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The University of Chicago has already just done this.

Officially, we're not cattle. So when did making a buck off me start to take precedence over everything in the Bill of Rights?

That's not just a figure of speech. As the (great?)grandparent comment says, it's about impressions. There's plenty of evidence (1, 2, 3, for instance) that ads have the most effect on behavior when you're not paying attention. So the only way for me to stop manipulation of my own mind is not to have those ads in the background in the first place.

But advertisers have some sacred "right" to make a buck that's more important than me making my own decisions. Which is even weirder because, I'm told, the free market depends on informed consumers making free choices.

Let's face it. Advertisers are gunning for a world where our eyelids are propped open with matchsticks while we watch whatever we're told to watch.

The Constitution does not require a national postal service, it merely authorizes congress to establish one. Those silly delegates at the constitutional convention actually thought that the post office might be a source of revenue for the US.. Abolishing the post office or not has nothing to do with wiping the mud off of my stylish jackboots with the constitution.

If you don't like the 1st amendment, then call a convention and repeal the goddamn thing. But do it legally. But while it remains on the books, you are obligated to enforce it exactly as written without exception. And nowhere in the constitution are there any exceptions.

First of all, the Constitution wasn't written in a vacuum.
It was written with British common law as its foundation.
You may be surprised to know this, but disorderly conduct has never been acceptable, whether you are free speechifying or not.

Second, the whole "exactly as written" idea has already been shot, burned, and its ashes scattered at sea.
As a society, we've modified the Constitution's meaning a thousand different ways, in a thousand different contexts.
The United States is something of an outlier for Constitutionally governed countries.
The average age of a Constitution is 17 years.
"The median lifespan is only eight years, while the mode is a miniscule one year."

A school will keep the Math textbooks for an other 5 years, Algebra hasn't changed much, new books is just wasting money, just so kids have a shiny new textbook.

If only it were that simple.

Schools change the materials according to the latest fads and brain farts from the educational establishment. In San Francisco, the primary schools recently changed to Everyday Mathematics, created by the University of Chicago. The schools are getting better at teaching it, now that they've been using it for a few years, but it's still a horrible curriculum. The best teachers provide their own materials, or hang on to older textbooks.

Perhaps you should read more of the Founding Fathers before propounding ignorantly on Liberty and Tyranny. May I suggest you start with Benjamin Franklin on taxation and property.

Quoting Alexander Hamilton's Report On Manufactures (1791):

the power to raise money is plenary, and indefinite; and the objects to which it may be appropriated are no less comprehensive, than the payment of the public debts and the providing for the common defence and "general Welfare." The terms "general Welfare" were doubtless intended to signify more than was expressed or imported in those which Preceded; otherwise numerous exigencies incident to the affairs of a Nation would have been left without a provision. The phrase is as comprehensive as any that could have been used; because it was not fit that the constitutional authority of the Union, to appropriate its revenues shou'd have been restricted within narrower limits than the "General Welfare" and because this necessarily embraces a vast variety of particulars, which are susceptible neither of specification nor of definition.

How is providing for individuals in hard times not in the General Welfare? We the people get to decide what is in our welfare. Austerity is not...

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As for examples, here's a quotation from Japan's lessons for a world of balance-sheet deflation (by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times):

Despite a loss in wealth of three times GDP and a shift of 20 per cent of GDP in the financial balance of the corporate sector, from deficits into surpluses, Japan did not suffer a depression. This was a triumph. The explanation was the big fiscal deficits. When, in 1997, the Hashimoto government tried to reduce the fiscal deficits, the economy collapsed and actual fiscal deficits rose.

From What we can learn from Japan's decades of trouble :

Japan's experience strongly suggests that even sustained fiscal deficits, zero interest rates and quantitative easing will not lead to soaring inflation in post-bubble economies suffering from excess capacity and a balance-sheet overhang, such as the US.

Reagan proved deficits don't matter. England's slide under Cameron, Ireland's economic difficulties, Greece, etc. are due to the austerity death trap. Iceland rejected EU-style austerity and is doing much better.

It's a mineralogical texture (shape). It just means that the shape of the edges of the mineral grain is quite wiggly, with deep embayments and projections, kind of like the shape of the pseudopods of an amoeba. The short way to describe it would be "blobby" or "shaped like an amoeba". So, the new mineral is found as an amoeba-shaped inclusion within an (also) amoeboid-shaped olivine mineral grain. The olivine grains were already well-known from this meteorite. For example, see this paper[PDF] from 1976, although the pictures in the scan are very poor.

Conservatives believe in personal responsibility,

Until an elected conservative gets caught doing something wrong, then it's the fault of someone else... Most likely Liberals, or possibly the infamous Overzealous Staffer.

limited government,

Unless you're a woman, or gay, or an atheist.

free markets,

Even if they've demonstrably failed or the premises for a workable free market don't even exist, like in healthcare.

individual liberty, traditional American values, the plain-language meaning of the Constitution,

I like buzzwords too. I also recognize that some "traditional American values" - like virulent racism directed, at varying times and places, against almost every group on earth including nigh every ethnicity in Europe - are repulsive.

and a strong national defense.

So the government you claim will enslave us all if it goes and says Exxon can't dump oil anywhere it pleases, you'll willingly support having more firepower than the rest of the world combined? And why is big government spending now suddenly OK?

