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Here is the perfect link in response to your post: http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/1...

Unfortunately, when peak power consumption occurs and when peak solar output are are not the same time generally. Similarly, while there's least power consumed very late at night (1-3 AMish), solar stops being useful well before that. See http://www.vox.com/2016/2/12/1....

That's very interesting, but it ignores the fact that newer natural gas plants can be flexible. They can ramp up production quickly and can be cost effective operating only 30% to 70% of the time. California uses natural gas plants for base loads, but could instead use them as a variable supply to offset the variations in solar production.

I have seen a couple of similar articles recently -- all of which ignore the possibility of varying the output of natural gas generation. I suspect that there is some big money pushing an agenda. Perhaps it is simply an anti-solar agenda.

Except it doesn't peak everywhere at the same time. When it's dark in Connecticut, it could be still broad daylight in San Diego.

Right this is why transmission is so important: if one can transmit power efficiently then areas with excess power can transmit it elsewhere. Unfortunately, that's in practice really tough. Right now, the US has three major grids: East, West and Texas. In practice there's almost no interconnection between these grids. And Texas sometimes has more wind power than they can use in parts, but can't actually give it to the other grids. This leads to weird things like the cost of electricity in Texas briefly going negative http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2015/09/texas_electricity_goes_negative_wind_power_was_so_plentiful_one_night_that.html (what actually happened is a bit more complicated but that's essentially accurate). There's a very cool project underway to connect the three grids with a set of superconducting lines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tres_Amigas_SuperStation. Unfortunately, that won't be enough by itself but it is a step in the right direction.

Considering the fluctuation in power usage over the 24 hour day, I'm not sure having localized drops in power-generation is necessarily a bad thing.

Unfortunately, when peak power consumption occurs and when peak solar output are are not the same time generally. Similarly, while there's least power consumed very late at night (1-3 AMish), solar stops being useful well before that. See http://www.vox.com/2016/2/12/10970858/flattening-duck-curve-renewable-energy.

Solar may be in some contexts cheaper, but that may not continue for the long-term. Solar power experiences value deflation, where the more solar power there is, the less it is worth (because unlike conventional power sources, it all peaks at the same time). This can lead to serious limits on how much solar a given area is likely to have http://www.vox.com/2016/4/18/11415510/solar-power-costs-innovation. Either the cost per a panel needs to go down by a lot, or the storage and transmission costs need to improve by a lot. The last link includes an estimate that in order to really get solar to succeed one needs an approximate cost of around $0.25 per watt. If one improves batteries and transmission that may not be necessary, especially if we have enough other sources of power, such as wind, nuclear, hydroelectric (which unfortunately has probably gotten close to its peak in much of Europe and North America), tidal, and geothermal. Nuclear is going to definitely be a part of any long-term solution, but one has silly things now like Sweden trying to give up all fossil fuels at the same time they phase out nuclear power http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sweden-first-fossil-fuel-free-country-in-the-world-a6684641.html and they call that "green."

At least in most places, we're very far from where solar can be even without improved transmission and storage. In much of the US, you can get home solar and have it pay back in a few years. The solar panel cost guide is a good place to start http://www.solarpanelscostguide.com/. Or, if you want to help other people out while helping the environment you can donate to Everybody Solar http://www.everybodysolar.org/ which helps get solar panels for non-profits like schools, homeless shelters and science museums. Every little bit helps.

Here's an even better satellite photo comparison. What makes it particularly relevant is that it's images of the Korean peninsula in 1992 and 2008 at night. One can see clearly that both South Korea and China to the north grew considerably brighter in these images while North Korea did not. So even if the difference between South and North Korea were "not as dramatic as I've been led to believe", it's a difference which is growing!

New transmission bringing western wind power to the TVA will make their nuclear generation redundant. http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/1...

Not sure what you're implying here, but you would have a very hard time convincing me that, somehow, Donald Trump is not an intelligent and decent person. Despite some of his wacky outbursts, he is in no way unfit to be president of the US, and might be exactly what this country needs right now.

