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No military in the history of the world has done as much to prevent collateral damage (i.e. the killing of innocent bystanders) as the U.S. military. That is just a fact.

Historically, that's obviously untrue. In modern times, it is, at best, disputed. Many militaries have done far worse, of course. But starting in the 90s and continuing through the second Iraq war, the U.S. (not to mention its allies) has by many accounts expended less effort at protecting civilians than they had in former wars, not out of malice, but likely in an effort to instead minimize American soldier deaths at any cost and maintain public support for the war in the U.S. And of course, the safest soldier is one that's not on the ground where people are dying.

The shocker was how people were dying. For the first time, in any of his [war mortality] surveys, the leading cause of death wasn't disease. It was bombs and bullets. [...] And the biggest number [...] were killed by the American-led coalition.

"I should mention that only three of them involved guys with guns. All the rest were helicopter gunships, and bombs from planes. [...] There's no evidence here of soldiers running amok. There's evidence here of a style of engagement that probably has relied very heavily on air power that has resulted in a lot, a lot of civilian deaths. [...] A Pentagon spokesperson said that they've dropped about 50,000 bombs in Iraq. 50,000 bombs. Very, very small fraction of them would need to miss their target or be based on bad information to explain 100,000 civilian deaths."

– Les Roberts talking about the first Lancet Iraq War mortality study (covering the first two years of the war, and before sectarian violence began dominating mortality) on This American Life.

As the same story later goes in to, the Pentagon soft limit for acceptable number of civilian deaths was 30 per airstrike. (By that standard, I guess they were really careful, given that we didn't have 1.5 million civilian deaths from those 50,000 bombs...)

I.P. is a blanket term for Copyright, Patent, Trademark, and Trade Secret. It also implies that I can own an idea or thought, and that you have no right to think of that idea without owing me royalties.

When Amazon patents a button on a website, when Microsoft patents sudo, when Apple patents rounded corners - that is theft.

When John Fogerty gets sued for sounding like John Fogerty, when the RIAA sues the dead - that is theft.

When farmers can not fix their tractors - that is theft.

All of this brought to us by lawyers. Remember, corporations are people too!

A great interesting story. You are looking for This American Life #403 - https://www.thisamericanlife.o...

It is well worth a listen. We drover a Chevy Nova (later Geo Prism) built at the Nummi plant and it was outstanding. Actually ruined us since we knew it was really a Toyota. I've never bought anything but Japanese since.

I've heard this is one of the things that killed GM in the 70's. Their line would never stop and they would "try" to intercept bad builds at the end and fix them.

Toyota rolled in and had a clear policy that anyone could and should stop the line if something went wrong.

If you want to hear more: https://www.thisamericanlife.o...

This was an ICBM: https://www.npr.org/2016/09/15...

Also, a good audio production of the same: https://www.thisamericanlife.o...

Here's an old TAL segment about him meeting the love of his life (at the time):
https://www.thisamericanlife.o...

Here's an old TAL segment about him meeting the love of his life (at the time):
https://www.thisamericanlife.o...

Carbonite! Fought back & won against the patent trolls! https://www.thisamericanlife.o...

In a recent feature on This American Life, Betsy DeVos was depicted as being a very compassionate and generous person (she helped individual students to get private schooling), but lacking empathy (she didn't understand the multiple issues with public schools and the diverse population and the regulatory frameworks for the public school system in the US. Also, she didn't appreciate the need for scalable solutions). MORE: https://www.thisamericanlife.o...

Actually, there was just a story about this on This American Life, this last weekend. A statistical study of the expected occurrence rate of the same name/birthdate across the entire US voter registration base.

https://www.thisamericanlife.o...

The details in short...
  - There are 3 million name/birthday matches across all states (roughly what DT/GOP claims are fraudulent votes)..
  - Removing bad data (i.e. no birthday so use a default day of Jan 1, etc.) reduces that to 750,000 matches.
  - Using a simple expected match based on statistical distribution (the 1 in 23), shows an expected 720,000 matches of different people in different states with the same name/birthdate.
  - Expanding the above to include common naming practices and oddities (i.e. Naming children "June" born in the summer, naming children "Carol" around the holidays, etc.) results in another 10,000 expected matches.
  - Going back to the "bad data" problem, the researchers then went back and reviewed the actual voting signature roles compared against the database reported voters who showed up... which removed another 20,000 matches nationally.