We believe as the founders did that the role of government should be to provide people the freedom necessary to pursue their own goals. Conservative policies generally emphasize empowerment of the individual to solve problems rather than expanding the size, scope, and power of government to solve them.

Have you ever actually read the words of the founding fathers? Like those of Ben Franklin, saying quite forcibly that anything more than the bare essentials of life are owned by Society as a whole, because it is Society's laws that made them possible.

And we finally get to where didnt-think-your-cunning-plan-through.jpg would go if slashdot allowed image embedding: how, precisely, do you propose that the people of the gulf coast acquire remittance from BP for destroying it? Who was it that finally had to step in once corporate dumping polluted the Cyuahoga River to the point it literally caught fire? How precisely can I be "empowered" to solve the problem of investment banker insanity crashing the world economy, other than by shooting one? And I'm sure this despicable behavior is the fault of the government too somehow. The bottom line is, we tried your ideas back when America and Europe first industrialized: The horrifying results of unregulated capitalism are exactly what made Karl Marx predict that the workers would revolt.

FDR, any closing remarks? But, they are guilty of more than deceit: When they imply that the reserves thus created against both these qualities will be stolen, they attack the integrity and the honor of American government itself! Those that suggest that are already aliens to the spirit of American democracy.

Almost every single sentence you've wrote is wrong as far as I can tell. See Zuckerman's paper I referenced earlier for a very long list of references showing that crime is not reduced by religiosity. There are complicating factors (for example, in a worse off society people may be more inclined to turn to religion) but your claim that there are "numerous studies" backing up this sort of position is simply false. Moreover, if this sort of claim were at all true then one would expect Sweden to be in absolutely awful shape since it is even less religious than Russia and China, yet Sweden is extremely well off.

As to your claim about philosophy, many prominent philosophers, such as Kant, Bentham, and Rahls would disagree. All three would see humans as having innate instincts for moral good. And in fact, studies have shown that many mammals will instinctively help other members of their species even when they have not encountered them before. For example, when another rat is hurt or trapped, nearby rats will help free them http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2011/12/08/helping-your-fellow-rat-rodents-show-empathy-driven-behavior. The instincts for basic moral behavior run deep.

At a temporal level, the claim is also questionable. It is pretty clear that over time, religiosity has gone down. But over the last few hundred years, the overall violence level when measured by the percentage of the population that dies violent deaths has gone down. There's an excellent book about the decline of violence among humans, The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker, which I strongly recommend.

By the way, the first major proponent for National atheism is Carl Marx. This is something to think very strongly about, though I very much doubt that people will do so even after reading that statement.

Ok. So first of all, his name was "Karl". Second, the that's just not true. Marx was born in 1818, when the French revolution was already over. During the French Revolution, major proponents of atheism included Jacques Hébert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_H%C3%A9bert and Chaumette http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Gaspard_Chaumette. Curiously, the bloody Robespierre strongly favored deism. But let's pretend that your claim was true for a moment and that Karl Marx really had been the first proponent of national atheism. Would this matter? Not really. This is in essence the genetic fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy- who comes up with an idea doesn't impact whether the idea is valid. For example, the mathematician John Nashh is schizophrenic- that doesn't make his math incorrect. And even if the genetic fallacy were valid, Marx's idea of national atheism, a forced destruction of religion, is extremely different than a secular society that simply doesn't care much about religion, (like say Sweden).

At some point not too long ago your "proper" British English language had the month first.

I don't know if/when that was, and it wasn't necessarily all "proper" British English -- perhaps just in some contexts. Legal documents say things like "on this 5th day of June in the 2012th year of our Lord". Here's one from 1806: http://www.pdavis.nl/Legis_06.htm and one from 1679: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_9_2s2.html

Please use fewer ellipses. I hate to suggest that perhaps you edit your comments, but given that your remarks here will be durable beyond anyone's ken, you may want to refrain from overstating the obvious or trivial.

Beyond the standard of obviousness, there are differences between software patents and most other forms of patent which you seem to be completely unaware of. This AC has a good summary. To this list we may add that patents are meant to cover implementations, not methods. You're supposed to be able to patent the cotton gin, but not "a process for separating cotton from seeds." Software patents exclusively fall into the latter domain; the rights to the implementation fall under copyright law. It is relevant to note that patent submissions used to require a working model of the device in question. This seems to be a useful standard of patentability; it could be beneficial to revive it. Looking beyond the basis for the patents, we have the issue of how these patents are actually being used, which is almost certainly to no one's benefit except the lawyers. I would be gratified for a counterexample.

Any one of the above reasons should be enough to decide the issue of software patents; sensibly they are not allowed in Europe. I think it entirely prudent to examine the fundamental basis of other areas of patent law, such as with chemical and genetic patents, and to judge them by the same standards.

My ultimate view is shared with that of Jefferson, and as I cannot hope to improve on his statement I shall merely quote:

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

Source document. The entirety is well worth reading, and shouldn't strain anyone's attention span.

The argument of patents is not one of ownership. There is no such thing as 'intellectual property' save by grant of society. Given that we need not invest much in order to spread ideas around the globe, what benefit do we see in restricting that natural flow? That a few may profit?

Sounds like a relative of the ICFP 2008 contest: http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/newsletter/353

Yes, clearly the only possible influence on reported crime statistics is the number of guns per capita, and it should be based on a single data point. Or, just maybe you could use a back-to-back comparison for states or countries that change their laws re: gun regulation. John R Lott, Jr. did a lot of research and wrote the book "More Guns, Less Crimes". Here is an interview where he talks about countries with lots of crime, few gun and other with low crime but lots of guns.