I don't know about intelligent or not, since that's very hard to judge, but he's ignorant, not at all decent, and wildly unqualified to be President. He doesn't know about basic aspects of US military and foreign policy, like the nuclear triad which combines with his terrible ideas about using nukes as a serious threat instead of conventional troops. This combines with his general deep misunderstandings of basic issues in international relations http://www.vox.com/2016/3/28/11318722/trump-foreign-policy.

As for being a decent person, decent people don't attack war heroes for being POWs http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/trump-attacks-mccain-i-like-people-who-werent-captured-120317, they don't suggest they'll pay legal fees for supporters who engage in violence http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/trump-attacks-mccain-i-like-people-who-werent-captured-120317, and then lie about it http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/03/15/fact-check-trump-claims-he-never-said-hed-pay-legal-fees-for-rally-attendees-who-hit-protesters/. They don't have such thin skins that they get upset over a comment about the size of their hands and then proceed to reference the size of their genitalia on at a Presidential debate http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/03/04/donald-trumps-obsession-with-size-surfaces-in-crude-ways.html .These are only a few examples.

He's an unqualified, egotistical blowhard. It is a deep shame that the party of Lincoln has been reduced to this.

Somehow the expose' doesn't mention anyone from some of the richest countries in the world, but Iceland, which jailed bankers, is front and center.

I will paraphrase another quote I read here on /. "People are dumb and angry. They don't know why they are angry but, they know that Trump seems to be addressing some form of anger".

Actually, that's close to the mark. The appeal of Donald Trump arises from two factors: (1) he taps into peoples' fears; and (2) he presents himself as the "tough guy" who can eliminate the cause of those fears. In short, he appeals to authoritarians.

People who vote for Trump because they think he'll directly change society for the better are idiots.

Really? Because you go on to say:

Other people (such as myself) will vote for Trump because we know he will be so fucking disastrous that it may cause real and positive changes to our political system.

Considering how intertwined society and political systems are, I'd say you're contradicting yourself.

It's a gamble, to be sure. He could start WW3. As long as he doesn't start WW3, I imagine that his presidency will have a positive legacy on our political system. I just hope we can endure his reign.

So, it sounds like you're an anarchist, and you're willing to gamble with the future of the human species in order to advance your agenda.

It's not just that - BART was simply never meant to be operating on the scale it does today. When BART was built, the creators envisioned a system that would serve about 100,000 people per week and choke points such as the Transbay Tube were built accordingly. Naturally, as the population increased, upgrades had to made. This worked for a while, but eventually lack of funding for serious overhauls caught up with the
constantly increasing ridership. Maximum capacity is heavily influenced by the fact that sections like the tube are single line, with no easy way to expand to double or triple. BART could theoretically be a 24/7 system, but as things stand now their engineers need every minute of the nightly downtime they have to service a rapidly aging rail system.

The rails already in place are almost at capacity, with a train crossing over them every 2 minutes. With the tech booms of the last decades, there's been an even bigger spike in these numbers. Over the last decade alone, passenger alightings at some stations have more than doubled. On busy days, the BART system now serves 25 times more riders than originally envisioned. There's some money for additional trains, but that can only do so much. Eventually, we are going to need to spend money on either more parallel tracks, cars, and bigger platforms or just a new system altogether.

Their administrators are simply being realistic about the situation we're in

Bicycles and pedestrians do not need traffic lights, so I think cycling and walking past traffic lights is something good.

Try visualizing yourself as a pedestrian at an intersection with say about 20 bicyclists approaching you in parallel at 30 kmph; what it would be like getting hit by them? It won't be fatal of course but could still cause considerable injury. Traffic signals are needed because not everybody cares about driving etiquette; bicyclists are not an exception.

They wanna drive on the street but not obey the rules of the road. Then, they play the pedestrian card if they get in an accident with a car,

Actually more people on bicycles means better safety, and less cars on the roads, peoples tendency to break traffic rules and laws are not linked to their mode of transportation. Lots of people drive too fast in a 30 km/h (20mph) zone, even though that is the most likely scenario for a car to kill someone, at 50 mph your kill rate is above 90% when you hit a pedestrian. When it's the people speeding that actually kill and hurt I think "playing pedestrian card" seems legit, speed matters a lot.

