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Stupidity is contagious!

Oh no! I've been infected!

> I have noticed that certain types of crimes are being pretty much ignored even though complaints about those crimes are numerous.

From the WSJ of all places: The Underpolicing of Black America.

The result has been a doubling down on distrust. When violent crimes go unpunished while nonviolent ones get hammered, many conclude that the state seeks control, not justice. Police don’t benefit either: Devoted cops would much rather chase serious offenders. We should let them.

And I thought it was IS/Russians/NKoreans/Aliens, because US and allies hold moral highground and would never initiate actions which they themselves consider to be acts of war, right?

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

After all, it's ok if they do it. It's only bad if terrorists, communists and perverts do it.

Crying wolf and all that.

Complacency. What freedom haters have for breakfast.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

Aside from statutes, beware the CFRs:

These rules can carry the force of federal criminal law. Estimates of the number of regulations range from 10,000 to 300,000. None of the legal groups who have studied the code have a firm number.

"There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime," said John Baker, a retired Louisiana State University law professor who has also tried counting the number of new federal crimes created in recent years. "That is not an exaggeration."

Barret Brown didn't do any hacking. He's a reporter. Reporters are fucking supposed to report the news, not keep it secret. This was just an example of the fact if the Feds want to get you, they have criminal code base so large, nobody can even count crimes let alone fit all of that knowledge into a single brain. Of course, not knowing the law is no excuse (unless you are cop), and having no intent to break the is irrelevant. What this boils down to, is the Feds can fuck you up any time they want if they don't like you. It's called tyranny.

[In 1998, the ABA tried to count crimes contained in Federal statutes but gave up estimating the number to be in excess of 3000.]

* * *

None of these studies broached the separate -- and equally complex -- question of crimes that stem from federal regulations, such as, for example, the rules written by a federal agency to enforce a given act of Congress. These rules can carry the force of federal criminal law. Estimates of the number of regulations range from 10,000 to 300,000. None of the legal groups who have studied the code have a firm number.

"There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime," said John Baker, a retired Louisiana State University law professor who has also tried counting the number of new federal crimes created in recent years. "That is not an exaggeration."

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

See also, "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent" http://www.amazon.com/Three-Fe...

They're talking about the Heritage Foundation's 1989 proposal, later supported by Orrin Hatch in 1993, revised again in 1994.

Also available at less truthy sources in more detail.

Now by making the ISPs "common carriers", we will get all the innovation that we got under Ma Bell before the breakup in 1983 :-(

The federal school loan program is turning out to be wildly profitable new tax program for the federal government. The loans are exempt from bankruptcy and are typically $40+k per student.

I don't know where you're getting your data, but you should never trust that place again. The average is less than $30k, you can discharge it in bankruptcy, and it's not profitable for the government. It would be, if everyone always paid their loans, but then the banking crisis never would have happened, either.

Actually oil companies have been exporting crude products abroad (They still can't legally export unrefined crude oil) for a few years now because they can make more selling them in other countries. In fact this past June some restrictions were lifted and they started exporting unrefined ultralight oil

The IRS hasn't really been enforcing that rule.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/pr...

There are many times they do enforce it. OTOH, churches are allowed to talk about issues, they aren't allowed to tell you who to vote for. So, depending on how they phrase it, they could pass the IRS test. You aren't supposed to say "Vote for John Doe," But you can definitely say "Vote only for candidates that uphold our belief on marriage or abortion or whatever." It is a gray area, that hasn't been tested in the courts as to whether you can say "Don't vote for John Doe, because his position on is contrary to our faith." Technically, you aren't telling the people who to vote for and technically, the negative endorsement is still about a faith issue. The rules are definitely complicated and somewhat subjective, but that is because churches and their ministers have a right to public discourse, too.

The IRS hasn't really been enforcing that rule.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/pr...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ch...

The value of the ruble isn't the only thing that is vanishing in Russia. A Moscow hedge fund chief executive has disappeared, along with all the money in the firm's accounts.

That's according to a stunning feature in The Wall Street Journal. Kim Karapetyan, 29, the youthful founder of Blackfield Capital CJSC, has disappeared, much to the dismay of his staff, which didn't know until a group of men charged into the firm's plush offices.

