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The fact is, that within the continental USA, because we are electrified, the ONLY places that Solar pays for itself is on extreme rural areas

The fact is is solar may be more competitive if it received as much in subsidies as conventional energy gets. Coal receive billions of dollars in subsidies. Add in external costs, such as co2 and mercury emissions, and coal will cost more. Require nuclear power to buy it's own insurance, get rid of the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, and make companies pay their own disposal costs and nuclear power will cost more too.

Between 2002 and 2008 coal received around $17 billion in subsidies. Obama's 2011 budget proposal even cuts coal subsidies $2.3 billion over the next decade. But it's hard to see exactly how much subsidies are, as State coal subsidies and US subsidies of oil and coal more than double the subsidies of renewable energy says, it's hard to add up all the subsidies because while some are purely handouts on taxpayer dollars others are deductions on taxes owed. And nuclear power would not exist without subsidies, it is Hooked on Subsidies:

"How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

Falcon

Taxes almost never go lower. They always trend higher.

They do?

To make it obvious, let's say that 20 people start working a collective farm and through hard work, 1 person comes to own everything.

Ideally what happens is those other 19 people start looking for something else they can do with their time in exchange for stuff from the farm. Maybe one learns how to make beautiful stained-glass windows. Or another becomes a musician. Or a cook, and makes delicious food. Then all of society benefits because we don't have to put all our effort into farming anymore, one person can do it, and we begin to become a service oriented economy, and specialize. People figure out things to do. Why should those who can't figure out a way to contribute to society benefit from society?

Historically, this is what has happened, and now we have a vibrant, multi-faceted economy of which agriculture is less than 5%. That means the rest of us can spend our time doing more interesting things than working in fields. The same thing will happen with factories: why should we do boring work in factories when robots can do the work for us? Isn't that like the science fiction dream, robots doing our work? You will still have to find a way to contribute to society, but your contributions will be much more interesting.

I do agree with your policy suggestions. Incentives matter, and taxing the very behavior we want more of is a bad idea.

Finally, your pessimistic portrayal of life since the 90s is probably inaccurate, it is similar to fears heard in the 70s, and probably in pretty much every recession. Real compensation for the average worker has been increasing pretty steadily, though, although a lot of that in the past decade has gone towards rising healthcare costs.

Lots of people and businesses do move when states increase their tax burdens.

What often happens is that businesses are the first to start leaving, because being in a lower-tax state gives them competitive advantages. If you move your business to a state with a lower personal tax burden, you can effectively spend the same amount of money to give your employees higher after-tax earnings. As a business owner you keep more of your profits, so can more easily reinvest in the business.

And once the businesses start moving, populations follow as they find more job opportunities out-of-state than in. That's what happened to the area where I grew up. I would've liked to stay near my family and high school relatives, but the job opportunities were bad there. I believe this to be largely because of decades of poor governance - heavy corruption coupled with high taxes and regulations. I found far better jobs, and lower taxes, in another state and moved there.

This sort of pattern is why you see things like this: State Migration Trends. The link uses IRS data to track changes in the number of tax returns (i.e. taxpayers) in each state, as well as the income earned by those individuals. It shows a trend over the last 15 years of people moving out of high-tax states (generally Northeastern states and California) to lower-tax states (generally in the South, and Washington State).

It depends a lot on where you go, how you get there[2] and many other factors :).

But yeah, eating out or in a workplace cafeteria[1] can actually be more efficient than doing grocery shopping and cooking for yourself - you might even waste more food on average than a well-run cafeteria (I know people who buy lots of stuff on sale, and have to throw a lot of it away because they are way past expiry, lose track, or lose the desire to eat the same thing, or the purchased portions just don't match well with "healthy serving portions").

In many high density cities, having your own kitchen is a luxury. If you're single you wouldn't be using your kitchen that much. In contrast a workplace cafeteria's kitchens would be in use many times a day or even night (for 24/7 places).

