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all of these — especially the efforts to mine resources in space — are hampered by the fact that existing treaties, like the Outer Space Treaty, seem to prohibit private ownership of space resources

That is one problem, but a somewhat bigger problem is that nobody has yet come up with a plan to mine moon rocks and return them to earth where the cost of the missions doesn't greatly exceed the value of the rocks.

That's why, unsurprisingly, even folks like Jain who claim that "private companies can do things better" are wholly dependent on taxpayer subsidies.

To put things into perspective: over the last twenty years, there have been fewer than 200 fatalities in school shootings (including colleges and universities) in the United States. By way of comparison, during that period in the US there have been about 1000 deaths due to lightning strikes, 25 due to (unprovoked) shark attacks, 3000 due to international terrorism, and 200 due to domestic terrorism. So we really ought to be more concerned about lightning and box cutters than about handguns.

Don't forget televisions. More than 2000 children have died since 2000 from falling televisions: http://theweek.com/article/index/237878/the-shocking-number-of-deaths-caused-by-falling-tvs

no politician has yet been reprimanded for playing golf

You might want to google "Obama golf".

http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/235844/deconstructing-the-5-most-ridiculous-myths-about-barack-obama

Every time someone pronounces something "unprecedented" someone else is able to find something in the archives that preceded it.

Who waits a week for their news, even their analysis anymore?

Those who are more interested in quality coverage with both breadth and depth than a lightweight, but timely response from pundits.

he can't give you a link.. because it's not true. here's an article from 2009 that says a mall opened in 2006, and another was scheduled to open later that year (2009)
http://theweek.com/article/index/94691/the-vanishing-shopping-mall

So a plan like that would depend on Republicans winning both houses of Congress and the Presidency this November - a chance that's probably too big to take if you're a justice actively looking to stop this law.

You really think Republicans are actually going to repeal a law that does favors for their buddies running the insurance companies? Naive.

As for the GOP's opposition to the individual mandate, I find it hard to take them seriously considering it was their idea in the first place.


Meet the new Boss, same as the old Boss, same as the Boss before him...

Impartial, disinterested, university funded R and D - which is what everything from music synths to Google started out as:

http://facts.stanford.edu/research.html

-is a natural force for good in developed countries and it's never going to be "over" unless that developed country is "over" .

The leveraging for "Yearbook On The Web !!! " -type opportunities to make money off people naive enough to surrender their most intimate details to a group of total strangers whose sole aim is to monetize same, well, that may be over.

If you compare FB with Google, the differences tell the real story. FB could be replaced in functionality by any number of me-too--products because its peculiar success is not borne of any kind of technological breakthrough but only the fact that it, and not some other equally ordinary-technology product, was the victor in a product space with network effects strong enough to create a natural "winner take all" market.

Meanwhile, Bing is still trying to be 1/10th as good as Google is at doing what it does, despite billions of dollars at the M$'s disposal and some of the best minds in the world working for them.

When the story of the internet is told, it will go like this- DARPA, FTP, email, the web, HTML, Mosaic then Google. Those are the big events. Those are the technological breakthroughs that that literally changed the world. FB will be a footnote.

So to the extent that FB's value is an exercise in bubble economics and phantom value, maybe this is the end of SV's love affair with this kind of thing. That proposition is dubitable since people with too much money generally earned it by doing wholly useless things like co-locating their servers closer to NYSE's servers to give them a multi-billion dollar edge when doing flash trading -

http://theweek.com/article/index/204396/wall-streets-secret-advantage-high-speed-trading

and having custom FPGA made for them in order to grind out nanosecond advantages over their competitors in high frequency trading -

http://www.impulseaccelerated.com/app_financial.htm

so it's unlikely these same people are going to have the fine antenna necessary to distinguish innovations which create revenue opportunities by delivering real, ongoing value from those that have "Hindenberg " painted in man-sized letters on the side: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F54rqDh2mWA

Long live the free market and real innovation delivering real value to the lives of real people . Here's to you.

Supposedly one that does not kill us. "Better" is not just a matter of engineering; it's about having the basic sense not to do anything that will render our habitat useless.

A better nuclear-plant like a thorium reactor does not go critical. It does not risk the same problems as the old reactors that where built during the 50-80'ies.. The problem with nuclear power is not safety, it's the inability for people to accept development of them since they think all nuclear devices are harmful without actually having an idea of what is safe or not and this is causing the politicians to stop accepting new, safer, reactors to be built and we are stuck with the old ones since we still need the power from them...

Even if a dam breaks and thousands die, the land itself can be used again somehow. Contrary to that, Chernobyl (and most surely Fukushima) are off limits to mankind now.

And what happens with farm-land when a dam breaks... top-soil gets washed away, houses demolished, peopled killed.
- Power to rebuild the houses.
- Power to transport new top-soil back to the farm-land..