From The Journal:

The firm’s employees didn’t know anything was amiss until mid-October, when three men charged into Blackfield’s offices in an upscale complex along the Moscow River in central Moscow, said people who were there.

The men, who didn't identify themselves, said they were looking for Blackfield's 29-year-old founder, Kim Karapetyan, according to the people who were there.

But Mr. Karapetyan wasn't in the office that day or the next, when senior executives explained to the staff of about 50 that there was no longer any money to pay their salaries, said one former senior executive and ex-employees. The executives disclosed that all the money in the company accounts — some $20 million, including investor cash — was also missing, they said. It couldn't be determined whether investors were from Russia or other countries.

"Our CEO just disappeared," said Sergey Grebenkin, one of the firm's software developers, in an interview.

No attempts to contact or find Karapetyan were successful, and he is still MIA. The company's website brags that its "systematic investment process helps avoid human-factor, cognitive-biases, and emotional-trading errors," but the CEO running away with all your money seems like a fairly big human error.

WSJ is known for its "technical" incompetence. In the following article, they credit mostly Xerox with inventing the Internet.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

The grossest error is that the author blatantly dismisses the ARPA invention of packet switching JUST because it was originally (allegedly) used for NON-computers. (For example, terminals.) Packet switching is THE primary feature of the Internet, regardless of the nature of the traffic (content). The fact that the content of the packets can be anything is part of what makes the Internet the Internet.

The cable design itself, which the article over-emphasizes, is fairly arbitrary and had decent alternatives at the time. Plus, the inventor of Ethernet gained a lot of his knowledge from prior gov't funded projects before working for Xerox.

I suspect it's the anti-government slant of the WSJ that creates such bad articles rather than mere incompetence. Look at the record of who it's owned by.

This SCOTUS case might be relevant:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/bi...

You're only getting half of the numbers when talking about subsidies. You're referring to subsidies for construction of new projects. I'm talking about the subsidies paid on the electricity generated by renewables. Please see this article for more info: Wall Street Journal.
If you're too lazy to click and read, here's the base numbers you need:
subsidies per megawatt hour
wind: $56.29
natural gas: $0.56
nuclear: $3.14
Those numbers show you how bad wind is for mainstream power generation. The only reason we have so many being built is because of the massive subsidies being paid for the "clean" energy they produce. However, at some point the subsidies run out, and then the turbines become a financial burden. There are times when it makes sense to build a wind turbine, such as a remote location far from the grid. But these times are few and far between. Wind turbines are nothing but a scam, and thirty years from now we're going to see these things abandoned and derelict all over the world.

Yet these alternatives produce much more CO2 to get from certain point A to B ... Imagine 200 cars driving from Finland to Sweden + requiring 20 hour boat trip too with 200 cars loaded... that, compared to 55min hop flight which also carries a lot fo cargo.

Flying is, for most common routes, VERY efficient after you also consider how much cargo the planes carry..

I dont have to imagine it, the WSJ already released the figures. The most fuel efficient airline got around 75 passenger miles per gallon of fuel, so if you put 2 people in a Prius, or 4 in an SUV, they'll get better gas mileage without all of the high-altitude effects. Fill the trunk and unused passenger space with Cargo, and that takes care of the cargo. Replace those 200 cars with a few buses and cargo trucks and the balance tips even further toward ground travel.

http://www.wsj.com/news/articl...

Jet engines are quite fuel efficient, but the air resistance at 500mph coupled with the need to provide enough lift to keep the plane in the air puts airplane travel at a big disadvantage for fuel efficiency.

I'm more curious about how North Korean defectors are smuggling things into the country.

The same way they got out? A little help on the inside? Helium-filled balloons are all the rage:

South Korea’s military said North Korean firing was first heard Friday afternoon, directed at balloons carrying anti-North Korean regime propaganda launched by South Korean activists.

Activists frequently launch helium-filled balloons carrying thousands of leaflets with pro-democracy, anti-North Korea messages, as well as DVDs and other items. Many North Korean refugees say access to outside media motivated their escape from the country, but critics say the balloons contribute to inter-Korean frictions.

