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Anybody care to provide a link that isn't paywall'd?

http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2011/04/19/nasa-pulls-out-of-astrophysics-missions

Google is always very helpful

Don't you think so?

I have another theory about the results: older people are more responsible.

Condom Use Lowest...Among Adults Over 40? Surprise! A new study finds that teens are more likely to report condom use than any other age group
Condom use declines with age, new research suggests, and adolescents are more likely than any other age group to engage in safe sex. It is adults over 40 who seem to have the strongest aversion to condoms, according to a large study whose first round of findings were published today in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

HIV In Older Adults: Engaged
Far too few people over 50 are protecting themselves and their loved ones from HIV. One national survey found that people over 50 are six times less likely to use condoms and five times less likely to get tested for HIV than people in their 20s. The troubling reality is that older adults who are sexually active or who use drugs aren’t doing as much to prevent HIV infection as younger people.

So, you were saying?

just need some vetted moderators

Perhaps the TSA has some qualified folks for this job...

to rank the attractiveness of people from either gay or straight perspective

Apparently, we don't need real live moderators to rank attractiveness.. On the gay vs straight issue, not sure this helps much in a bar scene (for example, from a straight perspective, maybe I find a lesbian very attractive... not gonna help me much). However, if perhaps there really is gaydar and they can figure out how to automate that...

then making tallies per gender per estimated age buckets (21-24, 25-28, 29-32, etc.)

That's what they are doing w/o the vetted moderators...

THEN you'd really have something.

I think privacy advocates already think there is something here...

You must be a republican, because you're attacking democrats with some weird out-of-left-field comparison to Stalin, claiming that the left-leaning among us want to silence expression, when it's the republicans who:

* want to suppress political expression in the form of one bogus voter ID law after another, running on a fraudulent specter of non-existent voter fraud (one source of many), or because "kids vote liberal" (source)
* want to suppress emotional expression by way of banning gay marriage for no discernable reason other than "gays make us uncomfortable" (and remember, these are the same guys who also don't like interracial marriage!) (source)
* want to suppress academic and scientific speech using bogus lawsuits AT THE GOVERNMENT LEVEL (source) just because they don't like the facts the science reveals
* fight repeatedly to curtail regulations on what chemicals big industries pump into the ground (source) or what they put in our food (three republicans eating pink slime to stick it to obama)


Oh, wait, it's because someone made a joke about punching an anti-science, anti-vaxxer in the face, that dems are teh eeevil! That same anti-science, anti-vaccine nonsense, by the way, which has led to many deaths.

Republicans...what will they think of next? Nothing! That's the joke..they don't really think.

You can get better education, free or nearly free, in most of Europe

Then why are 14 of the top 20 universities in the world in the US? 4 of the non-US top 20 are in the UK where education prices for students are rising, and 1 is in Canada which is also not free.

Really? I got this list as the top hit for a search for the best universities in the world. In the top 10, we have UK universities in spots 1, 5, 6, and 7. So somehow a country with cheap education and a population 20% that of the USA manages to have 40% of the top 10 spots. The cost of getting a degree at any of the UK universities in the top 10 is less than the cost of one year of tuition at any of the US universities in the top 10.

Looking at the methodology, it's somewhat flawed. 50% of the score is based on people's perception of the university (highly subjective and more based on how good their PR department is than their teaching), 20% is based on citations (so irrelevant for ranking universities in terms of teaching). Oh, and the citations score is not normalised by department size, so US universities do significantly better on this metric even when they have fewer good publications per researcher simply because they are considerably larger than most universities in the rest of the world.

THIS WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED UNDER BUSH.
http://classic.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54277/

Really. It wouldn't have happened.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/02/10/obamas-budget-gives-a-boost-to-science- /did I make a funny?

how long? before Iran retaliates and the whole thing escalates into WW3

You mean like seeking regional hegemony, running terrorist campaigns worldwide, threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz, threaten Europe's energy supplies to freeze people, use suicide boats to attack gulf shipping, arm Hezbollah to attack Israel with and ultimate goal of destroying Israel, attack US troops, send suicide bombers to Europe and America, aid America's enemies, threaten attacks on nearby countries and cities with missiles, kill diplomats, subvert nearby countries, unleash the suicide bomb brigades (serious), and the ninjas (you decide), perhaps adding some WMDs to the attacks?

I doubt that many people will buy it.

