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I just have to think -- when was the last time a large corporation was fined $1 billion for anything?

The most recent example I can find is the $2.3 billion dollar fine as part of the off-label marketing fraud settlement against Pfizer in late 2009.

If you ask our beloved president, there IS a typical white person, and the typical white person is scared of black people.

Because we suffer from some bozo's religion.

No, you suffer from ignorance, misinformation, and insufferable intolerance of the beliefs of over 70% of America.

Adult stem cells have already been shown to be capable of pluripotency to the same extent as a embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells do not have any of the possible moral implications of embryonic stem cells, yet you are advocating that your quality and length of life should trump moral implications when there is an alternative that would work just as well.

Since your stance is obviously flawed, I have to assume that you didn't know that adult stem cells are already as powerful as embryonic and that this entire conversation is a result of poor reportage, irresponsible politics, and illegal policies - as determined by a judge. That still leaves the misguided intolerance....oh yeah, the lawsuit was brought by researchers afraid of losing funding, not religiously motivated people. Glad to see your misguided and unprovoked attack on that count too.

My question to such people is how do you know the soul is started at conception?

The same question could be posed as how do you know it doesn't? It's as poor an argument to base opposition to a religious belief on a question that science is completely unable to answer in the first place.

The real question that should be posed in this is, what is the possible harm done under either assumption, and which is worse? Under the assumption that life starts at conception, then the harm done is tantamount to murder, however someone else's life might be saved by doing so. Under the assumption that these are just genetic material and don't have any moral implications to their use, then obviously the medical breakthroughs would be preferable. The point is to have the discussion without falling into religious fervor or scientific elitism (which it is since science is necessarily mute on the question of when life begins)

My personal opinion is that breakthroughs from adult stem cells have easily eclipsed the promise of embryonic stem cells Pluripotent Adult Stem Cells. We could simply avoid any moral hazards by continuing research on those since there are no objections from any side on their use.

Because it is so hard to find a citation for something so obvious as the United States has the best university system in the world:

http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/worlds-best-universities/2010/02/25/worlds-best-universities-top-400.html

Seems the UK and US are top of the class. There are plenty of great schools nearly anywhere. Still, when talking about volume, its not hard to see where the bulk lie.

I never stated that the only places people go are in the US. But a quick search Google search will reveal that the top 50 universities are dominated by the US and UK. Try this link: World's best uni's

http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/worlds-best-universities/2010/02/25/worlds-best-universities-top-400

http://www.4icu.org/top200/

Wanna make a point about Jim DeMint getting contributions from AT&T? Harry Reid got more from AT&T ($44K for Harry, $36K for Jim - see: http://politics.usnews.com/congress/reid-harry/donors) - I hear he supports Net neutrality (http://mydd.com/2006/6/10/harry-reid-and-net-neutrality)... I don't think money determines support for a given bill, otherwise Harry owes AT&T donors a refund...

Noting that an evil republican has AT&T (the PAC and its employees on their own) be #3 on his donors list makes him bad... but the fact that both the Telecom Services & Equipment AND Telephone Utilities (just to name a few industries) overwhelmingly has been giving to Democrats makes them... good? Or is that just not worthy of mentioning?

Noting that an evil republican has AT&T (the PAC and its employees on their own) be #3 on his donors list makes him bad... but the fact that both the Telecom Services & Equipment AND Telephone Utilities (just to name a few industries) overwhelmingly has been giving to Democrats makes them... good? Or is that just not worthy of mentioning?

Yes, Angle is not the candidate the Republican Party wanted. But the latest poll I know of shows Reid trailing.

There are over* 305,000,000 people who call them "potato chips" and only 61,126,832 people who call them "crisps". You're outnumbered five to one.

And unlike tyres, they were invented by an American.

*Probably more, since I'm sure Americans aren't the only ones who call them "chips".

Spoken like somebody who has the freedom to not give a rat's ass about all fellow humans.

Everyone has that right. That's not what I'm exercising here, though, or why would I champion freedom of speech for everyone, even those I disagree with?

Essentially, some asshole effectively killed the party for everybody in that country,

Essentially? Effectively? That's a lot of weasel words... And which asshole would that be? The guy who spawned the Facebook event, or the asshole who actually blocked it? No one forced them to block Facebook -- they did that on their own. They would've been entirely free to block only parts of Facebook, or to instead launch their own Draw Jesus Day event -- they could've handled it any number of ways other than outright censorship.