That leaves... 720,000+10,000 statistically expected name/date matches, plus 20,000 statistically found database errors, out of 750,000 "double voters".... i.e. ZERO actual double votes.

Mildly or otherwise.

It is most probably reacting to generally emotionally charged scenes.
From a comedy where all goes well in the end to the scene in an action movie where the hero is triumphant.
With a tendency towards crying at happy moments.

My guess... based on personal experience, and not even related to airplanes...
It's something related to low blood pressure and how that relates to oxygenation of the brain... and empathy.
Cause basically... people who cry at those emotional scenes are empathizing with the characters on the screen and compensating for their often exaggerated levels of distress (i.e. acted out in a over the top way) - by having an emotional reaction of their own.

I have a naturally low blood pressure. Also, my mom will get all teary-eyed when watching a movie.
I once cried watching this scene. At the time I thought that it was just the movie being so bad and that it was that "quality" which made me cry.

It's actually all that over the top melodrama, while sitting down, blood pressure dropping...
Brain then has to deal with images signaling the need for some great emotional relief, and the lack of oxygen making it emotional and basic instead of slow, calculated and rational.
Add to that the genetic component of predisposition for empathy... and you can have yourself a cry at the end of The Matrix, when Neo kungfus Agent Smith and then dives into him, exploding him from the inside and bending the Matrix to his will.
All in the privacy of your own home.

For those who think "male" and "female" are just social constructs, I encourage you to listen to this episode of This American Life, specifically, Act Two of the program. It is an interview with a female-to-male transsexual and how his entire mind shifted once he started taking testosterone.

The person was less emotional, was more interested in sex, and found math and logical thinking to be much easier while on testosterone.

The email, of which I haven't seen a full copy (just snippets) may not be worded very well, but oh well. Software is playing with logic all day. Testosterone plays an important role in helping our brains think along logical lines, and in fact seems to encourage it.

I work with a male-to-female software engineer. When she started taking estrogen a few years ago, I noticed a marked difference in her ability to comprehend code and get her work done. Not to the point of being unable to do her work, but things that she used to be able to do easily are now taking more time.

And that's just two hormones to consider.

NONE of this means that females (biological or otherwise) are unable to perform well in this field - the female software people I have worked with are generally not any better or worse than the males. They had the interest, they put in the time to learn, they do the work just like everyone else.

But on the whole, as an aggregate, female biology has evolved to push them in a different direction so they can perform different functions. They're going to be less likely to be interested in STEM.

Which really brings us to a whole other discussion: So what?

So what if software is heavy on males? Nursing is heavy on females. I don't see people marching in the streets demanding that 50% of all nurses be male. Teaching is also heavily dominated by females. I don't see people marching in the streets about that, either. Do you know why? Because in general, guys really don't care. They just want a good nurse or teacher.

Focusing so much on "diversity" and "fairness" and "quotas" has done so much harm to what we should be doing: accepting people as individuals on their individual merits.

If you want insight into that abyss of delusions of grandeur and power built on deep set foundations of inferiority complex... you should listen to this episode of This American Life:

Meme Come True

From claims like "We did it. We memed him into the presidency." to the idea of "meme magicians" - it's the crowd who are living the life of cognitive delusion where they are part of both the persecuted, yet jaded, minority and of powerful "king making" elite, doing it for the lulz.

Daily as I make and eat breakfast, workout and shower:

1. NPR Hourly News Summary

2. Marketplace Tech by American Public Media (APM)

3. The Writer’s Almanac

4. NPR Story of the Day

Weekly on my 30 plus minute commute each way:

1. The Moth Podcast

2. StoryCorps

3. Two Guys On Your Head

4. RadioLab

5. This American Life

6. Risk!

7. Improv Nerd

8. On Being

When they have shows:

1. Serial

2. Codebreakers

2. NPR Technology Podcast

For sure RadioLab. I listen to The Daily Tech News Show for some extended commentary on the day's tech news. I'm a board gamer and listen to The Dice Tower and The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast. If you're interested in hearing about the business of board games, Board Games Insider is a great resource.

Honorable mention to This American Life. If you haven't listened to the "Squirrel Cop" episode, here ya go, and you're welcome!
https://www.thisamericanlife.o...

Say goodbye to HTTP and HTML then! Since they weren't patented someone will surely patent them and shut down the web!