Oh children can get the pensions too in some cases: http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/02/09/us-government-still-pays-two-civil-war-pensions

Not to defend Derbyshire, but, what he said (albeit, in much greater obnoxious detail) isn't all that different from what The Rev. Jesse has noted:

Even Jesse Jackson said a few years ago, "There is nothing more painful to me ... than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/960318/archive_010008.htm

Yes it is different. Rev Jackson is saying he is ashamed about making prejudicial assumptions based on race when he meets people, which implies that he believes that people should try to set aside prejudice. Derbyshire is saying that he advises everyone to structure their lives around their racial prejudices, and nobody needs to examine these prejudices, justify them or consider whether it is right to act on them.

By my reading, Rev Jackson is giving the exact opposite advice from Derbyshire.

Not to defend Derbyshire, but, what he said (albeit, in much greater obnoxious detail) isn't all that different from what The Rev. Jesse has noted:

Even Jesse Jackson said a few years ago, "There is nothing more painful to me ... than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/960318/archive_010008.htm

Source (may be outdated): http://money.usnews.com/money/business-economy/technology/articles/2009/09/30/is-it-legal-to-copy-a-dvd

Even the current system isn't correct. The Republican Party holds voting accuracy as near sacred as part of their party talking points. Take a look at how they handled a primary season where they should have absolute control over the rules:
* Iowa went from Romney to Santorum, though a statistical tie, because someone mistyped a 2 as 22: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/01/18/rick-santorum-might-have-actually-won-the-iowa-caucuses
* Maine almost didn't even count a whole county: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/maines-miscount-one-county-might-be-included-after-saturday/
* Nobody can seem to make up their minds on what to do about Florida. It is supposed to be, normally, a winner take all state. It moved its primary up and got sanctioned by the party by having its delegates cut in-half. Also, it may or may not be proportional. We'll find out in August: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/26/2610390/fight-looms-over-fla-delegates.html
* Missouri has two elections this year. The first doesn't county, but everyone is assuming it will. The one that was held already was state mandated, but the state Republicans, not wanting to lose half their delegates, have decided that one won't count. They'll have a second one that will really count. Note : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/07/missouri-primary-2012-explained_n_1257817.html
* She was allowed to vote once it was all sorted out, but an 84-year-old was initially told she was dead when she appeared at the polls: http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/03/07/84-year-old-fall-river-woman-tries-to-vote-told-shes-dead/

My apologies to any Republicans I offended with these results. I only used these examples as they are near immediate in time scale.

The current voting system is full of flaws. It has been full of flaws. It will likely remain full of flaws. No need to worry about hackers mucking up an election when a typo can swing an election, and never have gotten caught if someone didn't post an image to FaceBook. So I don't see on-line voting as some type of corrupting influence on a pristine system.

The problem I see here is in the oversight. Considering it took two days for Washington D.C. to notice, I would say the real problem was not so much that the system got hacked, but D.C. didn't care enough about the election to monitor it as it was going on. The same lackluster oversight could still swing *cough*Iowa*cough* a close election.

This is a common misconception about EEOC regulation. There is no such thing as a "question that employers cannot ask during interviews." (Erm, I guess you are not allowed to ask about disabilities...so one exception.) An interviewer can ask whatever they want. Seriously.

The only catch is that if they ask something about your race, sex, religion, or national origin, they can't use your answer as a reason to hire/not hire you. So there's really no point in asking the question. But it's not illegal--of itself--to ask the question. It's just pointless and stupid (and risks alienating an otherwise good job candidate, and possibly opening yourself to litigation if the candidate thinks his/her answer was the basis for not getting the job).

Since I'm going to get a "Citation Needed" tag, here you go: http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2011/01/10/is-that-interview-question-legal

Go to the US with a few copies of the Qur'an and see what happens.

The outcome is pretty predictable: Oh, I see you have a Quran. You must be a Muslim? There are millions of them in the US. Have a nice day.

Wow, that is pretty horrible, but not on a par with nations living under Sharia.

Saudi jailed for discussing the Bible

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) — A court sentenced a teacher to 40 months in prison and 750 lashes for “mocking religion” after he discussed the Bible and praised Jews, a Saudi newspaper reported yesterday.

In Iran, Covert Christian Converts Live With Secrecy and Fear

Leaving Islam for another religion, or apostasy, has long invited reprisals from the Iranian government, forcing the likes of Illyas and his family into absolute secrecy, practicing their new beliefs only in the privacy of their home. In Iran, Christians are prohibited from seeking Muslim converts, although there has been tolerance for those who are born into Christian families.

