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There have been plenty of places that have shown the document is a false.
Here is one from a liberal source so some of you will not automatically ignore the truth http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/

The "smoking gun" memo is most likely faked, see Megan McArdle's analysis at http://www.theatlantic.com/megan-mcardle/

Many of the documents seem to be genuine, but the "smoking gun" document that everyone is quoting looks like a fake. This possibility seems to have been raised first here on Slashdot by eldavojohn, and Megan McArdle of The Atlantic has written extensively about it.

The Heartland people are making themselves look bad with these silly threats, though, which will lose them the sympathy they should get as victims of a forgery-based smear job.

And you do think that? Why? Do you have any specifics? Any evidence?

http://www.nationalcenter.org/2007/05/let-greenpeace-live-up-to-standard-it.html

"I just eye-balled Greenpeace's list, and they appear to list about 800 donors. It looks like about 100 (and 3 of the 14 big gifts) of those are anonymous. "

Really? One document of the bunch was supposedly forged. And who was it that made that claim?

It's been independently verified as a forgery by several sources, but here's a particularly well done one:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/heartland-memo-looking-faker-by-the-minute/253276/

And note, this is by a *believer* in bad human global warming:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/

"I should also probably note that I disagree pretty strenuously with Heartland's position on global warming. I not only believe that anthropogenic global warming is happening, but also support stiff carbon or source fuels taxes in order to combat it."

The problem here is that the documents that are legitimate aren't damning, and the one document that has even the slightest scent of malfeasance was *forged*. Imagine for a moment if with the release of the climategate emails, it was found that "hide the decline" was a forged entry!

The story here is that because bad human global warming believers aren't winning the argument, they're resorting to dirty tricks. Nothing undermines their position more than their need to forge caricatures of their opponents in order to make points.

And you do think that? Why? Do you have any specifics? Any evidence?

http://www.nationalcenter.org/2007/05/let-greenpeace-live-up-to-standard-it.html

"I just eye-balled Greenpeace's list, and they appear to list about 800 donors. It looks like about 100 (and 3 of the 14 big gifts) of those are anonymous. "

Really? One document of the bunch was supposedly forged. And who was it that made that claim?

It's been independently verified as a forgery by several sources, but here's a particularly well done one:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/heartland-memo-looking-faker-by-the-minute/253276/

And note, this is by a *believer* in bad human global warming:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/

"I should also probably note that I disagree pretty strenuously with Heartland's position on global warming. I not only believe that anthropogenic global warming is happening, but also support stiff carbon or source fuels taxes in order to combat it."

The problem here is that the documents that are legitimate aren't damning, and the one document that has even the slightest scent of malfeasance was *forged*. Imagine for a moment if with the release of the climategate emails, it was found that "hide the decline" was a forged entry!

The story here is that because bad human global warming believers aren't winning the argument, they're resorting to dirty tricks. Nothing undermines their position more than their need to forge caricatures of their opponents in order to make points.

"The Civil War was really a class war. The 1% who had slaves, wanted the rest of the workers who had to compete with slave labor to say; "Hey, you Northern oppressors -- we want to import cheap goods and not have to buy American, because we can't compete by selling good not made by slave labor."

The Slave Masters wanted everyone in the South to say; "WE are being harmed by the North economically" -- when really, slavery probably reduced wages for MOST Southerners.

Right on the money. I wish I had mod points to give you.

The Lost Cause may seem romantic, but anyone who doubts that the Civil War was really about slavery needs to read the declaration of secession:

We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof. The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made.

Megan McArdle has a pretty good post up questioning the memo's legitimacy here.

Vaccine refusal for standard childhood vaccines could be considered child neglect.

There are parents who don't want their children to have the chicken pox vaccine and then expose them to chicken pox. That's child abuse. The vaccine is far lower risk than actually getting the disease.

I'm actually feeling uncomfortable thinking about what she said.

You can start here:
http://consumerist.com/2010/08/tsas-enhanced-pat-down-procedure-lets-their-fingers-do-the-searching.html
Then check this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/for-the-first-time-the-tsa-meets-resistance/65390/
http://pncminnesota.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/rape-survivor-devasted-by-tsa-enhanced-pat-down/
http://www.consumertraveler.com/today/tsa-admits-to-punishing-travelers/

As for cables, the only real difference between cheap/expensive cables is how long they last. A cheap cable will most likely not put up with much abuse where as an expensive cable is more robust.

Yeah, that $199 price sticker makes the cable automatically more robust. It's all in the price!

As for the rest of your comments, You Are Not So Smart!

Thanks for the reply, even if the ad hominen part probably just weakens your argument. :-)

I actually like economists like Julian Simon, even if he ignores externalities and equitable distribution:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

The fact is, most mainstream economics is based neither on facts, history, or human nature. :-) Most of it is abstract theoretical model with little connection to populist ethics or reality. See, for example:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/6397/
http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/
http://debunkingeconomics.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/economy/04econ.html

Or:
"Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science that Makes Life Dismal"
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Rest-Us-Debunking-Science/dp/1595581014

Here is another thing to think about, by the way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_toil
"The paradox of toil is the economic hypothesis that total employment will shrink if everybody wants to work more when "the short-term nominal interest rate is zero and there are deflationary pressures and output contraction".[1] The idea is that total employment will fall when wages, and therefore consumption, are pushed down by the simultanious efforts of everyone to work more in situations where interest rates are against the zero bound so that rates cannot drop more to increase demand for goods. This is a limited example of the fallacy of composition.[1] where assuming that the increase in production that normally occurs when total labor increases applies in all situations. Put simply, when a recessionary economy is up against the zero bound, having more people seeking work - at lower wages if necessary - can actually reduce the number of jobs due to reduced demand from lower wages."

