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In Google's case Stockholders don't really matter. When they IPO'd they made two kinds of stocks, Class A and Class B. Class A is what got sold, Class B is what the insiders (Larry and Sergey) hold. The most important thing is that Class B has infinitely more voting power than Class A stock. It means that Shareholders cannot vote out the board for "not being evil enough". Even better, Class B stocks cannot be sold to outsiders (if they are, the convert to Class A)
Google made this pretty clear when they IPO'd -- their letter to investors said that they were not trying to be just another corporation. They specified that the stocks the customers were getting was a claim on the profits, not a claim on voting rights.
Essentially, as long as the insiders stay honest, the company will stay honest. The quarterly numbers, stock prices are all meaningless to the board in this case.

I had to come back and read this.

Which of any of serveral sins do you think are excused universally by Christians?

Greed?

Divorce?

Pride?

Would you like other examples?

Note - I do not aspire to leadership within my church. I am unworthy. I pray for each of these examples and more, that they are lead to repentance, and that others do not follow their own desires to sin. And I'm at least as guilty as anyone. But to claim that Christians condone failure in their 'leaders'? We forgive them.

It's not really an argument for or against prostitution, merely a point that it isn't just China that cracks down on prostitution Websites, Catholic organizer charged in online sex sting.

Wow! Source? Haven't seen anything like that.

That's a bit like asking for a source that the sky is blue, because you've never noticed... Of course, you couldn't be bothered to do the simplest search for yourself.

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/08/30/bush-blames/
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/200601012_bush_blames_clinton_again/
http://www.davidcogswell.com/Political/BushBlamesClinton.html
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2008/07/28/bush-administration-blames-bill-clinton-for-deficit/
http://www.truthout.org/article/keith-olbermann-a-textbook-definition-cowardice
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0006/23/se.02.html
http://zzpat.tripod.com/cvb/impeach44.html#Bush_Blames_Clinton_For_N_Korea_Debacle
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-13-attacks-panel_x.htm

And, of course:
http://homepage.mac.com/garyligi/iblog/C1957607809/E20080429161904/index.html

What they need to do is push an actual, meaningful, web presence, one with persistence, where content lasts longer than a week or so, and where the web content is clear, clean, and accessible to aggregation and search engines, so they can take advantage of the long tail.

Except that one of best and easiest ways to make content last longer is index it make it searchable - and yet many papers are choosing to charge for their archives. I don't have answers as to what they can do to remain profitable, but I can't imagine that's it. The other problem is that the sort of content that is accessible to aggregation also happens to be the most difficult to make any sort of profit from. Text content is so easily copied & pasted and the culture of not having any appreciation for the work it took to create it is only growing.

The information/data itself has gotten to the point of nearly becoming a commodity, so good luck making any profit. I have to believe there is a market for providing a better explanation of the information...a better context...making it easier for a reader/view to digest. We are visual creatures. We like games, but more importantly, simulators that not only provide a little entertainment, but also a deeper understanding of a topic and how variables change outcomes. Whether this avenue ultimately provides more hope for profitability, I don't know. But it certainly can be a competitive advantage & value-added.

USA Today has been using some excellent interactive graphics/elements. For example, Hurricane Gustov Map and California Wildfires help provide information and context to events that happened. A couple of pieces that provide a more useful interface to a larger data set are their Iraq casualties and NFL Draft History pieces.

What they need to do is push an actual, meaningful, web presence, one with persistence, where content lasts longer than a week or so, and where the web content is clear, clean, and accessible to aggregation and search engines, so they can take advantage of the long tail.

Except that one of best and easiest ways to make content last longer is index it make it searchable - and yet many papers are choosing to charge for their archives. I don't have answers as to what they can do to remain profitable, but I can't imagine that's it. The other problem is that the sort of content that is accessible to aggregation also happens to be the most difficult to make any sort of profit from. Text content is so easily copied & pasted and the culture of not having any appreciation for the work it took to create it is only growing.

The information/data itself has gotten to the point of nearly becoming a commodity, so good luck making any profit. I have to believe there is a market for providing a better explanation of the information...a better context...making it easier for a reader/view to digest. We are visual creatures. We like games, but more importantly, simulators that not only provide a little entertainment, but also a deeper understanding of a topic and how variables change outcomes. Whether this avenue ultimately provides more hope for profitability, I don't know. But it certainly can be a competitive advantage & value-added.

USA Today has been using some excellent interactive graphics/elements. For example, Hurricane Gustov Map and California Wildfires help provide information and context to events that happened. A couple of pieces that provide a more useful interface to a larger data set are their Iraq casualties and NFL Draft History pieces.