The government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has introduced legislation before the Iranian Majlis that would mandate the death penalty for apostates from Islam, a sign that it will brook no proselytizing in the country. "Life for so-called apostates in Iran has never been easy, but it could become literally impossible if Iran passes this new draft penal code," says Joseph Grieboski, the president of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy in Washington. "For anyone who dares question the regime's religious ideology, there could soon be no room to argue—only death.''

Let me know when he shows that instead of prostrating himself, and by proxy, the US to foreign leaders.

...that they somehow reserved the right to secede

I would love to see how how that worked out for them. If they want to succeed, I say we should just let them. Within a decade, I suspect that they would be asking for re-admission to the union.

We already know how it worked out.

...that they somehow reserved the right to secede

I would love to see how how that worked out for them. If they want to succeed, I say we should just let them. Within a decade, I suspect that they would be asking for re-admission to the union.

I'm sad to see the parent poster marked down - this comment was dead-on accurate. Far too many Texans are far too filled with hubris regarding their own state, and very little regard for their fellow states in the USA or the nations of the rest of the world.

Hell, their own brain-damaged governor actually started up secession talk when he was pandering to the Tea Party fringe.

The number of wack-job falsehoods that get tossed around by Texans - including that "they're the only state allowed to fly their flag at equal height to the US flag", that they somehow reserved the right to secede, or that Texas somehow had an economic miracle based on "conservatism" that sheltered it from the recent recession (that third one being more full of manure than your average rancher's livestock pens) - are absolutely insane. And yet they keep on believing them and not realizing that maybe Texas isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread... sigh.

That's my point - people talk about the "supermajority" as if it was something Obama had and wasted, but it was only so if all of the Dems (and "dems" who are just not republicans) voted in lockstep and on a large, complex bill such as healthcare or changing the tax code, it's not a guarantee.

But he did by definition have a supermajority. If he had passed something less extreme, his party would have been lockstep behind it, just like they were with the stimulus bill and the minimum wage bill and all the other garbage that got jammed through during his presidency. The point is that he forced through a very unpopular and extreme bill that even his own party was opposed to -- that's why he is attacked for it. No one was compromising and working to come up with something sensible -- instead they were tacking on riders to buy votes to force that terrible legislation to pass as quickly as possible. And that's Obama's fault. The fact Republicans were summarily ignored and not even included in the bill design process is Obama's fault. The fact he pushed a bill that even his own party could not support is Obama's fault.

The President is not an emperor, even with a majority.

Yet even in this country, the President has a considerable amount of sway in pushing agenda.

The republicans *were* invited to the table on healthcare. More than invited in fact

What kind of revisionist history in this? Look for yourself: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-3590 THREE of the 40 original co-sponsors are Republicans. And the final bill was intentionally shut off from Republican dialogue: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2010/01/04/democratic-leaders-plan-secret-health-reform-deliberations In fact, the only time Obama seriously took into account inviting Republicans to the dialogue was when he lost his supermajority and he suddenly needed a Republican vote: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-02-07-obama-health-care_N.htm

since they spent their entire time just saying "no" to everything

The reason they were saying "no" was because by the time they were invited to the table, the Democrats had already written like 90+% of the bill and were essentially looking for a rubber stamp -- they didn't want significant or radical changes to the hundreds of pages that had already been penned. They also wanted the bill to pass quickly for political reasons.

he probably should have decided to cut out the Republicans more than he did and attempt to force things through. As it turns out, going the bipartisan route just allowed the repubs to gut everything and still say no at every turn.

*rolls eyes* You libs believe whatever you want to believe, despite what the facts show -- Obama made no attempt to work with Republicans until he absolutely needed them (after he lost the supermajority) -- and Blue Dog Democrats (which even you admit to) were the ones forcing him to gut the bill to change things (http://articles.cnn.com/2009-07-10/politics/house.health.care_1_blue-dogs-public-option-medicare-rates?_s=PM:POLITICS). You seem to want to have your cake and eat it too -- you claim Obama didn't have a supermajority because his own party was obstructing the passage of the bill, yet you blame Republicans for obstructing the bill instead. Heck, it's the Blue Dogs to blame for the stripping of the "public option" provision: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

though the more interesting question is what technology will they be able to glean from what they did capture.

The answer would have been, "probably nothing". That is, if we didn't have such a wimp for a president.

In my opinion, Democrats should have removed the filibuster from the Senate's rules of order and rammed single-payer-with-optout (ie, if you opt out, no one is required to care for you if you can't pay), end of DADT, appointment of judges, cabinet post and agency director positions, and a whole host of other legislation down Republicans' throats just as the Republicans did when they managed to gain majorities in both chambers.