Even in your defense of the concept, you started introducing qualifiers. You "introduce" a new worker into a "closed" economy. You are carefully avoiding what it means when an economy already has 20% or higher real unemployment, or what it means if the economy is open to imports or innovation, or what happens when the owners of capital take advantage of the situation of too many workers chasing too few jobs and apply the law of supply and demand to lower wages.

But since so much of mainstream economics is theory devoid of facts, let me play along, and show how, just theoretically, the "lump of labor" fallacy assumes both linearity in a relation of labor to output and also increasing demand, given whoever becomes a worker in a modern society with unemployment like the USA must already have been consuming a lot of products.

Consider an economy with one hundred people who consume one generalized product called "A". Imagine forty-five members out of the hundred "work" to produce product 10000 units of product A per day. The production of A has been greatly optimized for maximum production, ignoring any joy the workers get from their jobs:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110425153540/http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html

Assume people only need about 1 unit of A to get by, but more is nice, up to about 7 units of A, and then more doesn't make people much happier (and at some point, people even become sick from too much).

The product is distributed in some fashion to everyone in the society, party based on

1. On the 95% number, the actual quote from Ron Paul's 1992 newsletter is: "Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/12/ron-pauls-shaggy-defense/250256/

So, "at worst...disingenuous, but still true"? There's also some good stuff about how Paul's longtime staffer and likely ghostwriter of these articles is famous for saying that the only thing wrong with the Rodney King beating was that it was videotaped, etc.

I don't know what you're defending with your comments about my statements being unsourced, given that I just critiqued the linked article for being a bad example and even went on to suggest ways that you might find more of the content (given that we're talking about years of newsletters, it's a bit much for a random comment). But I posted simply to correct any misperception that that may have caused, despite your rather high expectations that I was going to instead offer an encyclopedic counter-example. The content of the newsletters is public knowledge; you don't need me to google for you. But when I said before that the sources were a few clicks deep into the post's references, I wasn't kidding, I clicked a link in the first paragraph, and scrolled down to where the second author was recommending excerpts and commentary, and clicked on that. It took maybe a couple of minutes.

2. Moving on to your fight: "Once these kids are adults out in the world, how does [giving them access to the sytem] help them?" Well, it means they are qualified for jobs based on the piece of paper that they now hold. This is another matter and despite your attempt to bring it up here it is not really what Paul's newsletters are about except in a passing "look what else they are doing to us!" way. Despite your long explanation and justification the reason why you disagree with people about it is because the idea that giving the underprivileged access to the educational system is the same as "lowering standards" or "artificial equivalency" is in fact the part that is in question—your paragraph is a classic example of begging the question, leading with the conclusion couched in a quick, easy statement and constructing an argument based on tautology.

Worse than that, you wrap it up with "...instead of dealing with the underlying problems..." which is a flat-out insult to the people you seem to think you are arguing against, because in your effort to fight off their imagined attacks you are telling them that they are denying reality and that they haven't done anything useful. Because their personal experience and their own efforts to fight social problems are getting in away of your imaginary objectivity, "the ability of society to properly assess the matter and move forward" which I'm sorry to say doesn't have a very good record of eliminating oppression quickly in the US or anywhere.

Again, I'm not sure what you are defending. Maybe, given your eagerness to bring up your white-with-a-conscience cred you are protecting your privilege and sense of righteousness by loudly declaring yourself to be not racist. Maybe you just really really love Ron Paul. In any case I doubt that most people who are seriously working on solving racial inequality care about you and the way that you write off their efforts, because they know that white people do that all the bloody time.

People start off being able to reason, school stomps it out of most of them:
http://www.alisongopnik.com/TheScientistInTheCrib.htm

Well-rounded (or rather, healthy, which does not always mean being perfectly rounded) human beings are more likely to come out of healthy communities and healthy families...

Some other links;

"The Underground History of American Education" by 1991 NYS Teacher of
the Year John Taylor Gatto
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

"The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher" also by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

"State Controlled Consciousness" also by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html

"The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein, Vice Provost, Caltech
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

"Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

"What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream" by Noam Chomsky
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

"University Secrets:Your Guide to Surviving a College Education" by
Robert D. Honigman
http://web.archive.org/web/20060707100524/www.universitysecrets.com/us.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20060710145531/www.universitysecrets.com/table.htm

"The Kept University"
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/03/press.htm

"In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildness " by Chris
Mercogliano, who spent thirty-five years teaching at the Albany Free School
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/childhood.htm

"Teach Your Own" by John Holt (and other books)
http://www.holtgws.com/

"The Teenage Liberation Handbook" by Grace Llewellyn (and other books)
http://gracellewellyn.com/

"The Emergence of Compulsory Schooling and Anarchist Resistance" By Matt Hern
http://web.archive.org/web/20071014123355/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2003/Compulsory-Schooling-AnarchistMar03.htm

"Sustainable Education" by Jerry Mintz
http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/article.mpl?articleid=195&newsletterid=1

"Federated Learning Communities"
http://www.ericdigests.org/2000-1/learning.html
http://www.

