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Can you explain why unemployment (or more accurately, the labor force participation rate isn't a priority in your analysis?

Because, if your country is experiencing stagflation, your employment rate is going to be pretty darn low. Fixing that situation should be #1 on your list of priorities.

There are, of course, lots of other important factors to take into consideration for a healthy economy, but if you are setting your economy up for deflation, that's the only factor that you really need to pay attention to, because it's going to affect *everything* else.

Think if it this way - unemployment is like cancer and deflation is like a heart attack. If you have cancer and are having a heart attack - you still need to take care of the cancer somehow, but if you don't take care of the heart attack first, the cancer is kind of moot.

It's because China is using a protectionist practice.

Western scholars figured out the problem with this practice hundreds of years ago. Problem is - it screws with your money supply something fierce. You end up having to radically manipulate your money supply, and you wind up with deflation and endless stimulus spending. Japan did the same thing in the 70's and 80's, and they've been paying for it over the last two decades (stagflation in the 90's-2000's, deflation since then.) China's turn is coming up soon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I'm happy to learn more about this, but I am a bit sceptical about your conclusions. (Not the least of which is the general religious undertone of economic schools of thought.)

Firstly, the US is mostly free trade, and yet we've had to do stimulus spending for the last six-or-seven years. I don't really see the difference on that dimension.

Secondly, although the US isn't in a deflation cycle, we *almost* are. Checking the monthly inflation rates shows negative inflation for several months of 2015, and fairly low inflation for the last couple of years. Despite massive stimulus spending, despite the government spending trillions more than revenue over the last decade, we're *still* not up to the generally-accepted-healthy value of inflation of 2.5%.

There's recent evidence that depression and deflation aren't empirically linked, so it's no longer clear to me that deflation is as bad as everyone makes it out to be.

And finally, your analysis may be correct but myopic in that it doesn't take into account other factors such as employment. The US could be in a good financial situation and also on the precipice of revolt. If enough people are unemployed and *can't* find a job, if enough people drop from middle-class to poor-class, then there would be a great deal of unrest.

We're 'kinda seeing that now. Productivity is up, overall profits are up, but for the vast majority of Americans wages have remained stagnant. All the profits go to the upper echelons, so it *seems* like we're doing fine financially when in reality a lot of people are miserable.

I'm not an economist, I'm only trying to figure out this stuff on my own. Some aspects of "current economic theory" don't seem to make sense.

Can you explain why unemployment (or more accurately, the labor force participation rate isn't a priority in your analysis?

http://vignette2.wikia.nocooki... and https://metrouk2.files.wordpre...

Unless we've gotten a lot more masochistic, they won't have too many takers.

You would expect that most records would be broken in the early years of registration.

And, maybe, they were — but no one would profit from emphasizing the fact, so we do not know about it.

Over the last 20-25 years, we've seen a disproportionate amounts of records being broken

We have also seen a large number of people profiting from the idea of AGW during the same period.

average temperature of 1 or 2 degrees is massive on a global scale

We don't even know, if that's true — for example, satellite observations disagree (until "adjusted") on this with ground-based thermometers. And no wonder:

we found that 89 percent of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source

The AGW-proponents acknowledge the problems, but claim, they are properly addressed by "adjustments":

when processing their data, the organizations which collect the readings take into account any local heating or cooling effects, such as might be caused by a weather station being located near buildings or large areas of tarmac. This is done, for instance, by weighting (adjusting) readings after comparing them against those from more rural weather stations nearby.

Who is doing the weighting (adjusting) and how? What #define-s do they use in their code? Would they not stop "adjusting" before the results show the trend, which they sincerely believe must be there? See, what is "sold" to the public as objective recordings of scientific instruments are, in fact, results of "adjustments" by unknown programs using unspecified parameters...

And the raw — unadjusted — data sometimes go to sleep with Hillary Clinton's emails... But not to worry, the "scientists" tell us — it was processed correctly, trust us... So much for reproducibility being a requirement for scientific method — these guys are frauds, not "scientists"...

But even if it really is true, that temperatures rose 1 degree since 1850 — so what? 10 thousands years ago Tasmania was attached to mainland Australia. It was also possible for bears to cross from mainland Alaska to the islands of Kodiak archipelago (either over land or ice-fields). Then something substantial enough happened to isolate these lands. Whatever it was, it was not the humans discovering fire, was it?

Because it's civil forfeiture: you're not innocent or guilty, it is your video that is presumed guilty, and videos/property have no rights. They charge the video for being an illegal copy and take it away. Just like driving with a large amount of cash for purpose of attending an auction is presumed to be carrying drug money.

According to this site, even though the DMCA is not strictly in 18 U.S.C., violations of the DMCA are both civil and criminal in nature.

But I understand how slippery Persecutors can be with Civil "forfeiture" laws (e.g. United States v. 1997 Buick Skylark (made-up case name)) etc., and amazingly, the frickin' Supremes have completely disregarded the nonsense "logic" of this concept, and even UPHELD this unconstitutional skulduggery that completely sidesteps the constitution by "suing" an inanimate object. So, maybe you're right. Afterall, whether it's a Pirate Ship, or a stack of cash in the trunk of your car, neither had the sentience nor the independent will to commit a crime.

Now all we need is a brilliant attorney to make that argument stick.

All I know is the whole concept of Civil Forfeiture makes my brain hurt!