Clearly a very wise and informed opinion. Similar to Nancy Pelosi's position: "pass the bill so you can find out what's in it". A real policy for success followed by one of the most corrupt and pork filled bills in history voted in on a Sunday.

Healthcare is screwed up, badly. Particularly, outrageous court losses and the inability to compete across most state borders hinders thing's ridiculously. The bill that passed is not the solution and it hardly addressed the latter, and it did not address the former at all. The corrupt bits just send it over the lagoon into unconstitutional territory alongside the tax/fee that changes names based on who the administration is talking too.

Finally, the filibuster was alive and well when the Democrats used it, even during the Republican majority--even when they tried to remove it.

The rubber has to hit the road somewhere. Maybe you can contribute to your Senator's re-election campaign and get legislation that gives you visas for ten million programmers who will all work for 25 bucks an hour 12 hours a day 6 days a week, live 6 to an apartment and when their six year contract is up, all go home exchange rate adjusted millionaires.

But somewhere on some machine, ultimately, code has to run without errors.

Rubber, meet road. Road, meet rubber.

I love it when fast buck, coke snorting, prostitute screwing, sexual harassing, hard drinking, low IQ, high ambition, hand pumping, bribe giving, sales men dirtbags come face to face with something the rest of us know as non-negotiable reality.

It doesn't make up for the career swath of career destruction they've cut through the industry, but still.

"Hey ! Does anyone here know how to program? "

One thing is, companies learn their lessons. My spouse's company outsourced everything and after a years time brought it all back and now everyone's job is VERY secure. They'll never do THAT again.

Same thing here. Bet you anything the FBI is hiring programmers right now after having seen the advantages of developing and maintaining their own supply of stable, competent craftsman -programmers.

IBM Lockheed SAP Deloitte SAIC Technodyne and all the rest are in the business of billing bodies by the hour. Full stop. The more hours they bill, hey man, the better the business is. These are of course the same companies who lobby Congress to import as much programming labor as possible to undercut the domestic market.

I bless anyone anywhere who wants to be a programmer or make money for themselves and their families. That doesn't stop me from observing that Mega Corporations cynically exploit those same people and systematically undermine the quality of the work product of the entire industry by first staffing with masses of unqualified programmers, then paying substandard wages, then systematically overworking them all of which has the effect of causing people who wanted to make a real lifelong career of their craft to be forced out of their careers and also having the effect of making an IT career seem like a route to a short lived, overworked and underpaid job to people who are considering it as a major.

As far as these projects go, in the end, none of it works. Like making the WRONG choice for your prom date, you as a project manager only have to hook up with any of these sleazy companies and wait nine months to turn yourself into the sorriest motherfucker on your block.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/12/20/indianas-gov-daniels-assailed-by-ibm

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/218515/county_alleges_sap_deloitte_engaged_in_racketeering.html

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/237939/epicor_sued_over_alleged_erp_project_failure.html

http://www.cio.com/article/678553/Auditors_ERP_Software_Woes_Could_Cost_Idaho_Millions

http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3302164/lawson-embroiled-in-erp-lawsuit-with-customers/

I don't "know" in the sense that certain faith based folks "know" that they'll be the ones saved.

I do, however, know in the sense that I've read a lot about it, including impact models ranging from US government predictions (military, civilian), international studies, many of which predict widespread starvation and chaos.

Their point is: the banks wrecked the economy, probably criminally.

Uhmm ... I disagree. The banks were forced to give out loans to people THEY KNEW could not pay it back. It started with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 ... and was reinforced by Clinton in 1994 - Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown.

They not only did not get punished, but they got 700 billion dollars of taxpayer money

And Banks did not want TARP ... because of the strings attached.

which they then turned around and used to pay bonuses to the people that wrecked the economy.

Attacking the banks is a nice and tidy class-warfare position that may get some traction among those who are not informed, the real culprit in this case is the Federal Government. By interfering with the "invisible hand" of the economy, it places pressure to do the "wrong thing". Of course, it makes people feel good that they helped out a nice couple trying to buy a house for the first time, however, if it is KNOWN that the payments would not be able to be made ... it doesn't help anybody.

The issue is the double standard - if I am a rich bank, I can do whatever I want, and if I get into trouble, I get bailed out with taxpayer dollars, and if I am not a rich bank, then I'm screwed.

I would argue that it is with the Government that is at fault ... the Government can screw with the economy and nearly collapse it, yet the people just hear "it's the rich's fault ... they're not paying their fair share" ... the top 1% pay >36% of the taxes ...how much SHOULD they pay? And if they don't pay ... they get thrown in jail. So ... in essence, you're saying that the "top 1%" has to be our slaves and give us their money that they earned.

what they want is the government to spend its money helping its citizens in need rather than banks who deserve to fail for their incompetence.