Saw a parallel issue a while back... the Atlantic had a feature showing some images of the US in the 70's. Lots of pollution porn, but the part that gets left out is... that's what working steel towns look like. (Check out the third image.) As dirty as they were, they were cleaner than the places where steel is being made in China today. I'd rather live in a cleaner country... but then again I'm not an average guy who's working for peanuts because all the manufacturing jobs are gone.

I didn't argue this; I've been saying for years that we need to study the education systems of those countries that are kicking our asses and take what we can from them.

Sounds like a good idea. Of course, if we take that seriously, that might result in education overhaul of a type that might not be what some folks calling for changes in education might not have had in mind.

I pray to God—after having granted you success in destroying the dead, deaf, and mute false gods [meaning the statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, which were destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001] —that He will grant you success in destroying the living false gods, the ones that talk and listen. God knows that those [gods] pose more danger to Islam and monotheism than the dead false gods. Among the most important such false gods in our time is the United Nations, which has become a new religion that is worshipped to the exclusion of God. The prophets of this religion are present in the UN General Assembly The UN imposes all sorts of penalties on all those who contradict its religion. It issues documents and statements that openly contradict Islamic belief, such as the International Declaration for Human Rights, considering all religions are equal, and considering that the destruction of the statues constitutes a crime
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/09/inside-al-qaeda-rsquo-s-hard-drive/3428/

Perhaps you should start thinking why you have masses of "stupid lazy people" in the first place.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore. In the most recent survey in 2009 Finland slipped slightly, with students in Shanghai, China, taking the best scores, but the Finns are still near the very top. Throughout the same period, the PISA performance of the United States has been middling, at best.

Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play. All this has led to a continuous stream of foreign delegations making the pilgrimage to Finland to visit schools and talk with the nation's education experts, and constant coverage in the worldwide media marveling at the Finnish miracle.

Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.

In the Finnish view, as Sahlberg describes it, this means that schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.

In fact, since academic excellence wasn't a particular priority on the Finnish to-do list, when Finland's students scored so high on the first PISA survey in 2001, many Finns thought the results must be a mistake. But subsequent PISA tests confirmed that Finland -- unlike, say, very similar countries such as Norway -- was producing academic excellence through its particular policy focus on equity.

With Pakistan shuffling their nukes around in un-armoured minimally guarded vans, North Korea continuing to develop its nuclear facilities and Iran apparently hell bent on getting the bomb I'm more surprised they didn't move the needle sooner.

Wondering about the 500M per sec?

Take a look a the numbers for 4k video.

Now, be sure to keep in mind that on such an aircraft, there is at least one visual light spectrum camera, and at least one high resolution thermal camera.

If I were the one laying out the specs for this bird, I might want to look a direction other than just facing forward. Maybe a couple of cameras? The 500Mb or 500MB doesn't seem unreasonable when trying to pull all that data from the aircraft real-time; even compressed.

The telemetry data is small by comparison, but what is the refresh rate of said telemetry data? 30Hz? 50Hz? And, how much telmetry data is being sent? Keep in mind all the other data...even including the most basic lat/long, heading, airspeed (IAS via multiple pitot tubes), engine data (temperatures at different points, fuel flows, pressures, etc).

Here is a photo of the flightdeck/cockpit of a Boeing 777. Check out the cockpit of a C130 at night. Now, if instead of pushing all those sensor systems to a flightdeck on board, what if all that data has to be sent to the other side of the world?

Another [maybe flamebait] commenter suggested that the drone pilots operate in theater. From what I have read, the Airforce pilots the drones from Las Vegas; "just minutes from the slot machines."

  <rant> What makes so many slashdoters completely underestimate the complexity of such a system? The average /. crowd these days seem to be quite egotistical to assume that they could "do it better". </rant>

This is the problem. Vapid, ignorant, uninterested people who don't even bother to illuminate the vast empty place between their ears. You mention Nazis. So let's do this by the numbers. WHY WERE NAZIS BAD? Because they were Fascists and slaughtered a bunch of innocent folks. What is a Fascist? Well, Mussolini, a Fascist, said its the corporate state. Why is this bad? Well when a nation's corporations determine the fate of that nation and its people all kind of predictable things, bad things, begin to happen. You see profit is a great thing to motivate people, but as a guiding target for a society, it can lead to dark things. At first everything is great and the society enjoys explosive growth. But soon, the system begins to cannibalize itself. Ultimately the wheels come off, it crashes and explodes, and often a lot of people die. That why we don't like fascism. If you want to know how to tell a Fascist State here are some signs to look at. If you've not been in a coma for the last decade, you may notice that modern day America now has something in common with Germany and sadly its not the love of beer. So your Nazi comment as clever as you might have thought it was echoes a sad and frightening irony.