With Chernobyl it was gross human error that caused the tragedy.. Turning off the safety systems and pushing the stuff well pasts it's limits is not safe...
People have already started to move back to the surrounding areas that has dropped to safe levels... The actual Chernobyl plant will probably be unsafe for some time (300-600 years).. But this accident was due to grossly incompetent people and a plant that was not maintained as it should..

Even if you burn something, it is possible to devise a close cycle where you plant, absorb CO2 and then release it again by burning wood, which is far better than just burning oil or dealing with the uncontrollable: radioactive reactors.

The problem is that we could never grow enough trees to facilitate the energy-demands... But the biggest parts to make something like that sustainable..
- Fuel for the machines and trucks for chop the trees down, transport to the plant and then transport the ashes away from the plant..
- Risks for the workers.. People in this line of work today have quite high injury/death rates.

Death-rates by energy-source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
Some information about thorium reactors: http://theweek.com/article/index/213611/could-thorium-make-nuclear-power-safe

The pro about a thorium reactor is that as soon as you stop the proton beam it will stop power-generation.. Ie, it cannot go into a melt-down state... http://energyfromthorium.com/lftradsrisks.html

Given how angry wealthy people and politicians seem to be about them, and how ambivalent most other people I know are, that doesn't seem to be what's happening.

You don't seem to have been paying attention. The ambivalence turned into disapproval long ago.
http://theweek.com/article/index/221562/occupys-plummeting-popularity-4-theories

That might be so, but it doesn't change the fact that it's only Android devices where it's enabled by default.

That's probably because the carriers are not able to enable it in iOS. So Apple - the only manufacturer of iOS devices - doesn't want it enabled in their phone, and the carriers are not able to do this. Android is more open, so either the phone manufacturers like Samsung and HTC can install it, or the carriers. So it's true, but it's only true because of the open nature of Android.

Hate to break it to you, but Apple has their own stuff built into the systems.
But because its closed source its harder to detect, and because it all goes back directly to Apple, embedded in all the other apple traffic, its much harder to spot.

http://theweek.com/article/index/214437/is-your-iphone-spying-on-you
http://appadvice.com/appnn/2011/04/iphones-camera-spying
http://www.nowpublic.com/tech-biz/your-iphone-spying-you-al-franken-questions-steve-jobs-2779484.html

This is closer to (perhaps beyond) the GP's idea:

http://theweek.com/article/index/214332/the-6400-toilet-with-its-own-tablet

Witness the unsanitary conditions and crime in any of the camps.

You got any evidence to back this up or you just plucked it out of the air?

Also, it may be worth investigating the crime aspect to check if the crimes are actually being committed by undercover police or other right wingers looking to drive people away:

http://theweek.com/article/index/220144/the-agent-provocateur-who-infiltrated-occupy-wall-street

There have recently been a number of revelations here in the UK regarding Metropolitan Police officers who posed as political activists for long periods of time. They even helped organise demonstrations or other activities that may even have been illegal:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8249734/Trial-against-environmental-activists-dropped-after-undercover-Met-police-officer-switches-sides.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kennedy_(police_officer)

I also remember being on the fringes of a similar movement many years ago which suddenly became overrun with many homeless people who had serious drug problems. This was because the police were moving them on repeatedly from where ever they tried to sleep and telling they would continue to do so unless they descended on us. This is probably another reason for the squalor you describe if it did exist and was not based on a article written by the same agent provocateur who is mentioned above.

Salvation may be at hand!

PayPal founder Peter Thiel has put $1.25 million toward building floating, autonomous countries at sea, devoted to the implementation of libertarian policies.
http://theweek.com/article/index/218393/libertarian-island-a-billionaires-utopia

" Essentially, the autonomous island would be "a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: No welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons."

Foreskin Man already exists. He battles the Monster Mohel in one of the most anti-semitic things to come out of San Francisco this year.

http://theweek.com/article/index/216001/foreskin-man-proof-that-anti-circumcision-activists-are-anti-semitic

I live in a state that requires front plates, and a lot of people back into spaces for safety reasons. Especially with large vehicles or in congested areas, it is safer to back in, knowing the foot and vehicle traffic around you at the time. Front-in forces you to back out with reduced visibility into unknown foot and vehicle traffic. If you think about it, it is no harder to back in than back out. I guess people tend to do what they see other people doing, plus the human tendency to procrastinate. It is less work right now to front in even if it makes things harder later.

I know as drivers age it becomes harder to see clearly and turn your neck all the way around, so that may be a factor as well. here is an article I found on the subject.

Actually, didn't you hear about Australia banning tiny titties in porn? After all, women with small breasts who are of legal age may play the role of underage girls in pornography, and that's like a single step removed from child pornography, which we all know causes nuclear devastation and must be stopped at all costs.