With that said in a recent study of 5 years of accidents there was no incident were a bicycle was hit by a car at a red light. Traffic lights are there because cars are just really bad at sharing intersections, which is the most important part of making a traffic system work. Bicycles and pedestrians do not need traffic lights, so I think cycling and walking past traffic lights is something good.

I blame Political correctness and SJWs for the rise in trump.

The Republicans have also been blamed for resorting to the politics of hate. The best explanation I've seen has two components:

1) The inclination of some people to turn to authoritarianism when times get rough.

2) The concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands is making things rough for the working class. Things aren't really bad yet (like in the great depression) but people's prospects are bleak. They are worse off now than they were 10 years ago without much hope in sight.

If this simple analysis is correct then the problem is not Trump. There are always Trumps around. The problem is that economic times (more accurately, prospects) are bad enough that a sizable fraction of the population is turning to a strongman/bully who promises to protect them even if those promises don't make any rational sense.

This has several implications. First, if there is a successful large-scale terrorist attack in the US then this could easily raise the overall level of fear enough to sweep Trump into the White House. Second, if the powers-that-be stay in power and continue their policies of transferring wealth away from the working class then the levels of economic distress and fear will grow, creating even more support for Trump or the next authoritarian strongman/bully who comes along.

The only real solution is to stop waging economic warfare on the working class. Unfortunately, even if Bernie Sanders gets elected, it is going to be nigh on impossible to quickly change the course of the best government that money could buy.

It is kind of Republican political suicide not to pander to Authoritarian voters. This is a rather long, but interesting article:

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11...

Slightly off-topic, but who says Trump will win the nomination?

You're right. I should not ASSume. OTOH I was responding to a post that had already made that assumption and also assumed Clinton would be the Democratic nominee. Perhaps I should not have corrected one assumption without correcting the other one.

Cruz and Rubio could just as easily get together, pool their delegates, and become a Pres-VP combo, with whichever one having the biggest # of delegates coming out at the top of the billing. Top guy does 4-8 years, VP then does 4-8 years more as President.

This seems extremely far-fetched to me. It seems extremely unlikely there would be so much cooperation and even if there were, such a move would tear apart the Republican party (cue a quote from the Lord of the Rings movies about sharing power). The Democrats would have a similar problem if Sanders has the majority of pledged delegates but the superdelegates give the nod to Clinton.

Perhaps one of the reasons I ASSumed Trump would win the Republican nomination was that I had recently read: The rise of American authoritarianism. If they are correct then Trump should easily win the nomination barring unforeseen disasters (although I'm in the camp that sees a Trump presidency as a disaster). This article is the only thing I've read about Trump that makes sense to me. I think most commentators don't understand the situation. TL;DR: Trump appeals to the burgeoning authoritarian wing of the Republican party; fear is the mind-killer.

That article gave me hope that a Trump victory in the general election is not a given, even if he runs against an establishment candidate like Clinton.

An almost perfect misread of Vox.com

For those of you who doubt what I said above, go visit for yourself:

http://www.vox.com/

When you come back, tell me it didn't hurt your eyes. And the content? It's the perfect storm of shallow smugness, undergrad "liberal" values and hot takes. It's barista journalism. Now I'm liberal myself, even leftist, but reading vox.com makes me want to go out and punch a grad student.

You might want to read up on how social democracy differs from socialism. You might be surprised to find you like it a lot more than you realized.

In a nutshell it is "a rising tide floats all boats." Society provides a baseline available to everyone. If you think of public roads as being a public good then it is not much of a stretch to say that public education, public healthcare, unemployment benefits, etc are also public goods. Its about raising up the minimum but not putting a hard cap on the maximums. Very Star Trek.

A lot of people think it was aimed at China.

This is my favorite theory of why N Korea detonated a bomb, because China snubbed the dear-leader's hand-picked girl band. Things are strange over there.