As for soup kitchens and bread lines, are you brain damaged? Here, try these sites: People in line at foodbank, The State of Poverty in America, What replaced the Soup Kitchens, The real state of Unemployment in America Today, Tent Cities Sprouting up all over the country. One in five children in America today goes to bed hungry. One in six people in this country suffers chronic malnutrition. One in eight is out of work and can't find employment. Entire regions of America have been depressed for so long, they now have names like "The Rust Belt." One in seven people in this country is saved from hunger by food stamps or federal food programs. There are scenes all over the country of people lined up for blocks waiting for food from food banks. There are shanty towns and tent cities across the nation of homeless people who were formerly middle class, and tens of millions of middle class Americans who live a single pay check away from becoming homeless. Food banks are pleading for support, they've never before been required to support so many people and many are on the verge of collapse. Are you so blind and poorly informed that you don't even see the profound state of social collapse around you? Are you sleep walking? Medicated? Either you have no mind or you have no heart, please which is it?

As for the ruling class, the top 400 people in this country now have the same wealth as the bottom HALF of the country, over 160,000,000 people. The imbalance of wealth in America today is greater THAN ANY TIME IN HUMAN HISTORY. That is the ruling class. They have hijacked our government. They have hijacked the media and our sources of free information. They have robbed us of our Bill of Rights and damaged our form of government to the very edge of its ability to be repaired. They are working hard to rob us of our last best hope for human freedom and development, the internet.

I don't advocate violence, and never have, but I tell you now, I am plenty angry. I pray that we find our way back without the spilling of blood, but I have a hard time imagining a bright future with so many like you walking the street today. You scare me more than the despots.

Performers should get paid when they "perform" thus the name. Until the advent of recorded media in the last century that was the ONLY way they got paid. How many occupations are there where you can live quite comfortably if not luxuriously on a constant stream of revenue for work done 40 years ago. The only one that comes to mind is extortionist. It sounds to me like you may be the one not familiar with the modern music industry as most musicians I know can only make money by touring since their recording contract revenue mostly goes to the label. Until the lure of money and fame became possible due to recording performances and distributing them to much wider audiences performers actually performed because they loved performing. Of course there still are those who love the craft but you don't have to look very far to see the thousands just there for the money or fame. I believe in them getting paid for the recordings and support performers in general but when you have actors who will never get paid because Return of the Jedi never made a profit I have great issue with the studios getting ANY of my money.

I do the same but that option is about to go away, too, because the TSA has what they call VIPR teams (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) to bring their security theater to every other form of transportation in America. I have seen them in the New York subway. There have been reports of them stopping cars on the highway. It won't be long before "Comrade, your papers please" becomes standard practice in America.

In October polls indicated that the majority of Americans agreed with the points Occupy Wall Street was raising. Coverage has waned, attention spans have shifted, and holidays have happened since then but a plurality still support them despite constant work by the corporate media (esp. Fox) to paint them as dirty no-good hippies.

When you look at what they're about, and what the Tea Party was/is? about they share core beliefs, the prime among which is that the American people have lost control of their government. If OWS and the Tea Party put aside their relatively minor differences, realized they're two sides of the same coin, and worked together the 1% would be out on its ass in a fortnight. For all of our hand-wringing to the contrary, Americans are not passive Chinese or Russians who will take endless abuse, and we are still a relatively heavily armed people. Yes, the US military has citizens outgunned, but can you really see any military commander dropping napalm on suburban Houston?

When you put OWS and the Tea Party together they are the 99%. No amount of corporate media brainwashing can annul that because the underlying issues are deep, systemic, and unresolved. Tomorrow the reaction may march under a different banner than OWS or the Tea Party, but continue it will. I suspect, though, that OWS and the Tea Party were the last friendly warning the 1% will get to straighten out and fly right.

Yea that will probably be better, let the Pentagon do their contracts without any oversight, people who will jump to the private sector and work for the company they just steered that big defense contract too for a high six or seven figure compensation package as soon as its awarded. And of course they will be throwing the contract to their former bosses/generals who are already working at said contractor. The defense/security/industrial complex is riddled with corruption all the way through, it isn't just Congress.

Pretty good new article in The Atlantic, The Tyranny of Defense Inc.

Just look at Lockheed Martin's F-22 and F-35 programs for sterling examples of why the U.S. is going broke buying weapons we really don't need, that don't work right, cost vastly more than Lockheed said they would when they won the contracts, and are years to decades late being delivered. Cost plus contracts are basically letting Lockheed loot the U.S. Treasury.

Alright, then. So do you support nukes in China?
Here is a little reminder of the different approaches the two countries have on things.
Perhaps you might want to clarify just which countries you are pro-nuke for . . .

I would like to say that i want BOTH ways in the country that runs nuclear power plants (and other complex industrial systems.).

The formal almost ritualized system with proper precautions and very well thought through checklists
are excellent for running systems in a safe way during normal situations.

But if anything like a big whooping earthquake + tsunami, rips the systems to shreds.
Then i want the "improvise and solve the problem" attitude to take over until
problems are solved.

Together these aproaches are better then just using one of them.

Alright, then. So do you support nukes in China?
Here is a little reminder of the different approaches the two countries have on things.

Perhaps you might want to clarify just which countries you are pro-nuke for . . .

