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>Has Uber been involved in a traffic accident resulting in injury of death?

Yes. And a lawsuit is pending. He was dicking around with the Uber app looking for a passenger but wasn't carrying a passenger at the time so Uber claimed he wasn't working for them at the time.

"When the application is on and looking for a ride, they are doing so on their own time."

http://www.sfgate.com/news/art...

He was also charged with manslaughter.

http://time.com/3625556/uber-m...

>can Australians sue a billion dollar US corporation for damages?

I don't see why not.

Isn't the warming, sea level rise, and melting of ice verification? If not, what evidence could posisbly convince you?

Since it is a political fight, not a science fight, nothing will convince the deniers. Denialism is stronger thn anything you can imagine. Just like the AntiVaxxer denialists who declared that vaccines caused autism because of the mercury in the preservatives in some vaccines did not change their belief after the mercury was removed, and the autism rates remained the same, and padded the epidemic of autism by incorporation of the "autism spectrum" and were really pissed when researchers removed some people from that spectrum - they have no intention of ever changing their mind, which has been made up bsed on the collaboration od a long discredited corrupt researcher and a lawyer he was working with to make a money grab.

I only bring that up because of the similarity in modus.

Isn't the warming, sea level rise, and melting of ice verification? If not, what evidence could posisbly convince you?

Can somebody who knows more about antibiotics and bacterial evolution please explain something to me. If we keep taking natural antibiotics from nature, mass manufacture them, won't we just train the world's bacterial populations to be immune to practically anything we can throw at them? I know if used wisely this would not happen but we all know that profit (or stupidity) driven people will sooner or later use this stuff in ways that will ruin these drugs, doctors will hand them out to anybody who has a mild cold or just prescribe them to any hysterical parent with a new born to get rid of them and sooner or later the Chinese, or the Americans (the practice is banned in the EU) will make these drugs by the barrel and mix them into animal feed or otherwise administer them in huge quantities to livestock like they did with Tamiflu and which ruined that drug.

People have been saying MBA's are worthless for a while. Look at this http://content.time.com/time/m... Key quote from the article: "Lutz says, we need to fire the M.B.A.s and let engineers run the show."

And yet, I think the problem is still there, in spite of the work MBA's have done on their "branding". Exhibit (A) is Tim Cook with corroborating evidence to be found in TFA.

People have been saying MBA's are worthless for a while. Look at this http://content.time.com/time/m... Key quote from the article: "Lutz says, we need to fire the M.B.A.s and let engineers run the show."

http://time.com/3652040/movies...

Actually heavy drinkers have lower mortality rates than non drinkers.

http://content.time.com/time/m...

It is a very good way to stop anyone talking about what was actually in all the released internal documents though. While the media's been all over this stupid N. Korea angle, where are the reports about the actual scandals in the released documents?

Oh, I don't know.. everywhere, actually. Unless you are implying you know something that we don't, if so you should just say it.

http://www.cnet.com/news/13-revelations-from-the-sony-hack/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sonys-hacked-e-mails-expose-spats-director-calling-angelina-jolie-a-brat/2014/12/10/a799e8a0-809c-11e4-8882-03cf08410beb_story.html
http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/18/7417891/google-condemns-sony-project-goliath
http://time.com/3625326/sony-hack-files/
etc.

"Given that rich/poor status is mostly a question of luck..."

There's your problem, the hyper-rich never accept that. The more rich the more militant they are about their fortune being due to personal talent and no one else having a right to benefit from it. Apparently it causes major cognitive dissonance or something to digest the idea of being astronomically lucky.

http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/24/the-rich-are-different-more-money-less-empathy/

Somewhere there's a series where some guy interviewed people at exponentially increasing levels of wealth. The quasi-rich (half-million, a few million, tens of millions) were pretty generous about things, but the billionaire on top (started some storage facility chain in CA) was just a real outrageous, militant asshole.

Lets take this complaint by the GCHQ, and lets assume that the NSA/FBI may have similar issues, if indeed it's really a problem.
Then lets look at the Google/Apple/Microsoft complex offering up encryption for their users, as though to say "you're safe with us now".