Kids learning, http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/..., seriously, there is a world of delusion going on out their and there is a whole US town, where children will be learning bugger all and become criminals through no fault of their own. The biggest hit will be the huge fall off of code, finalised programs being exported to other countries. Basically no country can trust any other countries code any more, so a lot more restructuring will be occurring as countries start pushing no importing of code. A lot more jobs will end up diminishing, as the forced upgrade era also starts to wind down. There are not that many new jobs and it is all just about squeezing down salaries at the bottom to raise them at the top and coders are at the bottom in the tech world. Likely the biggest employment area is security, with no one trusting no one, there is a huge amount of security work to be done in computer systems.

Except they didn't confiscate them in Australia.

Minor detail I know. But since when has that ever stopped you from posting your ignorance?

Well, yes they did..they banned them and forced them to give them up..

Oz does apparently have a restriction from uncompensated confiscation of private property, so they got around that with a "buyback"..but you really didn't have any choice in the matter. A rose by any other name....

But yes, I consider Mandatory Buy Back of Guns the same thing as confiscation of guns.

And mandatory registration of guns is the first step for that....and Obama and crowd know this.

And really...name calling and insults? Why can't we just deal with facts and have a nice adult conversation?

Bill,
No, the numbers have been climbing for the last couple of years. Even for the west, That is esp true of Europe, South Korea, and Japan Note that back in 2012, there were a total of 1200 new plants being considered, or built. Now it is up to 2100. That is not a slowing down. That is growth. Most of it is China, India, etc. Basically, Asia is on a massive sprey that will drive the CO2 way above the limits. Worse yet, once these new MONSTER plants are built, they have zero intentions of tearing them down. For example, China's claims on coal usage does not match the shear number of coal plants that they have, nor does it match up to the CO2 that they claim vs. what OCO2 is showing. There is a LOT MORE COAL coming from elsewhere, which is very likely from the tunnels that showed up after their massive earthquake.

All in all, nations are still on a tear. Only America, and UK have pretty much stopped.

Dems do not make it a central tenant of their entire existence to bitch about the media.

Did you not hear Marco Rubio say the "mainstream media" is the biggest SuperPAC in the world for the Dems? Did you not watch the debate, where Ted Cruz got the loudest cheers of the night for bitching about CNBC's questions?

Since you apparently don't pay attention, and you can't google for yourself, here are some articles:
http://www.journalism.org/2014...
http://www.vox.com/2015/10/28/...

Pay attention. It's not just that the entire Republican constituency thinks the media is out to get them, it's that their biggest politicians get points for crying like little babies over things like this, with Trump, and Cruz.

        = = =
        Hillyard: But specifically, how do you actually get them registered into a database?

        Trump: It would be just good management....

        Hillyard: Do you go to mosques and sign these people up?

        Trump: Different places. You sign ‘em up at different
        = = =

Vox has another detailed analysis with multiple quotes: http://www.vox.com/2015/11/20/...

So again, why are you so anxious to not only claim that Trump didn't say what he clearly did say on multiple occasions but to brand those who are accurately reporting what Trump did say (and his base is eating up) as "liers"?

sPh

Trump has discussed the religious tracking database several times, including at his own campaign rallies: http://www.vox.com/2015/11/20/...

sPh

The hard Radical Right pushback attempt has failed utterly. Here's another through documentation of Trump saying exactly that he proposes to create a national tracking database singling out members of a specific religion: http://www.vox.com/2015/11/20/...

The dog whistle dropped down into audible range this time and it is repugnant.
sPh

Cars are designed to be as safe as possible. Guns are designed to be as dangerous as possible. Yet, cars kill more people every year than guns, including suicides.

That doesn't seem to be true. The only numbers I found in a quick web search are for 2013:
32,719 deaths in car accidents (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...)
33,636 deaths from firearm injuries (source: http://www.vox.com/cards/gun-v...)

In 2013 "people with guns" led to more deaths than "people with cars" — and that in spite of the much higher frequency and spread of vehicle usage.

What I see as the big threat is that Putin makes the first move, and the West does not react.