Sadly, I have to agree that the issue you raise is a big potential problem (especially that those with power and wealth often use that first and foremost to preserve their relative privilege), and it is very much what the USA is already struggling through. For example, real wages have been essentially flat in the USA for the past thirty to forty years, while productivity has doubled or tripled and the money has gone to the workers not as wages but as loans:
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/

Things may well get much worse before they get better, before people (OWS etc.) eventually confront "the mythology of wealth":
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"In fact, the cheap-labor conservatives have counter-attacked with their own “rational” theory to justify their hierarchical world-view. Some call it “Social Darwinism”, though more politically savvy cheap-labor conservatives avoid that term. The purpose of this “rational theory” is to establish that the existing social order is the “natural order”. Elites enjoy wealth, privilege and status because of their inherent superiority. The place where this natural hierarchy is established, is that mythical place known as the “market”."

And:
"The Market as God"
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/6397/

Marshall Brain talks about that general issue here:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
"With the rank and file employees gone, all of the money in the corporation flows upward to the executives and shareholders. The concentration of wealth will accelerate dramatically because robots allow real automation in the service sector for the first time in history. The amount of money paid to executives and shareholders will be remarkable. Meanwhile, the one million displaced employees will flow into a job market that is flooded by robotically-displaced workers. Since all major corporations with large numbers of employees will be doing the same thing, it is difficult to imagine the economy suddenly creating enough jobs to absorb all of the displaced workers. If the economy does not create new jobs for them, they will be living in government welfare dormitories. "

And also in his story "Manna":
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

This is starting to happen even in China. See, for example:
"Foxconn to replace workers with 1 million robots in 3 years"
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-07/30/c_131018764.htm
"Foxconn, the world's largest maker of computer components which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia, is in the spotlight after a string of suicides of workers at its massive Chinese plants, which some blamed on tough working conditions."

Or from a couple years ago:
http://www.plasticsnews.com/china/english/headlines2.html?id=1278958338
"In the wake of labor unrest, Chinese factories are adding automation to control rising labor costs. It was bound to happen. China, once considered one of the lowest-cost automotive producers because of its supply of cheap labor, is becoming another example of rising expectations as workers demand their share of the country's growing industrial prosperity. The rash of strikes at Honda and Toyota parts factories and assembly plants in southern China this year -- with demands for substantially higher wages at the Japanese-owned companies

If your standard is "really dig into the matter", Christian Parenti falls woefully short of the mark.

Moreover, casting a nuclear renaissance as the panacea for climate change is dangerous because it threatens to delay the shift to clean energy. Continually pushing nukes has opportunity costs; every dollar, euro or RMB spent on nuclear power is one not spent on clean technology like wind, solar, hydro or tidal kinetics.

If I were teaching introductory economics, I would fail a student who wrote that statement. There's obviously some competition for sunk capital at the margins, but it's hardly 1:1 and the buckets are unclean to begin with. Do we count every dollar invested in lithographic die shrink technology as a dollar invested in solar? If not, why not?

He continues in the brinkmanship vein:

A massive industrial-scale build out of fourth-generation nukes(slashcodefuckup)the ones that are supposed to be safe, cheap and easy to build(sfu)would arrive too late to stave off climate change(sfu)s tipping points.

Nowhere does he demonstrate that any other technology will arrrive "soon enough". He argument seems to be that alternative is our only hope, so pour the dollars on that horse, whether it will save us or not.

Work on it has just begun in Georgia, and already there are conflicts between the utility, Southern Company and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Moreover, this project is going forward only because it is in one of the few regions of the United States (the Southeast) where electricity markets were not deregulated. That means the utility, operating on cost-plus basis, can pass on to rate-payers all its expense over-runs.

I'm sure that the installed wind and solar capacity also sought favourable contexts. Here's a man flying the magic carpet of brinkmanship logic decrying his foe for becoming mired in controversy. We all know that the correct solution to global warming will be conflict free. Just keep proposing virtue until common sense prevails and the planet engages in the multiracial kumbaya group hug.

If all of these nuclear power plants are completed they will add 62.56 gigawatts of capacity, which is less than one-third of already-existing wind capacity worldwide, which was at 196.63 gigawatts at the end of 2010.

Here he's comparing the entire capacity for wind generation to an increment of nuclear capacity, where capacity is actually what you think it is.

The Worldwatch Institute reports that between 2004 and 2009, electricity from wind (not capacity but actual power output) grew by 27 percent, while solar grew by 54 percent. Over the same time, nuclear power output actually declined by half a percent.

He clearly does know the difference between base load and peak capacity, at least when quoting other sensible people. But so what the wind is growing 27% starting from nowhere?

Clean Energy's Dirty Little Secret

Mountain Pass(sfu)s mine contains a rare-earth ore that yields neodymium, the pixie dust of green tech necessary for the lightweight permanent magnets that make Prius motors zoom and for the generators that give wind turbines their electrical buzz. In fact, if we are going to make even a few million of the hybrid and electric cars that are supposed to help rescue the planet from global warming, we will need to double production of neodymium in short order.