These Snowden revelations crippled the "security" agencies, so what's the natural response?
"How do we get users to become complacent again?"

Easy, have the Google/Apple/Microsoft complex offer up encryption, then have the FBI come out publicly and complain about it, as though it (the encryption) were really going to be a problem for them, to trick people into thinking the encryption is actually solid.

http://time.com/3437222/iphone...

How valid this hypothesis appears to you is a direct measure of what you believe is the truth of our World today.
Are the corps, media and agencies complicit? Or aren't they.

Everything I've ever seen in both English and Spanish looked about 1.5-2 times longer in the Spanish version.

Don't take my word for it; some linguistic researchers actually looked into this, which you can read about here.

Here's an excerpt:

For all of the other languages, the researchers discovered, the more data-dense the average syllable was, the fewer of those syllables had to be spoken per second — and thus the slower the speech. English, with a high information density of .91, was spoken at an average rate of 6.19 syllables per second. Mandarin, which topped the density list at .94, was the spoken slowpoke at 5.18 syllables per second. Spanish, with a low-density .63, ripped along at a syllable-per-second velocity of 7.82. The true speed demon of the group, however, was Japanese, which edged past Spanish at 7.84, thanks to its low density of .49. Despite those differences, at the end of, say, a minute of speech, all of the languages would have conveyed more or less identical amounts of information.

wrote that 22 states permit direct sales of automobiles by Tesla to retail buyers, and of those the majority--14 of them-- voted for President Obama

There is a much fresher data-point for the political leanings of those states — we had elections a month ago. That this non-biased and bi-partisan article — the kind we've come to expect from the Newspaper of Record — chose to use the two year old data instead to illustrate its point, means, the point probably is not supported by the more recent poll...

He suggested that Democratic California, Illinois, and New York "have freer markets in auto retailing than Texas," which is presently Republican.

Is it "freer markets" for everyone, or just for the "green" technology — which got a major government loan (on very sweet terms) to survive and ought to be helped to avoid embarrassing the Democratic administration? Would those Democratic bastions of free markets be as supporting of freedom, if it were about sale of, say, high-capacity toilets?

If you really care for free markets, you'll vote Libertarian — with anybody else you still need a bloody permit to do (or sell) almost anything. Splitting hairs about who is more likely to permit this vs. that is stupid — you have your right to pursue happiness. Selling cars the way you want certainly ought to be covered by that.

Is the small bit of evidence enough to make a case?

No, it is not. To show, which party supports freer markets, one would need to study the market-freedom across different goods and services. Cherry-picking one item, that is so dear to one party's heart, in an industry, that is heavily-regulated by all states (as well as Federal government) is meaningless and reveals nothing but bare partisanship.

You're regurgitating complete nonsense. Once again, here’s figure 1 from Peterson et al. 2008. Notice that papers predicting warming vastly outnumbered those predicting cooling, even in the 1970s. Ironically:

• The term “global warming” was first used in a 1975 Science article by Wally Broecker called “Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?”.
• Sawyer 1972 estimated climate sensitivity as 2.4C, and Schneider 1975 gave a preliminary range of 1.5C to 3.0C.
• Manabe and Wetherald, 1975: “The Effects of Doubling the CO2 Concentration on the climate of a General Circulation Model.”
• In 1977, Freeman Dyson wrote that the “prevailing opinion is that the dangers [of the rise in CO2] greatly outweigh the benefits.”
• In 1977, Robert M. White, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wrote a report for the National Academy of Sciences that said “We now understand that industrial wastes, such as the carbon dioxide released in the burning of fossil fuels, can have consequences for climate that pose a considerable risk to future society.” [White, Robert, 1978, Oceans and Climate Introduction, Oceanus, 21:2-3]
• The 1979 JASON report “The long-term impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide on climate” estimated climate sensitivity as 2.4C to 2.8C.
• The National Academy of Science’s 1979 Charney report estimated climate sensitivity as 1.5C to 4.5C and said “If carbon dioxide continues to increase, [we] find no reason to doubt that climate changes will result, and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible.”