What they need to do is push an actual, meaningful, web presence, one with persistence, where content lasts longer than a week or so, and where the web content is clear, clean, and accessible to aggregation and search engines, so they can take advantage of the long tail.

Except that one of best and easiest ways to make content last longer is index it make it searchable - and yet many papers are choosing to charge for their archives. I don't have answers as to what they can do to remain profitable, but I can't imagine that's it. The other problem is that the sort of content that is accessible to aggregation also happens to be the most difficult to make any sort of profit from. Text content is so easily copied & pasted and the culture of not having any appreciation for the work it took to create it is only growing.

The information/data itself has gotten to the point of nearly becoming a commodity, so good luck making any profit. I have to believe there is a market for providing a better explanation of the information...a better context...making it easier for a reader/view to digest. We are visual creatures. We like games, but more importantly, simulators that not only provide a little entertainment, but also a deeper understanding of a topic and how variables change outcomes. Whether this avenue ultimately provides more hope for profitability, I don't know. But it certainly can be a competitive advantage & value-added.

USA Today has been using some excellent interactive graphics/elements. For example, Hurricane Gustov Map and California Wildfires help provide information and context to events that happened. A couple of pieces that provide a more useful interface to a larger data set are their Iraq casualties and NFL Draft History pieces.

What they need to do is push an actual, meaningful, web presence, one with persistence, where content lasts longer than a week or so, and where the web content is clear, clean, and accessible to aggregation and search engines, so they can take advantage of the long tail.

Except that one of best and easiest ways to make content last longer is index it make it searchable - and yet many papers are choosing to charge for their archives. I don't have answers as to what they can do to remain profitable, but I can't imagine that's it. The other problem is that the sort of content that is accessible to aggregation also happens to be the most difficult to make any sort of profit from. Text content is so easily copied & pasted and the culture of not having any appreciation for the work it took to create it is only growing.

The information/data itself has gotten to the point of nearly becoming a commodity, so good luck making any profit. I have to believe there is a market for providing a better explanation of the information...a better context...making it easier for a reader/view to digest. We are visual creatures. We like games, but more importantly, simulators that not only provide a little entertainment, but also a deeper understanding of a topic and how variables change outcomes. Whether this avenue ultimately provides more hope for profitability, I don't know. But it certainly can be a competitive advantage & value-added.

USA Today has been using some excellent interactive graphics/elements. For example, Hurricane Gustov Map and California Wildfires help provide information and context to events that happened. A couple of pieces that provide a more useful interface to a larger data set are their Iraq casualties and NFL Draft History pieces.

the countries that have higher productivity per worker than the US.

According to a U.N. report released in 2007, only Norway had higher productivity per hour worked than the U.S.

I think you think I'm more of a troll than I actually am...

I'm not old enough to have bitched about all of those things, and certainly there are both good intentions and good results, as many of those reforms can fall under the common-sense category (especially lead in gasoline...), but for every common-sense reform I can point at three that just resulted in wasted time and tax dollars, or caused severe market repercussions elsewhere.

Usually the problem with those negative examples is that someone freaked out about something (global cooling! global warming! global climate change! financial crisis!) and decided that SOMETHING needed to be done NOW. They then came up with a half-baked short-term solution to that problem and put it into place and continued living their lives. That's exactly what I classify this as: a half-baked short-term solution that won't do anything in the long run.

Take for example a great examples of way that private industry can help the environment: Wal-Mart reducing fuel consumption on their trucks: not only does this save Wal-Mart lots of money in fuel costs, but it drives innovation in truck and vehicle design and helps to greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If they then sell this technology to other companies similarly interested in both reduced costs and increased fuel economy, the effect will be much more substantial -- and require not a taxpayer penny -- than this silly regulation and the certification process it will surely produce.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CE6D7123AF933A15757C0A9659C8B63
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/1429096/British-cameraman-shot-dead-by-Israeli-soldiers.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jun/06/israel2
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/889281.html
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/cruises/item.aspx?type=photo&photo_id=0eY4akVfByfWH&tid=05YG14l3Yj8zn&pn=1
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=5480&Cr=unrwa&Cr1=

None of those are Reuters, none of those are BBC.

The same thing will happen: Apple will devolve again and be directionless, perhaps again bringing in a big soda company executive for CEO. History repeats itself. Market share will drop.
The problem with many firms (in IT especially Microsoft, Apple and Dell) is that they were built around their founders and really can't perform as a corporate culture without them. And without a vibrant corporate culture, the firm stagnates or fails. Commodore or Wang anyone?