To what end? What have they achieved?

Good question.

The event has proved that entire countries are on the run -- censoring just to protect themselves from ideas they don't like.

Or if you mean the asshole who blocked Facebook, well, not much. Those who really want to see it will find ways around, and in the meantime, they've blocked their countrymen from a site which is presumably useful and popular. They also haven't censored the vast majority of the Internet, so one wonders what they hope to accomplish by blocking just this one instance of blasphemy -- there are even Mohammed ASCII-art drawings on Slashdot now.

Do you honestly think they should block Slashdot? Would you honestly blame the ACs for "ruining it" if that happened?

Just because you are free in your country does not mean you have any right in fanning the conflict between the citizens of a country and it's ruling theocracy.

Are you serious?

No one said "Rise up and overthrow your government." Someone posted something on Facebook, and the government chose to block it. The government thus chose to pursue a course of action which might lead to increased tension between it and its citizens.

How is this in any way my fault for speaking my mind half a world away?

And why is it so difficult to wrap your mind around this concept: Words and ideas have only the power you give them. If Islam didn't get its panties in a wad every time someone makes fun of Mo', those words and cartoons would have no power.

Think about it -- you probably felt a bit of anger there at the way I worded the above paragraph. I did that deliberately, to illustrate a point: They're just words. They do not even have the power to make you angry, if you do not allow it.

And I'll present this as evidence that I do care about my fellow humans. I used to be very angry, often. I let my anger control me. I've broken free from that, and I am much better for it. I am happier, healthier, and I make better decisions when I do not let anger guide me. At least right here, in this moment, I am trying to share that with you. I hope you, or someone reading this, is in a position to share that with those who are in a position to change the political situation in Pakistan.

Quite often the same folks who do shit like this, and turn around and claim they're making any kind of contribution to society.

Because clearly, all I do all day is draw Mohammed? Is that really what you think?

I have a summer internship starting soon. In the mean time, I'm preparing to go to a convention, where I'll be speaking about some software I've developed. I'm also learning a martial art, and looking for another to practice over the summer. In the fall, I will be going back to school.

Or is it that you think drawing Mohammed contributes nothing to society? Political cartoons have a long history of contributing to the discussion, and one of our most respected news sources is one w

• I grant that college education has value. I don't grant that universal college education is better than the current partial college education. For example, in the US we're seeing a drop out rate (compare the percent who get some college education to those who get a degree) of almost 50%. While I'm sure some of those are doing so for financial reasons, I doubt that is a majority.
• I think there are a number of pervasive myths about the value of a college education. This thread illustrates a few of them (such as the number of Nobel laureates indicates the quality of a college program for average people or that getting an education will be better for anyone, a sort of one-size-fits-all approach to life).
• The same parties advocating a college education have been overseeing the decline of the K-12 public education system in the US.
• Employers have been complaining about the quality of college graduates. Some of it's pragmatic (they want college graduates with more vocational knowledge) or self-serving (want to show the "need" for more relatively cheap H1-B imports), but there appears to be a real problem of declining quality in college graduates.
• I believe the current student loan programs have had a harmful effect on colleges and their integrity, for example, leading to an increase in student cheating combined with lack of college enforcement (as I see it, colleges get their money no matter what the quality of the student they produce). This is another indication to me that a free tuition approach wouldn't improve the system.
• We haven't demonstrated that free tuition is better than paid tuition from the point of view of the student. I find people value something more, if they have to pay for it.
• We haven't demonstrated that the US can pay for this system.

On this last point, I have this to note. According to the College Board, in 2006-2007 public school students paid $5800 for that year just in tuition while private students (after financial aid) pay $22,000. At a glance, total college cost is over $100k for a degree (that is, money spent by the student not everyone else), public or private (including room and board, "fees"). A free education would cover all these expenses.

Given that there are currently, almost 20 million college students who are US residents, that's an effective cost of near $2 trillion just to educate the current group of students to a degree. This appears to be somewhat less than 60% of total people of this age, so the actual number who could get a degree are about 50% higher, I'd guess. That means our free, universal education now costs somewhere around $3 trillion to educate this estimated group to a degree. Suppose it takes six years to do so (average stay apparently for public college students BTW), then that's $500 billion per year of spending that has to come out of the federal budget. While that may be better than one Iraq war (which this is roughly equivalent to in cost), it's a huge amount of money to burn.