That's assuming that the banks did it on their own. NOT under the threat of former Attorney General Janet Reno

Has Obama done even one single thing about guns during his entire administration?

I believe they were voicing their opposition to the last Supreme Court decision on how states could ban guns.

They've supported trying to the Ammunition Accountability legislation.

I found this quote from an article:

'I just want you to know that we are working on [gun control]. We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar,' President Obama told Sarah Brady, the former president of the Brady Campaign, this past spring.

Some others:

Trying to ban shooters off public lands.

Banning import of historic guns into the US.

Defining high powered guns as those being over .22 cal?

And his judge appointments, many of whom are anti-gun like Justice Sonia Sotomayor has signed on to a Supreme Court opinion stating that there is no individual right to "private self-defense" with guns.

In the US, if someone knows the info on your check, they can use your identity. Because of this, check security experts such as Frank Abagnale Jr. recommend against using checks whenever possible.

I'm not defending the Anonymous Coward's statement but he was only off by about 20 years in his critique of the IPCC's original estimate of 2035.

I wonder if the rise is autism is strictly a diagnoses thing, or environmental thing, or perhaps due to 3 or 4 generations exposed to the flashing lights of television and computers.
Since autistic children have a massive increase in brain cells in the frontal cortex, and in some case "mild autism or high functioning" appears to be perfectly suited to intense concentration and skills sets beneficial to programming, engineering, etc, and programmers/engineers that marry and have children have a higher incidence of this.

Just a thought, no evidence really.

Brains of People with Autism Focus More on Visual Skills
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2011/04/04/brains-of-people-with-autism-focus-more-on-visual-skills

Autism tied too many brain cells
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57321349-10391704/autism-tied-too-many-brain-cells-will-finding-bring-better-diagnosis/

Educating Students with Asperger's Syndrome,
or High Functioning Autism
http://www.autismtoday.com/articles/Genius_May_Be_Abnormality.htm

The list goes on and on and on...

The main reason tuition has been rising faster than college costs is that colleges had to make up for reductions in the per-student subsidy state taxpayers sent colleges. In 2006, the last year for which Wellman had data, state taxpayers sent $7,078 per student to the big public research universities. That's $1,270 less (after accounting for inflation) than they sent in 2002.

Note, that was 2002-2006.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjA3_Qlji1Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQL6Mus1nCQ

http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/the-ticker/2009/01/26/peter-schiff-right-on-the-crisis-wrong-on-investing

http://caps.fool.com/blogs/im-glad-that-someone-else/136598

You're seriously suggesting Newt Gingrich doesn't want to shove religion down our throats?

A really quick search (actually, I went to the Wikipedia page for Newt Gingrich and glanced through the citations at the bottom) turns up this. Scary stuff, and it's only the first article I looked at.

Also, isn't Newt a huge supporter of the Defense of Marriage Act? That's huge government forcing religion down our throats right there. And after he has been divorced a couple times! Hypocrite.

LOL fossils? Gotta love the suckers who still thinks oil comes from fossils after all these years. Wake up from the BS.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/energy-intelligence/2011/09/14/abiotic-oil-a-theory-worth-exploring [usnews.com]

More recently, Forbes presented a similar discussion. In 2008 it reported a group of Russian and Ukrainian scientists say that oil and gas don't come from fossils; they're synthesized deep within the earth's mantle by heat, pressure, and other purely chemical means, before gradually rising to the surface. Under the so-called abiotic theory of oil, finding all the energy we need is just a matter of looking beyond the traditional basins where fossils might have accumulated.

[Read the U.S. News debate: Should offshore drilling be expanded?]

The idea that oil comes from fossils "is a myth" that needs changing according to petroleum engineer Vladimir Kutcherov, speaking at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. "All kinds of rocks could have oil and gas deposits."

Gotta love the suckers who still thinks oil comes from fossils. Just how ignorant can the world get?

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/energy-intelligence/2011/09/14/abiotic-oil-a-theory-worth-exploring

More recently, Forbes presented a similar discussion. In 2008 it reported a group of Russian and Ukrainian scientists say that oil and gas don't come from fossils; they're synthesized deep within the earth's mantle by heat, pressure, and other purely chemical means, before gradually rising to the surface. Under the so-called abiotic theory of oil, finding all the energy we need is just a matter of looking beyond the traditional basins where fossils might have accumulated.