His research was mostly re: US County crime and gun rate over time -- And his conclusion is obvious based on the title.

Now, people and studies both agree and disagree with his research & conclusions. Both his and other studies are likely to be flawed due to biases of authors (political or otherwise).

I think calling the parent post of my rant to be informative is simply ridiculous. Real information in this realm is hard, if not impossible to attain.

Kewl. I wrote a whole article in CACM on this proposal. I would have cited you had I known you'd mentioned it too.

I've gotten nowhere convincing anyone to implement the idea, although it would cost very little to provide an automatic registrar, and it doesn't have to be right below a TLD.

In fact, the basic service might end up being more useful for distributing public keys than for DNSish utility per se. I have a lot of notes regarding more detailed protocols, and the value as public key distribution infrastructure. Then I got too sick to finish. If you have any interest in co-authoring, you can look at http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/Citizen/Network_Identifiers/ and/or contact me as michael_odonnell at acm.org

Even if you just want to pursue the ideas on your own, I'd rather have them snitched than wasted. Everything I wrote is licensed Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike, and I'd add a more liberal license if anybody wants it.

If people keep coming up with these "solutions" to enable piracy, then maybe it's best to attack the problem from another angle: focus on the bug in pirates' moral programming that makes them believe that piracy is okay.

There ain't nothing wrong with NOT obeying arbitrary rules that go against the human nature of sharing knowledge. If there's a bug somewhere, it was the ban on copying that originated in clerical Europe's Middle Ages and spread like wildfire across the globe with European (esp. British and French) colonialism. If there's a self-inflicted bug we need to eradicate, it's this ban.

And yet, they implemented neither income nor wealth taxes, at least at the federal level. Odd how you imply they didn't want the accumulation of wealth and yet they did nothing to stop it. I think they actually knew that wealth was the incentive to success and didn't want to cripple a new country by trying to redistribute the wealth.

The early United States did not need income taxes to support the Federal Government.
The government floated along on excise taxes for a while, then excise and sales taxes, then just tariffs.
Import tariffs were enough for ~45 years until the Civil War brought about the return of sales and excise taxes,
as well as pre-cursor to the IRS in order to administer the first progressive income tax and progressive inheritance tax.

Anyways, I only mention all this to give some context to the discussion.
I'd suggest reading this letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison,
where Jefferson explicitly talks about poverty and concentrated land ownership (wealth).

Just to be clear, the Founding Fathers did not think about progressive taxation as a means to redistribute wealth.
In their eyes, those who could contribute more to support the Federal government, should.
Something the USA desperately needs to do right now.

Without some kind of copyright and patent protection, there is less incentive to create something intangible

this is TOTAL bullshit. it was totally to the contrary.

most lively and active period in music was in between 1700-1850. this is the era exclusively almost ALL great composers born and died, and a number of them totally shaped what 'music' is and how is done. (even bach is enough himself, and he died a bimbo)

the most active and lively period in science and engineering happens to be within a similar period, 1750-1850. and this is also the era in which patents et al had the lowest weight in how science was done. most of the scientists lacked funds and support, and yet, many of the biggest scientists came among these people. DESPITE there were already patent offices circa 1800, scientists were totally behaving like the free software movement of our contemporary times - freely sharing everything.

starting 1850, moneyed interests and newly materializing megacorporations spanning nations have started to come into play. and from this point on, innovation and discoveries subsided. the only reason the period starting from that point seems more 'scientific' is, what was discovered in the earlier period being put into practice in daily life. a period of application than discovery.

and we are still in that direction today. we are just feeding on what the pioneers DISCOVERED in their time of free science in 18th century. if you look at the stuff we do today, its application and reapplication of already known principles - mostly refinement, than discovery.

its not like we are having gravity capable vehicles and flying around in cities, or even able to use quantum computing in applications. we are THAT slowed down.

if you look at life and knowledge circa 1700 and life and knowledge circa 1850, you will notice that it looks like a superhero comic - life was SO out of reality compared to the start of that period.

and look at 1850 and now, and you will not see the same drastic difference. almost all our technology is similar and some almost the same, but more refined.

i will leave you to ponder the words of the first chairman and founder of u.s. patent office :

Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices. Thomas Jefferson, 13 August 1813

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html

Keep in mind that the Tevatron is only the last stage of a whole series of accelerators. The Booster and the Main Injector, the next two biggest rings, are still operational, as well as various other linacs and beam lines (neutrinos, pions, muons, name your particle). In fact the Main Injector is probably the new focus of the site, for long-baseline neutrino studies.

In addition to commercial uses, accelerators have huge potential for medical use, especially proton beams, which are an exploding cancer treatment option. Fermilab already has a strong medical physics program, so expanding into industrial applications is a reasonable move.

The University of Chicago (which runs Fermilab) Alumni Magazine has a very good article about Fermilab and the future:

While scientists at CERN continue research on the high-energy frontier, there is still room for discoveries at Fermilab. The focus will shift to neutrino beams used in fixed-target experiments, and researchers will take advantage of the Tevatron’s now quiet machinery. “There are a total of nine accelerators at Fermilab now,” says Kim. “Four will be shut down, and three of these four will be reconfigured to boost the intensity of the neutrino and muon beams.” Instead of speeding up the particle beams, researchers will work to produce the most particles possible, hoping to observe previously unseen interactions.

Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin still holds the world's largest refractor in a beautiful 19th century building. The Astronomer royale of Scotland once called it, "The Taj Mahal of astronomy" and perfectly fits the stereotype of what an observatory should look like. Their visiting hours are meager and much of the lovely grounds was turned into a housing development during the property bubble, but it's well worth a visit.

Venture further north to the Wisconsin Dells, a down-to-earth tourist trap where you'll find water parks, Indian trading posts and.... the Mir space station? Yep. One Mir copy fell out of orbit, the other is somewhere in Russia and this one is in Wisconsin.

The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry isn't my favorite science museum, but it is big and was recently updated.

The university of Chicago's old Stagg Field was demolished (happily, via non-nuclear means) but you can visit a sculpture at the site of the world's first man-made atomic pile.

I hope your insightful post and related predictions are very wrong, but I am hard pressed to find flaws in what you say other than trying to stay hopeful.

Links you might find of interest:

"They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45"
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

"How Germans Fell for the 'Feel-Good' Fuehrer"
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,347726,00.html

"Voyage from Yesteryear"
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary

My site with lots of alternatives to disaster:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/

On optimism and other things by Howard Zinn:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html

Please make sure you are getting your vitamin D, eating lots of vegetables and fruits, and getting omega-3s to be in the best of health for any tough times to come.

The paper is here.

So, this makes you either an ignorant fool that should read a book, or an unashamed partisan propagandists that must resort to such obvious lies. I hope its the prior. The latter is just so Joseph Goebbels (that's not a compliment btw).

Funny, that's what I thought about you.

Confident that I hadn't accidentally brainwashed myself with revisionist history, and encouraged by the fact that you couldn't be bothered to casually mention a single issue that would contradict my argument despite the alleged abundance of such issues, I decided to dedicate my evening to proving my point.

First of all, I'd like to cover the role reversal on civil rights issues which you know less about than a foreigner:

http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/programs/beyond/workshops/ampolpapers/fall07-schickler.pdf
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/History_of_the_Democratic_Party_(United_States)#The_Johnson_Years:_1963.E2.80.931968
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s6980.html
tl;dr-friendly summary: http://civilliberty.about.com/od/historyprofiles/p/democratic.htm

Next I want to continue your timeline up to the present day, but I had to help a relative with a cell phone problem and won't have time to finish it tonight, however I'll try again tomorrow evening. It will start with the (SPOILERS horrifyingly racist /SPOILERS) history of the Reagan administration.

It is quite amusing how educational and research institutions try to immediately flaunt their affiliations with the Nobel Laureates. Bruce A. Beutler is a particularly intriguing case. The University of Chicago chalks this up as laureate number 86 as he attended medical school there. The Scripps Research Institute where he was a professor until recently is hailing him as their own. This is despite that as of Septermber 1, 2011, Prof. Beutler is now Director of the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where he was a medical resident and a professor from 1986 to 2000 (and began his nobel laureate work).

Nonetheless, congratulations to Dr. Bruce A. Beutler on his award, and all the institutions which fostered his career. Best wishes to him as he joins a growing cadre of formidable researchers in Texas (yes, the same Texas as GH Bush, GW Bush, and presidential candidate Rick Perry).

References
Shaw Prize Autobiography
http://www.shawprize.org/en/shaw.php?tmp=3&twoid=90&threeid=180&fourid=306&fiveid=153

UT Southwestern Press Release
http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/utsw/cda/dept353744/files/654940.html
http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/utsw/cda/dept353744/files/638281.html

Scripps Research Institute Press Release
http://www.scripps.edu/news/press_releases/nobelprize.html

The University of Chicago front page (right side):
http://www.uchicago.edu/

Sure, why don't I just do ALL your fucking googling for you. Sit tight.

Dismissive, condescending, and frankly wasteful. Initiating your response with this tone is probably beneath you.

You must really use sources other than Limbaugh and Trump.

A silly attempt at pigeonholing my opinion. Again, you should think more of yourself than this. How am I supposed to take you seriously when the first three sentences you wrote in reply are this shallow?

If you think the list below is the mark of someone very, very average, you must keep company with some very,very accomplished people - how many of them are in Congress?

I'm not American. I know many, exceedingly accomplished people. Being a member of the U.S. Congress is not much of an intellectual or executive accomplishment, really. Nor, may I add, is being a Junior Senator. There are many very bright politicians, and just as many catastrophically stupid ones. Not a consistent marker of exceptionalism.

But we're talking about Barack Obama here, right? So enough with the subtle ad hominems, ok?

1.) President of the Harvard Law Review - that's not easy to come by. And don't try to claim "affirmative action" for that one - there's no way the rich whites who got passed over would have taken that lying down.
2.) Graduates from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude ( top 10% )
2.) Community organizer - this gets mentioned a lot by the RadicalRightWingNuts, as if it's a bad thing. Isn't that supposedly how the Tea Party got started (aside from the clear evidence it was actually funded by billionaires)?
3.) Author - wrote "Dreams from My Father" shortly after graduating from Harvard. How many politicians have published a book at the start of their careers?
4.) 4 years as a civil rights attorney at Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallard. Some details at http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/06/nation/na-obamalegal6
5.) Twelve years of teaching at UofChicago Law School ( info below is currently posted at http://www.law.uchicago.edu/media )
Statement Regarding Barack Obama
The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer."