We also have to consider that this isn't the only source of cost, since there probably would be other subsidies that would get paid to colleges (eg, the public universities are already subsidized by state and federal governments, traditionally) to cover the additional students under a universal college education policy. There's also the matter that education costs are increasing far faster than the rate of inflation or GDP. Since 1986, inflation doubled, GDP tripled, and education c

If you look at the statistics for voting and filibusters, you will see that you are completely wrong.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2010/01/25/how-the-filibuster-changed-and-brought-tyranny-of-the-minority.html
http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/index.ssf/2010/02/filibuster_abuse_founding_fath.html
and a good graph showing just how wrong you are, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_(United_States_Senate)

You are drawing a false equivalency when you claim that both parties do it, perhaps in a misguided attempt to appear balanced. Both sides have NOT been doing the same thing for decades. This is new, unprecedented, and totally destructive to good governance. The Republicans appear to want to destroy the country in order to save it.

See this Healy statement. The definitions of what counts as a live birth, and therefore what counts as infant mortality vary even in developed countries. the definitions are even more variable in developing countries.

There's a good point here that this is not just a right-vs.-left problem. You might want to look into Diane Ravitch's opinions to see how that's going. (Here's the first link I could Google, there's more commentary around.)

In a nutshell, Ravitch was a big supporter of the new way forward for schools during the Bush administration. She backed the testing for No Child Left Behind, she stumped for charter schools and voucher systems - y'know, right-wing ideas. Over the past few years, she's looked at the data, and she's since changed her mind dramatically. She's cited research that charter schools aren't improving grades, that they're more likely to simply poach better students, and that the quality of private schools swings widely despite a few positive stories. She's noted that the standardized testing from NCLB has simply been setting a lower bar while students continue to decline in standardized tests that haven't changed over the years.

That's not to gloss over the issues that liberals bring to the table in supporting teacher's unions. Moving to a more creative, more individualized issue of study would require ditching much of standardized testing as well as reducing the benefits of tenure that the old guard of the teachers' unions support, in order to encourage younger teachers to be experiment. It's also going to mean that we need parents who will oblige when teachers want to stop teaching to the test and try slightly "dangerous" things. It's also going to mean that those creative younger teachers are going to need to be paid a salary due to talented people - it's sort of a free market principle that good talent won't work for cheap.

All of those things do not neatly fit into a left-right spectrum. It's more about libertarian-vs.-authoritarian, and the leaders of both parties in the U.S. right now fall to the authoritarian side of their parties' values.

Cultures/religions are against homosexuality for cultural evolution reasons, more or less the same reason why Catholics are against birth control: it is to the advantage of the culture/religious group to have more children (and therefore out-breed competitors)

OK, tell that to the Samoans.

All of the recent advances are done using stem cells from the patient's own body

FTFY. And yes, it’s perfectly legal. Nobody protests adult stem cell therapy.

Maybe the restrictions against using embryonic stem cells advanced medical technology by pushing researchers and doctors to use the patient's own stem cells instead.

That’s a fair theory, and it shows that you’re thinking, but if you research the matter it is actually incorrect. There are enough embryonic stem cell lines for researchers and doctors to use to find cures, etc. if they were so inclined. They have, basically of their own accord, chosen to pursue adult stem cell therapies instead, because those were what yielded results, and since they are paid for producing results that is the direction that they have been inclined to go. There are severe problems with embryonic stem cells that nobody has been able to overcome, whereas adult stem cells are used in multitudes of successful treatments. If it were not for special interests pushing the embryonic stem cell research via grants, etc., and lobbying for increased federal funding and trying to make it all more acceptable in the public eye, industry would naturally gravitate toward the adult treatments that actually yield results.

I wish I could find better sources to back up some of what I’ve been saying, but I did come across these:
Why Embryonic Stem Cells Are Obsolete
Adult vs. Embryonic Stem Cells

Unfortunately there is so much hype generated over stem cells that it is difficult to sift through it all. As I understand it, embryonic cells can be harvested from fetuses if they were aborted at an early enough stage, and the abortion industry is putting a lot of pressure on the issue because they see this as a way to monetize their grisly waste product. As a result you have many claims of “potential” for the embryonic stem cells with no actual cures ever coming of it.