He clearly doesn't understand economics at the margin one bit. Even at modest scale, we are already encountering obstacles to maintaining the current growth rate. The economics don't improve as we populate more of the world's best sites with turbines, either. We could figure out how to install turbines in harsher

What I don't understand is why Hastings believes that the major studios will allow Netflix to operate the online distribution at the price levels consumers demand. ...the recent price increase...

Might not the recent price increase be an indication that Hastings knows full well that the studios are determined to get more money out of streaming? Megan McArdle recently wrote an interesting piece about this very topic. Faced with choosing among only bad alternatives, it's no surprise that Netflix picked a bad one.

But diamonds are so rare!

It's not like there are thousands of tonnes of diamonds just sitting in vaults somewhere that could be used for this purpose...

/SARCASM

I like your idea. I wonder how much of a business need there is in the world to have a random number generator card..

Actually.. if things go the way they are in encryption becoming more used and relevant in daily computing.. perhaps there could be something in this idea.. hmm..

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/03/the-lessons-of-valujet-592/6534/

William Langewiche, Atlantic Monthly, "The Lessons of ValuJet 592". It was basically done in because it was transporting safety equipment itself, which was vulnerable to a hard-to-predict failure. The more complex we make air travel, with its multiple checks and layers of protection, the more opportunities for failure. Adding another check to avoid 592, as they did, creates yet another opportunity.

It is, as they say, a Hard Problem. Yet, still: the US recently celebrated 10 whole years without a major airliner loss, despite a phenomenal amount of air travel. Things are getting better. Hard != Insoluable.

The TSA has already started randomly searching vehicles:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/10/like-tsa-youll-love-vipr/247221/

High speed rail has a host of benefits, but you're right: the TSA will probably ruin this. That said, we do have 22 years before they have a chance to ruin it so maybe, fingers crossed, they'll be gone by then?

'You Are Not So Smart': Why We Can't Tell Good Wine From Bad

Not saying that I know definitively that you can't, but a lot of people think that they can, but actually can't. Even when they've been studying it at University.

Can you link the video? The one ive seen-- the much lauded one about that veteran who got hit by something (we dont know what) thrown by somebody (we dont know who) had a bunch of protesters throwing a bunch of stuff at the cops-- including what looked like molotovs.

Not exactly what you would consider "innocent victims". I can believe that some cops got out of hand, but when the protesters then try to claim that they are completely innocent, my BS meter goes wild. Especially when the one case that theyre making such a big deal of relied on the word of Scott's friend, and there didnt seem to be any other evidence or videos.

Incidentally, Im in favor of people being allowed to protest for as long as you want, but public property doesnt mean you can set up a residence there. Darn right theyre going to prohibit tents and whatnot, its not your personal space and apparently even the people who owned the park wanted it ended. In fact even this heavily biased report doesnt deny that it was the park owners themselves who wanted an end to the tents.

I'll copy it here:

By the way, here are some key useful health related links, and these are some of the issues I'd like to use such a system to discuss, refine, rebut, or promote.

On healthy diet:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Revolution-Your-Diet-World/dp/1573244872
http://www.amazon.com/Diet-New-America-John-Robbins/dp/0915811812

Knife and blender skills for eating better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RhfAE6McrM
http://greensmoothierevolution.com/

On medically supervised fasting (both water and juice) and health:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-dr-fuhrman-on-fasting....
http://www.healthpromoting.com/why-water-fasting
http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/

And on getting enough vitamin D (in decreasing levels of recommended supplements):
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d...
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/vitamin_D_recommendations.aspx

On vitamin D and pregnancy:
http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20100504/high-doses-of-vitamin-d-may-cut-...
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/neurological-conditions...

On autism and health care in general:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_...

Understanding about good and bad fats:
http://peakperformance.runnersworld.com/2011/05/may-9-the-great-fat-deba...
http://nutsci.org/2011/05/04/the-great-fat-debate/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21515108

Mental health:
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/...
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene

Treadmill workstations for computer users (but be sure to get vitamin D being indoors so much):
http://www.engadget.com/2005/06/08/the-treadmill-workstation/
http://www.squidoo.com/wal

I'll copy it here:

By the way, here are some key useful health related links, and these are some of the issues I'd like to use such a system to discuss, refine, rebut, or promote.

On healthy diet:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Revolution-Your-Diet-World/dp/1573244872
http://www.amazon.com/Diet-New-America-John-Robbins/dp/0915811812

Knife and blender skills for eating better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RhfAE6McrM
http://greensmoothierevolution.com/

On medically supervised fasting (both water and juice) and health:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-dr-fuhrman-on-fasting....
http://www.healthpromoting.com/why-water-fasting
http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/

And on getting enough vitamin D (in decreasing levels of recommended supplements):
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d...
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/vitamin_D_recommendations.aspx

On vitamin D and pregnancy:
http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20100504/high-doses-of-vitamin-d-may-cut-...
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/neurological-conditions...

On autism and health care in general:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_...

Understanding about good and bad fats:
http://peakperformance.runnersworld.com/2011/05/may-9-the-great-fat-deba...
http://nutsci.org/2011/05/04/the-great-fat-debate/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21515108

Mental health:
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/...
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene

Treadmill workstations for computer users (but be sure to get vitamin D being indoors so much):
http://www.engadget.com/2005/06/08/the-treadmill-workstation/
http://www.squidoo.com/wal

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/no-wall-street-bonuses-arent-destroying-the-economy/248093/

Translation: His friends in the business like their bonuses.