While Jane is reading those papers, he should also consider addressing this issue with his basic thermodynamics:

Your own insistence that power in = power out (assuming perfect conversion and no entropic losses) belies this argument. You are arguing against yourself and you refuse to see that. If power in = power out (your own stipulation) ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-12-14]

I'm not the only one insisting that power in = power out through any boundary where nothing inside is changing. Once again, that's a fundamental principle called "conservation of energy". Here are some introductions: example (backup), example (backup), example

No,no. Global cooling. Haven't you read the scientific papers from top agencies and researchers from the 70's. Sheesh

You're regurgitating complete nonsense. Once again, here’s figure 1 from Peterson et al. 2008. Notice that papers predicting warming vastly outnumbered those predicting cooling, even in the 1970s. Ironically:

• The term “global warming” was first used in a 1975 Science article by Wally Broecker called “Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?”.
• Sawyer 1972 estimated climate sensitivity as 2.4C, and Schneider 1975 gave a preliminary range of 1.5C to 3.0C.
• Manabe and Wetherald, 1975: “The Effects of Doubling the CO2 Concentration on the climate of a General Circulation Model.”
• In 1977, Freeman Dyson wrote that the “prevailing opinion is that the dangers [of the rise in CO2] greatly outweigh the benefits.”
• In 1977, Robert M. White, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wrote a report for the National Academy of Sciences that said “We now understand that industrial wastes, such as the carbon dioxide released in the burning of fossil fuels, can have consequences for climate that pose a considerable risk to future society.” [White, Robert, 1978, Oceans and Climate Introduction, Oceanus, 21:2-3]
• The 1979 JASON report “The long-term impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide on climate” estimated climate sensitivity as 2.4C to 2.8C.
• The National Academy of Science’s 1979 Charney report estimated climate sensitivity as 1.5C to 4.5C and said “If carbon dioxide continues to increase, [we] find no reason to doubt that climate changes will result, and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible.”

I dunno, they need to up the lack of class if they ever hope to top drive through funerals

I think that the GP was just making a point that many of the global warming proponents have oversold their agenda.

You can't remain credible by simultaneously implying (with "weasel" words) that each natural disaster is a direct result of global warming, while ignoring the growing arctic ice thickness and decrease in tornado activity.

Yes, nature is stochastic. But the sword cuts both ways, but pandering to sensationalism will ultimately undercut any scientific argument.

http://science.time.com/2014/0...
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/globa...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/scie...
     

I don't see neckbeards in any of the approved styles, so I don't see how they can actually be elite.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/...

Mobile phones are booming in the developing world, and most are capable of SMS, e-mail, mobile cash, and downloading electronic books, if not also web browsing. More people now have access to cell phones than toilets.

http://time.com/74584/unesco-s...

.

Correction: free public wifi.

"If you compare childless women to men, the pay gap completely disappears."

Actually, it flip-flops with young childless women in metropolitan areas making 8% more on average.

http://content.time.com/time/b...

http://online.wsj.com/articles...

I simply asked for some proof and claimed I have not seen it.

If you would like to talk about the debunked sexism such as the wage gap myth id be happy to. Its been discussed over and over and over again and when you have 2 single adults, one male and the other female, they will be paid the same http://time.com/3222543/5-femi...

> One can always not purchase at Walmart.

That works both ways. Walmart has no legal obligation to do a pricematch. Their own policy says (and has said since the start), "The Store Management has the final decision for matching an online price."

Pricematching fake prices is no different than a store like JC Penny's using fake prices in order to negate their discounts. Scummy but not fraudulent.

While not 3D-printed, similar things have been done long before by Nikolai Aldunin. A TIME gallery features some pictures, among them perhaps most relevant at the moment a set of seven camels (plus three palm trees) in the eye of a needle and most impressive for me personally a flea fitted with horse shoes, saddle and stirrups. While TIME reported on him in 2008, most of the work is much older. I remember going to an exhibition in late 1980s.