[1] workplace cafeterias don't have to be bad:
Apparently Google has some decent ones: http://www.neatorama.com/2009/02/24/googles-cafeteria-doesnt-suck/
And Microsoft too: http://buckleyplanet.typepad.com/cafetour/cafeteria_tour_2006/

[2] for some figures:
The average sedentary person needs about 2000 Calories = 8 megajoules a day.
1 litre of petrol has 34 megajoules, and a car can travel about 8-10 km on one litre.

I assume it costs more than 8 megajoules of petroleum to farm, transport, cook that 2000 Calories worth of food for you (boiling 1 litre of water already costs 314 kilojoules). So your own transportation costs might not be that bad in comparison.

Oh, poor millionaires, then. So sad, so very very sad. A great dissection of this kind of blinkered thinking here.

In addition to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there have been more recent efforts, most notably by Paul Wolfowitz (as Deputy Secretary of Defense), to make nuclear weapons something the US will consider using regularly.

On the upside, the latest nuclear treaty between the US and Russia should help. As far as what us normal people can do about the threat of nukes, here's the instruction guide.

Twitter is just a tool for stalking celebs. You may think that's me dismissing it, but it's actually a really great tool for that purpose. Your first "lol xxx" from some 3rd rate Z lister is worth the price of entry, plus there's always the holy grail of concern-trolling the crap out of Wil Wheaton and watching him have a public noob-fit. Happy days.

That's counterproductive. He'll just hang out in his windowless van and cruise the neighborhood.

Wait, it's Wil Wheaton in the PedoBear outfit?

[Gag Reel @ 2:00, but -1 to your Nerd Cred if you needed to be told that]

white person's flesh is not suitable for human consumption

Not according to Rev. Thomas Baker.

Anyway, the mosquitos will happily consume you if you don't have insect repellant (which requires money - e.g. FJD$12 for a roll-on stick that might last a week or so), let alone deal with infection if you so much as brush against anything sharp (i.e. coral). Yes I was there a couple of days ago and yes the weather is beautiful. But don't get sick.

The paper which can be got in German here has almost no signs of ability to think. Consider - there is DME http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_ether , which can be produced from coal/biomass, then read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel, then figure out , as Gregory Clark did http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/12/life-after-peak.html that up to the price of 500 dollars per barrel of oil will decline the economy for only 11 percents and at such prices - DME other synfuels will spring to wide use, so it is not possible that we live in era of 500 per barrel fuel for very long time. And then - not even 11% drop will be achieved - so if 5% drop in this recession did not kill all us, how then the comparable shock will make any worse?

Nationalization was debated in the Fall of 2008, and it's getting late, so I don't want to spend too much time digging through old references, but advocates of nationalization wanted something like what Sweden did, which was hardly disastrous. It was proposed as a way of recapitalizing the banks without the moral hazard of simply bailing them out.

As for the present, Welsh is still in favor of nationalization based on the notion that the banking system is still in trouble because many banks are still insolvent.

If you accept the premise that banks have only avoided bankruptcy by pretending that many of their assets are worth more than they actually are, then there are three options:

1. Ignore the problem. The banks might be able to stay afloat long enough to make enough profit to become solvent. In the meantime however, the unhealthy banking sector might cause problems for the economy.
2. Bail them out. This is very unpopular (see TARP) and creates moral hazard.
3. Some form of temporary nationalization.

I'd bet that you could use that many megapixels to seriously boost dynamic range by averaging several adjacent pixels into one.

Simply put: no. Software "averaging" may smooth out noise, but it will not add information that was not present in the first place. Missing dynamic range at the hardware is just not there to be recovered in software. In digital camera sensors, dynamic range is limited by saturation of the sensor's photosites. Once a photosite has collected enough photons, it registers maximum charge -- information about any further photons collected at that photosite during the exposure is lost. In fact, adding more photosites per unit area increases the per-photosite noise and chip areal overhead. Noise reduces dynamic range at the low end, and less charge capacity per photosite reduces dynamic range at the high end.