USA Today ran a story on it a few months back... http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-08-21-founder-ceos_N.htm

Talking about computing & journalism is a tough conversation to without specific examples. As with non-journalism software, results depend on the problem that's being solved. Good examples of state of the art Computational Journalism are USAToday.com's airport capacity monitor and NYTimes.com's Represent ... they're automated apps that aren't so much data mining as they are coherent presentations of useful, interesting data in flux, a distinction that the source article author failed to grasp.

Let's keep a few things in mind:

1. This was "a technology he created as an intern at NASA in the summer of 2007." It's not like he was an undergraduate sitting in a classroom -- he was working for NASA when he made the invention.

2. "The iShoe researchers used some of their own work and previous NASA data ," the latter presumably taken with "an expensive device about the size of a phone booth" in the creation of their invention. So NASA's data (and presumably equipment) were needed to produce the invention.

3. While an intern, Lieberman was also a federally-funded (i.e., taxpayer-supported) graduate student, receiving money from both the National Science Foundation and Department of Defense, through his university, for his research. Like many (perhaps substantially all) graduate researchers in US universities, he was being paid by his university to do research. The fact that the research was being conducted at NASA doesn't change the fact that Lieberman was on the university payroll at the time the invention was made. Welcome to internships.

4. His company has also filed for federal funding to develop the idea for market and, "[o]nce funding is obtained, the iShoe could be for sale in 18 months, Lieberman said." So he's still using taxpayer money to develop the invention for market.

5. We don't know what the "hefty royalty" is (unless I missed it, it's not in any of the linked articles), but $75,000 is peanuts. "The iShoe has a way to go to reach the market [...] Lieberman estimates $1 million is needed for a broad clinical trial, and $3 million to $4 million to bring the insole to market." As a startup, his monthly burn rate will be much more than $75,000.

Frankly, I'm fine with institutions receiving a financial return on the work of their paid employees -- especially if taxpayers are ultimately footing the bill. In fact, I would argue that Mr. Lieberman is getting a sweetheart deal; I think once he gets into industry himself he'll find that the commercial sector typically requires employees to assign all rights to any future inventions (at least, in the company's field of interest) to their employer starting on Day 1, usually with trivial or no compensation.

It will be interesting to see what intellectual property policy the new iShoe company establishes for its own employees. As CEO, will Lieberman let his iShoe researchers invent and patent without expecting that those inventions will belong to iShoe?

Let's keep a few things in mind:

1. This was "a technology he created as an intern at NASA in the summer of 2007." It's not like he was an undergraduate sitting in a classroom -- he was working for NASA when he made the invention.

2. "The iShoe researchers used some of their own work and previous NASA data ," the latter presumably taken with "an expensive device about the size of a phone booth" in the creation of their invention. So NASA's data (and presumably equipment) were needed to produce the invention.

3. While an intern, Lieberman was also a federally-funded (i.e., taxpayer-supported) graduate student, receiving money from both the National Science Foundation and Department of Defense, through his university, for his research. Like many (perhaps substantially all) graduate researchers in US universities, he was being paid by his university to do research. The fact that the research was being conducted at NASA doesn't change the fact that Lieberman was on the university payroll at the time the invention was made. Welcome to internships.

4. His company has also filed for federal funding to develop the idea for market and, "[o]nce funding is obtained, the iShoe could be for sale in 18 months, Lieberman said." So he's still using taxpayer money to develop the invention for market.

5. We don't know what the "hefty royalty" is (unless I missed it, it's not in any of the linked articles), but $75,000 is peanuts. "The iShoe has a way to go to reach the market [...] Lieberman estimates $1 million is needed for a broad clinical trial, and $3 million to $4 million to bring the insole to market." As a startup, his monthly burn rate will be much more than $75,000.

Frankly, I'm fine with institutions receiving a financial return on the work of their paid employees -- especially if taxpayers are ultimately footing the bill. In fact, I would argue that Mr. Lieberman is getting a sweetheart deal; I think once he gets into industry himself he'll find that the commercial sector typically requires employees to assign all rights to any future inventions (at least, in the company's field of interest) to their employer starting on Day 1, usually with trivial or no compensation.

It will be interesting to see what intellectual property policy the new iShoe company establishes for its own employees. As CEO, will Lieberman let his iShoe researchers invent and patent without expecting that those inventions will belong to iShoe?

Let's keep a few things in mind:

1. This was "a technology he created as an intern at NASA in the summer of 2007." It's not like he was an undergraduate sitting in a classroom -- he was working for NASA when he made the invention.

