/the-right-to-be-forgotten/309044/

In this article, the case is made that retaining production in house makes it easier to improve products, increase quality and reduce response times (due to lack of shipping cost).

Fructose

You don't know what you are talking about.

U.S. Taxes Really Are Unusually Progressive

So long as we have an income tax (that's another conversation...) I say with a resounding YES: the ultra-rich (>10 million "net worth") should pay much more (as a percentage) of their income in taxes than do the working poor ($0 "net worth"). It's called progressive taxation, and it's ABSOLUTELY necessary so long as there is such a HUGE chasm between the top 0.1% and the bottom 50%, financially speaking. Granted, the culture of greed that dug that chasm is a social issue, and cannot be solved politically. Progressive taxation is treating the symptom.

That's great. Just one problem, the US tax system is already the most progressive - two different studies.

U.S. Taxes Really Are Unusually Progressive

Income taxes in America are more progressive than in other rich countries--according to an authoritiative official study which, to my knowledge, has not been contradicted. The OECD's report "Growing Unequal", on poverty and inequality in industrial countries, includes a table that provides two measures of income tax progressivity in 2005. This is evidently the source of de Rugy's numbers. Here they are in an excel file. According to one measure, America's income taxes were the most progressive of the 24 countries in the sample, except for Ireland. According to the other, they were the most progressive full stop. (A more recent OECD report, "Divided We Stand", uses different data, a smaller sample of countries and a different measure of progressivity: the results are similar.) . . . more

America has industrialized world’s most progressive income tax, says The Tax Foundation

America leads the world in many fields, but for those keeping score, the nation apparently has yet another superlative to add to its column. According to The Tax Foundation, the U.S. currently can lay claim to having the most progressive income tax among all industrialized nations.

In the mid-2000s, the top 10 percent of households in the U.S. were responsible for 45.1 percent of all income tax revenues, according to numbers compiled by the foundation. That same decile, however, only earned 33.5 percent of the market income – which makes the ratio of income tax paid to market income earned the highest of any industrialized country, at a whopping 1.35. For comparison, France stands at 1.10, Belgium at 0.94 and Switzerland at 0.89.

American Enterprise Institute economist Alan Viard told The Daily Caller that while America’s tax code is extremely progressive, it is not as redistributive as many other nations because the overall tax system is smaller.

“As a country imposes a larger volume of taxes and as the public sector gets bigger, it is almost certain that they are not going to remain as progressive in how they raise their revenue,” Viard said. “Progressivity has certain economic costs. It tends to undermine incentives to work and to save It will be more and more costly for a country to stay that progressive as their tax system gets bigger. ” . . . more

Will raising taxes pull in more revenue? Not necessarily.

Why 70% Tax Rates Won't Work

The intelligentsia of the Democratic Party is growing increasingly enthusiastic about raising the highest federal income tax rates to 70% or more. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich took the lead in February, pro

So long as we have an income tax (that's another conversation...) I say with a resounding YES: the ultra-rich (>10 million "net worth") should pay much more (as a percentage) of their income in taxes than do the working poor ($0 "net worth"). It's called progressive taxation, and it's ABSOLUTELY necessary so long as there is such a HUGE chasm between the top 0.1% and the bottom 50%, financially speaking. Granted, the culture of greed that dug that chasm is a social issue, and cannot be solved politically. Progressive taxation is treating the symptom.

That's great. Just one problem, the US tax system is already the most progressive - two different studies.

U.S. Taxes Really Are Unusually Progressive

Income taxes in America are more progressive than in other rich countries--according to an authoritiative official study which, to my knowledge, has not been contradicted. The OECD's report "Growing Unequal", on poverty and inequality in industrial countries, includes a table that provides two measures of income tax progressivity in 2005. This is evidently the source of de Rugy's numbers. Here they are in an excel file. According to one measure, America's income taxes were the most progressive of the 24 countries in the sample, except for Ireland. According to the other, they were the most progressive full stop. (A more recent OECD report, "Divided We Stand", uses different data, a smaller sample of countries and a different measure of progressivity: the results are similar.) . . . more

America has industrialized world’s most progressive income tax, says The Tax Foundation

America leads the world in many fields, but for those keeping score, the nation apparently has yet another superlative to add to its column. According to The Tax Foundation, the U.S. currently can lay claim to having the most progressive income tax among all industrialized nations.