Imagine your contract gives you 10% of what profits you make for your company during a calendar year. But it's December 31, and your balance is at zero, you're looking at no bonus at all. Now, if you could take $1M of the company's money to the casino and put everything on red, would you do it?

Of course you would, if you live only for money, as Daniel Indiviglio suggests. You have an 18/38 chance of winning with a $100K bonus to follow. And you have nothing to lose, provided you can make the gamble look like a reasonable enough gamble not to lose your job. And you can, because in real life it's not a casino gamble, but some kind of "financial product" that you can easily pretend carries no particular risk.

But for your employer, it's a terrible deal: The loss is 2/38*$1M on average - more than $50K. So the bonus has led you to make an unsound gamble.

The question then is, if there's no bonus and you are instead positioning yourself for the yearly pay negotiations, would you be tempted by the same gamble? And the answer's no: If you have a negotiation coming, the damage to your reputation from losses matters just as much as the benefit from wins. The bet that is a bad bet for the company is also a bad bet for you.

In short, Taleb is right. Drop the bonuses, stabilise the economy.

More to the point . . .

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/no-wall-street-bonuses-arent-destroying-the-economy/248093/

Here's a good article by a senior theologian outlining the parallels between modern "free market" economics and religion.

The article was written in 1999.

Below are some other recommended magazines for depth. These are worth supporting much more than your average newspaper.

The New Yorker
The Atlantic
Harper's
Lapham's Quarterly (not news coverage, exactly, but still great)
(Canadian) The Walrus
(Australian) The Monthly
(Australian) Quarterly Essay
(UK) Standpoint
(UK) Prospect
(India) The Caravan
(Spain) Catalan International View

He does.

Note: He does distinguish between defense spending and spending on militarism.

Why else do you think both of them are manic about trying to get you to "validate" your account with a phone number?

Because account hijacking is a huge problem and that's one of the good ways to fix it?

False sense of security.

There have been studies, and more well known, mythbusters did an episode on something very similar (is talking on a cellphone while driving just as bad as drinking and driving), and while mythbusters is a bit hollywood science at times, they confirmed the myth. Texting isn't that far off. And in other studies, is just as bad.

But don't take my word for it, take a look at all the studies and materials.

There's a reason why texting/talking on the phone is rapidly becoming illegal while driving. But hey! Maybe in Nebraska, facts and truths aren't the norm!

Another relative here, in the USA. :-) Send me an email if you want, my address is easy to find.

She was my father's aunt IIRC. I only met her once that I can recall, when my father and I visited her home around 1985. But she might have been at some get together or other other times we visited that does not stick out in my mind. I don't remember her speaking English and I do not know that much Dutch. They talked and I went for a walk around the area. I was overdressed in a overcoat and hat, and some neighborhood kids pointed at me and said "gangster" and chased me a bit, and I went into a store to avoid them. So, that's mostly what I remember of that visit. :-)

I feel diet and lifestyle (and the extent to which genes may interact with interests and habits) have a lot to do with this though. So does very early life experiences. Even being born premature might have had some value, in that the slower we grow perhaps the slower we age? Not having kids may have been a factor too? Also, there is a lot to be said for a positive outlook on life however you get that.

Related resources on healthy diet:
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Revolution-Your-Diet-World/dp/1573244872
http://www.amazon.com/Diet-New-America-John-Robbins/dp/0915811812
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Fasting (like for lent) which often connects to religion (and eating less in the past from being less wealthy) can also help:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-dr-fuhrman-on-fasting.html

And on getting enough vitamin D (and she was out and about plus maybe got some from herring she liked):
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d/vitamin-d-supplementation/
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/vitamin_D_recommendations.aspx

Understanding about good and bad fats:
http://peakperformance.runnersworld.com/2011/05/may-9-the-great-fat-debate-does-the-total-fat-in-your-diet-matter.html
http://nutsci.org/2011/05/04/the-great-fat-debate/
http://www.adajournal.org/article/S0002-8223(11)00291-4/fulltext

Mental health:
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/7439/
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene

Treadmill workstations for computer users (but be sure to get vitamin D being indoors so much):
http://www.engadget.com/2005/06/08/the-treadmill-workstation/
http://www.squidoo.com/walkingwhileworking

Community level ideas for health:

Another relative here, in the USA. :-) Send me an email if you want, my address is easy to find.

She was my father's aunt IIRC. I only met her once that I can recall, when my father and I visited her home around 1985. But she might have been at some get together or other other times we visited that does not stick out in my mind. I don't remember her speaking English and I do not know that much Dutch. They talked and I went for a walk around the area. I was overdressed in a overcoat and hat, and some neighborhood kids pointed at me and said "gangster" and chased me a bit, and I went into a store to avoid them. So, that's mostly what I remember of that visit. :-)

I feel diet and lifestyle (and the extent to which genes may interact with interests and habits) have a lot to do with this though. So does very early life experiences. Even being born premature might have had some value, in that the slower we grow perhaps the slower we age? Not having kids may have been a factor too? Also, there is a lot to be said for a positive outlook on life however you get that.