2. "The iShoe researchers used some of their own work and previous NASA data ," the latter presumably taken with "an expensive device about the size of a phone booth" in the creation of their invention. So NASA's data (and presumably equipment) were needed to produce the invention.

3. While an intern, Lieberman was also a federally-funded (i.e., taxpayer-supported) graduate student, receiving money from both the National Science Foundation and Department of Defense, through his university, for his research. Like many (perhaps substantially all) graduate researchers in US universities, he was being paid by his university to do research. The fact that the research was being conducted at NASA doesn't change the fact that Lieberman was on the university payroll at the time the invention was made. Welcome to internships.

4. His company has also filed for federal funding to develop the idea for market and, "[o]nce funding is obtained, the iShoe could be for sale in 18 months, Lieberman said." So he's still using taxpayer money to develop the invention for market.

5. We don't know what the "hefty royalty" is (unless I missed it, it's not in any of the linked articles), but $75,000 is peanuts. "The iShoe has a way to go to reach the market [...] Lieberman estimates $1 million is needed for a broad clinical trial, and $3 million to $4 million to bring the insole to market." As a startup, his monthly burn rate will be much more than $75,000.

Frankly, I'm fine with institutions receiving a financial return on the work of their paid employees -- especially if taxpayers are ultimately footing the bill. In fact, I would argue that Mr. Lieberman is getting a sweetheart deal; I think once he gets into industry himself he'll find that the commercial sector typically requires employees to assign all rights to any future inventions (at least, in the company's field of interest) to their employer starting on Day 1, usually with trivial or no compensation.

It will be interesting to see what intellectual property policy the new iShoe company establishes for its own employees. As CEO, will Lieberman let his iShoe researchers invent and patent without expecting that those inventions will belong to iShoe?

There's a difference between a statue and a picture of real tits.

Not according to the government.

Yes, well, maybe it's time for some of that "civil disobedience" that Slashdotters are so fond of promoting. The fact that the religious right in the U.S. considers the female body to be an object of shame is, itself, shameful. Most (well, okay, all) Europeans I know consider our government's attitude towards sex in general, and the human female in particular, to be provincial at best, uncivilized at worst. This is one case where I'm in complete agreement with them.

There's a difference between a statue and a picture of real tits.

Not according to the government.

This kind of system exacerbates the problems that currently exist. Currently 100% of all searches are performed on non-terrorists and almost 100% are performed on innocent people. Wrap your head around that for a bit. The quality of the searching is based on facts from incidents where terrorists were not caught, not based on terrorists who were. That is to say, oh, if people *can* put explosives in their shoes, we'll search all peoples shoes. All a terrorist has to do is try something that has not been tried before and they will be successful - more or less. I can't wait till someone sneaks a liquid explosive on board a plane inside a bladder that encases their crotch. Yes, the TSA's reaction to that will be awesome!

This machine will search 100% of all travellers (for a given set of travellers) and any who are pulled aside for further searching is supposedly equal to a smaller number than are searched now. They will still be innocent, but this justifies the inconvenience to them because a machine detected something. What is the accuracy of lie detectors BTW?

Since there appear to be no stories of Gitmo prisoners being loaned out to security equipment manufacturers the probability that any 'real terrorists' were used to test the machine is zero. Does anyone have the statistics handy? How many terrorists that have been caught since 9/11 have been caught anywhere near an airport, never mind trying to board the plane?

This seems to amount to a lie detector test that you are forced to take because you choose the criminal activity of traveling from one place to another by air. Apparently, if you wanted to bomb a bus there is no one to stop you. If you want to poison a water supply there is no one to stop you. If you wanted to sabotage an underwater cable there is no one to stop you. If you wanted to car bomb a public building there is no one to stop you. Think about that for a second or two. Airport security as it is currently implemented is 99% waste of time and resources. It inconveniences all, catches no guilty persons, and robs resources away from efforts to protect other infrastructure etcetera.

What would I suggest we do for security? The same thing we do for security for any other public transportation. The goal of terrorism is to make you waste resources, to make a violent statement that circumvents any implemented security. It's a whack-a-mole game. Catching terrorists should be done long before they strap on the explosives. That's the only effective way to catch them. I don't have links, but I can't remember any story about a terrorist being caught by airport security measures. The only ones that were caught were caught with normal pre-9/11 police measures. Right now, the terrorists are winning.

Folks know ash collapses roofs. So, gasp, folks would clear the ash as it accumulates.

Oh, I wonder why nobody else thought of that simple idea!

The population distribution in most of the US is simply not geared toward passenger rail except possibly at the local level

That's not really true. It rarely makes sense to extend light-rail systems beyond the densely packed urban centers, but you're ignoring the old heavy traffic. The layout of our towns, highways, etc are all heavily determined by the paths that the railroads took 150-75 years ago. This hasn't changed, as many of our Interstates were built along similar pathways.