It was the fact theses technologies were not prohibitively encumbered by copyright and patents that enabled their broad adoption.

Many Gopher daemons required expensive commercial licensing fees and sent many requests for payment of license to users of the Gopher software, often when they were being used for personal or hobby use. This is why permissive licenses and the GPL expressly permit commercial use.

Patent trolls will be trolls. This does not mean that patents are good for business. Nor do patents protect your business. If you have a few patents then a business or troll with a larger portfolio can still sue you out of existence. NPR's This American Life podcast covered this subject: "When Patents Attack"

There is no evidence that patents are beneficial or necessary. We made it all the way through the personal computer revolution without having patents on any software. It's time to do the experiment and abolish patents. If we want we can reinstate them later after gathering evidence to determine whether they're good or bad. Until then the hypothesis that "patents = good" is a bunch of untested bullshit unsupported by any facts, and ignores all the evidence from industries not protected by copyright or patents (such as automotive design and the fashion industry) which are innovative and more lucrative than any other industries which have "Intellectual Property".

Oh noes! Whatever shall we do? Clothing and Car designs can't be patented! Every car and wardrobe will be exactly the same stagnant design because their's no patent incentive to innovate!

Welcome to the real world, here's your reality check. Have your geek card stamped at the door, every tenth post the karma is free.

I would point out that the gullible trump supporters are somewhat more complex than that. They believe that Trump means the things he says that they agree with, and they believe that he does not really mean the things he says that they disagree with. They are absolutely convinced of his dishonesty, yet they somehow think he's on their side.

NPR's This American Life did a segment about Alex Chalgren, an african-american, gay Trump supporter. In the segment, Alex explained that he supported Trump because Trump supported gay rights. Later when confronted by a statement from Trump saying that he would try to appoint judges to overrule the decision on same-sex marriage, he continued to defend Trump. He said that Trump only made the statement to get votes.

Trump rejected the one issue that Alex chose him for, and Alex continued to support him.

http://www.thisamericanlife.or...

This entire thread is based on a false idea that if people are thrown out of minimum wage jobs that they'll be unemployed forever.

This has been proven countless times since the 1700's to be absolutely false.

And because Malthus has been wrong a few times, that means that the earth can support an infinite number of people forever.

The problem is that there are already people who will never work again. Laid off from small town mills and manufacturing as their jobs. No where to go to get another job. Packing up and moving? Where? To get what job? These are 50 something year olds, who even if they get some sort of job training, who is going to hire an entry level worker who is near retirement age.

So what do they do? Untill we decide to go Logan's Run on people, or maybe Hunger games or simple target practice, we've allowed them on Social Security Disability. Which by the way, conveniently removes them from the unemployment picture. http://www.thisamericanlife.or... http://www.npr.org/sections/mo...

Once a technological innovation disrupts employment - the loom, the cotton gin, the computer, the combine planter/harvester, the robot - those who were displaced from employment find new jobs in higher paying sectors, at least in the aggregate.

Okay, what are the new jobs going to be. You've set up an inviolable truth, that all innivation will create new work. Elucidate. Teach those who are wrong, wrong because being wrong in the past means (according to you) the premise will always be wrong. You can try to diminish the argument all day long that way, but do what I did, Present some evidence of what ex fast food workers will do when there are no fast food work jobs any more.

Which by the way, sounds an awful lot like saying tht since man wasn't created to fly, he never will fly.

This is going to happen, but there needs to be something for the new leisure class to do. You need to tell us what that is.

There was a fairly recent example of a court sentencing a man but somehow failing to actually send him to prison.

This is probably the case you're referring to.

There is a lot of overlap, and neither Islamists nor Muslims are willing to help us differentiate the two groups.

It's true that there is an overlap; indeed, one is a proper subset of the other. However, there's a far bigger overlap between Muslims and "us". If you are killed by as Islamist terrorist, there is a roughly 90% chance that you are a Muslim.

But here's the question I want you to answer: What could mainstream Muslims possibly do to help "us"?

Well, they could report suspicious behaviour. Do you know what happens when they do that? The people who do do the reporting get surveilled and threatened with deportation for their trouble.

Maybe this is not a case of "us" and "Muslims". Maybe it's all just "us", and we all have to work together on this one. It's called "community policing", and it's all the rage in civilised countries. The US should try it some time.