As another poster notes, you might change the effective exposure received by each photosite (perhaps by Bayer-array like neutral-density filtering). Or you can do what Fuji did with the S3 pro: make a matrix of photosites of different sizes/sensitivites to improve dynamic range. Fuji's sensor, while nice, has hardly taken over the digital imaging world.

On a more constructive note, Ctein wrote up a nice exposition on The Online Photographer about both near-term sensor technologies entering production and long-term avenues for advancement in digital imaging technology.

I'd bet that you could use that many megapixels to seriously boost dynamic range by averaging several adjacent pixels into one.

Simply put: no. Software "averaging" may smooth out noise, but it will not add information that was not present in the first place. Missing dynamic range at the hardware is just not there to be recovered in software. In digital camera sensors, dynamic range is limited by saturation of the sensor's photosites. Once a photosite has collected enough photons, it registers maximum charge -- information about any further photons collected at that photosite during the exposure is lost. In fact, adding more photosites per unit area increases the per-photosite noise and chip areal overhead. Noise reduces dynamic range at the low end, and less charge capacity per photosite reduces dynamic range at the high end.

As another poster notes, you might change the effective exposure received by each photosite (perhaps by Bayer-array like neutral-density filtering). Or you can do what Fuji did with the S3 pro: make a matrix of photosites of different sizes/sensitivites to improve dynamic range. Fuji's sensor, while nice, has hardly taken over the digital imaging world.

On a more constructive note, Ctein wrote up a nice exposition on The Online Photographer about both near-term sensor technologies entering production and long-term avenues for advancement in digital imaging technology.

I call "horseshit" on that: http://lancemannion.typepad.com/lance_mannion/2009/05/death-will-not-be-taking-a-holiday.html To boot, here's a better explanation of the reason why people are crying wolf about Social Security: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0127/p09s01-coop.html

http://videoeyeball.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/09/14/upinsmoke.jpg

I don't think the old lady who was the lone holdout was "less politically sophisticated". My bet is she was a life-long straight-party-ticket voter.

You would be correct in your suspicions:

Breaking: Blago Holdout Retired State Employee Who Once Handed Out Campaign Literature For Relative Seeking Office; NPR and Liberal Talk Radio Listener

Juror # 106 [Jo Ann Chiakulas], a black female believed to be in her 60s, is a retired state public health director who has ties to the Chicago Urban League. She has handed out campaign literature for a relative who ran for public office. She listens to National Public Radio and liberal talk radio shows.

Blagojevich And The Revenge Of The Machine

Let a few years go by and we can find Mr. Lumpkin and Ms. Obama on the same page, literally if not metaphorically - on p. 36 of the annual report for the University of Chicago Hospitals, we see that Mr. Lumpkin is on the Board of Trustees and when Ms. Obama was Vice President for Community and External Affairs.

Which means what? Maybe nothing - Chicago is not that big a city if you restrict the world to black community activists such as Ms. Chiakulis or the Obamas. But it is the sort of coincidence that may or may not be a coincidence. Fortunately, we can rest easy knowing that our tireless watchdog press will ferret out the truth.

MY TIRED EYES FAIL ME... Time does not permit, but it seems from the picture and bio that Dr. Lumpkin may also be black. I only care because it increases the odds that he took a professional interest in both Ms. Obama and Ms. Chiakulis.

Ok, so if your household is running low on cash do you raise your kids allowances and add more chores?

Funny you should say that; I suggest you read this blog post by the same author.

Our household isn't only running low on cash. We are unemployed. It is a time to cut back and spend less, yes, but it's also the time to find a job. That might mean spending money to get to job interviews, cleaning old suits, patching old jackets - all of these things cost money right now, when the budget can least support it, but are beneficial in the long run because they will help us find employment.

And employed people pay a whole lot more taxes (and thus do a whole lot more to help the budget) than unemployed people.

Huh, looks like my link disappeared. This is what it was supposed to be: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09/red_states_feed.html

I suggest you read this: Sewers and Storm Drains.