Now, Amtrak may suck, but it's not like there's good competition available. Driving takes every bit as long and already costs far more, and our piss-poor airlines with worse food than a Flying J: Don't even get me started on the Fly America Act and even greater sins our government commits in their favor.

If we had new rail-systems and new stations (with ZipCar and other car rental companies etc. colocated thereupon), they might very well be able to perform profitably. Let foreigners run 'em, too, so that the food doesn't taste worse than the truck stop food you'd get when driving (which is still better than the nothing-to-ramen spectrum on American air carriers), and this may very well be worthwhile. If speedy rail systems can be built that are fast enough and substantially more environmentally sound, we might even consider taxing competing air routes to subsidize them in an effort to meet soon-to-be-adopted CO2 emissions goals. Of course you may wish to hold off until after opening them up to all comers to knock the price down an equivalent amount.

Regardless, I'd assert that there is a market for a competently run Amtrak with maglevs et al or, better yet, multiple competing private firms. We just don't see it right now because the Amtrak service is (marginally) worse than the (insanely bad) domestic airlines. If we can restore service to all the cities over the million-person mark, I think they'd do just fine.

They just can't compete as long as:

1: They're as slow as a car
2: They serve worse food than truck stops (like the airlines)
3: They fail to advertise and compete aggressively due to lack of real market pressure
4: They fail to service many large cities

Still, that's half the point of the above. Look beyond light rail - The car manufacturers can make a lot of money regearing to deal with the above issues. If they're going to be bailed out with taxpayer money anyway, perhaps we should lead them in this cheaper and more fuel-efficient direction.

Except that I'm not convinced that this is a replacement of traditional print media by Internet sources so much as it is simply a decline in news readership. As a librarian, I've found that I don't really compete with bookstores. The more people read from the library, the more they also tend to buy from the bookstore. It tends to be a synergistic relationship.

On a related note, Central Connecticut State University President Jack Miller put out his annual Most Literate Cities study, which looks at what literary resources are available and used.

From a USA Today article on this year's study:

The findings come at a time when newspaper circulations across the USA are declining, and online newspaper reading is increasing. Miller's analysis suggests that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the availability of free online news is not to blame for the decline in newspapers' print circulation -- and that neither is the decline in bookstores across the country caused by the rise in online book buying.

Cities that ranked higher for having more bookstores also have a higher proportion of people buying books online, the analysis found, and cities with newspapers that have high per-capita circulation rates also have more people reading newspapers online. Likewise, cities that ranked higher for having well-used libraries also have more booksellers.

So I don't think it's necessarily that people are actually choosing to read their news online instead of subscribe to a traditional newspaper. I think more people are just not reading in general and may happen across news online as they do other things--but that isn't the point of their Internet usage.

And if we aren't reading, will that leave us with just television reporters? :O

There has been an on-going scandal, actually, that the Nobel committee is reticent to award the Peace Prize to a well deserved individual, jailed by the Chinese government for dissidence and crimes against the state, human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng and environmental activist Hu Jia. The bribes were most assuredly given in order that these Chinese freedom activists would be shot down for the award in favor of the Norwegian Ahtisaari. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-10-10-935738050_x.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gao_Zhisheng ---- Sonne Times: Social and Political Commentary http://jsonne.blogspot.com/

The process of life creates waste, and the process of cleaning up that waste creates more life. We need to use biomimicry and smart manufacturing techniques if we're going to survive past the next 2-3 hundred years. Otherwise we're just making the world a little more poisonous every year...

I think you need to read this article.

Fine, then here, here, and here.

I never said there was no immunity in IRAQ. I was responding to a comment about immunity from U.S. or Afghan laws, not Iraq laws.

Indeed, your articles back me up, that this was a special situation just for Iraqi law, implying it doesn't cover U.S. or Afghan laws ...

Acid-free paper (used in all quality book, e.g., Springer Verlag) is a very durable medium.

In fact, Gartner research recommends paper if storage is supposed to last over 10 years.

http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/storage/story/0,10801,64684,00.html

Of course, digital content management peddlers will disagree.

Check out the following story: a University of Southern California neurobiologist wanted to read the records of the Viking mission but couldn't read the data on the magnetic tapes. He had to find the paper records and pay people to type everything that was in them:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-01-17-digital_x.htm

Photos are also stable if they weren't made with the new inkjet printers (all those fast photo services), but the old-fashioned way. They last for many decades, as we know from family photos and museums.