North Korea has repeatedly demanded that South Korea prevent the launches and threatened to fire at the balloons, but it had never previously done so.

"The leaflet-scattering operation, part of the psychological warfare targeting [North Korea], can never be overlooked as it is a deliberate and premeditated provocation," North Korea’s state media said Thursday.

South Korea sometimes intervenes to prevent launches when there are complaints from local residents worried about the North’s retaliation.

The North’s firing appeared to be aimed at balloons launched by a group headed by North Korean defector Lee Min-bok, who said no one in the group was hurt. Late Friday, Mr. Lee said he was looking for new locations to launch more balloons.

A lot of the balloons have religious messages attached. Most people launching balloons aren't doing it just because they think the citizens of the DPRK want these things. They are doing it because they are religious evangelist fanatics and it is part of their conversion strategy.

As an agnostic, I completely understand why the DPRK hates these balloons. It is the equivalent of Mormons dumping tracts (pamphlets) in your back yard. Not once, not a handful of times, but whenever the winds are favorable.

I'm more curious about how North Korean defectors are smuggling things into the country.

The same way they got out? A little help on the inside? Helium-filled balloons are all the rage:

South Korea’s military said North Korean firing was first heard Friday afternoon, directed at balloons carrying anti-North Korean regime propaganda launched by South Korean activists.

Activists frequently launch helium-filled balloons carrying thousands of leaflets with pro-democracy, anti-North Korea messages, as well as DVDs and other items. Many North Korean refugees say access to outside media motivated their escape from the country, but critics say the balloons contribute to inter-Korean frictions.

North Korea has repeatedly demanded that South Korea prevent the launches and threatened to fire at the balloons, but it had never previously done so.

"The leaflet-scattering operation, part of the psychological warfare targeting [North Korea], can never be overlooked as it is a deliberate and premeditated provocation," North Korea’s state media said Thursday.

South Korea sometimes intervenes to prevent launches when there are complaints from local residents worried about the North’s retaliation.

The North’s firing appeared to be aimed at balloons launched by a group headed by North Korean defector Lee Min-bok, who said no one in the group was hurt. Late Friday, Mr. Lee said he was looking for new locations to launch more balloons.

Yet Pegatron under cut Foxconn's price on the job, why would anybody think the conditions would be any better there?

In this case though we have a threat of violence and terror on top of the simpler criminal matter. These guys are not threatening to just empty a few bank accounts and embarrass some more celebrities. They have moved from the realm of nuisance crimes to violent crimes and the state definitely has an interest preserving public safety.

I am finding the fact that just a couple of days ago Tom Coburn blocked the extension of the Federal terrorism insurance program to be very coincidental.

Uh, what? We're talking about on-device encryption here. That is very much the issue where YOU encrypt things. The FBI are complaining that Apple and Google have made it too easy to do full encryption (and Google has now made it on by default in Android 5.0), and when people make use of it, they cannot decrypt it even with a warrant.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/fb...
http://motherboard.vice.com/re...
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

And if you want some real news Former iTunes Engineer Tells Court He Worked to Block Competitors

But cloud is great, right? They told me cloud is great!

Yes, cloud is great as a convenience for you.

It is also great as a convenience for NSA and other agencies. The text of the bill allows that anything that was encrypted can be kept indefinitely. If your web site says HTTPS then it is fair game for permanent governmental storage.

Also, they can retain it forever for a number of reasons:

From the bill now on its way to the President's desk: "(3)(B) A covered communication shall not be retained in excess of 5 years unless ... (ii) the communication is reasonably believed to constitute evidence of a crime ... (iii) the communication is enciphered or reasonably believed to have a secret meaning; (iv) all parties to the communication are reasonably believed to be non-United States persons;"

#2 should be troubling. Does your communication (which is not limited to just email, but also includes web pages and any other data) have any evidence of a crime? Evidence that you downloaded a movie or software from a warez site, or looked at porn as a minor, or violated any of the policy-made-crimes that even the federal government has declared they are not countable? With an estimate of over 300,000 'regulations-turned-crime', plus laws that incorporate foreign laws (the Lacey Act's criminalization of anything done "in violation of State or foreign law"), pretty much anything you do probably violates some law somewhere in the world. Better preserve it just in case somebody eventually wants to prosecute you for that crime someday.