I think your boss has the right of it. I loved programming ever since I had my first taste of it in 4th grade. And I had parents that had the means and will to a) care about my education and b) buy a computer for me when I was in 5th grade. Not everyone is as lucky as I was.

http://techland.time.com/2012/...

You act as if mass shootings are something that have existed only in the time that SSRIs have been available. The US saw a number of prominent mass shootings in the 1960s and 1970s. This is not a new problem, though your anecdotal experience consuming contemporary mass media might mislead you to believe it is.

I didn't say that SSRIs were responsible for all school shootings, did I?

But, looking at the history of school shootings in the U.S. (particularly "mass shootings"), you can see an incredible uptick in the 1990s and 2000s.

Prozac (the first SSRI) was first prescribed in 1987.

Now, go back to that "history", and tell me that there isn't a strong possibility of a correlation between the "Rampage" school shootings and the introduction of SSRIs.

People have been mentally ill for millenia. Almost never resulted in school "Rampage" shootings. Kids have had access to guns for centuries. Almost never resulted in school "Rampage" shootings. Kids have been bullied, molested, and otherwise abused by faculty and classmates. Almost never resulted in school "Rampage" shootings.

Yet, SSRIs come on the scene in 1987, and just look at the statistics...

From TFA:

Suzanne Kennan, a resident who lives across from the school...supported the investment anyway.

‘‘Unfortunately we’re at a point where we have to do something like this,’’

Yes, we're at a point where the level of violent crime is at its lowest in 40 years but apparently a crazy response is needed regardless.

Needless to say, there's no discussion in this article. Simply a visit to the school for the demonstration, a quick chat with the cops, and a thoughtless quote from the neighbor.

I have a kid in school and frankly I think all this pseudo "security" is more dangerous for shaping future civic involvement than the anhistorical gibberish in the history books.

If a procedure requires three integers and a returns a float, that's not an invention that's an agreement between software components to permit inter operation.

But it only has to exist in order to follow that API. If I create a "Point" class I can have the function "int getX()" or "int getHorizontalPosition()", I can choose many different ways to set parameters and defaults through constructors and member functions and overloads and if you look at the API as a whole the division into classes and the means by which they interact is clearly designed. If you isolated two teams and asked them to design any non-trivial API it is extremely unlikely it'd be exactly the same. So the question is, do you have the right to implement the same function using the same API, or the same functionality using a different API? That copyright doesn't cover methods of operation basically means it's not a patent, you can implement the same functionality. Whether you can implement the same functions is more unclear.

Isolated speaking I would say it's a creative work and copyrightable, because you can copyright fairly trivial things such as the ordering of songs on an album. Not the songs themselves, not the cover art but the actual ordering. Spotify has been sued for user playlists mimicing compilation albums, even though the service has licensed all the songs. If that's enough creative input for a copyright, then I'd say the naming and structuring of an API is clearly a creative work as well. Actually let's go back one step and ask what makes a function signature part of an API? Is it particular functions that external programs are granted to run or any function? If you're saying that's something that's explicitly granted then nothing in copyright law says it can't come with strings attached. This function is private unless....

The Linux kernel has been trying something similar with "GPL" exports for kernel modules, basically saying if you touch these interfaces you're mucking so deep in our internal code you're a derivative work. That is trying to say the GPL "infects" over an interface if the creator of the interface wants it to. On the other hand, if you say there is no such distinction then the whole idea of derivative works gets iffy, it's just your code calling my code and my code calling your code no matter if it's my browser sending a HTTP request to your server or my kernel patch calling your kernel code? That would get incredibly nasty too. On the other hand, this is already weird with code that's not compiled but just interpreted, it is a mere aggregation until the interpreter converts it to actual machine code? A php file including another isn't linked at distribution.