• Keeping our satellites in orbit.
• Replacing broken satellites.
• Keeping the Hubble telescope working.
• Keeping or replacing the shuttle fleet.

Funding is limited. We have to choose one or the other.
Here another article I found on the weather topic. http://www.usatoday.com/weather/hurricane/2007-06-12-quickscat-satellite_N.htm

The pay really sucks. Frankly you'd probably be better off managing a fast food restaurant.

If you put up with the crappy pay and the stifling bureaucracy, then you're probably not doing it for your own selfish purposes, but rather because you feel that it's the right thing to do. Which means that you are genuinely interested in teaching people.

How much can you earn managing a fast food restaurant? Is it more then 40k a year? A teachers pay puts them in the top 50% of wage earners. Not great money but the pay DOES NOT SUCK. And the bureaucracy tends to drive out people with options, talents, youth, and abilities. People interested in teaching will eventually be driven out like everyone else unless they have no better options.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-06-25-teacher-salary-raise_x.htm http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

The trouble is, teachers are paid extremely poorly (that's why we have so many bad ones)

Bullshit. The years of teachers being underpaid are long gone. Their pay puts them in the top 50% of wage earners. Not amazing pay but to call their better then average pay "extremely poor" is just plain wrong

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-06-25-teacher-salary-raise_x.htm http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

The rest of what you said may have some validity but your understanding of teacher incomes is just plain wrong.

direct comparisons between schools of today and the schools of the 70s is completely unrealistic and ignores huge societal changes that have impacted the role of school in society.

That's definitely true. However, if that spending growth were due only to societal changes, you'd expect similar spending changes worldwide over the same time period. Instead, our spending has grown faster than that of our peer nations. We now have the highest per-student spending rate in the world, and only average academic results ( U.S. tops the world in school spending but not test scores ). Our schools are providing a far poorer return on investment than those of other first world nations. We're doing something wrong.

"but he is also making a very loud statement to the government to pull its head out of its ass and appropriate more education funding."

His statement is as ridiculous as it is loud. America spends more money on public education than any other country on earth, and has some of the worst scores. In the last 15 years, education spending has doubled, and test scores have steadily declined.

Our schools don't need more money. They need to start teaching hard core reading, writing, math, science, and critical thinking and stop appropriating gigantic school bonds to build football stadiums and soccer fields. They need to spend 0 hours per day talking about cultural diversity and 100% of their time learning hard facts and skills that will improve their minds and equip them to be successful.

I love you too. What is it about being retard and insults? Next time, if you want to go the cheap road, just do your homework, Einstein. Just look north of USA. I'm in Canada, and although some parts are still using satellites, our population has a better internet speed than you guys. And by better I don't mean "a bit more", I'm meaning more than 3 times faster. July 2007 stats here. Has anything changed much since?

actually, been there done that

(not yet overseas)

The idea is that you check out marshals more thoroughly, both background and psychologically. Thus, the chances of one being a terrorist is very, very low. Much like actual airline pilots.

Still let's look at some numbers -
In August(2008), U.S. airlines operated 897,800 scheduled domestic and international flights, down 5.7 percent from the number of flights operated in August 2007 (Table 1). The number of domestic flights decreased 6.0 percent in August from a year earlier while international flights were down 2.4 percent (Tables 7, 13).

Call it 29k flights a day, 203k flights a week. Figure an AM does 2 flights a day, 5 days a week, 10 total. That'd mean that you'd need 20k air marshals to cover every flight. Probably closer to 22k, with leave, training and such. 14k if you figure on planning smart enough that the marshals average 15 flights a week. Looking further - in 2006 there were 599 airports 'certificated to serve commercial air carrier aircraft with nine or more seats'.

Now, my local airport probably employes around a dozen TSA workers - that'd be a minimun of 7.2k. Obviously large airports will have hundreds. However, I've seen some links saying things like 45k TSOs. Even assuming we PAY the marshals more, they'd have to earn far more than double(remember benefits!) to cost more.

Meanwhile we'd increase travel as we stop harrassing travelers and a few guns are far cheaper than x-ray machines.

Ha ha ha...
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS07-066.mspx/ ,
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,533801,00.asp/ ,
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q231/3/68.asp/ ,
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E877D9C1-3E7C-4551-A899-C3FCC5175BB6&displaylang=en/ ,
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2002/0909cryptoapi.html/ ,
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-039.mspx/ and finally http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2003-07-16-microsoft-hole_x.htm/
I can go on, but i gotta get back to work...
Let me know if you need more proof.
Or better yet, put your virgin XP SP2 on 'net... the best example is by doing!