Pushed down insurance margins below the 3.4-5% that they make now? So you mean you want to eliminate the insurance companies to increase competition? Not likely. Also- there are far fewer people standing on the abortion topic than the socialist party would have you believe. Nevertheless people will be supporting abortion who wish not to, as their tax dollars will become part of the collective. Look up adverse selection death spiral. Link below. http://www.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2009/08/25/why-health-insurers-make-lousy-villains.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_spiral_(insurance)

Uhh, insurance companies make about a 3% profit margin on average. Google for yourself if you don't trust this link.

20 to 40% profits? Hardly. Try 3.4%.

"Overall, the profit margin for health insurance companies was a modest 3.4 percent over the past year, according to data provided by Morningstar. That ranks 87th out of 215 industries and slightly above the median of 2.2 percent. By this measure, the most profitable industry over the past year has been beverages, with a 25.9 percent profit margin." http://www.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2009/08/25/why-health-insurers-make-lousy-villains.html

Total genius! Where'd you get this gem from? LOL!

Isn't it obvious? Take a look at digital media. The supply can be (basically) infinite, so how much do people value songs at? Nothing. They download them for free.

The value of something is zero if nobody wants to buy it.

Too many houses?

http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2009/05/05/in-bank-demolition-echoes-of-the-great-depression/tab/article/
http://www.usnews.com/money/blogs/fresh-greens/2009/05/05/what-a-waste-new-homes-demolished-by-bank

Knock em down.
 

You pay for the bottom line of the equipment manufacturers: I recall being told by a person who knew that heart pacemakers cost US$ 250 to make, and were sold for US$ 20,000. This did not include the cost of fitting them.

[ http://www.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2009/08/25/why-health-insurers-make-lousy-villains.html ]
Medtronic (medical equipment): 14.9 percent
Baxter International (medical equipment): 17.5 percent
Covidien (medical equipment): 12.3 percent

US undergrad, US graduate, world.

The classroom is a complicated and unconstrained environment. It is unconstrained since there are so many outside forces at work a teacher does not have control over. How do you select and train good teachers, even if you could identify them? Do you fire an bad teacher after the first year or give them time to develop?

Do you test people? How do you know they just aren't good at taking tests?

Another thing I heard (I can't find the reference) is that fewer students in the classroom make a difference. Are we willing to pay for better education or is this just another lame half-hearted attempt?

And let's not talk about charter schools. There is evidence they are no better than public schools. If we fix either charter or public schools we may be able to fix the other.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-education/2009/06/17/charter-schools-might-not-be-better.html

This type of Orwellian crap comes directly from the same people who run the same banks that ran our economy into the ground

The Democratic party?

Don't mind me. I am expecting troll even though the parent straight out lied about the big banks requiring fingerprints and got a +3.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aSKSoiNbnQY0

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212948811465427.html

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/barone/2008/10/06/democrats-were-wrong-on-fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac.html

These were the ones from the top 10 (non-you-tube / video / blog) results from my google search of "democrats freddie mae"

But then, the search is probably specific to me since I "signed away my privacy" to Google and plan to continue to do so for every search and email I receive :)

I used to worry about my figerprints being taken. In Texas they require a fingerprint (forget which finger) to get a driver's license.

Start with money.

You're a bank. You're going to loan out some money for what reason? To get more back. So, the recipient of a loan has to supply something of value. Say, a house.

What happens when the supply of houses matches or exceeds the demand? Houses become valueless. You can't make money supplying them. The bank isn't going to make that loan.

So for our existing monetary system, demand must never be satisfied. We must never build enough houses for all the homeless, and if too many are built, they have to be knocked down.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120709588093381941.html?mod=todays_columnists
http://www.usnews.com/money/blogs/fresh-greens/2009/05/05/what-a-waste-new-homes-demolished-by-bank

When the supply of work meets demand, work becomes valueless.

Which leads us to energy.

The reason we "modernise" is to reduce costs. A human costs say 20k/year. A digging machine costs 250k, with one driver can replace 10 humans digging trenches. Payback after the 1st year.The cost of the energy for the digger is lower than the costs the humans have to pay to live, plus the humans have a 30% tax on top.

So economically, it makes sense to get rid of humans and replace them with machines. In fact, our monetary system pretty much enforces it.

If all human labour can be carried out by machines, then humans will have no money. i.e. Universal machine labour will destroy capitalism and the monetary system. Banks etc. What will happen is the system will devolve into a 2 class system of owners and the owned. Creditors and debtors. Neofeudalism.