Nobody has presented public evidence that ANY were clearly classified at the time she sent/received them.

Zilcho.

Irrelevant, and false: Dozens of Clinton emails were classified from the start, U.S. rules suggest

Plus, some things are "born classified". They do not need "clear markings" to be classified, and she knew this.

Oh, and then there is the email in which she ordered someone to strip the classified markings from a document. Quote: "If they can't, turn into non paper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure." That's a smoking gun in my book. If you or I did that, we'd be in federal prison right now.

So? Mozilla is making sure support will be there for extensions like Tree Style Tabs. It's been on their radar since day one.

So? How does that stop Tree Style Tabs when Mozilla is explicitly targeting support for it in the new extensions API.

Did Youtube demand money from her in exchange for fire, theft, and kneecap insurance?

Yes, that's one of the main points of her open letter. Youtube has a system in place, Content ID, to stop piracy and it works quite well. The crux is that they only allow it's use to musicians who have agreed to license their content to them or at least that's assumed, as they don't publish any rules. Everybody else gets left in the dust and isn't allowed into Content ID and thus their content can be shared on Youtube without permission. Which according to her argument violates the requirements for "Safe Harbor" protection and makes Youtube guilty of mass copyright infringement, as that "Safe Harbor" law requires technical measures to be made available to everybody.

Maybe Buffett thinks that there is lots of money to be made in the automobile industry. Maybe because of the number of orders Tesla received for their new model. One thing Apple was able to deliver on was satisfying a huge demand for their product. Which isn't easy and which Tesla now has to prove they can do as well.

Apple knows where the money is, they will introduce iCar with rounded corners and uglier than this.

According to Facebook's own published documentation, their staff decides when to "elevate" a topic, when to blacklist it, when to combine it with another "related" topic, when a topic deserves to be allowed to trend on its own.

Facebook has explicit guidelines which elevate specific news websites to the status of deciding when a story is important or not. The work flow for how to elevate a topic requires that to be a National Story it must be leading at least 5 of the following websites: BBC News, CNN, Fox News, The Guardian, NBC News, The NY Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Buzzfeed News. To be a Major Story it must be leading all 10. If the above 10 aren't where you get your news, well, too bad. If you have something trending which is headlining The National Review, Fox News, the NY Post, the Wall Street Journal, Washingon Times, Redstate and Drudge, guess what? According to the rules that's at best a local topic, not good enough to be made a trending National Story.

So Clinton and Lewinsky? Wouldn't have been a National Story in the trending topics. Benghazi failures after asking for help? Not a National Story in the trending topics. Clinton's personal IT guy at State who was a political appointee getting immunity and State not being able to produce a single email he send/received from his own account (only a handful from other people's accounts)? Not a National Story in the trending topics.

Yep, no bias there. It just happens that 7/10 out of the only news web sites recognized as the "quality" gatekeepers are left-wing when compared to the average US political viewpoint and you need at least 5/10 to elevate a trending topic to be a National Story. Just a coincidence it's setup that way, no confirmation bias there at all. No intent to limit what can trend and be marked for people's attention.

Plus, I'm sure no young left-wing journalism major would ever let their own opinions impact which topics they choose to deep-six... never happen...

Fifth Element did it! /SouthParkReference

It matters because they claimed that "trending" was determined by computer algorithms that analyzed what people were actually talking about, but that turned out to be a lie: they were instead determined by people, who necessarily have a bias.

It matters because it artificially shapes how people see the world. Facebook isn't just "a news site" it's also a site that - in theory - shows you how your friends view the world. Except it turns out that conservative views were being censored on Facebook.

This was written by a right-wing wacko who didn't bother to read the Guidelines (which FB posted on the Internet), who doesn't understand how newspapers work, who thinks everybody is conspiring against him, and who libelously accuses people of telling a "lie" when they merely disagree with him, or because he doesn't understand the issues.

Here's the guidelines. The relevant excerpts are:

https://fbnewsroomus.files.wor...

Trending Review Guidelines

(They would override the algorithm if it is obviously a junk topic, like "Pizza rolls," which has no association to a real-world event.)

P. 9

National Story: You should mark a topic as a "National Story" importance if it is among the 1-3 top stories of the day. We measure this by checking if it is leading in at least 5 of the following 10 news websites: BBC News, CNN, Fox News, The Guardian, NBC News, The New York Times, USA TODAY, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News.

So that's when the human editors intervene -- when the algorithms deliver a high-ranking topic like "Pizza rolls", because it took over on Reddit, they need human editors who can understand it's not a real news story.

A topic does become a national story if it's leading in Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and one other major news source. Fox News and the WSJ should be conservative enough for anybody.

This story came about because, in an attempt to provide balance and objectivity, FB commendably hired a diversity of editors, including conservatives, to make these judgment calls.

The conservative editors didn't like it, because FB's stories weren't conservative as they wanted. Duh. They're conservatives. The rest of the world isn't as conservative as they are. They'll never be satisfied unless it looks like Breitbart or Washington Times.

It's hard to tell from the Gizmodo story exactly what FB stories were censored. http://gizmodo.com/former-face... But it's easy to look at the FB guidelines and see that there are good, reasonable journalistic reasons for selecting or not selecting them.

More ideas: The Olympic Games will be in August, which is winter in the southern hemisphere. In Rio and most of Brazil, winter is still warm.