Related resources on healthy diet:
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Revolution-Your-Diet-World/dp/1573244872
http://www.amazon.com/Diet-New-America-John-Robbins/dp/0915811812
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Fasting (like for lent) which often connects to religion (and eating less in the past from being less wealthy) can also help:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-dr-fuhrman-on-fasting.html

And on getting enough vitamin D (and she was out and about plus maybe got some from herring she liked):
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d/vitamin-d-supplementation/
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/vitamin_D_recommendations.aspx

Understanding about good and bad fats:
http://peakperformance.runnersworld.com/2011/05/may-9-the-great-fat-debate-does-the-total-fat-in-your-diet-matter.html
http://nutsci.org/2011/05/04/the-great-fat-debate/
http://www.adajournal.org/article/S0002-8223(11)00291-4/fulltext

Mental health:
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/7439/
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene

Treadmill workstations for computer users (but be sure to get vitamin D being indoors so much):
http://www.engadget.com/2005/06/08/the-treadmill-workstation/
http://www.squidoo.com/walkingwhileworking

Community level ideas for health:

I'm waiting to find out that I paid more than Google in taxes.

It's not just Google, here's a place to start. The problem is larger than that as some of the largest companies (Boeing, Ebay, GE) spend more money lobbying politicians than paying taxes.

I was comparing average salaries

Oh?

When you have guys out of high school making more money than, let's say, pharmacists that put in 9 years of undergrad and pharmacy school

The word "average" is not in your sentence. Fuckwit.

Average wage for a pharmacist in Los Angeles is $110k. Average for a longshoreman in LA in 2002 was (only) $120k, so they went on strike to protest their low wages. Now they make $140k.

And the CEO of publisher Gannett just retired with a $37 million retirement package, after laying off 20,000 workers and seeing his stock price decline. And yet here you are, whining that a fraction of a percentage of the American blue collar workforce can make more than someone who went to college.

Could your sense of priorities be any more broken?

Ain't unions great?

Yes. They are. You like having weekends? You like not having to compete with 12 year olds in the labor force? You like paid vacations? Thank unions.

If you're in the Forbes 400, your attitude makes perfect sense, Shaka. If you're not, then you're just a crab sucking corporate Koch and spitting the disgusting results on your fellow workers.

Sure they can. In fact, the Supreme Court has upheld clauses forcing you into binding arbitration. Such clauses would be tossed out as unconscionable in almost any other country in the world, but in the US unconscionable is business as usual.

Class warfare has been made a taboo topic and spun by clever P.R. people so that the masses can't openly and intelligently discuss the class warfare being waged against them for decades. It has gotten so bad that a lot of people are just now becoming aware of it... Anybody who talked about it was attacked, called names and marginalized. It is difficult to do today because it draws attention to the idea which at this phase is bad strategy; the next phase is to blame scapegoats which has been underway for a while. I don't think there is a single plan for the next phase other than to create confusion.

The chart everybody must see before talking about this mess AT ALL: (a few screens down)
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/07/the-chart-that-should-accompany-all-discussions-of-the-debt-ceiling/242484

Millionaires don't make their money on their own; they require more public resources than somebody on food stamps. People like Trump take big risks for huge gains and go bankrupt OFTEN (as Trump has) and the losses are burdened by the public they claim to have not needed and shouldn't pay for. Corporate welfare costs us more than anything else. No, welfare does not include social security, medicare, or unemployment insurance - they are separate programs that WE PAY for in every paycheck; sure they don't pay out exactly what you pay in, but neither does private insurance does it?? Hell, social security is as close as we've ever come to a FLAT TAX (if you just made it fully "FLAT" it would have too much money; you see, it is basically flat but has a low ceiling so well off people don't put in anything, you don't have to be "rich" to avoid it.) The social security trust fund isn't as individual as an actual trust fund...even then, if the selfish are upset by this, the solution would be a 1:1 ratio and that might make them happy; however, the republicans would still want to kill it because their REAL opposition to social security is that their banker masters want all that investment money to gamble with (along with protections so you suffer for their losses and not them... as usual.)

Trickle down is a bad label today; instead they say "rich provide jobs" which suckers the simpletons who can't see how this is another label for THE SAME THING. Again, DEMAND creates jobs, not supply the rich boss is not going to higher more people because he gets more money, he is going to hire more people to meet increased DEMAND... his GOAL is to cut as much overhead as possible so he can get richer and more powerful. YOU ARE OVERHEAD!!! "Human resource" dehumanizes you to just another material resource-- and the less resources, the lower the cost and the higher the profits. Over produce -- over supply and you drive down prices, profit etc. Yeah, give the rich money so they can hire people to produce more that doesn't sell at an ideal profit ratio... with no public backing of that risk why should they?? They may as well keep the handout themselves and put in no effort or risk.

Before Empire, before Lucas started pretenting to take Star Wars seriously, back when he still thought he was going to be a "serious" filmmaker.

The Man who Made Star Wars

He basically say he made it for the money, he made it to sell toys, he did it on the cheap, and it wasn't a very good movie. Remember, he couldn't even be bothered to direct the next two installments himself. He really had no idea what he had made.