You should read Silvio Gesell. He came to a similar conclusion. That if demand is ever satisfied, capitalism stops functioning. (This is why there will always be poverty. It's required by the money system.)

Ofcourse as energy itself (easy energy resources like coal, oil, gas) becomes more scarce and expensive, the running of a 10,000 cpu cluster to emulate 100 billion human neurons is likely to consume quite a lot of energy.

Here is some information on the recent incredible rise in filibusters:
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2009/11/25/the-staggering-rise-of-the-filibuster.html

http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2010/01/25/how-the-filibuster-changed-and-brought-tyranny-of-the-minority.html

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1933802,00.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_02/016901.php

This is NOT business as usual. This is obstructionism, plain and simple. The Democrats are more than willing to debate, but what the Republicans are doing is not debate. The voters are desperate for change, though, and the Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot.

Thankfully, Obama is spearheading a reform of the filibuster. Hopefully, the Democrats will force the Republicans to play their filibuster card over and over again, to demonstrate to the people that the Republican party is the party of NO. That is the answer the Republicans are providing to this country's problems: don't let the Democrats 'score points' by doing anything useful.

However, the Republicans will find that people do not look kindly on people who, though they have no answers or plans of their own, nonetheless obstruct anyone who does.

Here is some information on the recent incredible rise in filibusters:
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2009/11/25/the-staggering-rise-of-the-filibuster.html

http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2010/01/25/how-the-filibuster-changed-and-brought-tyranny-of-the-minority.html

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1933802,00.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_02/016901.php

This is NOT business as usual. This is obstructionism, plain and simple. The Democrats are more than willing to debate, but what the Republicans are doing is not debate. The voters are desperate for change, though, and the Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot.

Thankfully, Obama is spearheading a reform of the filibuster. Hopefully, the Democrats will force the Republicans to play their filibuster card over and over again, to demonstrate to the people that the Republican party is the party of NO. That is the answer the Republicans are providing to this country's problems: don't let the Democrats 'score points' by doing anything useful.

However, the Republicans will find that people do not look kindly on people who, though they have no answers or plans of their own, nonetheless obstruct anyone who does.

...seeing as I get paid 2 times a month.

Doesn't seem to stop them from getting a College education.

Plenty of People think they should

And Congress is wanting to make it so

Very little tangible has been done to limit the threat. For example, here is a US news report on the Saudi Link to terrorism from 2003. Recent articles state that the link is still there, for instance there may have been a 15 million transfer from Saudi fundamentalists to Yemen terrorist forces. For those who do not know, Saudi Arabia earns much of their money through oil, and almost nothing has been done to limit the amount of money they earn. In fact many people they have a right and responsibility to use as much oil as they want, thereby funding the terrorists.

A better example is the lack of training of the TSA. We have had eight years to create a professional police force. If the TSA screeners were seen as a professional force, instead of simply a work program for people who would otherwise be unemployed, I bet there would be much less protest against the body scanning machines. As it is, the airport screeners are treated as easily replaceable figureheads, not really there to do much of anything. Yet the screeners should be the most important part of airport defense, not only to prevent terrorists from entering the plane, but to prevent suicide bombers in the airport.

My concern is the TSA does not have leader, and instead of concentrating on making it a professional organization, Conservatives are bickering about unionization. Most police forces in the US are unionized. It is a non issue. This would not really have effected this case. What might have helped, and what will help, is if every country would take the screening process seriously, instead of just assuming that machines will do everything. This is something that is a human problem, and CCTV and x-rays will not solve it. Humans know how to subvert machines. The only flexible agent is another human

The real secret, Edison found, arguing it out with Charles Batchelor, was to raise the voltage to push a small amount of current through a thin wire to a high-resistance filament. It was an application of the law propounded in 1827 by the German physicist George Ohm, but it was still imperfectly understood. Edison himself said later, "At the time I experimented I did not understand Ohm's law. Moreover, I do not want to understand Ohm's law. It would stop me experimenting." This is Edison in his folksy genius mode. Understanding the relationship linking voltage, current, and resistance was crucial to the development of the incandescent lamp, and he understood it intuitively even if he did not express it in a mathematical formula.

In this case, there isn't any particular reason for believing that this is any different than immunizations. Poor people in the US are also more likely to have their kids vaccinated than the upper classes. Mainly because the government pays for the vaccination and the poorer parents are less likely to decline the mandatory vaccinations.