From the Slashdot story summary: "It was reported earlier this year that Rio has given up on its promise to eliminate 80 percent of the sewage found in the city's notoriously filthy water."

I've only been in Rio, at separate times, for maybe 3 weeks total. I haven't seen "notoriously filthy water". The heavily polluted area is in Guanabara Bay, I understand. This is a mostly true but sometimes exaggerated discussion of beaches in Rio: Beaches in Rio de Janeiro. (The article mentions where it exaggerates.)

The Brazilian media constantly emphasizes violent events in Brazilian cities. However, the murder rate in Rio de Janeiro was, the last time I checked, less than two-thirds of the murder rate in the U.S. capital city, Washington, D.C.

Discussions of the song, The Girl From Ipanema, are usually examples of cultures outside of Brazil not reporting Brazilian culture accurately. The author, Antonio Carlos Jobim, was sitting in a restaurant, I suppose, writing that song. If he had wanted to talk with that woman, she almost certainly would have been happy to talk with him. That's been my experience, and I'm not as physically attractive as was Jobim.

Many people live in the area surrounding Guanabara Bay, Go there. People from the U.S. will see that the people everywhere in Rio are generally far more healthy-looking than people in the United States.

Nonsense, I don't like Bush but I do admire the way he worked with Obama and treasury in his final days of his term to stop the toppling dominoes with a massive wall of cash. I think the history books will say both sides of politics realised the gravity of the situation and actually came together with an (ultimately successful) plan to prevent another great depression.

Of course, they will. But it will be to rationalize yet more rounds of massive Keynesian-like spending for future recessions not because the stimulus spending actually worked.

In addition to my previous remarks on this subject, I found out that administration economists had projected that the US unemployment rate would recover by the beginning of 2014, if nothing was done. Actually performance under the Stimulus ended up considerably worse than that. The excuse for why they were so brazenly wrong was, of course, that things were "worse than expected".

President Obama did not "beat a bunch of drums"; he dropped $768 billion in stimulus funding and through the Fed, trillions of bonds into the economy.

And the end result was worse than what Obama's economists claimed would have happened, if nothing had been done.

Your claim that the recession "would end anyway" without any action is specious and incomplete at best, flat wrong at worst. Even IF you accept the notion that the economy would eventually recover without any sort of government intervention, you must make the case that the economy would recover at the same time it would have WITH intervention, which you have not.

That's why I backed my observation elsewhere with two pieces of evidence, the unusually slow recovery compared to previous recoveries and the numerous cases where the Obama administration has prioritized ideological or venal goals over economic recovery (such as his war on fossil fuels or the takeover of General Motors for the benefit of labor unions).

But glancing at my link, I see that economists working for the Obama administration came to the same conclusion as I and then went on to claim a full recovery in unemployment rate by the beginning of 2014!

First US usage of power is about 4 times higher per household than Germany, possibly due to Germans mostly not having or using AC in the warmer months. This makes summer the power usage low in Germany. In the US the summer months are the usage high.
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com...
https://www.eia.gov/electricit...

The government (ie taxpayers) subsidize the tune of 20 billion Euros per year and rising (hiding the actual cost)

http://www.bloomberg.com/view/...
http://www.greentechmedia.com/...
http://www.seia.org/research-r...

German prices per kwh are higher (~.34 per kwh) vs US (~.15) mostly due to tax/tariff on energy, and regulatory procedures related to the infrastructure payments of solar and other renewables. The prices are rising so fast the government has had to begin a more restrictive path on new solar.

https://www.eia.gov/electricit...
https://www.cleanenergywire.or...

Based solely on price per kwh and predictable capacity, solar is awful. More specifically awful for germany, because of geography and weather trends.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/qu...

This unpredictability is causing massive new production plants using coal. This is a reult of shutting down nuclear and building solar which only generates an average of >10% of potential capacity. Altogether the solar plan's end result is not bringing them closer to meeting their climate pollution goals.
https://carboncounter.wordpres...

"when the wind suddenly stops blowing, and in particular during the cold season, supply becomes scarce. That's when heavy oil and coal power plants have to be fired up to close the gap, which is why Germany's energy producers in 2012 actually released more climate-damaging carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than in 2011. If there is still an electricity shortfall, energy-hungry plants like the ArcelorMittal steel mill in Hamburg are sometimes asked to shut down production to protect the grid. Of course, ordinary electricity customers are then expected to pay for the compensation these businesses are entitled to for lost profits."

http://www.spiegel.de/internat...

I'm not going to make an exhaustive list, but I will offer a few sources.

1) The predictive record:

a) Temperature and CO2: James Hansen - one of the most prominent climate scientists in the world, and former head of the NASA Goddard Institue for Space Studies - gave highly influential testimony to the United States Congress in 1988 based on his efforts at numerical modeling of future AGW. The actual increase in temperature is approximately that of his best-case scenario, in which he assumed far lower CO2 emissions than have actually occured; the actual increase in CO2 since that time has exceeded his worst-case scenario.

(Despite this unambiguous falsification of his models, Hansen continues to prophesy CO2-induced doom real soon now to this day - and the media still takes him seriously.)