From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers has high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.

Yes, I was fully aware of the preceding before I posted, thank you. Yes, that is his resume, in short.

The question here isn't what, but why. There is nothing in the accomplishments listed above that should rationally lead one to anoint somebody a savior.

His articles are average. His books are rudimentary. He is certainly not a compelling orator when off-script. It's the minutia of the man that should give one pause. Again, Barack Obama is utterly average. The question you still need to answer is how someone of such obviously modest gifts has achieved so much?

I'm certainly not arguing his accomplishments as listed, as relatively pedestrian as they are. My point remains; how did such an ordinary man become known as an i

...everything he has, including the Presidency, he earned.

I would really like to see you prove that.

Sure, why don't I just do ALL your fucking googling for you. Sit tight.

It was utterly obvious from his initial coronation at the Democratic convention in '04 that he was a talking head and nothing more.

He's not dumb. But he's very, very average. The thing about his pre-presidential resume, was that he didn't really have one.

You must really use sources other than Limbaugh and Trump. If you think the list below is the mark of someone very, very average, you must keep company with some very,very accomplished people - how many of them are in Congress?

1.) President of the Harvard Law Review - that's not easy to come by. And don't try to claim "affirmative action" for that one - there's no way the rich whites who got passed over would have taken that lying down.
2.) Graduates from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude ( top 10% )
2.) Community organizer - this gets mentioned a lot by the RadicalRightWingNuts, as if it's a bad thing. Isn't that supposedly how the Tea Party got started (aside from the clear evidence it was actually funded by billionaires)?
3.) Author - wrote "Dreams from My Father" shortly after graduating from Harvard. How many politicians have published a book at the start of their careers?
4.) 4 years as a civil rights attorney at Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallard. Some details at http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/06/nation/na-obamalegal6
5.) Twelve years of teaching at UofChicago Law School ( info below is currently posted at http://www.law.uchicago.edu/media )
Statement Regarding Barack Obama
The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer."

From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers has high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.

The average restaurant manager or small-business owner with couple of years under their belt, has more executive experience than Obama had prior to running his campaign.

It's not just that he's a product of the advantages gained by Affirmative Action; it's that he is the ultimate product of said advantages.

Watching the mythos be manufactured and marketed, and most distressingly seeing tens of millions of people just like me fall for it completely, with a religious fervor... it was an informative first-hand lesson in how the whole mess of religion must have started in the first place.

A part of us is willing to suspend disbelief at a moments notice, as long as the reward is somebody telling us everything will be ok. Don't you find that terrifying?

Obama is far more of a product than any previous U.S. president, and that's saying something.

2c

I don't agree about Obama and affirmative action but do you know who the ultimate product of AA is ( yes, there's a double-entendre here ) - former 2-time POTUS George Walker "Fucknuts" Bush. How did he get into Yale? Was it his grades, his SAT scores? Hmm, I wonder.

Measles has a fatality rate of 0.3% so if the entire population of the UK was not vaccinated, you could expect nearly 200k people that are currently alive to have died from it.

Thanks for the history lesson. I can wonder if the same happened in Argentina, too?
    "Argentina: Sheer neoliberal lunacy"
    http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/twr137a.htm
"The following article provides the background to the current crisis in Argentina and traces the roots of the crisis to adoption of the neoliberal economic reforms advocated by the IMF. ... SINCE 1989-90, Argentinaâ(TM)s neoliberal economic model has closely followed the Washington Consensus requirements: trade (tariff reduction) and financial (free capital inflows and outflows) liberalisation; deregulation of the economy (liberalisation of prices of goods); and the âretirementâ(TM) of the State from economic activities (privatisation of the state enterprises, e.g., oil and gas, banks, telecommunications) as well as some of its functions (coverage of social security, for example). This prescription, which has been applied mainly through the medium of the economic reform policies of the Bretton Woods institutions (in particular the IMF), has also shaped the development of many other countries of Latin America. ..."

I can fear you will prove right, sadly. The USA is already so far gone. But the problem is, Mexico did not have nuclear weapons and other WMDs like killer robots to unleash as it descended into madness. The USA, on the other hand...

"They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45"
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter."

Just saw Isles (previously mentioned) had some videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3krXLJEfdhQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WX6dcsn-fc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c52hHMHsOGU
etc.

My wife and I visited Isles, Inc about 18 years ago, to talk about our garden simulator. In Marty Johnson's office he had this quote under his computer monitor: "You can't plow a field by turning it over in your mind".

Of course, if you are a computer programmer or mathematician who spends a lot of time on mental things, that adage may be a bit less true, :-) but it's still a good sentiment about engagement.

I regret now not trying harder to figure out some way we could have worked together back then.

Those videos might be inspiring as far as thinking about the value of what you are doing in Chicago and what is possible.

Although I feel we still need bigger things like a basic income or other broader shifts, too, if our economy continues to implode with rising productivity (like from robotics) coupled with limited demand from currency issues and an environmental ethic and the law of diminsihing returns on having more stuff. Stronger local communities might lead to the energy to make bureaucracies accountable again and get better policies in place?