This author (http://www.stetson.edu/other/faculty/profiles/christopher-ferguson.php) clearly has experience in clinical psychology. However, he's been talking extensively about videogame violence for a year only; first publications and *very frequent* publications in both peer and non-peer-reviewed (majority) journals. He's stepped quite significantly into the gun+violence debate in the US, too: "Viewpoint: Stop Tearing Ourselves Up About Mass Killings" - http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/... . In short, be sure to read authors with a much longer history on the subject before taking this at face value. But wait -- isn't that the common /. story? -dC

If by 'wealth' we mean 'earthquakes' then yes, Ohio has gotten some wealth. http://time.com/60363/fracking... http://www.reuters.com/article...

Can't be Obamacare failures

20M more people have health insurance: http://time.com/2950961/obamac... Lives are being saved in states that accepted the medicaid expansion (which is why even some of the deepest red states are moving to accept). Jobs are being created in health care. Some premiums are decreasing, but most are going up by a modest (2-5%) rate, much lower than before Obamacare.

loss of press freedom

Who are you going to vote for to fix that? Wasn't it Bush who introduced the "Free Speech Zones" at rallies?

lowest labor force participation in many decades

Employment tanked as Bush left office and banks destroyed the economy. (No one was regulating the banks, so we'll go with them just happening to tank under Bush - could have happened under any president).

If you look at job creation it consistently weak under republican leadership and much stronger under democratic. 5000+ jobs created under Obama vs just over a 1000 under Bush. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

incompetence on Ebola

Despite the right wing terrorizing the population with the treat of Ebola, there is no threat from Ebola. Nigeria, hardly a bastion of high tech medicine and good government manged to contain a real attack. Sequestration and cuts at the NIH have slowed efforts to create a vacine (it's not profitable to create one since most fo the people with Ebola are poor). I trust you favor reinstating funding for that (and the many other) governement efforts.

lack of plans for ISIS

See "Ebola". ISIS is not a threat to the US and, frankly, there's almost nothing the US can do to help (unless you consider Iraq an overwhelming success)

overweening regulation

Tell that to the people you were killed in the West Fertilizer explosion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explosion)

Or to the people of West Virgina. (http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/dont-drink-the-water-west-virginia-after-the-chemical-spill-20140312)

politicization of DoJ and IRS

Listen, the IRS investigated many political non-profits of all stripes, it was not just the right wing groups. This is what the IRS is SUPPOSED to do, investigate possible tax fraud. They did it, and (despite the political disinformation) it was non-partisen.

extrajudicial killings of US citizens

Come on, that completely crossed party line. Extraordinary rendition and redefining torture as acceptable started under the Bush administration, but nothing has been done to fix that and it won't be for the forseeable future. The 100ml bottles on planes has the same problem.

crony capitalism bailouts of banks and GM

The banks collapsed under Bush and (even though it stinks) a bailout was the least worst evil. GM turned out to be a good investment, certainly for the people who now still have jobs.

increasing levels of poverty, highest levels of food stamp use ever.

Easy, raise the minimum wage. Good for the economy, good for people working at that level. (Again, who you going to vote for who will do that?).

Naaah, none of that. It's gotta be just Harry Reid.

I don't know about just Harry Reid, but it sure seems that politician are going to have to take more care to see who's offering the highest bribe (sorry, campaign contribution).

Faith without evidence is not always toxic. It depends on what that faith is in. Point to me a devout Buddhist who is somehow toxic. or one who has ever existed.

http://time.com/3090990/how-an...

When the minimum wage went up in San Jose, the downtown pizza parlor raised the per-slice price by $0.25 USD and per pie price by $1.00 USD. Business remained steady and the world didn't come to an end. Never mind that states with higher minimum wage have higher job growth

San Jose is the largest city in Silicon Valley, third largest city in California, and 10th largest city in the United States.

Silicon Valley is a terrible example to demonstrate the effects of a minimum wage increase and corresponding increases in local product/service costs. The area is too wealthy, this distorts the reaction to $1 more per pizza.

"The median household income is $90,000, according to the Census Bureau. The average single-family home sells for about $1 million. The airport is adding an $82 million private jet center."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

When the minimum wage went up in San Jose, the downtown pizza parlor raised the per-slice price by $0.25 USD and per pie price by $1.00 USD. Business remained steady and the world didn't come to an end. Never mind that states with higher minimum wage have higher job growth.