>who was buying the loans

Everyone. Everyone from 401Ks to mutual funds, to hedge funds, cities, states, CALPERS - i.e., Wall Street and eventually you through your ownership of a CD or something.

They were all bundled up with AAA class loans and called "mortgaged backed securities." AAA on the top, junk on the bottom. And then labelled "AAA" quality - same as cash. Which they obviously were not to anyone paying attention.

Magnetar saw what was going on and bet against all that.

"A hedge fund named Magnetar comes up with an elaborate plan to make money. It sponsors the creation of complicated and ultimately toxic financial securities...while at the same time betting against the very securities it helped create. Planet Money's Alex Blumberg teams up with two investigative reporters from ProPublica, Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger, to tell the story. Jake and Jesse pored through thousands of pages of documents and interviewed dozens of Wall Street Insiders. We bring you the result: A tale of intrigue and questionable behavior, which parallels quite closely the plot of a Mel Brooks musical. (40 minutes)"

http://www.thisamericanlife.or...

I had a mortgage broker (at a fly-by-night) tell me before the crash that the only thing I needed to qualify for a loan was to breathe. This was in spite of all banking regulations about credit scores, income, etc. The broker simply fobbed the loan off to BoA or some such. It was then /their/ problem.

It horrified me, considering what I saw was happening with the price of real-estate.

It literally was criminal levels of fraud. The prisons should be filled with these people.

Yet we need less regulation, if you talk to Libertarians and Republicans.

Idiots.

--
BMO

This isn't police corruption, it's police brutality, which is a separate issue

It seems your relationship to law enforcement has made you either stupid or blind to what is what. Do you want to see what corruption looks like? It looks like this. Watch him drop the tazer next to the body. Shooting him was indeed brutality but there's a whole bunch of wrong going on here -- and we've heard complaints about both kinds. It's just that brutality gets a more sympathetic ear from the news and public. Nobody cares about the officer that didn't believe the lady living in the projects and so never did his due diligence as an officer of the law. But that attitude shatters her trust in law enforcement.

Grow up. Do yourself a favor and listen to this TAL radio segment and its sequel. But hey, keep lying to yourself and everyone else, whatever helps you sleep at night, right?

This isn't police corruption, it's police brutality, which is a separate issue

It seems your relationship to law enforcement has made you either stupid or blind to what is what. Do you want to see what corruption looks like? It looks like this. Watch him drop the tazer next to the body. Shooting him was indeed brutality but there's a whole bunch of wrong going on here -- and we've heard complaints about both kinds. It's just that brutality gets a more sympathetic ear from the news and public. Nobody cares about the officer that didn't believe the lady living in the projects and so never did his due diligence as an officer of the law. But that attitude shatters her trust in law enforcement.

Grow up. Do yourself a favor and listen to this TAL radio segment and its sequel. But hey, keep lying to yourself and everyone else, whatever helps you sleep at night, right?

The problem is idiots who don't realize the internet is not a toy. Trolls do it for the lulz and don't realize that no, they're actually creating a very permanent record of their activities.

Troll all you want, but realize that your five minutes of fun is recorded and you may find yourself as the top news story worldwide. If you want to offend, go for it knowing it WILL haunt you forever. This isn't a bathroom wall in some gas station - it's a gigantic unforgetting bathroom wall that the world sees.

It's not always so black and white though. See, for example, the Justine Sacco case. She made a satirical joke and it was misinterpreted. Then there's this story on This American Life: act one specifically. It highlights how the ire of a community can be directed unjustly.

I think you make a very good point. I wasn't close to my grandparents and I would very much like to have heard about their lives. My mom and I had a close relationship and I'm glad I don't have a bunch of videos for exactly the reason you say -- it would be too much ... too much something. Don't know how to say it.

There's an interesting This American Life about a person who's mother left a pile of letters to be opened once per year on the daughter's birthday, and one for her wedding. It started out very good, but ended not so great (see Act 1) ("... you shouldn't be dragged back into the grave with them every year ...):

http://www.thisamericanlife.or...