Related about a new book on US economic problems:
http://www.counterpunch.org/mokhiber07292011.html
"Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner were at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. this week for a discussion about their book -- Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. ... "Five years from now, mark my words -- none of the people responsible for this -- not only not be held accountable -- they will be in more important positions -- that is what would happen in Russia." Rosner pretty much agreed. "My father was a federal prosecutor and my mother was a criminologist, and her speciality was Soviet criminology," Rosner said. "As she read our book -- she kept saying -- Jesus, this sounds like the way it is done there. Every piece of it. You have an entrenched bureaucracy without accountability." Rosner said a "code of silence" protects those complicit in the recent collapse."

That new book mentioned there echoes this old one:
"They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45"
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security."

Stronger local communities might be able to generate more social energy for national (and global) accountability?
"Visions of a Free Society"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjHTrwCstcM

I mentionian "localism" as one way to deal with increasing unemployment towards the end here (as one of four broad apporaches including a basic income, a gift economy, and better democratic resource-based planning):
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

So, all the local efforts can add up nationally. How can we expect to have healthy national politics if our local politics are non-existent or dysfunctional? (I guess the Greens have been saying that for a long time.)

W

The political application in the modern era may be relatively new

True, and that's when it became a problem for the rest of us.

The post that started this discussion claimed it was creationism that is holding back technology advancements and that is just not true.

I'd like to agree with you but I have deeper misgivings. Science isn't a collection of knowledge and facts, it's a process for acquiring and understanding them -- the only one that works. Those who would bring religion into science classrooms can have only one goal -- to teach kids that reality isn't all that interesting and important, and that objective truth plays second fiddle to spirituality.

And it's working. It's 2011, and 59% of U.S. physicians believe in an afterlife (or at least they did in 2005 when the survey was conducted). A similar percentage favor 'intelligent design' over Darwinian models of evolution.

Are those figures in line with what you'd have guessed? You may disagree but IMHO those surveys are a big deal, even though they involve medical doctors rather than technologists and engineers. They tell me that respect for science as the only valid process for learning about our Universe, our world, and our bodies is in decline. There's no way you would have gotten results like these in the Sputnik era, or even in the 1930s.

The more science does for people -- and the less religion does for them -- the more they seem to cling to the latter. That's not entirely the fault of public education but it damned sure should be a big concern for it.

What you want is an iButton. It can be used to store a crypto key, and the device itself can be secured both cryptographically and physically. I would assume that with enough effort you could get the die out of an iButton but the device is designed to prevent this, providing physical tamper security; Crypto iButtons have a crypto processor built in. Then there's Java iButtons, which include a little bitty processor and which run tiny little Java applets. They have already come and gone (ISTR you could actually buy them at one time, and not just get them at one JavaOne conference) but they seem handy. There is actually a monetary iButton but I didn't read any of the datasheets.

poop on having a button though, you just touch the button to the terminal.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

From "They Thought They Were Free -- The Germans 1933-45": http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

The U.S. is much better than China. We are free.

The new glass-and-robots Mansueto Library, with its capacity for 3.5 million books, is right next to the older Regenstein Library, which still has roughly 4 million books in open stacks. Within a five minute walk of these two libraries is the Crerar Science Library with some 1.3 million books in open stacks. The two older "open-stacks" libraries, built in the 70s and 80s, aren't going away anytime soon. The majority of the University of Chicago's collection will therefore continue to be easily browsable by students and faculty alike for decades to come.

The new library will house rarely consulted books and the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of serial volumes in the University's collection - journals and pamphlets which have already been digitized and need only rarely be consulted directly. The Mansueto is therefore more like a stylish reading room on top of a warehouse of rarely-consulted books - remote storage with five-minute retrieval times. http://news.lib.uchicago.edu/blog/2011/05/16/mansueto-library-celebrates-books-in-digital-era/

1) Your library has 1/4 as much storage.
2) Your library doesn't look like this:

http://www.uchicago.edu/features/20110520_mansueto/

Meat eating accounts for 32% of the USA's total greenhouse gas emissions.

All the math is here: http://pge.uchicago.edu/workshop/documents/martin2.pdf

Reducing your meat consumption by just 20% is equivalent to buying a Prius (except you'll be healthier because of it and won't be avoided at parties).

No. "General Welfare" is a term from contract law

In 1789?

This isn't how Hamilton understood its meaning:

The terms "general Welfare" were doubtless intended to signify more than was expressed or imported in those which Preceded; otherwise numerous exigencies incident to the affairs of a Nation would have been left without a provision. The phrase is as comprehensive as any that could have been used; because it was not fit that the constitutional authority of the Union, to appropriate its revenues shou'd have been restricted within narrower limits than the "General Welfare" and because this necessarily embraces a vast variety of particulars, which are susceptible neither of specification nor of definition.

It is therefore of necessity left to the discretion of the National Legislature, to pronounce, upon the objects, which concern the general Welfare, and for which under that description, an appropriation of money is requisite and proper. And there seems to be no room for a doubt that whatever concerns the general Interests of learning of Agriculture of Manufactures and of Commerce are within the sphere of the national Councils as far as regards an application of Money.

The only qualification of the generallity of the Phrase in question, which seems to be admissible, is this--That the object to which an appropriation of money is to be made be General and not local; its operation extending in fact, or by possibility,* throughout the Union, and not being confined to a particular spot.

Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures

*- emphasis added.

Think of infrastructure and economic development projects like the state-funded Erie Canal in the 1820s or the federally funded TVA in the 1930s. Once you demonstrate what can be done, you can do more.