The temperature predictions of the early IPCC reports have also been falsified; over time the group has gradually lowered their estimation of the climate's sensitivity to CO2, while maintaining that doom is as imminent as ever (or more so).

b) Sea level rise: "A senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of "eco-refugees," threatening political chaos, said Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program." - San Jose Mercury News (June 30, 1989)

2) Vague, mutually contradictory models: Amusingly, this very thread contains a fine example about sea level rise - phantomfive's "real, peer reviewed scientific paper" predicts seven meters of sea level rise in the near future (and I have seen other papers predicting even larger rises), but both the Guardian article he linked, and the Solomon Islands paper in the OP have other climate scientists are predicting a rise of less than one meter.

Another good example of the self-contradictory nature of the "settled science", is the myriad efforts to explain away the unpredicted 15+ year long "pause" in statistically significant global warming that has occured since about 2000 (although the strong El Nino this year may finally end it, at least temporarily): there are now 50+ official excuses, ranging from "the missing heat is hidden in the oceans" and "excess volcanic dust is dimming the sun", to "the pause isn't real; it's just an error in the measurements". Many of these excuses are mutually contradictory - the pause cannot be just a measurement error and also have a real physical cause.

(Suspiciously missing from the above, is any serious consideration of the possibility that the models were just wrong about the magnitude of the climate's sensitivity to CO2.)

3) Low quality data: There are two main problems with the data sets upon which modern climate science is based. The first is that claims about the long-t

Smartphone sales growth continues to be explosive."

Maybe we should just add smartphones to the definition of "PCs" (a device you can carry in your pocket does seem to be a "personal" device, anyway) and go on with life?

Innovation didn't stagnate, it just is being focused on a new form factor.

Now nerds want comic book movies and to complain about the doom and gloom of the future. Well good luck with that.

To be fair, wages have stagnated and lots of people are out of a job.

It makes perfect sense to be worried about the future, and devote time to complaining and looking for solutions.

(And not to put too fine a point on it, WE are the smart people in the room. If answers are to come, they will come from forward-looking individuals like us.)

Many? Try 2 so far. That would be diacetyl and a related flavoring. Both are butter flavoring (not popcorn). Most vendors (read, not Chinese) got rid of it fast or sharply reduced the amount used. Years before OSHA reacted BTW. Note that one consumer was affected due to his extreme love of microwave popcorn (another case where it is heated to the point that it vaporizes). I haven't heard of any vapers affected.

The part that wasn't blared over the media in 40 foot tall letters is that cigarettes give you 18 times the amount found in the most risky ecig flavors, so it still represents a substantially reduced risk vs. cigarettes. Cigarettes contain 600 times the amount found in the most risky flavors after the warning went out. All of those are lower level exposures compared to what the popcorn workers got.

It does go to show that nothing is absolutely without risk. It was a surprise to everyone involved including the regulators. However, the e-cig industry was the fastest responder to the bad news even though it was entirely unregulated. The next fastest was a food flavorings manufacturer's association.

You may find these references interesting: Popcorn Lung Coming to Your Kitchen? The FDA Doesn’t Want to Know, New Study Finds that Average Diacetyl Exposure from Vaping is 750 Times Lower than from Smoking, Media Bias Exposed: ‘Popcorn Lung’ Chemical 750 Times Greater In Tobacco Vs. E-Cigarettes

The problem is, you can only fund a "subsidence dividend" at the expense of medicare

Patently false. The till is OASDI, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and HUD housing assistance (17.2% of the total taxed income in 2013) converting into a 17.0% base, plus 1.4% of AGI covering a public aid system (food stamps, UI, OASDI, HUD) only applicable to children and naturalized citizens. That's 100% Federal initiative.

The total from 18 to 82 amortizes over 20 years to just a little less than OASDI (i.e. it pays the same as OASDI from 62 to 82, if you save 100% of it), without adding additional taxes. The plan in total I've designed actually lowers taxes further at most income levels; and besides, even reliable interest-based accounts exceed the performance of OASDI.

That's all without touching any healthcare services, at all. It's enough for 225 square foot of apartment space in most low-income areas, even in California and New York, although such small spaces are usually marketed as luxury apartments instead; plus food, personal care, clothing, and utilities.

That means a single individual actually gets enough to survive. I've got a lot of risk reserve built into that--I used a $1/sqft model for apartment rent (real world is between 60 cents and $1.20 for 1br), but allocated $1.33/sqft, and did similar for the other categories--and the proportional costs drop as technology expands and lowers cost-per-income-per-capita of the various goods. Over time, the poorest of poor get richer by exactly the per-capita marginal technological growth.

There's also an intentional fault in my particular plan: it's aimed to cause a labor shortage crisis. The target is ~118% employment (negative 18% unemployment), at which point we have to make everyone 20% poorer by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to define full time as 28-32 hours per week. That cuts back working hours per person and the attached income, settling us at 5.6% unemployment--right back where we started, working 1 day less, with the same buying power, although everyone making under ~$625k is a bit better off in it.

The buying power guarantees also smooth out the market a bit (economic downturns aren't so sharp), so you have a more stable economy which can afford more risks--more effort toward technological growth, creating more wealth in shorter time spans while protecting the economy from rising unemployment (humans are slower to replace and faster to re-employ because we pay them an income-tax-sourced Dividend rather than a minimum wage, and because certain payroll taxes are lifted off the cost of employing a human; technological unemployment thus has a blunter edge and a shorter recovery time).