" children living at or above poverty levels were more likely to have had the vaccination series than children living below the poverty level, the survey shows." from http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/08/27/us-childhood-vaccine-rates-good-but-could-be.html

So your premise is wrong. And I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic. You are apparently asserting, without reading the study, that "experts" didn't correct for some confounding variable that is obvious to you. That seems quite egotistical, and from the fact you were asserting some point about vaccines and got the numbers completely wrong, I'm not sure such analysis from you holds much weight.

As for tobacco and correlation, that's incredibly ignorant.

How is it ignorant. People say "evolution is just a theory, and I think we need to teach the theory of the FSM along side." The real answer is that a scientific theory isn't the same as person's unsubstantiated thoughts they assign the word "theory" to. Just like doing scientific studies about correlations, expecting some causation in there, and finding what they expect, correcting for confounds, retesting, will result in a "correlation" that is stronger than many facts. And in most cases, it doesn't matter. By that, I mean that the actual cause and the suspected cause must be correlated in such a way that changing one does change the other. There is no "proof" smoking causes cancer. There is just a correlation. Anytime someone says "correlation != causation" just think of that. C is not C is nothing more than saying "I don't like your result, and I have nothing specific I can object to, so I'll drag up that tired cliche."

Statistics doesn't prove anything ever, that's not what statistics is for.

They why did they ever do any studies on tobacco? They didn't do anything other than statistics. Or drug trials? It's only statistics that tell us they are effective and what the side effects are. Statistics don't "prove" anything, but they show with sufficient accuracy that proof isn't required. If you required 100% proof of everything before you acted, you'd never act. Is the milk still good? It *should* be, since it is before the expiration date, but how do you know? I guess you shouldn't drink it. And that meat? I guess you shouldn't eat either. And I'm sure that air could cause you problems with carcinogens, so stop breathing. After all, you don't know 100% sure that not breathing causes death, because holding a pillow over someone's mouth and having them die is just a loose correlation, and we don't know for sure.

I cannot imagine to which presidents you are referring. Maybe Jimmy Carter didn't read it or Ronald Reagan. Maybe John Kennedy or Dwight Eisenhower did not. Maybe Bill Clinton or Barack Obama did not. Maybe George W. Bush did not (although, he is more likely to have read it because he reads so much): http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060817/17bushbooks.htm

and: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/29/AR2008122901896.html

and: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123025595706634689.html

Anyway, I've read portions of The Prince and was not impressed.

That's roughly accurate, although saying "everybody knows" is silly. Now, do you realize that CNN and MSNBC, and yes, even NPR, are no better? Or do you think they're magically better because they correspond more closely to your beliefs?

With the exception of MSNBC which does have an unabashedly liberal bias in primetime, I'm not aware of either CNN or NPR promoting astroturf political rallies ("tea parties"), orchestrating the crowd. and promoting partisan language. To claim equivalency between Fox News and CNN and NPR just doesn't pass muster. There just never have been any blatant cheerleading on either of those. Complaints of "liberal bias" are limited to such wishy washy statement like "Postcards from Buster" having the audacity to show a lesbian family without commentary, the there being too many blue muppets on Sesame Street. Even a 2003 poll on perceived bias PBS revealed that only about 1 in 5 thought there was a liberal bias, lower than other networks or CNN. The only difference being that a third of Republicans thought there was a bias, versus 10% of Democrats.

The complaints of "liberal bias" against the mainstream media, have always been a canard. Rich Bond, 1992 chair of the Republican Party, said in an interview "There is some strategy to it [bashing the 'liberal' media]. If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one." In 1996, Bill Kristol said, "I admit it. The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures."

Obama swept into office with a ringing endorsement from the U.S. population (and much of the world) and a Democrat Congress with a filibuster-proof majority.

And a week ago the Democrats lost some seats. If health care reform passes Democrats may lose more next year. Such as the Blue collar and Reagan Democrat voters. Though I voted for Obama myself I feel I've been used and can not support Obama again.

Falcon

Also one blockbuster drug can pay for the research, development, and testing for a bunch of other drugs.

Absolutely. But, only if you can sell the blockbuster drug for what the market will bear. If you are forced to sell at near-marginal-cost (the whole point of this thread) then there are no blockbuster drugs.