You mean like The Crimea? We sat by and watched Russia annex a sovereign nation's territory and didn't even whimper. We even promised to defend them and failed to do that.

Why not just divert all the money and resources in the "war on drugs" into the "war on guns", and it'd be won inside a decade, I reckon.

Just what we need: another war on a noun. Won inside a decade, you say?

Seems to have worked in Australia. Gun massacres since the Port Arthur Massacre have been almost none existent because the government clamped down on gun ownership. Similar results in the UK, which enacted tough gun controls after the Dunblane Massacre.

I find Jim Jefferies sums it up best (on home security):

You have guns because you like guns! That's why you go to gun conventions; that's why you read gun magazines! None of you give a shit about home security. None of you go to home security conventions. None of you read Padlock Monthly. None of you have a Facebook picture of you behind a secure door.

This guys sums it up: http://www.vox.com/2015/3/24/8...

Reasonable estimates based on the established literature in the area indicate VW's cheating caused or will cause on the order of 100 deaths.

The 2007 and newer standards (phased in from 2007-2010)

The emission standards included new, very stringent limits for PM (0.01 g/bhpÂhr) and NOx (0.20 g/bhpÂhr).

The preceding 2004-2006 standards:

The goal was to reduce NOx emissions from highway heavy-duty engines to levels approximately 2.0 g/bhpÂhr beginning in 2004.

From a Vox article with actual details ( http://www.vox.com/2015/9/21/9... ):

On the road, VW's Jetta was emitting 15 to 35 times as much nitrogen oxide as the allowable limit.

Assuming they mean the 2010 limit, that puts it at 3.0-7.0 g/bhp*hr

The VW Passat was emitting 5 to 20 times as much.

Or roughly 1.0-4.0 g/bhp*hr

So the NEW Passat is capable of meeting the OLD Passat's emissions rate, some of the time.

The NEW Jetta never comes close to meeting the OLD Jetta's emissions rate.

Somehow, not only did they not improve on power or mileage over the last 8 years, they also are doing worse on emissions?!?

I love my '06 Golf, but I've got to wonder what the hell they've been doing for the last decade...

-Rick

The submission article is in response to the story of the "overreaction" by Irving, Texas police and school authorities for a 14 year-old student bringing his invention (as he calls it) to school. He claims he built a clock, but his teacher said it looked like a bomb, and one thing led to another. The kid, Ahmed Mohammed, who calls himself a nerd, was cuffed, taken to the school's interrogation room (as he put it), and suspended from school.

Afterwards, his situation improved. The news media treated him favorably. Many people believed he was being treated unfairly. He was invited to MIT, Facebook and the White House, and he appeared on sympathetic talk shows. He wants his invention and his "humility back."

But it turns out his invention is simply the guts of a store-bought LED clock placed in a pencil box. Moreover, his father, Mohamed ElHassan Mohamed, is active in promoting islamophobic-awareness, like being the defense attorney in a anti-Islam staged trial for the Quran.

I'll add this in too: Other foods that humans have modified... Though these are through selective breeding. Humans have been manipulating our food sources ever since we took to farming. Sure, they may not have done it with a chemistry set (or lab), but that corn sitting on your plate is not a "naturally occuring" plant.

Aside from maybe some tshirts I really cannot think of any "ironic embrace of vintage" that resulted in a meaningful resurgence of a product

How about Pabst Blue Ribbon beer? Or the otherwise inexplicable growth of vinyl record sales?

True to the nature of hipster-ism, these things will decline again at some point. But the presence of cool tastemakers interested in retro stuff is a real thing that impacts sales beyond just their own ranks. God help us all if these people rediscover fax machines.

I honestly don't think a real "organized" war of that kind is likely to ever happen again. We have long since passed the point where the major actors are just too big and powerful to risk war with eachother, so they engage in little more than proxy wars against eachother's minor interests.

Even that doesn't really seem to describe the present day since the major powers major interests are so aligned they don't even proxy war with eachother so much as with the fallout from the decades worth of mess they made with their proxy wars.