In the mid-2000s, the top 10 percent of households in the U.S. were responsible for 45.1 percent of all income tax revenues, according to numbers compiled by the foundation. That same decile, however, only earned 33.5 percent of the market income – which makes the ratio of income tax paid to market income earned the highest of any industrialized country, at a whopping 1.35. For comparison, France stands at 1.10, Belgium at 0.94 and Switzerland at 0.89.

American Enterprise Institute economist Alan Viard told The Daily Caller that while America’s tax code is extremely progressive, it is not as redistributive as many other nations because the overall tax system is smaller.

“As a country imposes a larger volume of taxes and as the public sector gets bigger, it is almost certain that they are not going to remain as progressive in how they raise their revenue,” Viard said. “Progressivity has certain economic costs. It tends to undermine incentives to work and to save It will be more and more costly for a country to stay that progressive as their tax system gets bigger. ” . . . more

Will raising taxes pull in more revenue? Not necessarily.

Why 70% Tax Rates Won't Work

The intelligentsia of the Democratic Party is growing increasingly enthusiastic about raising the highest federal income tax rates to 70% or more. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich took the lead in February, pro

No one is saying "capitalism doesn't work". They are saying supply side economics doesn't improve the lives of most Americans.

A quick googling on tax rates and economic growth:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/tax-cuts-dont-lead-to-economic-growth-a-new-65-year-study-finds/262438/

Intel will need software for any play in media delivery and content management.

You mean like something embedded in hardware? with a built in screen and a speaker?

Failure on the launch pad.

Most unfortunate

I was hoping Intel would become the new Magnavox

Interestingly enough, this would have been illegal in Iowa since you're not allowed to take photographs of farms without permission of the owner of the farm.

There are even proposals to tie tuition payments to the popularity of courses: charge more for engineering courses and less for liberal arts (which is the opposite of the right way to influence it if you're trying to coax people into the sciences and into engineering).

I haven't heard anything like that, and in fact it seems to be the opposite:

Down in Florida, a task force commissioned by Governor Rick Scott is putting the finishing touches on a proposal that would allow the state's public universities to start charging undergraduates different tuition rates depending on their major. Students would get discounts for studying topics thought to be in high demand among Florida employers. Those would likely include science, technology, engineering, and math (aka, the STEM fields), among others.

link Perhaps this is true in fringe cases, but it doesn't seem to be the norm.

The Atlantic: Bad software runs the World

Try this one.

And there are many ways to be a jerk, even on societal levels. Interesting chart here that completely invalidates the idea that copyright promotes the arts. Same with patents for the useful sciences.

Sadly, this chart will be used to promote even longer copyright, as this obviously indicates legislation granting an unfair advantage to older books!

The system has always been equally broken before

Agreed.

but it's a select few companies ...

Who have finally taken full advantage of all the abuse the system provides for. We need to recognize that the system is inherently broken and needs to be abolished and/or replaced. And only replaced if there's some way to show that the replacement won't have detrimental unintended consequences.

Just because the law says it's okay to be a jerk doesn't mean it's okay when you actually do it.

And there are many ways to be a jerk, even on societal levels. Interesting chart here that completely invalidates the idea that copyright promotes the arts. Same with patents for the useful sciences.

If the Internet has taught us one thing, it's that very few ideas are actually unique. The patent system has just become a race to see who has the most and fastest lawyers who can file a patent for as many ideas as can be floated, ability or intent to implement be damned. Execution is what really matters now when it comes to advancing technology and nobody needs to make up imaginary property rights for a good management team to succeed.

But IP does maximize profits for certain corporations, created by the government, feeding money (and by extension power) back to the same government players. That's what we call a positive feedback loop. If there's a silver lining, positive feedback loops cause instability and usually lead to collapse, ending the cycle. Unfortunately, those collapses often damage everything around them when they let go.

Really?

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/scandal-alert-congress-is-quietly-abandoning-the-5th-amendment/266498/

You might want to rethink that "I have freedom" opinion a bit..

central wealth distribution has been shown time and again to disincentivise people from actually doing something useful with their lives

The good news is that I, and just about every American on every side of the political spectrum, agree with you entirely. We do not want a central wealth distribution. We are also very, very far from a such a distribution; you would be forgiven if you only thought there were three parts of the left pie in this graph of wealth by quintiles because the bottom 40% of Americans have about 0.3% of America's wealth (and this is coincidentally about equal to that of the combined owners of Wal-Mart)

And the sad thing is that we probably don't underestimate the inequality that badly, if it weren't for those at the very top. I'm not talking about the 1%. Or even the 0.1%. Or the 0.01%. You need a couple more 0's because the problem is the top 400. If you remove those individuals from the equation as outliers, then Americans probably have an accurate estimate of wealth inequality. The top 400 are not only gaining greater wealth faster than the mere 1%, but the rate is increasing, a term which I have seen called "economic redshift".