Did you read your own article link?
"The rate of job growth was the highest in North Dakota, where the local oil and gas boom has spurred the economy but there has been no minimum wage increase. "

As you have stated, everything will go up, inflation. The value of the dollar decreases and negates any increase in wages. This will only move the poverty line up.

states with higher minimum wage have higher job growth.

Correlation != Causation. It is likely that states with higher employment have more flexibility to raise wages without putting people out of work.
Raising the minimum wage is a blunt method of fighting poverty for a number of reasons:
1. Most people making minimum wage are not heads of household, and aren't poor. They are second or third earners in middle class households.
2. Many businesses that pay low wages, such as fast food, discount stores, etc. disproportionately serve lower income people. So price increases hit the poor the hardest.
3. Most people are not poor because of low wages, but because they are not in the workforce at all. Households in the top quintile have on average 2.2 people employed full time. Households in the bottom quintile have 0.4.
So most of the benefits of higher minimum wages go to people that are NOT poor, and most of the costs, in higher prices and fewer jobs, fall on those that ARE poor. There are better ways to fight poverty, such as the earned income tax credit, that tops up low wages only for people in low income households. The benefits are targeted, and the costs are both lower, and spread through society rather than paid solely by the companies that we need to be creating more jobs.

Also... we are talking about the lowest rung of employees. Minimum wage or close. Raise those wages, and what happens to everyone elses wages? They go up. Wages go up, prices go up. Wages won't pay for themselves - those increases WILL be passed on to consumers.

When the minimum wage went up in San Jose, the downtown pizza parlor raised the per-slice price by $0.25 USD and per pie price by $1.00 USD. Business remained steady and the world didn't come to an end. Never mind that states with higher minimum wage have higher job growth.

This will put more people on welfare, food stamps and beholden to the Democratic party.

I'm still waiting for my FREE iPhone from the government that Republicans always talk about but can never provide a link to the sign-up page.

Egalitarianism

Wage gap myth:

http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf

Majors by Gender: Is It Bias or the Major that Determines Future Pay?

There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap

The Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth

Gender pay gap is not what activists claim

Equal pay statistics are bogus because they don’t compare like with like

Fair Pay Isn’t Always Equal Pay

Wage Gap Myth Exposed -- By Feminists

5 Feminist Myths That Will Not Die

The Wage Gap Myth

Don’t Blame Discrimination for Gender Wage Gap

The pay inequality myth: Women are more equal than you think

Women Now a Majority in American Workplaces

Labor force participation rate for men has never been lower.

Share of Men in Labor Force at All-Time Low

Women In Tech Make More Money And Land Better Jobs Than Men

Female U.S. corporate directors out-earn men: study

Female CEOs outearned men in 2009.

Women between ages 21 and 30 working full-time made 117% of men’s wages.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, single women between 22 and 30 years old earn an average of $27,000 a year. That’s 8% more than comparable men.

Workplace Salaries: At Last, Women on Top

Young Women’s Pay Exceeds Male Peers

The 15 Jobs Where Women Earn More Than Men

Women aged between 22 and 29 earn over £10 per hour on average, compared to men their same age who earn just under this amount.

Young women now earn more than men in UK

Egalitarianism

Wage gap myth:

http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf

Majors by Gender: Is It Bias or the Major that Determines Future Pay?

There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap

The Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth

Gender pay gap is not what activists claim

Equal pay statistics are bogus because they don’t compare like with like

Fair Pay Isn’t Always Equal Pay

Wage Gap Myth Exposed -- By Feminists

5 Feminist Myths That Will Not Die

The Wage Gap Myth

Don’t Blame Discrimination for Gender Wage Gap

The pay inequality myth: Women are more equal than you think

Women Now a Majority in American Workplaces

Labor force participation rate for men has never been lower.

Share of Men in Labor Force at All-Time Low

Women In Tech Make More Money And Land Better Jobs Than Men

Female U.S. corporate directors out-earn men: study

Female CEOs outearned men in 2009.