So I started this post, listened again to that TAL episode, and coming back to this post, will sort of disagree with what I said at first. I still think periodic mailing is a bad idea, but maybe the poster could make the videos, but they would be given to the daughter immediately after the funeral, and in a whole pile all at once (backups kept somewhere in case of accidental or intentional destruction). Then in the future, if she chooses, she can watch what she wants -- all, some, or none. This leaves watching as a choice she may or may not exercise -- in contrast, the periodic shipment seems like it has a good chance of becoming a source of resentment and pain (i.e., why should a ghost appear on the wedding to potentially create great sadness or feelings of being a disappointment or whatever).

This is a great post. This American Life has a cautionary tale about this sort of thing: http://www.thisamericanlife.or....

Basically, the world will change and your daughter will change. Your daughters "virtual instance" of you will also change. If the you of today keeps showing up to stomp all over those changes and you try to impose your will from beyond the grave, it can be damaging.

The most important things to leave, IMHO, are notes of love and compassion. You want your daughter to know that you love her and did everything in your power to give her a good life. In your position, that involves handing that off to someone else, probably your wife, and trusting her. You just need to make sure that the love you feel is always there to comfort your daughter. Don't sully it with expectations and demands.

OP, very sorry to hear of your diagnosis. As a father myself I understand wanting to leave something to guide your daughter after you are gone, but you should realize that there is no way to interact and converse. Your daughter may idealize you from your messages, you will certainly idealize her future. In the end it may lead to impossible expectations. Robin McGee talked about her experience of her mother's passing from cancer, and the letters that her mother wrote for the many important events of life she would miss. It went from something that provided comfort and connection to something that became a burden. Here's the piece she did with This American Life http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/401/parent-trap?act=1.

Since I will not be around for all of the big events in her life, I am going to create a set of video messages for her that she can watch at those important times or just when she's having a bad day. I would like to do this before my condition progresses to the point that I am visibly ill, so time is short.

A story about a daughter who was the recipient of such letters from her dead mother:

Letter Day Saint

Rebecca was 16 years old when her mother Elizabeth died of cancer. But before she died, she wrote letters to Rebecca, to be given to her on her birthday each year for thirteen years. At first the letters were comforting, but as time went on, they had much more complicated effects.

While I understand the desire to "be there" for you daughter, the painful fact is you will not be. And as the years pass, the less and less likely it's going to be that your imagined future version of your daughter is at all like the actual person your daughter becomes. This is going to create stress as she's now constantly being reminded by your videos of how she's failed to live up to your dreams.

Episode 401: The Parent Trap http://www.thisamericanlife.or... Also, keep in mind that we could learn from you that you could learn from most of us. Peace - SingleEntendre

It could also be because the most appalling reports of working conditions at Foxconn proved to be a figment of one man's imagination.

The problem is that you now have the big players writing the laws to stifle competition. In this case, it's not the auto manufacturers, but the dealerships. The dealerships are not the mom and pop dealerships but the huge conglomerates. For example, the 5th largest which Warren Buffet just bought, the Van Tuyl Group does $8 billion in annual revenue. In my area there are a huge number of dealerships under the Del Grande Dealer Group. These are the guys who are paying off the politicians.

To get an idea of why car dealerships are generally so unpleasant to deal with This American Life has a good podcast showing why car salesmen are the lying scum they are. Some of the auto manufacturers would like to ditch the dealerships but they can't due to the laws. Most states have laws that prevent manufacturers from competing against dealerships but those don't apply if there are no dealerships as in Tesla's case.

The dealerships like to make the argument that they add protection to the consumer. This is pure BS. I know someone who bought a Fisker Karma. When Fisker went bankrupt, so did the warranty even for those who paid for it. Most dealerships dropped all support for the car like a hot potato leaving the owners in a lurch or get support from a couple of ex-Fisker employees who do the support on their own and paying for all service and repairs out of pocket.

Calamari is neither. It's pig bung!
http://www.thisamericanlife.or...

It represents the people, but in a horrible proportion unlike the house. In what world does that make sense?

The Senate makes sense in this http://www.thisamericanlife.or... world (summary: a city where the majority of the people want to send their children to private school, so they actively sabotage the public school system).

For a law to get passed the majority of people have to agree upon it (the House), and the majority of different kinds of people have to agree upon it (the Senate). So what the Senate does is protect the minority. Ideally there might be some way to repurpose the Senate to be based on race or socio-economic situation, but I don't now how realistic that would be to implement. So the Senate is based on geographic location. Texans are different than Californians which are different than New Jersians, etc. I realize it's not ideal for every possible representation for every "kind" of person, but it is something.