#3 refers back to a vague definition of "enciphered" that does not just mean encryption. The "secret meaning" could be as simple as data inside a protocol, Who is to say that the seemingly random bytes "d6 0d 9a 5f 26 71 dd a7 04 31..." used as part of a data stream are really not an encrypted message? Better record it just in case.

And of course #4, the law has a careful wording about communications between "non-United States persons". Considering the "internet of things", all those devices talking to other devices are not communications between United States persons. It was your camera (a non-United States person) communicating with a data warehouse (a non-United States person), so better exempt that from the 5-year retention policy as well.

I agree - so I looked it up and apparently they *were* doing this (via investments):

http://www.solarcity.com/newsr...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

But then their new CEO decided to abandon them:

http://www.bizjournals.com/san...

And then they changed their mind *again* and wanted to invest, but the PUC decided against it:

https://gigaom.com/2012/05/10/...

So, basically WTF. It's a complicated situation...

Those aren't your tax dollars. Our country spends twice what it takes in.

According to this Conservative-run Federal budget reference website the current Federal budget deficit is $483 billion on a $3504 billion dollar budget, or 13.8%. That is a far cry for "twice what it takes in". Smart to remain anonymous, you would not want to reveal your math skills to those who know you.

That notorious Marxist rag The Wall Street Journal concurs.

Useful distinction. To be clear, I'm not arguing against evolution per se, but rather loose conceptual categorization that tends to persistently lead on the part of the general public to presuming one's conclusion, and reasoning that leads people to think seriously, rather than farcically, that notions equivalent to yawning as an evolved adaptation simultaneously supporting catching nutritious insects in one's mouth while reflexively also closing one's eyes to avoid the insects getting in them are "evidence" for their understanding of "evolution" that they've accepted a priori and second-hand, rather than scientifically.

But I also think there's been a massive overreaction by the health care industry because of HIPAA,

THIS!. It's difficult for me to get the status of a family member. After all - "Privacy!"

Then these hospitals, these guardians of privacy, thesde bastions of HIPPA, put a unguarded computer on the net, and give everyone's records away. Or just put it on Facebook.....

http://www.journal-news.com/ne...

http://www.journal-news.com/ne...

http://www.inquisitr.com/12847...

http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2014/...

http://www.inquisitr.com/12847...

And onandonandonandon. The uncontestable fact that Hospitals are the largest source of leaked personal data means that there is no need nor point for it to be encrypted, because as soon as it's in plaintext, it's darn near publicly posted.

THAT is why many people avoid Apple like the plague. They've lost their lead, had their fun and are now fighting fowl.

Yup. Random mostly-unsubstantiated rumors that totally happened to a friend of your cousin's roommate are indeed why many people avoid Apple products.

More importantly, it now seems it never happened to any of the plaintiffs: http://online.wsj.com/articles/judge-questions-plaintiffs-in-apple-antitrust-case-1417734307?mod=ST1

A federal judge Thursday questioned whether any of the plaintiffs in a long-running antitrust suit against Apple Inc. had actually bought the iPods at issue in the case.

“What am I supposed to do if I don’t have a plaintiff?” asked a concerned U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers after the jury left the courtroom at the end of Thursday’s proceedings.

Judge Rogers said that in a letter submitted to her late Wednesday night, Apple’s lawyers said there is no evidence that the plaintiffs’ two class representatives purchased the models of iPods focused on in the trial.

Judge Rogers’ comments raised the prospect that the 10-year-old case, in which the plaintiffs are seeking $350 million in damages, could end quickly in Apple’s favor.

Please provide sources. There are no plant build subsidies, only government loans (admittedly with low interest) that are paid back. I don't know what you mean by plant operating subsidies but the power produced is very scarcely subsidized, according the the Wall Street Journal, nuclear is subsidized at about $1.59 per megawatt hour, whereas solar and wind are given roughly $24 each per MWh. A research study on the externalities of energy found that nuclear externalized 0.2-0.7 cents per kWh depending on the country, while solar externalized 0.6 cents and wind externalized 0.2. For comparison, coal and oil were at around 10 cents per kWh. Plant waste is not subsidized, the cost of disposing/storing nuclear waste is added to the price of the electricity (source). I was unable to find any information on subsidizing retirements for nuclear workers, and I have no idea what you mean by money spent on nuclear education.