Man are you out of touch with what's happening in the world. It's exactly that type of thinking which predominated prior to WW I and is considered a major contributing factor to it starting. Putin's rhetoric and brinkmanship likely has the risk of a major war closer now than it was during the cold war.

that blacks that *do* do well are often labeled by their peers as "actin' like dey white", "uncle Toms", "house niggas" (all things I've heard blacks say personally, as well)

Come on. When will that bullshit racist excuse end?

You guys are screwed. Good luck recovering and creating a reasonable culture.

If you think this is bad, then you should see what's happening in American universities:

http://vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid

captcha: autocrat

"You outnumber the 1%'ers literally 99 to 1."

We outnumber Usain Bolt literally billions to one. Can you name someone running faster than him? It is not about the numbers but about the proper numbers. And regarding *raw* numbers, 99% are less than 2:1 to 1% regarding wealth accrual. Still an advantage but one that has been severily reduced in the last decades and looks like it's going to be reduced even more.

"In a democracy, no less."

And after we talked about raw numbers, then we need to qualify them. No, it is not a democracy, it is a *representative* democracy. Those that control the representation, control the outcome. And these are the 1%, not the 99%. And the 1% have quite a different vision of the world than the 99% (see i.e.: http://www.vox.com/2015/6/16/8...).

"If you cant manage to out fight or out vote them, then you deserve the shitty country you live in."

You know this is as stupid as it can be, right along with "if you can't defend yourself, you diserve to be raped", do you?

"Signed - Rest of the world."

I'm part of that "rest of the world": don't put yourself as if your idiotic arguments somehow represented me.

"It is in no ones economic interests to replace humans with machines."

You may be right. Still, prisoner's dilemma aplies: it certainly is in *my* interest to replace expensive and difficult to manage humans with relatively cheaper and easy to manage machines on *my* mills, and capitalism focus on me looking ater *my* interests, not yours.

"It creates an ecomony that collapse in upon itself"

Now I'm even more interested on making my money now, everybody else's be damned. You know, the wealthy have always the upper hand, much more so in troubled times.

"Legislation will emerge limiting/eliminating AI from human jobs."

Legislation always go in the way of the wealthy's interests and so it also does in modern representative democracies: http://www.vox.com/2015/6/16/8...

"for example, thousands of taxi drivers, truck drivers and delivery people will be out of a job practically overnight"

The answer to that already exists and is supported by the majority of the US population if surveys are to be believed.

The federal government should just guarantee a job offer at the living wage to all that want it, working for the public good. A simple employer of last resort function. That keeps demand up, ensures people have something to do with their day where they can demonstrate their worth to others in society, and allows business to get on with the job of automating drudgery out of existence without worrying about job numbers.

Anybody coming up with the tired 'how do we pay for it' line should immediately book themselves on a course of accounting and monetary economics with a strong Modern Monetary Theory component.

You mean Pao?

Her case was not a very good one for the neo-feminist to tie their wagon to.
I agree with you though, ultra high personal sensitivity is the disruptor of the day.

Here's a great read on the manufactured outrage and identity politics of the day.
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/87...

The "most informed" are usually the most misled. Bertrand Russell's famous quote about ignorance and bluster is about you. It doesn't always have to be that way.

That would be Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who collectively donated $26 million.

How about we go with a company not entangled in Hillary Clinton's finances?

Paul Krugman leans negative about TPP. For this is not a trade agreement. It’s about intellectual property and dispute settlement; the big beneficiaries are likely to be pharma companies and firms that want to sue governments.
In a direct sense, protecting intellectual property means creating a monopoly - letting the holders of a patent or copyright charge a price for something (the use of knowledge) that has a zero social marginal cost. In that direct sense this introduces a distortion that makes the world a bit poorer.

Intellectual property: leaked text suggests very strong, even draconian IP regime on copyright, patents, pharma, etc.

But given that the USA's largest employer is using the government subsidized process

Instead of trying to alleviate this travesty with a new one — minimum wage — why not undo such subsidies? If somebody does not pay "enough" for your goods or services (including labor), people look for another buyer. And if they don't, then the pay is enough — by definition.