I thought it was "Toy Yoda."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/09/toy-yoda.htm

All politics aside this --> http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/archaeology/2001-03-22-afghan-buddhas.htm -- is why I hate the Taliban... that and their abuse of women.

Had this discovery occurred in a land where the Taliban had influence, it likely would not have lasted very long after discovery.

That would definitely make for some serious comparisons if they were to use that terminology.

Get out of their groupthink!

(i'd like to say most canadian tourists know enough to not do such things, but given the current state of my generation and earlier here i sadly hear you...)

Don't say that!! Someone will write a novel using text messaging speak!! Oh, wait

I'm basing my notes on this report. While it's true that Latino voters have leaned Democratic in the past (53-44 for Kerry nationally), they leaned much further in this election (67-31 for Obama nationally); Florida, especially, where Latinos were +12 for Bush in 2004, and were +15 for Obama this year.

Good point about Cubans in Florida, though; the change there is at least in part attributed to Cubans making up a smaller portion of the aggregate Latino population.

Yep. There was even a lawsuit about fake accounts a while ago. From my own experience, I would say Match.com is still doing it. Last time I was on there (and I will never do it again because of this sleaziness), when I canceled my subscription it asked why and I checked off something like "nobody will talk to me" and I had an email from an attractive woman within an hour (after getting only 2 emails in a month). Mysteriously (sarcasm), she seemed to have no interest in emailing me directly (i.e. without Match.com) or talking on the phone.

First let me state that I know full well that my restricting the discussion to the US narrows it by quite a bit... since we were discussing the US election I thought it was reasonable to restrict the discussion. While race is not a problem unique to the US, the US problem does have some unique aspects to it.

You mention that you are white, but there are so many different perspectives within this group that it would be meaningless for me to make any sort of comment about what white people think on a subject.

Whites are not so easily lumped together - I mean obviously at least 43% of the US white population is comfortable enough with a black man to elect him as president. And obviously there will be many, many overlapping opinions between blacks and whites... but the fact is that blacks 40 years ago did not have full civil rights. That scars one's psychology. And it's not as if the racism vaporized, so the scarring continues to this day. As a white man, racism rarely affects me. I encounter it quite often, but since only about 14% of people are black, the loss of opportunity there doesn't really affect me. As a result, I grew up not particularly sensitive to racism. Had I been black, my opportunities might have been far more restricted and my opinions would be far more shaped by racism.

This is something that _most_ blacks in the US have in common and _most_ whites in the US have in common, and it is constantly reflected in polls when they ask questions like "are racial conditions improving in the US". It's improving, but this is the current situation.

Can you think of any but the most contrived examples of something you could say that was representative of a white point of view?

Trust of police. White people generally trust police and see them as a good presence. Blacks tend to be more wary of police. Please note that I'm not saying that all blacks fear the police... it's just a tendency that correlates with race. There are many of these tendencies that together make up what I'm calling a "black point of view".

Another example would be slurs. You can drop the word "nigger" and it will almost universally cause a very unpleasant response among black people. Many (most?) whites won't like it, either - but it will really stir up some deep feelings among blacks. Compare this to whites... can you think of a single word that would get whites almost universally riled up? This is something that is shared by other minority groups which have been traditionally oppressed.

Another example is when some big heinous crime is reported, one of the first things through many (most?) black folks' minds is, "Oh, please don't be black." This simply doesn't happen in the white "community" - probably because we don't view ourselves as a community and from our perspective the actions of one of us do not reflect on the rest of us. However, what we don't consider is that this is not true from the perspective of other people/groups.

I'm saying that there is no supportable reason why someone must belong to the same ethnic group as someone else to share their perspective (and interests).

Oh, I would never claim that. I'm claiming to have an "in" on the black perspective and I'm white. I have this perspective because I'm married to a black woman and we had many, many really tough fights that were rooted in not understanding one another's perspective. Without months of really deep, contentious discussions with someone who I cared for deeply, I seriously doubt that I would have come to understand.

Election night was a different experience for me than for most white people. My wife first of all did not believe that a black man could win in the US. Even as they were calling states for Obama, she remained skeptical and kept asking me procedural ques

The guy never had better than a 50-50 approval rating and by the time the the torture stuff really hit the fan it was a lot lower.