I am not "forgetting the other 6 decades", they were taken into account in the $73 billion.

According to the new European Commissioner for the Digital Economy, Germany’s Günther Oettinger, there would be no "break up and no expropriation" with him. Oettinger: Such measures would be "instruments of the planned economy, not the market economy". Only a more competitive Europe could recover lost markershare in the digital economy. Link: Keine Zerschlagung von Google (in German).

But he also suggested a EU-wide "Google Tax": New EU Digital Chief Floats Tough Anti-Google Regulations
"If Google takes intellectual property from the EU and works with it, the EU can protect this property and can demand a charge for it," Mr. Oettinger told the daily Handelsblatt, adding that such a law could be in place by 2016.

How can Facebook get personal information that you don't voluntarily share with it?

Offline data collection:

• Datalogix
• Data brokers
• Outside data sources

Tracking your browsing:

• WSJ article

Getting tentacles in your OS:

• iOS
• More on Apple

Running analytics software and servers for other websites and apps:

• Parse

Etc.

Lucky them, at least their computers did not crash

http://online.wsj.com/articles...

An article I read about the sapphire producer claimed that the primary reason it wasn't used for the iPhone was that they simply couldn't get the yields needed to support the volume.

http://online.wsj.com/articles...

There's a paywall, but googling the title in a private window might get you a good link (worked for me).

Reguardless of how "patentable" things like round buttons and beveled edges should be you obviously don't understand how patents work. If Apple tried to sue the people they derived from for patent infringement they would loose and also run the risk of having their patent nullifed. If the people they copied from wanted to nullify the Apple patent or come to Samsungs aide in the case Apple put against them they could have. None of these things happened.

And while we're on the subject, Samsung has a long history of non-trivial patent infringement. For instantance they blatantly stole Sharp LCD TV technology when it was the hot thing at the time and basically destroyed the market for Sharp after sharp had put immense effort and research into the technology. Even today Sharp has not recovered from this.
http://online.wsj.com/articles...

There are many many many other cases too. Samsung is unforgivable. They just copy everything and they think this is a valid business strategy. Seriously, why do more people not boycott them?

"If you compare childless women to men, the pay gap completely disappears."

Actually, it flip-flops with young childless women in metropolitan areas making 8% more on average.

http://content.time.com/time/b...

http://online.wsj.com/articles...

This could turn into a real micropayment system.

About 7 years ago I (incorrectly) predicted that ISPs could bootstrap micropayment systems by allowing users to put money into an account with their ISP. When the user visits a site with ads, the site could "bill" the customer via the ISP anonymously, transparently to the user, and cheaply. The payment system would essentially live in the ISP's HTTP proxy server.

The Google model sounds like a variation of that, with Google collecting the money and distributing the micropayments to the web site via the ad network.

A similar ad-free subscription-oriented option will be available for YouTube soon. I am surprised to see this announcement without it connecting to that one.

And yet only ONE of those industries is up in arms about the gender imbalance, even when there's a clear demand in both?

Yes, it's not like there's a 30-year-old organization dedicated to things like:

• Encourage men of all ages to become nurses and join together with all nurses in strengthening and humanizing health care.
• Support men who are nurses to grow professionally and demonstrate to each other and to society the increasing contributions being made by men within the nursing profession.
• Advocate for continued research, education and dissemination of information about men's health issues, men in nursing, and nursing knowledge at the local and national levels.
• Support members' full participation in the nursing profession and it's organizations and use this Assembly for the limited objectives stated above

What's funny is, you're so myopic you don't realize that advocating for more diversity in these fields is so NON-controversial that people don't remark on it. Huge amounts of money and time are being poured into getting more men interested in nursing, yet whenever anybody suggests that a male-dominated field should intentionally try to be more diverse, there's this ridiculous shitstorm on "news for nerd" sites like this.