I never said otherwise. A company should be able to sell something for whatever price they want as long as they spent their own money developing and testing it. If BMS had spent it's own money to develop Taxol instead of the taxpayers then while I may grumble about their prices I'd also let them set the price. I'm angry about it because the taxpayers paid for it not BMS.

the whole point of this discussion was whether you can make initial-cost-heavy-marginal-cost-light items without IP protection.

And I argue that if duplications costs are low, which they are with copyrighted goods, they should have limited monopolies. Without copyrights it's difficult to make a profit which I've been arguing all this tyme. Previously I said I am disabled and currently don't work but I want to start a photography business. Without copyrights I seriously doubt I'd want to do it. Why would I spend the thousands of dollars to start the business when someone else who didn't spend the money could come along and take my work without paying me?

Likewise, if you have a world where there are no drug patents then it isn't all that easy to make money off of drugs either.

Actually there is a proposal to fund drug research without patents, see An alternative to pharmaceutical patents. There are others but that's the only link I have.

I'm not trying to suggest that drug companies didn't make money in the 90s. I am suggesting that it is hard for drug and movie makers to make money in the 2010s.

According to the article Why Health Insurers Make Lousy Villains, dated 25 August 2009 "Pharmaceutical companies have a profit margin of 16.4 percent--seventh highest of the 215 industries that Morningstar tracks." Seventh highest out of 215? I wouldn't say the pharmaceutical industry is finding it hard to make a profit.

Falcon

http://www.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/real-estate/articles/2009/06/08/best-places-to-live-2009.html

I think you'll find that very often speed limits are completely idiotic and don't have any connection to the real world, because whoever sets them for a given road can have several reasons not to maintain this relationship. This could be a municipality trying to cash in on speeding tickets, which has been shown to be pretty effective in many cases. Somebody could be playing the "think of the children" and safety cards by blindly lowering the speed limits everywhere - this sounds good to your average person, statistics be damned. Then there's the environmental angle, which is apparently how the retarded 55mph limits were set on US highways. This actually covers both cases, though there are other examples of course. And last but not least, the people responsible could be incompetent or just not care.

Following the limits can be stupid and dangerous if everybody else is breaking them as well for the above reasons. By driving below the average traffic speed, you're creating more of a hazard than if you just stay with the flow and keep the speed difference low. Also keep in mind that in all but a few exceptional cases, the speed limits don't reflect the actual conditions on the road. It's the middle of the night, there's a huge blizzard and you can't see shit, but the sign will still say 130km/h, just like it does when it's dry and sunny. Therefore, this leads me to conclude that statements such as "if you can't follow the speed limits and whatnot - you are a bad driver" are simply incorrect.

Same goes for the signs. There are at least real-world case studies that showed that removing all, or most, signs actually increased safety for all involved, here are the two I've been previously aware of: one in the Netherlands and one from Germany, which is actually a more recent follow up to the part that mentions that the Germans are also planning this change. In both cases, there has been no increase in accident rate, but actually a significant decrease.

I'm not going to argue completely against predictability on the roads, however blindly following whatever's written on those small metal disks isn't necessarily the best thing for the safety of those involved, as I have hopefully demonstrated clearly enough.

That's assuming that Mcgill and Harvard are equivalent schools.

They are.

Not even close.

I can provide quite a few more ranking lists for other sources with similar results. Canadian universities are generally a shit stain on the faced of the American continent who like to fantasize that they matter.

About the only thing our floppy-headed inferiority-complex-laden neighbors have that's worth a damned is here and here.

Considering we just hit the Moon to try to figure out how much water ice is there, it seems unlikely that we have any good ideas on which asteroids have water ice in them

Some progress on that front:
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2009/10/08/ice-confirmed-on-an-asteroid.html

much less the ability to bring them to where we need them (yet)

Yeah, I think smart folks feel it's a pretty straight-forward, if slow, proposition, but we'd have to still design and build the actual devices. Heck, convincing the populace that the rocket scientists wouldn't crash the asteroid into Earth is probably the hardest part.

That's more the type of project I'd expect a few decades _after_ we do what this project is talking about. All in good time, my friend...

Agreed. :) This kind of air gun could be a good way to bridge the gap.

It would be like claiming that the thermostat in your house is slowly increasing the temperature in your room so therefore there's no harm in raising the thermostat further.

But I don't see any harm in that. I may actually like a 1 degree annual average increase. Possibly improve my comfort, and possibly save me some money if spaced correctly (when considering the air conditioning). Thanks for the idea.