No, Bush's approval rating went up to 90%

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-09-11-palin-cover_N.htm

She increased the taxes on oil companies in Alaska, and some that income went to Alaskans, in addition their normal yearly dividend from the oil companies. (You do know that you get 1-2 thousand a year just for living in Alaska from the oil companies)

I agree that this is the right team. But what's just as delightful, and make no mistake, delight is an understated way to describe what I think of this news, is that they're clearly thinking of this not as a "mission" but as a task set to bootstrap a business able to pay its own way. I particularly like that they're not using the oh-so-annoying sop of "space tourism". Afaic, "space tourism" is pretty much like twenties barnstorming. Iow, "we've got this amazing technology that we aren't using seriously at the moment so while we get our act in gear we'll kill time, keep ourselves busy, and make beer money giving people rides on our cool vehicles".

Personally, I've been pushing the idea of private organizations exploring with clusters of small robotic missions for years now, I've even ranted at my friends about it, so how could I not be pleased?

I wonder how long it will take for the mainstream media and legislators to claim that they've backed this approach all along

Well duh.

Anyone who wants everyone to vote, and everyone's vote to count is a Democrat. It's a commonly known fact that there are more democrats than republicans.

It wouldn't make strategic sense for Republicans to support any attempt at massive, non-partisan voter turnout. Their only sound strategy is to try and rally Republican voters to go to the polls while trying their best to avoid suggesting that Democrat voters go.

John Maynard Keynes was an economist who used his understanding of economics to make himself wealthy. He spent a couple of hours a day on his investments, leaving himself the rest of the day to amuse himself. He lost most of his money in the 1929 crash, but quickly recouped his losses. I'd say that the fact that Keynes found making a fortune fairly easy by putting is economic ideas into practice (as opposed to making a fortune by selling the ideas) probably counts as reasonable evidence that he understood how the economy of his day worked. Naturally, nobody can predict everything; there is a degree of randomness and chaos.

I think the key is that the randomness and chaos is most powerful over the short term. Over the long term, various economic parameters like stock market indices tend to be fractal: the closer you look, the more detail there is to see. This means nobody is ever fully the master of their economic fate. However, by investing in a way that offsets the variability in various indices, you can "understand" the economy quite well. David Swenson, who manages Yale's endowment, has a very simple system: you just keep rebalancing your portfolio regularly. When stocks are up and bonds are down, you take money out of stocks and put it into bonds and vice versa. What this means is that you are continually buying low and selling high.

Does this confer on him the ability to predict something like the credit crisis that plays bloody hell with everything? No. But that certainly wasn't beyond human reason. What it was, was beyond human emotion to accept. Consider this timeline of articles:

2002, September: Housing Bubble Lurks Among the Levered:"The people who say that the housing market can't be seeing a bubble argue that it's more heterogeneous, whereas the equity market is more homogeneous, in terms of money flowing back between different securities. ... It is true that real estate is more of a regional market, but it can still turn into a bubble."

Could this be that this is the classic glass half empty/half full dichotomy? I don't think so; the glass half full people are saying that empty space cannot exist in the glass, which doesn't seem right...

2002 October Housing boom breeds new mortgage deals:"Jennifer Scutti, a mortgage industry analyst at CIBC World Markets, wonders about the impact on delinquencies when some of the back-loaded costs of the new flexible mortgage deals hit home."

Looks like Ms. Scutti was right. Just how right? She goes on to say there might be problems in "three to five years"...

2002 October Where the Risk Went: With respect to credit default swaps, "[The banks] have shifted the risks to institutions that are less-equipped to handle them--from insurers to highly leveraged hedge funds. And because disclosure is limited, it's not always clear just who is exposed. ... Who's bearing the risk that has been redistributed by all of those securitizations and derivatives? Surprisingly, some of it has stayed in the banking system. ... The danger is that if the financial system's health is impaired, consumers and businesses will be starved of credit, and the economy will slump."

OK, so mortgage practices are getting dangerous... at the same time the banking system is overextending itself by insuring securities, risking a complete collapse. What does that mean with respect to mortgage backed securities?

2003, January: How TCW Galileo Gets Stellar Returns: how? "In general, mortgage-backed securities funds are much less volatile than other types of bond funds because they're less sensitive to changes in interest rates." Hmm. Just thr

3) will replace the Bush Administration with a cabinet full of something besides the Bush Administration.

*ahem*

You said, "I'm sure the average research neurobiologist would be far more proficient at eliminating confounding factors, since it is a critical part of the job..."

Actually, I haven't found that to be the case. Only a few of the people doing "science" actually have a careful scientific orientation.

Vioxx is an example. Read Dangerous Deception - Hiding the Evidence of Adverse Drug Effects in the New England Journal of Medicine.

It is my observation that fraud and incompetence is widespread in what is called "science".

Stop spreading FUD, it's only a single ten of trillion.

You are forgetting the unfunded liabilities the American taxpayer is on the hook for which is $60+ trillion.