I'm pretty sure that the use of non-words like "ideation"

That word disgusted me as well. I was certain that it had to be a marketing speak neologism. It isn't. Ideation is a legitimate word, resurrected from disuse by these heinous trolls.

Websters (1913): ideation

What do we know?

First, we know from the California study, as confirmed by more recent, better publicized studies, that the real problem is too much medical malpractice, not too much litigation. Most people do not sue, which means that victims—not doctors, hospitals, or liability insurance companies—bear the lion’s share of the costs of medical malpractice.

Second, because of those same studies, we know that the real costs of medical malpractice have little to do with litigation. The real costs of medical malpractice are the lost lives, extra medical expenses, time out of work, and pain and suffering of tens of thousands of people every year, the vast majority of whom do not sue. There is lots of talk about the heavy burden that “defensive medicine” imposes on health costs, but the research shows this is not true.

Third, we know that medical malpractice insurance premiums are cyclical, and that it is not frivolous litigation or runaway juries that drive that cycle. The sharp spikes in malpractice premiums in the 1970s, the 1980s, and the early 2000s are the result of financial trends and competitive behavior in the insurance industry, not sudden changes in the litigation environment.

Fourth, we know that “undeserving” people sometimes bring medical malpractice claims because they do not know that the claims lack merit and because they cannot find out what happened to them (or their loved ones) without making a claim. Most undeserving claims disappear before trial; most trials end in a verdict for the doctor; doctors almost never pay claims out of their own pockets; and hospitals and insurance companies refuse to pay claims unless there is good evidence of malpractice. If a hospital or insurance company does settle a questionable claim to avoid a huge risk, there is a very large discount. This means that big payments to undeserving claimants are the very rare exception, not the rule.

Finally, we know that there is one sure thing—and only one thing—that the proposed remedies can be counted on to do. They can be counted on to distract attention long enough for the inevitable turn in the insurance cycle to take the edge off the doctors’ pain. That way, people can keep ignoring the real, public health problem. Injured patients and their lawyers are the messengers here, not the cause of the medical malpractice problem.

Problems: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,347726,00.html
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402

Solutions?
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation

That the biggest indicator of slashdot's downfall is that every single article posted is immediately met by a claim that the inclusion of said article indicates the site's downfall.

Unfortunately, the old Slashdot drinking game at http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~neilk/drinking.txt appears to be gone, but perhaps it needs to be updated anyway. "Somebody posts a comment complaining about how Slashdot is going downhill and this story is an example" is probably a good one for the game; perhaps "I know I'm going to be modded down, but..." also belongs on the list, with an additional one for "Somebody says 'I know I'm going to be modded down, but...' and gets modded up".

antiquities history. then, renaissance. then, enlightenment. you may opt to skip baroque. then scientific age.

especially things like this.

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html

scroll down to last paragraph, and read the last parts of the paragraph before it, and the last paragraph itself.

You're kidding, right? If anything, it's the other way around. Many patentees are attempting to use the work of others by claiming infringement and seeking royalties or injunctive relief to stop other people from practicing the patents. The problem I have with patents is that they allow a patentee to tell me what I can or cannot do with my own property. That is hardly a free market idea.

You might want to read up on Jefferson. Here is a relevant quote: "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it."

It seems such a shame that the life of the American economy has in part devolved into a fight over the ownership of ideas.

.....Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices......

if you are going to talk about economy and science history and make synthesis out of in between either of them, learn BOTH first. dont sell generic shit you have been conditioned to memorize in for-profit education institutions to 3rd parties. its an insult to faculties of mind and cognition.

States have the right to have an anti-sodomy law (as stupid as it is).

Wrong answer, in 2003 the Supreme Court ruled that anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional.

would you support Panama paying the US back (adjusted for inflation of course)?

Actually yes, but obviously it is not as simple as the cost of building the canal and calculating in inflation, there are substantial monetary benefits that were gained by many other nations and many corporations. It may turn out the way you think it will.

The only reason religion is brought into this is because you're using it as a strawman because you disagree with those particular laws

No, Ron Paul brought religion into the argument, read his legislation, it is a huge determining factor in several of his legislative attempts.

And it is not that I disagree with any specific law, I disagree with the idea that it is okay for states to infringe on constitutionally protected rights of citizens.

I think James Madison put it best in his letter to Thomas Jefferson on October 24 1787 where he specifically addressed the relationship between the newly formed Constitution and the rights of states...

A constitutional negative on the laws of the States seems equally necessary to secure individuals agst. encroachments on their rights. The mutability of the laws of the States is found to be a serious evil. The injustice of them has been so frequent and so flagrant as to alarm the most stedfast friends of Republicanism. I am persuaded I do not err in saying that the evils issuing from these sources contributed more to that uneasiness which produced the Convention, and prepared the public mind for a general reform, than those which accrued to our national character and interest from the inadequacy of the Confederation to its immediate objects.

Ron Paul's efforts would undo the protections against state level oppression of rights and would be a regressive move for the United States as a representative democracy.

Exactly.

Ron Paul makes popular statements about the big bad Federal government but gets a free pass on the real legislation he tries to ram through Congress that is designed specifically to give state government the right to infringe on citizens rights. Ron Paul is no friend of freedom nor the Constitution of the United States. In fact, James Madison noted that the infringement of citizen's rights by these "State's Rights" goons was likely the sole driving factor that made the Constitution of the United States possible...