So... yeah. Slow the loss of jobs from every source, speed the eventual creation of replacement jobs, and eliminate all homelessness and hunger by replacing our hardly-functional welfare system. 50 million Americans living without continuous access to enough food; 75% of families qualified for HUD assistance go on a waiting list and NEVER receive it; and Unemployment Insurance relies on continuously cycling people out of jobs and then back into them at fixed intervals (jobs are created by consumer buying power, and the dynamics of technological growth guarantee continuous creation of transitional unemployment, while scarcity and population growth guarantee an unemployment baseline).

We can fund America's welfare system, today, now, as it stands, with a 20% increase in *everyone's* taxes; or we can cut out payroll taxes, reduce business income taxes slightly, and replace all our welfare taxes with an earmarked 17% Dividend tax that accomplishes the same purpose and *much* more, redu

The problem is, you can only fund a "subsidence dividend" at the expense of medicare

Patently false. The till is OASDI, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and HUD housing assistance (17.2% of the total taxed income in 2013) converting into a 17.0% base, plus 1.4% of AGI covering a public aid system (food stamps, UI, OASDI, HUD) only applicable to children and naturalized citizens. That's 100% Federal initiative.

The total from 18 to 82 amortizes over 20 years to just a little less than OASDI (i.e. it pays the same as OASDI from 62 to 82, if you save 100% of it), without adding additional taxes. The plan in total I've designed actually lowers taxes further at most income levels; and besides, even reliable interest-based accounts exceed the performance of OASDI.

That's all without touching any healthcare services, at all. It's enough for 225 square foot of apartment space in most low-income areas, even in California and New York, although such small spaces are usually marketed as luxury apartments instead; plus food, personal care, clothing, and utilities.

That means a single individual actually gets enough to survive. I've got a lot of risk reserve built into that--I used a $1/sqft model for apartment rent (real world is between 60 cents and $1.20 for 1br), but allocated $1.33/sqft, and did similar for the other categories--and the proportional costs drop as technology expands and lowers cost-per-income-per-capita of the various goods. Over time, the poorest of poor get richer by exactly the per-capita marginal technological growth.

There's also an intentional fault in my particular plan: it's aimed to cause a labor shortage crisis. The target is ~118% employment (negative 18% unemployment), at which point we have to make everyone 20% poorer by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to define full time as 28-32 hours per week. That cuts back working hours per person and the attached income, settling us at 5.6% unemployment--right back where we started, working 1 day less, with the same buying power, although everyone making under ~$625k is a bit better off in it.

The buying power guarantees also smooth out the market a bit (economic downturns aren't so sharp), so you have a more stable economy which can afford more risks--more effort toward technological growth, creating more wealth in shorter time spans while protecting the economy from rising unemployment (humans are slower to replace and faster to re-employ because we pay them an income-tax-sourced Dividend rather than a minimum wage, and because certain payroll taxes are lifted off the cost of employing a human; technological unemployment thus has a blunter edge and a shorter recovery time).

So... yeah. Slow the loss of jobs from every source, speed the eventual creation of replacement jobs, and eliminate all homelessness and hunger by replacing our hardly-functional welfare system. 50 million Americans living without continuous access to enough food; 75% of families qualified for HUD assistance go on a waiting list and NEVER receive it; and Unemployment Insurance relies on continuously cycling people out of jobs and then back into them at fixed intervals (jobs are created by consumer buying power, and the dynamics of technological growth guarantee continuous creation of transitional unemployment, while scarcity and population growth guarantee an unemployment baseline).

We can fund America's welfare system, today, now, as it stands, with a 20% increase in *everyone's* taxes; or we can cut out payroll taxes, reduce business income taxes slightly, and replace all our welfare taxes with an earmarked 17% Dividend tax that accomplishes the same purpose and *much* more, redu

I've already addressed this.

And in 1972 it was predicted that there would be .6 degrees of warming by the year 2000. That proved to be extremely accurate.

In 1896 Arrhenius predicted that a doubling of carbonic acid in the atmosphere would produce global warming and stratospheric cooling, and that the effects would be most pronounced at the poles. His work was based off of Tyndall's experiments with the absorption of IR by various gases. His prediction of the exact climate sensitivity is on the high side of current estimates, but the theory overall has been shown to be accurate.

It's like you people think that you don't need any sort of empirical evidence to do science. Some people make bad predictions; predicting the future is known to be difficult. The laws of physics do not allow for AGW to be false; increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will raise the equilibrium temperature of Earth. How much it is raised and how quickly are matters of debate and study, but we can establish a firm lower bound for the temperature rise, and in the last few decades we have got a pretty good baseline on how quickly things are changing. Science doesn't allow us to have arbitrarily precise predictions; you're always going to be able to cherry-pick bad ones. However, in order to disprove something, it is not sufficient to show that it is inaccurate, because again, all of science is inaccurate. Empirical error is inherent to measurement. In order to disprove something, you need contradictory evidence. You don't need to talk about Al Gore. You don't need to blame Obama. You just need one single fact.

https://jhaines6.wordpress.com...
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com...

As, in the Catholic Church, the Pope dictates the law, here are some of his quotes as the head of the church. Next?

There are the guys you're looking for:

https://flavorwire.files.wordp...

It's called a "shadow CV". Haushofer is hardly the first to post one.

For example, from 2012:
https://dynamicecology.wordpre...

That is prominently noted in the second paragraph of Haushofer's CV. He cites a 2010 Nature paper by Melanie I. Stefan as a source of inspiration and provides 4 examples of similar works (see the CV for that - I'm not doing all your work for you - LOL).