Women between ages 21 and 30 working full-time made 117% of men’s wages.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, single women between 22 and 30 years old earn an average of $27,000 a year. That’s 8% more than comparable men.

Workplace Salaries: At Last, Women on Top

Young Women’s Pay Exceeds Male Peers

The 15 Jobs Where Women Earn More Than Men

Women aged between 22 and 29 earn over £10 per hour on average, compared to men their same age who earn just under this amount.

Young women now earn more than men in UK

I don't think that was ever promised. Embryonic stem cells were seen as very promising for research and possibly treatment.
There's been one notable success:
http://healthland.time.com/201...

Other therapies have been significantly hampered by Government policy, but despite this some researchers went ahead. They found unforeseen obstacles like tumor formation, and unstable gene expression.

The problem with the Embryonic stem cell debate hasn't been the ethical concerns. Those are real, and should be address. But you need to know that there are those out there that used the debate not to fight Embryonic stem cell research, but to fight science itself. You don't want your tax dollars to go towards stem cell research? Fine, that's a reasonable request. But what happened was they not only pulled funding for Embryonic stem cell research, they also said that researcher couldn't receive ANY federal funding at all. For any other project. You were basically blacklisted if you even touched the topic. That had nothing to do with moral concerns, that was an attempt to use the governments muscle to kill the research entirely.

Embryonic Stem Cells had, and still have great medical promise. If your kid died from some disease, then a few years later research into stem cells lead them to some new drug that would have cured him, how would you have felt about the way this had been handled? Does it matter that they didn't find the cure? What's the next research they'll try to kill? Will it be the one that could have cured you?

I was skeptical about the claim that PETA euthanizes so many animals, but studies say it's true, and may even understate the situation.

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services report on their investigation found that 94% of the animals given to PETA for adoption were instead euthanized, 90% within one day.

This is not ethical treatment of animals. There's no "nuance" here. Putting the vast majority of healthy pets to death rather than trying to find homes for them is cruel and highly unusual.

Of course, with $35 million in annual revenue, who can afford to take care of the animals, what with paying all the salaries for the people working for PETA to exploit them? PETA's job is to raise funds to pay PETA salaries. The animals are just raw material to be exploited, then tossed in a dumpster

I'm not a fan of PETA by any stretch but I can't criticize them for this.

I'm sure PETA would adopt out all of the animals they were given if there were enough people willing to adopt them. But the fact is there simply aren't that many people looking for pets, and the people who are looking generally don't want the kinds of pets who are given up for adoption.

So given there's no one to adopt those animals what do you propose they do with them? Pets require a lot of food and care, you basically have a choice between storing them in conditions that are slightly expensive and really horrific, really expensive and somewhat pleasant, or cheaply euthanizing them. Given the fact that $35 million is completely insufficient to humanely care for that many animals what would you suggest they do instead?

OK, in Texas, we have 1 health care worker infected per 1 patient, so far, and the sick health care worker was aware of the ebola and trying hard not to get it.

In Spain, we have 1 health care worker infected per 1 patient, also aware of ebola and trying hard not to get it.

On the postive side, the West has managed to treat 3 others without any more health care workers getting sick.

So in the West, the score is maybe 5 patients and 2 health care workers sick so far.

I would call that alarming. But wait, it gets worse.

In Africa, health care workers are 5% of the cases overall.
http://time.com/3502002/ebola-...

Presumably they are doing their best not to get infected too.

We need to do better, far better, in protecting health care workers both in the West (where we are doing poorly) and in Africa, where we are doing VERY poorly.

--PM

I was skeptical about the claim that PETA euthanizes so many animals, but studies say it's true, and may even understate the situation.

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services report on their investigation found that 94% of the animals given to PETA for adoption were instead euthanized, 90% within one day.

This is not ethical treatment of animals. There's no "nuance" here. Putting the vast majority of healthy pets to death rather than trying to find homes for them is cruel and highly unusual.