Part of any future protest movement is going to be managing international communication in the face of government-enforced information-blockades.

Part of any future totalitarian regime is going to be anticipating these and taking care of it.

--
On an unrelated topic, there are two ways to successfully run a totalitarian regime:
* Through fear and intimidation
* Through running it like a cult and silencing people at the slightest hint that they don't worship you.

Most regimes try use the first approach and some do so successfully. North Korea - the self-proclaimed 2nd happiest place on Earth - approximates the second but I'm sure they use the first when needed and they've been successful at staying in power for decades.

You can get chlamydia from a koala, those adorable little sluts.

If you're having marital relations with a koala, chlamydia is probably the least of your problems.

Bingo. Look at the airlines. Asia is buying A380s. The bulk of 787 orders are coming from Asia as well. Meanwhile the ancient US fleet is falling apart; thirty year old planes shredding in flight.

Johnnie's at home till 35 working off his education debt. No law degree? You're fucked in the USA; everything else is outsourced.

Yep, it's not Facebook despite the current habit of the media to link Facebook with everything (have they linked it with cancer yet? ;) ). Egypt has to import lots of wheat. Russia and India banned exports. Australia had a bad crop.

So wheat shortage = expensive bread = lots of hungry unhappy people. But just hungry unhappy people doesn't mean revolution.

Revolutions happens when the hungry unhappy people think the rulers are to blame for the problem, and then they become hungry very angry people. You can be starving and not blame the ruler/Government for the situation.

http://theweek.com/article/index/212433/fighting-over-food

Lookup thin blue line and perhaps that will be clearer.

I know what thin blue line means, but I’ve not seen the sticker you’re referring to so I don’t know whether the sticker is advocating or opposing the concept.

2nd of all - was she trespassing? Where does it say that?

WTOP: “it was 8:40 a.m. when she was walking her son to school along a path between houses.”
The Week: “a woman cutting through his yard with her son saw Williamson drinking coffee, naked, in his kitchen”
MyFoxDC, after his acquittal: “One of those women was taking a shortcut with her daughter through Williamson's yard”

What’s more, that report by MyFoxDC tells that in the trial, the information came to light that though the woman and police claimed she was ~25 feet from the door when she saw him, defense claims to have proven that she was more than 3 times that distance, 83 feet from the door.

Additionally, “By the time the jury found him not guilty, six months had passed and Williamson had been laid off, lost visitation rights with his young daughter and racked up $15,000 in legal bills.” One would hope that they made right, but that’s an awful lot of grief over drummed-up charges.

And perhaps most worrisome: “police testified that a broken window pane in Williamson's door gave them cause to enter. Williamson and his attorney say nothing was broken.” – as is all-too-typical, police fabricated cause to perform an illegal search without warrant. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain from this sort of behavior: They’re never punished for it if the jury decides the search was illegal, but if they can convince the jury to allow the evidence, they benefit.

Here you go Mr Anonymous... A news article to back it up. http://theweek.com/article/index/105766/Australias_small_breast_ban

Well, when you donate money to the men in charge, the US Government doesn't get so upset at you.

http://theweek.com/article/index/202679/Do_BPs_big_donations_to_Obama_matter
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/06/rahm-emanuel-bp-gul-oil-spill.html

From Catholics in Crises

Are there any bright spots?
Yes--Africa and Asia. The African church has grown from 55 million in 1978 to 150 million today. "The church has provided, in many cases, the voice that stands on behalf of the voiceless," says the Rev. Emmanuel Katongole, a leader in the Ugandan church. In Asia, church membership increased 80 percent since 1978, while the number of priests rose 74 percent. In fact, Africa and Asia now supply priests to the rest of the world, with about 300 coming to U.S. parishes every year. But the church faces problems in the developing world, too. Evangelical Protestantism is making inroads, and many African priests live openly with wives and children, in defiance of the Vatican's celibacy requirement.

Since you're the rare Obama critic who doesn't see Pure Evil in his every move (such as his choice of condiments!) perhaps you could share some of your list of O's "many mistakes". I think he's actually done surprisingly well.

But more to the point, I crave an intelligent argument with a right-winger whose rhetoric goes beyond infantile insults and weird conspiracy mongering. When the conservatives were in charge, their abuse of logic and rhetoric would drive me up the wall. But now that they're out of power, their arguments are just a depressing sign of intellectual sloth. I guess they've had it too easy for too long.

People, get it together! It's your job as the opposition to keep us liberals honest! And it's a job you're not doing! Come one! Start pulling your weight! Isn't Personal Responsibility one of those Bennettish Virtues you keep harping on?

http://www.theweek.com/article/index/89514/3/3/Cretaceous_economic_expert