Yes, paying a million people to fix up our crumbling infrastructure (or in this case, to build a high-speed railroad) will be expensive. However, all those million people will no longer be unemployed, which means that they will go from being a drain on society to being a benefit to society. This sort of thing would lead to much faster economic recovery than your "everyone stop spending money right now" plan.

This might be an explanation : http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2010/08/simply-explained-dead-code.html

Can anyone point me to a good cost/watt chart over time? I would love to be able to see how prices have dropped over the past two decades. I keep hearing that solar has to drop in price... but have no baseline to judge our progress.

It depends on what you want: space solar panels are the most expensive multi-junction technology, but achieve the highest efficiency.

If you're a huge company, you can get really great deals because you purchase whole manufacturing runs. This is also why it's hard for an individual to buy direct from any manufacturer: all their production capacity is probably already bought up by large companies, so you get the "seconds," the panels that those resellers decide they would like to sell to you (at a price mark up, of course).

Here are some panel price charts, though they're not perfect:

http://www.solarbuzz.com/Moduleprices.htm
http://futurist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/08/solar-energy-co.html

But I should point out the bias on these sites: they're in the industry, not independent review sites. So they will be competing to drive your dollars to their products.

They are just good at hiding it. But they're not even that good. Take, for example, the current fashion of outing conservative, anti-gay Republicans as gay. These people aren't puritans, they're just self-loathing, and it's gotten damn easy to catch them at being hypocrites.. so easy that it's become a cliche that if you sound like a conservative white male, you're probably cruising me.

This applies to all kinds of sins. Human frailty and ego being what they are, you will find plenty of examples of the public teetotaler who gets drunk at home and beats his wife, the anti-drug mom who's hopelessly addicted to Oxy, the pro-censorship nut who's into rape porn, and so on. And technology being what it is, their private sins will soon become part of their permanent record, too. The people they hurt will out them to get revenge or force them to get treatment. It only takes one uploaded video to make your private sin public for eternity.

Worry less about what puritans will do and more about how to forgive your loved ones when you find out what they're really like.

They even presented to the security guards the very letter that granted the photographers permission, and they were still stopped.

The video isn't available anymore, but there was a great episode that happened a couple of years ago at DC's Union Station. From: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2008/06/union-station-p.html

The Fox channel in Washington D.C. became aware that photographers were being hassled by security in Union Station (the train station in Washington), so they dispatched a reporter and a crew to do a story on it. So they're interviewing the head spokesman for Amtrak, who is explaining that there aren't any laws or rules against photography inside the train station...when a security guard comes up and tells the TV crew they'll have to turn the cameras off.

And as I recall from the video, the security guard refused to take the Amtrak spokesperson's direction to back off.

Or get the guy that gave them permission to go on a photoshoot with them. That'd be fun.

Already been done. A news crew was in the process of interviewing the head-honcho for that stuff at amtrak and a guard came up to them and told them to shut off their cameras.

Fairtax is a scam whereby the rich don't pay their fair share and the rest of us end up picking up the tab.

Another person who fell for the myth that the wealthy paid little taxes. The Top 1% Pay More Income Tax Than Bottom 90%.

23% sales tax is enough to kill pretty much any economic activity.

Yet you'd have people pay even more in taxes. The tax on the top income in the US is 35% of their salaries, bonuses and business income. And those numbers are from the pseudo (fake) liberal New York Times.

Falcon

And if you want to get it from the horse's mouth these days, you can now more than ever.