In the first few decades after the American Revolution, there were some bad examples of a 51% majority abusing the 49% minority. So the idea of a bicameral legislation was created to be a forcing function to prevent the current 51% majority from creating abusive laws.

I highly recommend to everyone reading this discussion to listen to this 16-minute NPR Money Matters story:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

Them if you have some time, This American Life tells the dealer's side of the story:
http://m.thisamericanlife.org/...

I'll warm you now that your blood may boil, and you may turn into a rage monster thinking about the sheer absurdity and stupidity of the car-buying process.

One thing is that in most states the laws were written to protect franchises against the car manufacturers but in this case there are no franchises to protect to often these laws don't apply.

This podcast gives a lot of insight as to why the dealerships are so anti-consumer blood sucking parasites.

http://www.thisamericanlife.or...

One other thing to keep in mind is that the dealership model has changed significantly. It used to be a bunch of mom and pop dealerships throughout the country. These aren't the dealerships complaining about Tesla. Instead it's the huge dealership conglomerates that have gobbled up and consolidated many of the smaller independent dealerships. These are also huge political donors in many states, getting laws written to protect them, often to the detriment of the automobile manufacturers.

Part of it is the way the car manufacturers have the dealerships competing against each other, giving them huge incentives to sell a certain number of cars by the end of the month, etc. The dealerships also make a lot of their money off of service, whether it be warranty service or just plain service.

Tesla does things differently. The people who work at the showrooms do not earn commissions on cars sold. Their job is to show the car, not play all these silly games pushing cars that people don't want to get their numbers.

Also, Tesla generally does not maintain an inventory of cars. Every car is built to order with only the features the buyer wants. They don't have huge lots of cars that they have to push since every car is already spoken for.

Their service is also different. They have publically stated that their goal is not to make a profit off of service. I have had to have things repaired that were not covered by warranty (I broke some clips). The cost to repair was actually fairly reasonable and was much less than what the cost would have been had the same sort of thing happened to my Prius.

My biggest complaint about service is that there is often a long wait to get an appointment because they're having trouble keeping up with the growing number of cars out there.

Tesla took a cue from Apple with the Apple stores. They want to provide a consistent experience for their customers without all of the hassles and problems often encountered at dealerships. The company has also consistently bent over backwards in favor of their customers. When news of the fires hit they quickly extended the battery warranty to cover fires caused by hitting objects then actively worked on methods to mitigate it. They retroactively increased the drive train warranty to unlimited miles.

Acetaminophen aka Tylenol can actually be quite harmful. The difference between the maximum safe dose, and the amount to cause liver problems (or failure) is quite a small margin. Combine that with the fact that they put it in other medications such as cold medications that people take along with regular acetaminophen, and you end up with a recipe for disaster. This American Life did an episode on it.

Often they make very little on the cars. Most of the money is on service and financing. Sometimes they lose money on the cars they sell. http://www.thisamericanlife.or... gives good insight as to what actually goes on with car dealerships and why they're the dirtbags they are.

Detroit was the economic powerhouse of the United States for decades until its business leaders caught the 'MBA Disease' and managed their companies into the ground.

I'm not sure exactly what the "MBA disease" is but the rise of professional managers in the '50s and '60s, as exemplified by the rise of Robert McNamara and the "Whiz Kids" at Ford, was actually a very good time for the US auto industry. What killed the US auto industry was a combination of 1.) building crap cars with terrible quality; 2.) not foreseeing the Oil Crisis of the '70s and that customers might actually want small, non-gas guzzler cars; and most importantly 3.) a dysfunctional relationship between management and unions that resulted in an outrageous, unsustainable cost structure. Management didn't have the courage to make necessary big cost structure changes, and they kept kicking the can down the road by promising huge pension and benefit increases that wouldn't have to be paid for until they had the retired and the next sucker got stuck with it. Wash, rinse, repeat. There was ample evidence that cars could be built well and profitably in the US, as the NUMMI joint venture between Toyota and GM proved, but doing so required big changes from both management and unions and neither were willing to budge from the system that had kept them fat and happy for decades.

It all nearly fell apart in the '90s (the rise of SUVs was all that saved Detroit back then) and then finally in '08. But the system had been rotting for decades and all it took was the right push to send it collapsing into a heap. If you're interested in what went wrong with the US auto industry and why, I highly recommend Crash Course by Paul Ingrassia. The This American Life episode on NUMMI is also brilliant and well worth a listen.