James Madison, October 24 1787

A constitutional negative on the laws of the States seems equally necessary to secure individuals agst. encroachments on their rights. The mutability of the laws of the States is found to be a serious evil. The injustice of them has been so frequent and so flagrant as to alarm the most stedfast friends of Republicanism. I am persuaded I do not err in saying that the evils issuing from these sources contributed more to that uneasiness which produced the Convention, and prepared the public mind for a general reform, than those which accrued to our national character and interest from the inadequacy of the Confederation to its immediate objects.

The Constitution of the United States was meant to protect against the flagrant oppression of mob democracy that was practised at the state level and that is exactly what Ron Paul wants to bring back. And whether they realise it or not Ron Paul supporters are supporting establishment of a Christian State Theocracy with oppressive religion based laws.

These are some pertinent Ron Paul bills that highlight his true political nature:
Religious Freedom Restoration Act
Expressing the sense of the Congress that the Panama Canal and the Panama Canal Zone should be considered to be the sovereign territory of the United States.
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States authorizing the States to prohibit the physical destruction of the flag of the United States and authorizing Congress...

Here's a link to the abstract just to nip all this 3rd and 4th hand speculation about flood myths and Atlantis: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/657397

It's great for bringing public attention but not so great for highlighting the actual science behind the pop sci article.

the 1913 public domain version of Webster's that is widely distributed on the Internet includes the infringement definition for "pirate"

Wow, you are right! You can even look back further than that and see that even the 1828 version contained "To take by theft or without right or permission, as books or writings".

I have never understood why the term generates such a massive response here. All language is fluid. Even if the definition wasn't in these old dictionaries, it is in the modern ones because that is the term that people use for the act. Just live with it, I say.

Before the 1st amendment was written, when the Constitution was written and ratified, it was already well understood that, contrary to your rewritten history, Constitutional Law from the beginning was meant to place in check the attacks of state governments on the individual rights of United States citizens. Your history is based on the Articles of Confederation which gave immeasurable rights to the states and was an absolute failure, the Constitution put an end to religious mobs creating laws that served their religious majority.

James Madison to Thomas Jefferson
24 Oct. 1787

"A constitutional negative on the laws of the States seems equally necessary to secure individuals agst. encroachments on their rights. The mutability of the laws of the States is found to be a serious evil. The injustice of them has been so frequent and so flagrant as to alarm the most stedfast friends of Republicanism. I am persuaded I do not err in saying that the evils issuing from these sources contributed more to that uneasiness which produced the Convention, and prepared the public mind for a general reform, than those which accrued to our national character and interest from the inadequacy of the Confederation to its immediate objects. A reform therefore which does not make provision for private rights, must be materially defective."

And it was fully understood that of the many distinctions that separate individuals into groups and result in oppression religion is one of those "erroneous or ridiculous" differences that a lesser human would use as grounds to oppress.

"In addition to these natural distinctions, artificial ones will be founded, on accidental differences in political, religious or other opinions, or an attachment to the persons of leading individuals. However erroneous or ridiculous these grounds of dissention and faction, may appear to the enlightened Statesman, or the benevolent philosopher, the bulk of mankind who are neither Statesmen nor Philosophers, will continue to view them in a different light. It remains then to be enquired whether a majority having any common interest, or feeling any common passion, will find sufficient motives to restrain them from oppressing the minority."

And it was known that some would question the ability of a central government to protect the rights of individuals better than a state government. And the answer was simple, a government must have an extensive sphere of influence to protect all individuals.

"It may be asked how private rights will be more secure under the Guardianship of the General Government than under the State Governments, since they are both founded on the republican principle which refers the ultimate decision to the will of the majority, and are distinguished rather by the extent within which they will operate, than by any material difference in their structure. A full discussion of this question would, if I mistake not, unfold the true principles of Republican Government, and prove in contradiction to the concurrent opinions of theoretical writers, that this form of Goverment, in order to effect its purposes, must operate not within a small but an extensive sphere."

And has history has shown religion stands out as one of the greatest sources of oppression therefore justifying a strong central government that supersedes the power of the state governments to protect the citizens from the religious zealots.

"Will two thousand individuals be less apt to oppress one thousand, or two hundred thousand, one hundred thousand? Three motives only can restrain in such cases. 1. a prudent regard to private or partial good, as essentially involved in the general and permanent good of the whole. This ought no doubt to be sufficient of itself. Experience however shews that it has little effect on individuals, and perhaps still less on a collection of individuals, and least of all on a majority with the public authority in their hands. If the former are rea

"I'm not really sure what you're getting at."

If you're serious about understanding what I said ... It's not something that can possibly be communicated easily without book length treatment and requisite reading of a lot of literature.

Without which, you won't get it because you won't be able to see the relationships because you don't have the requisite conceptual framework in your head to see how different areas link to one another.

But It has to do with how human languages and mathematics basically use a more basic language in the mind - see: cognitive linguistics, and how our mind are able to map any arbitrary system onto any other arbitrary system of things. To be able to interpret one thing in terms of other things, which is very powerful the implications of which you will understand if you read enough.

Some good books for you to read:

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Flesh-Embodied-Challenge-Western/dp/0465056741/

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=3637992

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Mathematics-Comes-Embodied-Brings/dp/0465037712/