Personally, while I do not wish to see a central wealth distribution, I wouldn't mind seeing our current wealth distribution move a little bit more toward the center.

central wealth distribution has been shown time and again to disincentivise people from actually doing something useful with their lives

The good news is that I, and just about every American on every side of the political spectrum, agree with you entirely. We do not want a central wealth distribution. We are also very, very far from a such a distribution; you would be forgiven if you only thought there were three parts of the left pie in this graph of wealth by quintiles because the bottom 40% of Americans have about 0.3% of America's wealth (and this is coincidentally about equal to that of the combined owners of Wal-Mart)

And the sad thing is that we probably don't underestimate the inequality that badly, if it weren't for those at the very top. I'm not talking about the 1%. Or even the 0.1%. Or the 0.01%. You need a couple more 0's because the problem is the top 400. If you remove those individuals from the equation as outliers, then Americans probably have an accurate estimate of wealth inequality. The top 400 are not only gaining greater wealth faster than the mere 1%, but the rate is increasing, a term which I have seen called "economic redshift".

Personally, while I do not wish to see a central wealth distribution, I wouldn't mind seeing our current wealth distribution move a little bit more toward the center.

Fuck you. Children die all the fucking time. Want some examples?
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/oct2012/afgh-o24.shtml
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/24/3-killed-kids-hurt-as-fury-grows-over-u-s-drone-strikes-in-pakistan/
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/177737.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team-obama-justifies-the-killing-of-a-16-year-old-american/264028/

So stop with the knee-jerk attempts to shout down civilised debate. Shit, I just handed you several compelling reasons to disarm Americans, you really shouldn't need to resort to appeals to emotion.

It's not a fantasy or even a theory, it's historical fact for the last four hundred years. A guy who can run a combine harvesting tons of cotton per day makes more, and works fewer hours, than someone picking by hand.

It's important to make a distinction here. Is the guy making more because he's more productive, or because of the extra training necessary to operate the combine?

If the guy actually owns the combine in question, then all the increased productivity gains go directly into his pocket (sans the extra maintenance costs of the combine). But if he doesn't own it, but instead works for someone who does, then his labor will only paid higher than that of his unskilled hand-picking competitor to reflect the extra skills; but all the extra productivity gain is pocketed by the owner of the combine.

And, no, you can't find a different company that'll actually share that productivity gain with you. Why would they want to do that, when no-one else does? It's not economically efficient for them.

The fact is, 98% of Slashdot readers earn more and get more time off than our grandparents

We don't.

There is a reason that real income peaked while hours worked per family bottomed in 1971.

Yes, and that reason is evident when you look at whom that income peaked for (and whom it didn't). It's also evident that it has nothing whatsoever to do with inflation - if it did, everyone would be affected equally. As it is, the money is just going elsewhere, and the recipient is not the government.

2 - If anybody actually thought that the eqyptian government was going to be all good now because of the uprising clearly has not been paying attention. Id love to visit but not until there is another revolution there.

There's a few things about Egypt you should probably know. For one thing, the poverty rate there isn't much worse there than the United States (15% versus 20%) despite the radically different size of the economy and median income ($6k versus $40k). And before you jump down my throat on "proving that", I sourced that information from the CIA World Factbook. They have a significantly lower violent crime rate than here as well -- almost four times less (and yes, I can back that up too from a reliable source, The UN Office on Drugs and Crime. And when it comes to jailing people, the United States ranks #1. Egypt? #165. (Oh yes, sourced that too).

So when you get all uppity about how they're jailing a blogger for three years for publishing something anti-muslim, I want you to remember the terror watch lists. I want you to remember Guantanamo Bay. I want you to think of the hundreds of political prisoners (Citation? Got you covered. I assume Harvard Law School is prestigious enough?) we ignore. You talk about media control and manipulation in other countries like Egypt like they're somehow worse than those of the west.

The truth is... they're better. Three years for pissing off the government here is a comparatively light sentence: We put people in jail for at least a year for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Don't ask for a revolution before considering visiting Egypt. Chances are good, your country needs one more.

Excellent points. It could also be the case the people who drink more coffee have more money, and are therefore more able to afford cancer treatment (thus reducing the "risk").
I would recommend this article in The Atlantic: Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science. It points out many of the fallacies of this kind of medical research.