It's called a "shadow CV". Haushofer is hardly the first to post one.

For example, from 2012:
https://dynamicecology.wordpre...

this was just 6 months ago.
I believe that they have several more new ones that they are adding.

> It does provide a nice example of the worst possible way to define a front page to a website.

Agreed. Guess it is the classic case of over-engineered. Jack of all trades, master of none.

/Oblg. Google vs Yahoo homepage history

http://www.inquisitr.com/15484...
http://sjwar.blogspot.com/2014...
http://gamergateharassment.tum...
https://angelwitchpaganheart.w...

You can ignore the problem and act like it doesn't exist, but that doesn't make it stop happening.

I don't call GG a movement against feminism, as they literally only espouse one opinion, that gaming journalism is corrupt. The side that is anti-gg I would describe as peopled with a bunch of feminists who try to make everything about them. After all, the original incident was about Zoe Quinn getting a positive review from a journalist who was sleeping with her, and what did Anti-GG focus on, but that it was mean to drag Zoe into it, even though it wasn't about her, but about the journalist being unethical.

A poster above (arguing for the consensus position btw) posted a recent survey that indicates only 67% of AMS members believe that a majority of warming since 1950 is anthropogenic. That's not a consensus. https://gmuchss.az1.qualtrics.... [GiordyS]

Answered here.

Hey, point me to a good study that shows that "published papers that seek to test what caused the climate change over the last century and half, almost unanimously find that humans played a dominant role". I'll read it and get back to you. [GiordyS]

You failed to answer yes or no, but your response seems to suggest that you actually are arguing with the results of John Cook's paper. Despite the fact that you insisted you weren't. So let's try again. Do you agree with Richard Tol when he says this?

"The consensus is of course in the high nineties. No one ever said it was not." [Richard Tol]

Note that Richard Tol explicitly states this is "something everyone knows." Do you agree with Richard Tol's statement? Yes or No?

In the last keynote that talked very briefly about the "new Mac mini", they listed some bullet points:
- 4th-gen Intel Core processors
- Intel Iris and HD Graphics 5000
- PCIe-based flash storage
- 802.11ac Wi-Fi
- Two Thunderbolt 2 ports

Imagine my surprise when the low-end model was only running at 1.4GHz, but my complete shock that not all models had PCIe-based flash storage. In fact, the low-end and mid-range models not only have a much slower hard disk drive but they're slow 5400-rpm drives.

For the prices that Apple are asking for the Mac minis, the low-end should have come with 128GB, the mid-range with 256GB and the high-end with 512GB.

There's also another Keynote when they introduced an update to one of their existing laptops and they started with buzzwords like "cutting edge" or "revolutionary" but then the main feature was that it was a bit thinner than the previous model. This is completely useless, we are at a point where there is no benefit at all to making things thinner. The size should stay the same and they should increase battery life, CPU and GPU power, put more RAM in the damn things, etc.

For all intensive purposes

you misspelled "porpoises".

He is always doubling down his position

http://twitchy.com/2016/04/20/...

and I doubt he will answer a real challenge

https://stevengoddard.wordpres...

He isn't particularly informative but it is fun to watch him squirm.

I'm all for doing something about Climate change, but can we fix our country first?

The US labor participation rate has fallen off the cliff. Our population is increasingly divided into the rich and the homeless.

The suicide rate is highest it's been in 3 decades. Looking at the commentary to that article, lots and lots of smart, highly trained workers are out of work and terrified.

Even among those who *have* jobs, the jobs now are part-time, menial and boring. A greeter at WalMart 20 hours a week won't keep you from poverty. Articles entitled "<such-and-so> corporation fires entire department, hires H1B workers, and makes employees train their replacements" come up about once a month now.

The lead politician on the R side has a 70% disapproval rating, but D side leader is only 12 points lower (and might be indicted for several felonies).

We spend twice as much as our revenue. We spend it on endless wars over pointless goals. We torture foreigners and assassinate our own citizens. We've turned our "land of the free" into Stazi-Lite with no one to reign the abuses of law enforcement, spy agencies, or even elected officials.

We are not safe in our homes.

All recent news indicates that the US is dying as a nation. It's headed for a crash-and-burn not seen since Roman times.

I'm all for trash talking the Republicans for ignoring climate change and all that, but we have much bigger fish to fry.

I really, *really* don't care about every niggling little political issue in an election with one binary choice.

I make my choice based on the biggest issue, and vote for the person I think will best address it.

Ignore the small problems, and the distant ones.

We have more immediate concerns.

I have more confidence in a gun carrying republican than a sneaky slim frustrated liberals...

Like this one?

https://qzprod.files.wordpress...

When I hear "trickle-down" I can't help but think of this.

Your first and fourth links are both really derived from the same 2008 computer simulation. A fuller discussion is here:
https://zbigniewmazurak.wordpr...
I think the fifth link falls into this bucket as well.

You second link ALSO refers to the same 2008 RAND corporation one, and it also simply waves away stealth by assuming that the F -35 would be detected by ground based radar, or that the infrared signature on it would automatically betray it.

The third article has a sensational headline, and doubles down with this quote:
"The F-35 isn't even close to fully operational - it can fly only on sunny days. It can't fly at night. And it can't fly in clouds or near lightning. We know this because the Pentagon tells us so, in a report written for the Secretary of Defense by the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, J. Michael Gilmore, dated February 15, 2013."