You mean: http://horsesmouth.typepad.com/

I fail to see how a blog about water sports is relevant?? ;)

No Lochlear - here is the best I could find: http://girls.c64.org/p_bloempjes_and_byties_01.gif (an amazing 160x200x16 colors)

http://www.micro-paradise.com/Gifs/Images/Amiga/Amiga_sex_tetris_01.png (352x240x64 colors)
http://www.micro-paradise.com/Gifs/Images/Amiga/Amiga_sex_tetris_02.png (Amiga Tetris)

Stickman from 1986 - http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0128777032aa970c-pi (4100 colors)
Another Amiga image - http://image.absoluteastronomy.com/images/encyclopediaimages/h/ha/ham6example.png

That's not a tablet! This is a tablet!

http://nozama.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54ed05fc288330128771bd234970c-800wi

Chinese products are cheaper because the workforce is abused....[the rest of your post follows from that assumption]

Bleeding heart liberal answer: No it is not

In fact the recent boom in manufacturing has created the greatest improvement in the living standards of Chinese people since...well, since ever. Why on earth do you think they leave the countryside by tens of millions to come and work in factories in the cities? Because they are worse off or better off by doing so? It follows the same pattern as the industrial revolution in Britain which improved the lives of average people more than anything since the invention of agriculture. You can't compare the living standard of Chinese worker to the US worker. You can't jump from a third world nation to a first world nation overnight. You have to compare the living standard of Chinese worker 10, 20, 30 years ago etc to today. Google some charts to see, per capita GDP, average wage growth etc.

Stone hearted conservative answer: So what if it is?

We as a nation benefit from having access to goods for a lot lower price than the price at which we can produce them ourselves. What do we care how they do it, by abusing their workers, polluting their cities or subsidizing their industries. It would all amounts to the same thing, benefit to us at their expense (see youtube video in the previous post). Sure we lose some of the jobs in a specific industry but we gain more jobs and more wealth overall.

Better yet, see Seth Godin's piece from last August: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/08/not-so-good-at-math.html (and the math - http://charliepark.tumblr.com/post/169016492/in-seth-godins-post-this-morning-he-talks-about & http://www.onpreinit.com/2009/08/mpg-illusion-seth-godin.html)

Adding to the irony, when I clicked the link to TFA, it popped up a flashing box declaring that I am the 1e6th visitor, I am a winner, I have won a "FREE*" "WALMART GIFT CARD!!" "*see offer details". In the words of the great Ashley Morris, FYYFF. We really ought to hold corporations accountable for their advertising claims, and any disclaimers in a smaller (or non-contrasting, or scrolled far to the bottom) font do not count.

Historically, this has been done via re-distributive taxation: subsidizing federally "friendly" states with funds taxed from the "unfriendly" ones.

This is factually untrue. The more pro-Federal government, liberal/"blue" states tend to pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal funds; anti-government, "red" states receive more federal money than they pay in taxes. See e.g. here; I'm not immediately finding more recent figures, however.

Conservatives like yourselves like to couch your arguments in select passages of the constitution without consideration of the larger context.

This reminded me of a recent slacktivist blog entry, which was about how Christian fundamentalists keep on focusing on the few parts of the Bible which talk about homosexuality and ignore the huge passages of text which condemn hoarding wealth. Given the overlap of conservatism and religion - the infamous "religious right" - I wonder if there's a connection?

Aren't judges in the US elected? Oh wait...

I just wonder how many of the teabagging crowd - you know, the ones who are completely paranoid about "teh gubmint" are also cop fanboys. They don't seem to grok one simple fact: that the guy who's at the cutting edge - the one who can rape you in the ass and then charge you with shitting on an officer's dick - is much more of a direct threat to your liberty than some pen-pusher in DC.

Are you sure? The wording of 401(d) visual works and 402(d) audio works regarding the notice is the same; the defendant must merely have "had access to" the work (as shown in Maverick v Harper, where the district court decided that this was fulfilled by publishing a notice with the work). Obviously, Maverick v Harper related to an audio work but I cannot see a functional difference between 401 and 402 regarding innocent infringement. The case: http://jgehrke.typepad.com/files/maverick-recording-co.-v.-harper.pdf See (d), innocent infringement defense 401 and 402: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000401----000-.html