Of course, with $35 million in annual revenue, who can afford to take care of the animals, what with paying all the salaries for the people working for PETA to exploit them? PETA's job is to raise funds to pay PETA salaries. The animals are just raw material to be exploited, then tossed in a dumpster

So basically you're just anxious, because none of this "seems right" in complete absence of empirical evidence?

Somebody in a modern clinical environment who supposedly knew what they were doing got infected.
That right there is empirical evidence of something not being right.

And in your sample of 10 (or 20, who knows!) one person became ill, because, we dunno, but it sounds fishy.

It doesn't to you? "Well, they have to take off those contaminated suits, and some will get infected while
doing that. Shit happens." really isn't the right approach here.

What recommendations would you make, if you were, say, a public health official? Everyone who develops illness has to be treated in something akin to a BSL-4 facility?

No, but how about "don't mix clean and unclean environments, and follow proper decontamination
procedures while moving between them, and before undressing"?

Have you any idea how many plane flights that would require, just to cite one small aspect of the logistics?

Huh? Plane flights? Are we still talking about a controlled clinical environment in a big American city?

And all this to protect from a disease vector that's completely unsubstantiated in the literature?

Or do you do like Judge Clay Jenkins, and personally go to the family's house in shirt-sleeves and drive them to a new home? Which approach is more appropriate? Which one balances our available resources against the actual concrete threat of the disease? Which one is actually workable?

You're losing me here.

So basically you're just anxious, because none of this "seems right" in complete absence of empirical evidence? And in your sample of 10 (or 20, who knows!) one person became ill, because, we dunno, but it sounds fishy.

What recommendations would you make, if you were, say, a public health official? Everyone who develops illness has to be treated in something akin to a BSL-4 facility? Have you any idea how many plane flights that would require, just to cite one small aspect of the logistics? And all this to protect from a disease vector that's completely unsubstantiated in the literature?

Or do you do like Judge Clay Jenkins, and personally go to the family's house in shirt-sleeves and drive them to a new home? Which approach is more appropriate? Which one balances our available resources against the actual concrete threat of the disease? Which one is actually workable?

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

Makes perfect sense as a sentence gramatically and semantically, but fails to understand idioms and context. One of my favorites of this in action can be seen here. The software did an excellent job matching duck to duck, but it ends up being entirely inappropriate because it doesn't understand the context the ad is placed in.

Just goes to show that while we like to see ourselves as logical, not everything can be figured out through logic, and sometimes trying to apply logical rules can create the biggest failures. And unfortunately, logic also does not come naturally as well, but is something which has to be learned.

Because Saddam had the audacity to consider not selling oil in US Dollars?

See back in 2000:

http://content.time.com/time/m...

It is all about the economy, as always, and the US likes being the worlds reserve currency. Without it that massive $trillions_of_debt would cause them far more burden than they are currently suffering. Being the reserve currency is the main reason why the US can run such deficits and not go bankrupt.

> On average, girls are - for whatever reason - less interested in math, physics, chemistry.

Yeah, it is that "whatever reason" part that is important. Do not just hand-wave it away.

More and more it looks like it is purely the result of societal expectations.

Not for much longer. Russia. China. India.

At the rate Americans are de-funding wasteful gub-mint spending like space exploration and basic research, the whole "put a man on the moon" bit is going to become pathetically out of date. Hope that extra dollar in your job-creator's tax refund is worth it.

I consider all, or at least 99%, people in religions to be extremists that force their way on to others in one way or another, just because someone is not violent does not exclude them from being an extremist..

Try telling any religious person that YOU think their god is a joke and see the feedback you get on that statement..

Perfect example is how people in religions behave towards atheists.... ( christianity for example since you brought that up http://time.com/3450525/atheis... )

* Please not that i did not write religious people but people in religions...

The laffer curve is a fictional construct of corporate greed.It is laughed out of any conference of economists for it's absurd leaps of faith and lack of supporting evidence.

https://www.princeton.edu/~rvd...
http://scienceblogs.com/goodma...
http://business.time.com/2012/...
http://www.theguardian.com/bus...
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/L...
http://economistsview.typepad....