The government inserting itself between private parties willingly engaging in a lawful transaction is an abomination. That it is done under the pretext of fixing, what it broke in the first place, makes it worse.

This is a destruction of liberty and path to totalitarianism:

• We must help the poor!
• We must force everyone to be helping the poor.
• Now that we are helping the poor, we must control their lives to prevent them from doing "stupid" things. Depending on the kind of Statist in power, these may include:
  • no working for "too small" a wage
  • no drugs, tobacco, or alcohol
  • no sex out of wedlock
  • forced sterilizations and abortions
  • no usage of encryption to prevent monitoring your life
  • no driving "too fast"
  • forced medical treatments

All under the excuse, that we — the Collective — pay you, so you must do as we say. And, no, you can not opt-out either — our compassionate bleeding hearts would not allow you to make that stupid thing either.

As the definition of "poor" expands, the government's control of us all solidifies. Mandatory minimum wage is no different from NSA-spying and other manifestations of Collective (Glorious) trampling the rights of the Individual (cantankerous and unreasonable) — both are imposed on us "for our own good" by the people, who consider themselves our betters.

I think you also missed that states around the US have been reducing their support for universities. This was especially true after the depression started in 2008.

As for research, the private sector has been smaller than the public sector in research funding since the 60's, and federal research funding hasn't really changed as a portion of total research funding, so I really don't think that makes sense as a cause, except in that the government has been reducing its research spending.

Wow, I was honestly hoping for better! Of everything you can pick from the Bush administration, that's the best you can come up with?

First of all, where's the "toxic" revolving door here? I understand that you disagree with the decision that the Bush FCC made regarding unbundling (though the article you linked to is completely incoherent), but that's not at all what this discussion is about.

Secondly, if unbundling was so disastrous, why has gigabit internet rapidly proliferated around the country over the last decade? If it was such a bad decision, decreed by a "toxic" individual, why has the Obama FCC shown zero interest in changing the rule? Here's a thought: "...by the time Barack Obama took office in 2009, [unbundling rules] had become so discredited that the FCC didn't try to revive them."

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/26/8117489/conservatives-winning-net-neutrality

Here, btw, is a Slate take on Michael Powell, who they call "an earnest technocrat, out of place in the politically calculating Bush administration. ... Powell is the closest thing to Al Gore in official Washington today. ... But Powell's not a fire-breathing conservative and shill for big business. Like Gore, he's a wonk with an abiding interest in policy minutiae and a deep faith in technology."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2003/02/the_real_michael_powell.html

Toxic revolving door? Hilarious.

You say "peer review" as though that means something:
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/...

The US State Department recruited Hollywood to boost “anti-Russian messaging“.
Sony pirated multiple books about hacking, while aggressively campaigning against piracy.
Emails reveal concerns in the US over the secrecy of the TPP talks.
The leaks included a draft of the international VOD and DHE agreement between SONY and Google
Sony received nearly $48 million in tax breaks in 2011 and 2012 after donating to New York Governor Cuomo.
Ben Affleck demanded PBS program “Finding Your Roots” hide his slave-owning ancestor.
Sony changed the Snowden film press release to remove “illegal spying” from the description of NSA’s activities
Sony cameras are used as a part of the guidance system for Israeli rockets bombing Gaza
Sony Chiefs met with David Cameron ahead of the Scottish referendum
Corrupt product placement practices used in Dr. Oz show

I really hope that slashdot doesn't become another place of pro-government propaganda, as that really pisses me off. The information was already out there, but their republishing obviously did us a favor (us that care about government accountability or knowing the truth anyway). We already have enough media outlets against information out there, let's keep this one useful.
I would never know the above facts if it wasn't for them, as 1. I believed the propaganda that it was mostly employee information and didn't feel comfortable downloading it and reading, and 2. it would be too much work for me to look into the e-mails.
Now that I know these stuff I feel like someone more informed than before. I hope the Slashdot community stops being against information.

By the way, since I haven't seen here a link to their press release, with the leaks, here it is.