Various Native American tribes are engaging in self-destructive behavior. Some say it is over gambling profits.

Disenrollment leaves Natives "culturally homeless"

One tribe in California will shortly have cut itself in half, down to 900 or less: I Know I Am, But What Are You?

There is a much more dangerous issue here that makes it a terrible idea: decoupling the provider and user from the costs involved is exactly why the US healthcare system is so screwed up. Today, colleges have a cost that is known to the student, and students factor that in to their education "purchase." I might like to go to a college that charges $50K a year, but if there's another one that charges $30K a year and provides a similar education, I may choose the cheaper one. Colleges know this and they model their cost structure to fall within a tuition rate that students will be willing to pay.

But now, with students and colleges not having to consider price, no college has any incentive not to inflate its costs - hey, if cost is no object to the student, why not? New Ferraris for all the administrators and a shiny new $50M Center For the Study of Basket-Weaving! The college is getting paid either way, and the student doesn't care because they don't see a bill. Maybe that provides a better quality education for some people, but it's dubious as to whether the benefit outweighs the costs to all the people who have graduated and are now paying for $100K/year per student tuition rates.

This is the same thing that happens in the US medical system today - doctors don't have to think about what procedures cost, so, hey, why not run a bunch of tests that cost $15,000 a pop just to be safe? They're getting paid either way. And the patient typically doesn't see much of that cost directly because (post-deductible, blah blah) most of it is absorbed by their insurance company. Nobody (for the most part) chooses which hospital to go to based on what it costs, and there is no incentive to reduce costs for anyone except the insurance companies. (If you want to hear the gory details, NPR did an awesome story on this several years ago.)

At any rate, while improving access to college education is a great goal, the healthcare example should scare anyone sane that taking "what college costs you to deliver or receive" out of the equation is a recipe for costing everyone way more money than it should.

Sorry, but I have to add one more vote for this "cause" of the crisis being right-wing propaganda.

The requirement to make loans to low-income people had little to do with how the sub-prime crisis went down. Instead it was mostly caused by greed in just about every sector. Here are a couple of links with a lot more details:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money - a great radio documentary, including first hand accounts of what was happening on the ground (i.e. people making money tons of money) when the whole bubble exploded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis - all the details you could want.

Listen to me talk about the evils of software patents on NPR's This American Life: When Patents Attack pt. 2 (around the 50-51 minute mark). http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/496/when-patents-attack-part-two

If you ever want to explain to the layperson how damaging patent trolls are, point them to this episode of This American Life.

It's patently ridiculous...

(Note: Although it says Part Two, it's really the whole thing - they include Part One into this episode).

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/420/neighborhood-watch

This American Life covered it in 2010: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/420/neighborhood-watch

Yeah... you have no idea what you're talking about.

Listen to Act Two of this episode of This American Life. The example they hunt down to its conclusion has one guy, Chris Crawford, selling his patent to IV and in turn he gets 10% of whatever they get on it (which considering IV was settling with dozens of firms for fucktons of dollars in perpetuity, is not too shabby).

Once IV does your dirty work for you, you'll never need to make widget bolts again.

If you haven't already listened to it, this is a very good episode covering the topic:

When Patents Attack

The prologue is just heart wrenching. The guys spent many years building a business just to pretty much lose everything to a patent troll.

I have been thinking about opening a business myself and this is something that has been constantly in my mind. How can I protect myself? Should I open a handful of shell companies in different countries in order to protect myself from a lawsuit. This is actually not very expensive. A couple of thousand dollars will do. Would that be enough of a protection?

I would like to hear from the slashdot community. Are you an entrepeneur? How do you protect yourself from this threat?

"David Ettinger, today's interviewee, is both the son of CI founder Robert Ettinger and CI's lawyer. "

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/354/mistakes-were-made?act=1#play

The various incarnatins of the (now) CI has a /spotless/ history, don't it?

This is "We need more money for a process we know doesn't work. But trust us anyway."

--
BMO

This American Life did a piece on how horribly bad things went in the early days of cryogenics. The episode was called Mistakes Were Made.

This American Life did a piece on how horribly bad things went in the early days of cryogenics. The episode was called Mistakes Were Made.