Curious phrasing. Since they have to cite the "written report" to have any weight, why not link directly to it? Is a hyperlink too fucking hard for the author? He certainly has no problem providing one when something lets him editorialize.

Well, here's the report:
http://pogoarchives.org/straus...
And here's the quote:

"The Block 1A training syllabus used during the OUE was limited by the current restrictions of the aircraft. Aircraft operating limitations prohibit flying the aircraft at night or in instrument meteorological conditions, hence pilots must avoid clouds or other weather. However, the student pilots are able to simulate instrument flight in visual meteorological conditions to practice basic instrument procedures. These restrictions are in place because testing has not been completed to certify the aircraft for night and instrument flight."

Note also the title of this report: "F -35A Ready for Training Operational Utility Evaluation"

This report was talking about the first stages of training pilots. It happened before the plane had been tested for all the conditions, and talked about what the workaround was at the time. Hey, did they ever get to that testing? http://www.livescience.com/496...

Your last link is discussed here:
https://fightersweep.com/2548/...
And was on slashdot initially here:
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
And then again here:
https://slashdot.org/story/16/...

Your links are sensational. Certainly, they are all over the internet, but most of them source the same few out-of-context facts. The fact that the authors have to really dig to find facts which they then portray sans-quote and most assuredly sans-context sorta shows that they have some kind of editorial vision that they were going to enact. Taking training reports and pretending that the restrictions in place for them are fundamental restrictions on the jet, extensive reliance on a 2008 computer simulation- these guys obviously have a bone to pick. Neutral headlines and reports don't get clicks though.

You're probably thinking of the Kelly Hoose case (here's another story link)where the government used a company-watermarked image of Melissa Bertsch. The British government pulled the same trick using the same exact model two years prior to that. Some state laws that define the requirements for child pornography let the police and prosecutors treat something as child pornography even if only the metadata indicates it's probably child pornography (file name, title, a sticky note on a DVD case that says "kids having sex," whatever.) The overall standards for what is or is not pornography are grossly subjective already; parents have been arrested in the past because of taking innocent pictures of their kids in a bathtub combined with mandatory reporting laws for photo developers that make the developers liable if they fail to report.

The system is set up to make it as easy as possible to accuse someone of possession of child pornography and make it extremely difficult to win in court. The conviction rate for child pornography cases that aren't plead guilty to, dropped by prosecution or dismissed by a judge before going to trial is 100% and that's not an exaggeration. Once you're charged, you either find a bulletproof defense like Kelly Hoose, you plead guilty to avoid prison, or you go to a trial and watch as a jury throws you away because it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to protecting the children.

Kiddie porn charges have become an easy way for the government to strip someone of their rights, shut them up, and get rid of them for a long time. You don't have to be guilty, you just have to seem that way.

Whales are about as smart as pigs and have been eaten in many cultures.

The guy who asserted that whales were as smart as humans was on LSD at the time. He spent the rest of his life tripping balls and trying to teach dolphins to talk...Good work if you can get it.

We now have Functional MRI that tells us the extra grey matter in whales is for sonar processing. Large brain mystery is solved. They are as smart as pigs.

No. If only you were as smart as you think you are. John C Lilly is far from the most recent research into whale intelligence.

https://theraptorlab.wordpress...

http://blogs.scientificamerica...

And for comparison, here's what the US did to [then] Bradley Manning.

She was required to remain visible at all times, including at night, which entailed no access to sheets, no pillow except one built into her mattress, and a blanket designed not to be shredded.

Her cell was 6 × 12 ft (1.8 x 3.6 m) with no window, containing a bed, toilet and sink. The jail had 30 cells built in a U shape, and although detainees could talk to one another, they were unable to see each other. Her lawyer said the guards behaved professionally, and had not tried to harass or embarrass Manning. She was allowed to walk for up to one hour a day, meals were taken in the cell, and she was shackled during visits. There was access to television when it was placed in the corridor, and she was allowed to keep one magazine and one book.

On January 18, 2011, after Manning had an altercation with the guards, the commander of Quantico classified her as a suicide risk. Manning said the guards had begun issuing conflicting commands, such as "turn left, don't turn left," and upbraiding her for responding to commands with "yes" instead of "aye." Shortly afterwards, she was placed on suicide watch, had her clothing and eyeglasses removed, and was required to remain in her cell 24 hours a day. The suicide watch was lifted on January 21 after a complaint from her lawyer, and the brig commander who ordered it was replaced. On March 2 she was told that her request for removal of POI status—which entailed among other things sleeping wearing only boxer shorts—had been denied. Her lawyer said Manning joked to the guards that, if she wanted to harm herself, she could do so with her underwear or her flip-flops. The comment resulted in Manning being ordered to strip naked in her cell that night and sleep without clothing. On the following morning only, Manning stood naked for inspection.

Until I read the OP article, I had always considered the US to be a fairly civilized place. Reading about the Norwegian jail and how they generally treat their prisoners, I got the distinct feeling that we, the US, are looking up from the bottom of the curve at the civilized people of the world.

I remember a photo of Richard Reid being transported to Guantanamo, who was naked and strapped immobile to a gurney, and toted around in complete view of the public while being transported (hence the photo, which I couldn't find in a quick search).