Well, AGW is raising sea levels and drying up the Tibetan plateau, which is already causing much hardship in places like Bangladesh. But I understand - they are not Mericans, so they don't count. But why don't you go check out the impact of AGW on forest fires in the western US? It turns out that increases in fires are not just due to bad forest management by the evil guvmint (who ignored what all the nice lumber companies kept telling them) but are also being exacerbated by earlier spring melts

Maybe they were all bored and frustrated with the Bush administration's modus operandi of ignoring scientific research?

Bad example. Comparing infant mortality rates between countries is not an apples-to-apples comparison; making such an assumption inaccurately assumes that we count the same way. We don't. In fact the way we count guarantees that we will have among the highest counts.
http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/060924/2healy.htm

Infant mortality numbers do not indicate that the US health care system is in any way inferior to anyone else'. There may be compelling arguments to support such a proposition, but infant mortality is not one of them.

BTW why are we discussing this in a copyright thread?

Ok, as a guessimate and assuming this survey means excluding:

- the poor who cannot afford insurance so access to the best care (about 15-16%)

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2008/08/26/number-of-uninsured-americans-drops.html

- obese people who have underlying health issues? (about 65%)

http://obesity1.tempdomainname.com/subs/fastfacts/obesity_US.shtml

So the remaining 20% who can afford healthcare and are do not have an underlying illness - get the BEST treatment in the world.

Now this is a great sample - it only proves, reinforces and highlights the 2 tier system in the US.

My understanding is that lib(dvd)css2 is in a legal limbo -- despite a quick search on Google, I can't find a single citation to show that it is expressly forbidden. However, there are warnings about using it and similar technologies all over the net.

So what? If "they" (whoever "they" may be) don't know you are using it, who cares? Well, for instance, what happens when you carry your laptop on an international flight, and as you return to the country, Customs asks to search your laptop?

I might just be paranoid, but it's something to keep in mind.

The problem is the "features" you are touting are the crap nobody wants unless they want to wag their epeen! For example DDR3-total crap. The latency on DDR3 is complete shit. The ONLY way that DDR3 is worth the extra lag is if you stuff the living hell out of a machine with enough of it to make up for the lousy latency. Less than 8Gb? Crap.

-This on the other hand is complete and total overkill for 99.995% of the home and business users. of this I know because many of my customers are happy to let me run performance counters for a week or two to allow me to "tune" the performance after the sale. Most aren't even hitting 1.5Gb or 12% CPU on machine with a LOT less power than the one at that link. In fact my biggest sellers are the lowest Core 2 Dous on the laptops and the AMD 7550 on the desktop and I have yet to see a customer get above 20% utilization for any length of time.

Let me ask YOU a question: If Apple is such a "good value" then why do YOU think company after company after company keep coming out with HAckentoshes" huh? Allow me to answer that. It is because with Apple you have shitty (Mac Mini) or total overkill (Mac Pro) and pretty much nada in between. Same with their laptops. You got the shitty $1000 model and the decent ones are all over $2200. Did you look at the price of the "total overkill" laptop? It is a grand total of $1379 and completely stomps anything Apple has for less than $2400. That is a full $1000 difference. Pretty big difference,huh?

Look, if you want to spend crazy money on a shiny, that is your business. Nobody is judging you for it. But I can sell a laptop for less than $1000 that will doo all that my customers can ever ask for and then some. And of course we both know that Apple doesn't even make desktops, as the Mini is a bad joke filled with laptop parts and the next desktop is ....what? $2400+? Meanwhile I just sold a client a really nice quad core for $750, and that is with me making nearly $200 on the build!

But you can read for yourself here and here that I am not the only one who thinks Apple is like Ferrari-nice and pretty and expensive. Do you see doctors going around saying their Hummer H3 is a "good value for the money"? Or their trophy wife saying that Lincoln Navigator is "a good value"? NO! So be happy with your expensive status symbol and enjoy it. Meanwhile my customers and the other 90% of the US population that don't have a couple of grand burning a hole in their pocket will get really nice Intel and AMD (how is that AMD Apple doing you? Oh yeah, you don't get a choice there either) crotch rockets for cheap. And yes, they will last much longer than most folks actually want to use them for, as the 1.1GHz Celeron HP Pavilion I'm typing this on, or the whole damned closet full of under 3GHz desktops can attest.