[Read the U.S. News debate: Should offshore drilling be expanded?]

The idea that oil comes from fossils "is a myth" that needs changing according to petroleum engineer Vladimir Kutcherov, speaking at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. "All kinds of rocks could have oil and gas deposits."

You are having a logic failure. Correlation does not equal causation. The US economy was a powerhouse and people moved to the US in droves during the 19th century, when there was no income tax at all. Even if it were true that the tax cuts over the recent years were all for the wealthy, that doesn't mean there should be nothing wrong with the economy.

The current flailing economy is a product of:

• Short-term thinking on the part of investors, demanding short-term gains without regard for long-term effect. For example, cutting workforce to raise the current quarter's profits, or hiring an external company to provide customer service because its cheaper.
• Individual lack of ethics and/or intelligence. Since brokers were paid by the dollar amount of mortgages they sold, and banks were being paid by the amount of mortgages they re-sold, and buyers were buying with the expectation that they would be able to sell again before the bubble burst, property values continued to climb until they lagged, then they crashed. As many people predicted.
• Interference in the mortgage market by the Federal government, causing mortgages issued to those who did not have to prove that they could pay it back. Unsurprisingly, this caused mortgages to be issued that had little chance of being repaid. It's not like nobody saw that coming.
• An education system that is designed to enforce social ideals, rather than to teach necessary skills. This has also been discussed.

The wealthy are sitting on the largest sums of money for a century, and they aren't doing shit for anyone else, such as giving them a job or investing in start ups.

Can you cite an example, please? Only the most extreme idiot would "sit on" money, since the value of the US dollar decreases with time.

If a wealthy person didn't finish college and that's their excuse for not knowing algebra, then they are simply a moron considering you learn it in high school, contradicting your "The wealthiest 10 percent are the smartest" theory.

I'm not even sure how to parse that. But perhaps I should state the underlying point I was making, which is that an education is not needed to be rich. Many rich people dropped out of school altogether, during or before college. And some of the most thoroughly educated people are not rich. The reason is that education does not make a person rich--being industrious, gutsy, and smart do.

there are millions of workers that work twice as hard as any CEO since their jobs are long and demanding, like construction.

People are paid based on value of their product, not based on how hard they work to make it. A good CEO can make the company billions in profit, and a good construction worker can't. They're getting a percentage of the eventual return on investment that's made in their work. And if they want to go into business for themselves, instead of get paid to perform their duty, they can partake directly in that return on investment (and inversely, take the loss if the investment turns out to be a bad one).

If there weren't inheritance and disproportionate privileged for the children of wealthy parents I would agree with your "upper 10 percent are the hardest working". As it is you can inherit a bunch of money and live the rest of your life making investments...

As I've discussed here and elsewhere, investing money is a good thing.

...or you can work for your daddies company making way more than you are worth...

Your rant makes me think that you have history with a specific person. I'm not sure what you expect to gain from this extreme minority of people whose daddies are bad parents

Desperately poor? They're only 40bn in debt, which pales in comparison to the USA.

As a % of GDP, they're actually quite close in terms of debt - 49% vs 58% for the US (US is closer to (90% by some measures).

For an interesting comparison of debt ratios, see:
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/01/28/the-10-countries-with-the-most-debt

I almost submitted this yesterday and got a screen saying several people had already submitted it; I think the screen was referring to this cancer thread, but this is from U of PA and the virus drug is from MIT. They had a cure for the common cold and most other viral infections. According to TFA they're starting animal trials and it may be ten years before it comes to market.

A potentially groundbreaking drug appears effective against a wide range of viral infections, including the common cold, flu, stomach viruses, polio and dengue fever -- at least in mice.
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The new drug is made from living cell's own defense systems and works by targeting a type of genetic material found only in those cells infected by viruses, MIT researchers explained.

"Currently there are very few antiviral treatments, and most that do exist are highly specific for individual viruses or have undesirable side effects," noted lead researcher Todd Rider, a senior staff scientist at Lincoln Laboratory's Chemical, Biological, and Nanoscale Technologies Group, which is part of MIT.

The new drug is called DRACO (from the more unwieldy "double-stranded RNA activated caspase oligomerizers"). According to Rider, it "has the potential to safely treat or prevent a broad spectrum of viral infections."

Still, a long road awaits before humans might benefit, if ever. Clinical trials remain years away and any drug available to patients might not materialize for a decade, Rider said.

The report was published recently in the online journal PLoS One.

Maybe I'll go ahead and finish submitting the article.