One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

There are piles of astronomy data that are publicly available - you just need to write the software to dig through it. I remember a few of years ago there was a paper in the top science journal Nature in which the authors found a snow/ice/dry ice outcrop on Mars that was not there in some earlier images of the area, but appeared in some of the more recent ones. All the raw images are available online, someone just had to find this needle in the haystack. So, if you have an interesting idea, you should be able to pursue it even without astronomic equipment. Btw., the original Nature article is here (if you have a subscription): http://www.nature.com/nature/foxtrot/svc/mailform?doi=10.1038/444800a&file=/nature/journal/v444/n7121/full/444800a.html The 'before' and 'after' images are available, for example, here: http://popsci.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/marswater.jpg

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

Since it violates one of the key elements of the definition of Open Source this is not an Open Source license, and clearly _not_ a Free/Libre Open Source Software license.

I think it may even violate Wheaton's First Rule, the one about being a dick, but I can't prove that empirically.

Clicking through, it appears that Mr. Conroy lets his personal feelings on morality override the legal system, which sets a precedent for tricky problems. From the wikipedia article you linked:

"Conroy and his wife, Paula Benson, have a daughter born in November 2006 with the assistance of an egg donor and a surrogate mother, both friends of the Conroys. The procedures were performed in New South Wales instead of their home state Victoria, where altruistic surrogacy is banned."

So, if I understand that right, if you DO come from, e.g., Japan, where your actions were legal, into Australia (yes, ignorance of the law is no excuse, that's not my point), you'll be held to a different standard by a man who went somewhere else to make what he wanted to do legal. Perhaps it's more an issue of federal (country) vs. state (territory) governments, but to me that seems like a fine line; furthermore, if he returned to his home state, aren't there usually laws for crossing a border in the commission of a crime?

In any case, while it once was, it appears to no longer be criminalised, on Feb 21, 2010. Oh, well that's okay then, right?

Closing Velocity has an excellent take on Postol's analysis. Turns out the work that Postol did was not exactly rigorous. From Closing Velocity "In other words, Postol is a deceiving hack with a permanent axe to grind. Indeed, when not purposefully misrepresenting test objectives, Postol simply ignores the tests that do not support his wild-ass claims"

MDA also gives Postol the smack-down.

I've only seen radical Marxist philosophy in Women's Study Departments and a few times in Anthropology which has adopted the Three Worlds Theory which admittedly Maoist, is where we get the idea of 1st, 2nd and 3rd world countries.

The economic and historical theories espoused by Marxist, Leninist, Trotskyist and Eurocommunist parties in Western Europe have fallen almost completely off the radar in actual Philosophy, History and Economic Departments where the most popular new school I can think of are the X-Phi folks. Which attempts to be borrow methodologies from social sciences to 'test' philosophical questions. I'm pretty sure that is not particularly Communist in flavor or practice, but who knows.

Most of these wingnuts have about as much an idea what Communism or Socialism is than did actual Communists have of Capitalism. When Albania was liberated from the totalitarian Marxist-Lenist-(briefly)Maoist regime of Hoxha and company the entire countries economy collapsed because of the proliferation of pyramid schemes.

http://tedrockwell.typepad.com/files/factsreport2010apr.pdf

Page 15-19 has a information on wind-power accidents. I don't think there is any debate on fossil fuels issues for the general public, right?

Good points with wind. Then again, we don't have so many problems with nuclear because of the massive oversight and regulations. Not that that's bad, but perhaps if people are going to build more large wind farms some of that is needed there too.

I don't have any info about solar-power related deaths on-hand, but it involves people attempting to clean their roofs and falling to their deaths. I could dig it up if you really want.

You know, there are a lot of other things people do on their roofs that could cause them to fall to their deaths. Things like replacing shingles and putting up Ham radio antennas. Pinning that on solar's a little shifty.

http://tedrockwell.typepad.com/files/factsreport2010apr.pdf

Page 15-19 has a information on wind-power accidents. I don't think there is any debate on fossil fuels issues for the general public, right?

I don't have any info about solar-power related deaths on-hand, but it involves people attempting to clean their roofs and falling to their deaths. I could dig it up if you really want.