Reid was SO DANGEROUS that he couldn't be allowed clothing, shackles weren't sufficient, and had to be sent to an offshore prison.

What has become of our great nation?

Sadistic abuse. Torture. Indefinite detention, long after it has lost relevance. Giving drugs to prisoners against their will.

We force feed them to prevent them gaining release by starving to death, just to continue the abuse.

I don't expect this level of retribution from GOD, let alone fellow citizens.

I just got a rude awakening and realized: we're the bad guys.

What has become of us?

12,000 jobs isn't a lot in a 350,000,000 American population with 170,000,000 labor force in a 7,000,000,000 population world.

The reduction of labor force per product made has important and highly-desirable impacts, unless you would rather spend twice as much of your money on the basic food and clothes you eat now, and buy half as much cool stuff while reducing your access to health care.

"There has been no evidence presented that it hit a drone. Just speculation at this point."

Absolutely true!

What's more, even if this *was* a drone-strike, it simply proves what I (and many others) have been saying for years... a small recreational drone poses a very, very small danger to a commercial airliner. But hey, even if you don't believe me, why not believe Dr Chris Manno, an ex-USAF pilot who now flies 737-800s for one of the USA's largest airlines. His blog entry on the subject of the risks that recreational drones pose to commercial air flights is refreshingly frank and honest -- unlike the crap we're fed by the pilots' unions, airspace regulators and the media.

In fact, Chris Manno's comments on laser pointers and the danger they pose to pilots is also an eye-opener.

What a shame that so many ignorant people (even here on Slashdot) prefer to believe the dross that the media dishes up to them without challenge. Newsbreak: the mainstream media has long ago stopped being a reliable, factual, objective, informed source of news information! It's now all about sensational click-bait stories that focus on hype and misinformation to get eyeballs on webpages, TV screens and newspapers. I'm really rather disappointed in fact that so many Slashdot readers have fallen for this stuff. I guess it speaks to how the Slashdot readership has changed from an intelligent, *thinking* group of individuals to just a cross-section of the "Joe Average" public.

Shame really.

"There has been no evidence presented that it hit a drone. Just speculation at this point."

Absolutely true!

What's more, even if this *was* a drone-strike, it simply proves what I (and many others) have been saying for years... a small recreational drone poses a very, very small danger to a commercial airliner. But hey, even if you don't believe me, why not believe Dr Chris Manno, an ex-USAF pilot who now flies 737-800s for one of the USA's largest airlines. His blog entry on the subject of the risks that recreational drones pose to commercial air flights is refreshingly frank and honest -- unlike the crap we're fed by the pilots' unions, airspace regulators and the media.

In fact, Chris Manno's comments on laser pointers and the danger they pose to pilots is also an eye-opener.

What a shame that so many ignorant people (even here on Slashdot) prefer to believe the dross that the media dishes up to them without challenge. Newsbreak: the mainstream media has long ago stopped being a reliable, factual, objective, informed source of news information! It's now all about sensational click-bait stories that focus on hype and misinformation to get eyeballs on webpages, TV screens and newspapers. I'm really rather disappointed in fact that so many Slashdot readers have fallen for this stuff. I guess it speaks to how the Slashdot readership has changed from an intelligent, *thinking* group of individuals to just a cross-section of the "Joe Average" public.

Shame really.

Waitwut? Does that mean that this orthodox judge would also consider scrapping Kopimism (usa, can) as an official religion? So how are the inmates that were thrown in the slammer for downloading a couple of 1960s Beatles songs going to have their religious ceremony of the Holy Copy Party?

One of the most amusing aspects of denialism is that since they have no concept of the science, they go oafter what the can attack. Personality. That's why we were treated to years of "Michael Mann is an asshole", which was somehow supposed to invalidate his work. Mann is not an asshole, and the denialists largely stopped pursuing him after he proved to be adroit at their tools.

Now Nye, he isn't a person on the same caliber as Sagan. But the attacks are similar.

Carl Sagan, Socialist Jerk http://www.stephankinsella.com...

https://eternian.wordpress.com...

I coud find more of people playing the personality card on people of science. Nye is getting the same treatment as other popularizers like Sagan and N.D. Tyson.

And that's good enough proof that he's on to something, when Deniers single him out for their anti science derision.

If you're going to be pedantic, at least be correct. The ACT of blocking traffic itself was an act of aggression.

Words don't mean what you want to twist them to mean? By your logic, these people are showing aggression and anyone who "blocks" traffic. By the way, you do realize that the Quad is a park so what was the crowd "blocking" again? The grass. You realize that in a park, people can and do go around other people as it is considered open space.

Going to the store is not an act of aggression, because you're not preventing anyone from anything.

NO, you defined assembling as an act of aggression. Words don't mean what you want them to mean.

Blocking public access is an act of aggression.

Please define blocking as being a group in a park means "blocking" to you. That means every single gathering in a park is "blocking".

It is willful and disruptive, which was the point of the protest. The point of going to a store is to buy groceries.

There is no law against being willful unless you want to re-define that as well.

I am guessing you're kind of special snowflake.

I am not the one trying to redefine words because I don't understand them.

Everyone voting IS a show of force.

So let me get this straight: Sitting down == show of force. Got it.

Luckily we live in a Republic and vote for representatives. Two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner. I am the well armed sheep contesting the vote.

And what does that have to do with our rights to protest? Being in a Republic does not mean we lose out on our rights. You make no sense.