I agree with reading about it on the Internet. I like RSS, but I've found it homogenizes my content so that things don't jump out at me and the really interesting stories get buried with all the mediocre ones. So I keep the following list of bookmarks to check on a weekly basis:

ABC (Australia) Science, ABC (US) Science, Air & Space Magazine, ARKive, Ars Technica, BBC SciTech News, CBS Sci-Tech News, Chet Raymo, Cosmos News, Current: Science, Discover, Discovery News, Edge, Economist Science, EurekAlert!, Flyp media, Futurity, h+, Inkling Magazine, LiveScience, Massimo Pigliucci, Mother Jones Environment, MSNBC Science News, National Geographic News, National Public Radio (US), Natural History Magazine, New Scientist, New York Times Science, New Yorker Science, Newsweek Science, Orion, PhysOrg, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, R&D Magazine, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Science Daily, Scientific American, Seed Magazine, Science Cheerleader, Science News, Schrodinger's Kitten, Slashdot Science, Smithsonian, Space.com, The Technium, Time Magazine Science, USA Today Science, US News & World Report Science, Wired News, World Changing

It didn't take this long, it's normal. But you didn't see videos glorifying it when it was Shiite militias fighting us in Iraq.

I hear name calling, "You are naive" but nothing factual.

It's interesting that you would say that after doing the same yourself. When you state "It's also true grass roots, unlike the paid astroturf deployed against it" what facts do you have that show it is "true grass roots"? What "paid astroturf"? You state that the person you replied to is ignorant, yet have no facts to back up your assertions. Then you come and claim that I need facts. Why must I prove myself yet you do not have to?

Which TEA party isn't grass roots?

I'll give you that the original movement of the TEA party was somewhat grass roots but has since been co-opted and formed into an astroturf campaign full of people being manipulated by larger organizations

Who is funding them if they aren't grass roots?

When you have Tea Party organizations such as "Americans For Prosperity" which are funding a lot of Tea Party movements and activities. Then you realize that the "Americans For Prosperity" are funded by the Koch brothers....You begin to wonder. That, and if you look at the funding that Tea Party candidates receive, you find that they get tons of donations from the oil industry, gas industry, health professionals and the financial industry. Every large donation (Tea Party Patriots received a $1million donation from an 'anonymous donor'. How is that grass roots?) is hidden behind the new laws that don't require disclosure. So while you might look at everything I just said and claim I made it up (I did not) and then say I haven't proved it isn't grass roots. I say to you, you haven't proved that I'm wrong and that it is grass roots.

Did I hear you say according to your assertions that Rand Paul is ultra conservative far right?

Rand paul is so conservative that he scared Dick Cheney. Think about that for a second:

Some of his positions frighten even staunch conservatives like former Vice President Dick Cheney, who backed Paul's GOP opponent. Source

He opposes abortions even in cases of rapes and incest and wants to overturn Roe v Wade. He wants to eliminate the department of education. I'll give you that some of his positions aren't as far right. He's an interesting mix of both far right and moderate, even a little left (such as legalizing Marijuana). But if it'll make you feel better, my original assertion was slight hyperbole and should have said "are generally ultra conservative/very far right" because yes, there are some exceptions.

The TEA party was effective in....

Just because they got someone elected does not necessarily mean they were effective. Consider Wisconsin where I'll be surprised if Scott Walker gets another term doing anything ever again. He's outright shown that getting rid of Unions has nothing to do with the budget or money, he just wants to bust unions. Including firefighters and policemen. In fact, the only public worker he's not trying to take a paycut and benefits from is himself!

Just because you haven't been paying attention, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I never said it didn't happen, hell the Tea Party is causing chaos, I even said that. But don't pretend that there's no corporate influences going on here. Don't pretend there's no astroturfing. Hell, don't pretend that the Tea Party is "drastically chang[ing] the conversation towards what We the People believe is important" because it's not. It's just another corporate funded group of people who believe they know best thinking that they are speaking for many more people than they actually are.

... Health insurers make about 15% profit on hundreds of $billions a year. ...

Except anyone can use Google and find out this is false:

Overall, the profit margin for health insurance companies was a modest 3.4 percent over the past year [2009], according to data provided by Morningstar. That ranks 87th out of 215 industries and slightly above the median of 2.2 percent.

Perhaps I was giving you the benefit of the doubt when it seemed to me like you were confused. Either way, I suggest making true statements instead of false ones.