Indeed.
http://blog.ju29ro.com/uploaded_images/hooligans-reuters-735894.jpg
http://www.ilga-europe.org/var/ilga/storage/images/europe/photo_galleries/budapest_pride_5_july_2008/budapest_pride_2008_hooligans__5/70616-1-eng-GB/budapest_pride_2008_hooligans.jpg
http://www.awitness.org/eden2003/kosovogenlg.jpg
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/images/paris_riots_day_9.jpg

What the fuck are you rambling about?
Are you actually equalizing legal police actions in western Europe during civil riots with homophobic fascists' organized attacks on gay-pride marches and examples of Serbian war crimes in Bosnia?
As a reply to a comment disagreeing with OP's (somewhat delusional) idea of the stance Europeans have regarding USian prison and legal system?

What the fuck have you been smoking and why aren't you sharing with everyone?

cheers from europe.

Indeed.

http://blog.ju29ro.com/uploaded_images/hooligans-reuters-735894.jpg

http://www.ilga-europe.org/var/ilga/storage/images/europe/photo_galleries/budapest_pride_5_july_2008/budapest_pride_2008_hooligans__5/70616-1-eng-GB/budapest_pride_2008_hooligans.jpg

http://www.awitness.org/eden2003/kosovogenlg.jpg

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/images/paris_riots_day_9.jpg

The problem is that they would need to ask for an exorbitant prime for insuring the power plant, the damage in case of an bad incidental contamination will be beyond the capability of *any* insured to absorb unless such gigantic prime would be available. It won't matter if the risk is 1 to 1 million or 1 to 1 billion, if the damage to pay goes way over the capital of the insuring company. The enormous prime required would make the cost of nuclear electricity go through the roof.The government simply decided to keep the energy cheap by absolving them and avoiding the use of insurance. The airline industry has a similar problem, which went through the roof after 9/11. So basically the reaction of the insurer has nothing to do with however safe or unsafe the insurer think the nuke plants are, as you seem to imply. Nuclear plant are much, much safer than any other kind of industry. heck the US coal plant kill more people per gigawatt per years than theUS nuclear industry, due to the mining alone :

http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_frank_warner/2006/01/us_coal_mining_.html

U.S. coal mining deaths: 1990-2009

1980: 133 deaths, .06 per 200,000 hours.

1990: 66 deaths, .04 per 200,000 hours.
1991: 61 deaths, .04.
1992: 55 deaths, .04.
1993: 47 deaths, .04.
1994: 45 deaths, .04.
1995: 47 deaths, .04.
1996: 39 deaths, .03.
1997: 30 deaths, .03.
1998: 29 deaths, .03.
1999: 35 deaths, .03.
2000: 38 deaths, .04.
2001: 42 deaths, .040.
2002: 27 deaths, .028.
2003: 30 deaths, .031.
2004: 28 deaths, .027.
2005: 23 deaths, .021.
2006: 47 deaths, .040.
2007: 28 deaths, .030.
2008: 30 deaths, .030.
2009: 18 deaths. .020.


Even if you count medical incident in nuclear death incident, there isn't as much per decade as mining per year.

And as far as I can tell coal is more dangerous radioactively wise than nuclear plant:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

An exerpt for the lazy :

The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants.

1)Coal kill more directly in mining operation than nuclear plant total 2) coal release much more radioactivity in the surrounding environment than nuke plant

3) with 1+2 I would rather have a nuke plant in my backyard than a coal plant.

It's a "service" and yes they can.

I'm guessing you've never taken a single class in contract law. This is not even a grey area, IMHO.

Yes, it is true that they can change the terms at any time, but until such time as you agree to those changed terms, they have no right to operate under the assumption that you have agreed to them as Facebook does. More to the point, if the change to the terms is considered large enough to constitute a substantive change to the nature of the contract, they are required to explicitly get agreement to the updated terms or else the new contract is NOT valid.

This is very basic law, people. We're talking first year of law school. Heck, I'm not a lawyer and even I know enough about contract law to know that these terms are invalid. Some citations to start you off:

• Union Pac. R.R. v. Chi., Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pac. R.R. (among other things, ruled that a substantive change is sufficient to make a contract invalid)
• Affirmed by Douglas v. US District Court ex rel Talk America, and a blog about the case

And a few older ones that I didn't have time to find links for:

• Hanson v. Puget Sound Navigation Co., 52 Wash.2d 124, 323 P.2d 655 (1958)
• Marnon v. Vaughan Motor Co., 184 Or. 103, 194 P.2d 992 (1948)
• Carothers v. Carothers, 260 Or. 99, 488 P.2d 1185 (1971)
• Miller Construction Co. v. Watts Construction Co., 223 Or. 504, 355 P.2d 215 (1960)

A) nothing I can address here.

B) This is really common knowledge. Yahoo had a big piece on 10 areas who are hit really hard by the double whammy. Large liabilities committed to on the assumption that the good times would not end, high unemployment, no demand for new housing (so no new housing jobs). Many houses under water, being foreclosed).

C) First-- are you really that out of the loop? This has been commonly known for over a decade. But okay.. I'll google it for you.
      http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_20060621/
      The wealthy pay a lower tax *rate* than everyone else at this point too. The secret is "fixed" state taxes like auto fees, property tax, etc. run 12% on poorest but only comprise .3% on the wealthiest (same dollar amount). Social security caps at just over $100k (15% on you and me-- under 1% on the wealthy). Likewise the "property tax" benefit only benefits you to the amount that it exceeds the standard deduction. A person with a $4k property tax bill saves almost nothing (a few hundred) while a person with a $20k bill saves almost $6,000.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

"As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers)."

I can't find it now, but a later source (2008, 2009) said the top 1% now owned 42.7% (and the next had 42.3%) putting the top 20% at an incredble 95% of the wealth.

Our GINI index is close to most 3rd world countries now.

D) Again, this is fairly common knowledge. Surprised you are ignorant of it.
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/beckerposner/2010/04/american-wage-stagnationposner.html
"Between 1997 and 2008, median U.S. household income fell by 4 percent after adjustment for inflation. It presumably did not rise in 2009, and may not in 2010 either. A median is not an average; average income rose because the incomes of high earners rose, and so the effect was to increase the inequality of the income distribution..."

E) If you can buy a device that can do any manual labor that a human can do for $100,000, then why hire a human. We are very close. You don't have to pay social security taxes for the work it does. It doesn't call in sick (it may break once in a while but will probably be modular and easy to fix). It's close. A decade. They can already pick random objects out of bins, toss things in the air and catch them, assemble things faster than humans.

We are running out of jobs to step up to. Most of the jobs we can step up to based on intellect or training. Many of those jobs have a couple billion new humans who are smart enough to do those jobs and happy to do them for under $30,000 a year. It could be a paradise-- no need for most to work, essentially free food and lodging- or it could be pretty hellish.

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/12/death-to-the-ju.html

http://catholicforum.fisheaters.com/index.php?topic=3427255.0

Those links lead straight into conspiracy theory heaven. The Revolution Muslim brothers are the American Al-Qaeda. No, they're just two fanatics without a following. No, they're really agents provocateurs working for the Anti Defamation League. No, they're recruiting terrorists. No, they're Mossad. Al-Quaeda doesn't exist, and Bush bombed the WTC. No, Israel did it... ... and so on.

I find it hard to believe that somebody with near perfect English and a fanatical devotion to all things Islam doesn't know how to spell "jews", but most online sources assume just that (illiterate wannabe terrorists). The other sign says "Throw the Jew down the well", which is from Sacha Baron Cohen song. The question is, are they doing that to discredit Islamists, or are they sending a message while remaining within the limits of their First Amendment rights?

It would be great to get some objective information on that group, but even in the Wikipedia article, many of the sources look suspect, or at least heavily biased.

CJ