The best I could find quickly were articles/summaries like this:
http://www.higheredmorning.com/and-the-best-predictor-of-college-success-is
http://fairtest.org/sat-i-faulty-instrument-predicting-college-success

Mostly they refer to the combination of grades & course selection. My own personal biased unscientific interpretation of these results is, kids who take easy classes to get good grades in high school continue to take easy classes in college. Kids whose grades aren't as good because they push themselves with harder classes in high school continue to take harder classes in college.

Also, with regards to college admission:
http://www.usnews.com/mobile/blogs/the-college-admissions-insider/2011/3/14/qa-on-high-school-course-selections.html
"The answer depends on the level of selectivity at the colleges to which your son is applying. Most selective institutions—and all of the most highly selective colleges—expect students to move to the next logical level of rigor each year and to perform well in those courses. At less selective schools, his course selection will be less consequential to the admissions outcome."

Not quite...

Some bits may be in order: Given the severe shortage of priests in many areas, and couple that with the average priest's schedule: doing confessions, ministering to the sick, visiting prisoners, administering their local parish staff (and those of parishes w/o a resident priest), attending meetings of numerous church groups (Right To Life, Knights of Columbus, etc), counseling/presiding in seminars and retreats, preparing (this year) for a large and impending change in how Mass is done (at least for the English-speaking Catholics)... oh, and actually saying Mass multiple times a week. Add to all of that the fact that the average age of these guys *at ordination* is 35 (retirement age is somewhere around 70, but that's been pushed up, IIRC).

Not exactly seeing them seizing an opportunity to fill an already cramped calendar...

Right, perhaps we need some citations from 2006 and 2008 or maybe read some books from 15 years ago to find that indeed the ol' US of A is falling behind instead of anecdotes of a cheating driving school.

I'm NOT an American, but I have lived and worked in the USA and one of my daughters went to school there and I'll tell you, children are promoted even if they should have to take remedial classes or flunk, so spare the anecdotes and give us some hard statistics to prove the USA is not falling behind.

Really?

35-57% support it, they don't list a total figure or the proportion of the three but over 40% is likely. And that is now, if you ask "Was passing the PATRIOT act after 9/11 the right thing to do?" I think you'd find that the general public don't exactly consider it a mistake.

Alright. Is this better?

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/gatesivu.htm

That's if you're only counting above-the-table pay and monetary benefits. Under-the-table and non-monetarily they probably do quite well

If Democrats or Republicans were taking money under the table politicians from the other party who be howling loudly, especially those serving their first term who ran on a platform of cleaning Washington. Tea Partiers, many who ran against the Republican establishment but who helped Republicans take control of the House and gained senate seats will surely be howling loudly come January. Just look at what happened to Rep Charlie Rangel, who has served 20 terms in office and is a Korean War hero. He was found guilty of 11 ethics violations.

Why else would individuals willingly pay out millions of their own money to run a campaign that may not work?

Because they believe in something. There are some people who aren't greedy and only think of themselves. I'm pretty cynical about politics but I admit not everyone who runs for office only does it for money.

Falcon

FYI, infant mortality rate comparisons are mostly meaningless. Everyone has their own standards when deciding if an infant is "stillborn" or not. Generally, if the baby is in a condition that they can't treat at all, it isn't counted. That's what the U.S.'s rate is comparatively high -- they try to save more infants.

http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/060924/2healy.htm

I keep hearing the phrase "reduce our dependence on foreign oil" associated with things like wind turbines and nuclear power. Maybe somebody should do a little research and discover that 1% of the electricity in the U.S. is generated using oil as fuel. Unless you're planning on cars, trucks, buses and trains powered by wind turbines or nuclear reactors, how exactly does this "reduce our dependence on foreign oil"?

I think the idea is that people would buy electric cars and hence start putting far more load on the electricity grid instead of going to filling stations. It is a long way off but the idea of running your personal transportation device on stuff that explodes to provide momentum is doomed in the long run. Electric is the way to go as we already have a way of distributing it around the country so you can save on infrastructure:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1705518,00.html

Israel is far more serious about moving away from oil as the population has a better understanding of where the money they spend on oil goes: Some of it is donated to the likes of Hamas and it comes flying back to the Israel in the form of a rocket. Every one knows that some Saudi money is diverted to terrorism:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/031215/15terror.htm

Most of the 9-11 bombers were from Saudi or had saudi ties: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_attacks

This is the best reason for getting away from our dependence on middle east oil, most of the countries that have large amounts of oil are distinctly Muslim and while their leaders might be friendly with our leaders the people in those countries often have more sympathy with the terrorists than the do with us decadent westerners.

Perhaps this would be more your speed. Given your propensity to dive straight into ad hominem attacks, though, I don't know that it'll make much difference.