Oh, and here's the kicker:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics...

Show me a study that supports the assertion that women in IT make more money than their male counterparts, I dare you.

It's quite shallow. Another app harvesting data from schoolkids. Privacy policy is vague. Teachers don't care because it's useful. Parents try to care but don't really. There's really nothing new here that deepens the discussion about the continuing erosion of student privacy.

Anyone really looking for a good read on that subject should turn back to the May Politico article highlighted earlier on Slashdot. Also interesting to note is how some companies are pledging to no longer mine student data, as well as companies that were notably absent from signing that pledge, including the one that promised to stop collecting student data last April.

No, at least in the case of pharmaceuticals single payer is less expensive. You have more negotiating leverage.

If you are the sole buyer, and you use that leverage of yours too much, you'll simply have no sellers/service-providers. Competition works both ways — or is supposed to. If the buyer is unreasonable, the seller shrugs and sells to someone else — if there is anybody else. If there is not, the seller closes down the shop.

In the Dutch system you also do not have CEOs of medical companies having to pay for trophy mistresses, reducing costs even further.

Ok, let's stipulate for a second, the Dutch CEOs — unlike the American ones — are all asexual, and do some computations. Let's say, five big-pharma CEOs, are overseeing development and production of drugs for, say, 1bln people. Even if each one had 20 mistresses to support, an extra dollar per year from the beneficiaries of their work would give each mistress a whopping $10mln per year. You are barking up the wrong tree. Easy though it is to harp at the executive pay, it is largely irrelevant to the cost of the final product...

Cocoa Surges on Ebola Fears

you forgot Derek Bird and Raoul Moat, to name two right off the top of my head, there are more. From your much-loved WSJ: "Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is." source. "Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven't made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres. The two major countries held up as models for the U.S. don't provide much evidence that strict gun laws will solve our problems."

A few comments from me to close down any further idiocy from the anti-gun crowd:

When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
Criminals DO NOT CARE about the Law. That's why they were once called "out laws". From the old English literally meaning vermin, wolfsbane or wolfshead, which were basically fair game for anybody with a weapon and the brass bollocks to go take him down, nobody was allowed to offer an outlaw food, water or shelter. Presenting a local sheriff with a wolfsbane usually attracted a reward. Outlawry was abolished in England in 1861. The Castle Doctrine, however, still stands in English law which means that I would be perfectly within my rights to shoot an intruder into my home in the face, but if I shoot him in the back, that's murder (Tony Martin case: [2001] EWCA Crim 2245).

From the elephant's mouth ...

For Democrats, the most important issue in this year’s midterm elections is what’s long been the central focus for the party’s top officials: jobs and the economy.

But Republicans have a different view of things, rating taking military action against Islamic State militants as their top issue, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

At least this part is still the "good ol slashdot" - misleading shitty statistics straight from the crappy press.

Where is the 52% bump?

As the video suggests, "incentives" don't really make much of a difference to motivation. However, you make some good points about value to a company of an experienced employee (whether motivated much or not), and it is true, if you want to hang onto mostly unmotivated employees a little longer, then incentives may help keep them from being unmotivated elsewhere. And it is true that a lot can get done by a lot of unmotivated employees -- just not stuff that is generally that creative or innovative. But that sort of advice is kind of like giving advice on what orders the Captian should give while the Titanic is sinking -- it is not advice about how to keep the Titanic from sinking or build a ship that is truly unsinkable.

It is true though that you have to, as Dan Pink says, "take money off the table" by paying your staff enough that money is not an issue. Related (though no doubt there are nuances, like $75K in Silicon Valley is generally poverty wages requiring long commutes):
http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/20...
"The study, which analyzed Gallup surveys of 450,000 Americans in 2008 and 2009, suggested that there were two forms of happiness: day-to-day contentment (emotional well-being) and overall "life assessment," which means broader satisfaction with one's place in the world. While a higher income didn't have much impact on day-to-day contentment, it did boost people's "life assessment." Now we have more details from the study, conducted by the Princeton economist Angus Deaton and famed psychologist Daniel Kahneman. It turns out there is a specific dollar number, or income plateau, after which more money has no measurable effect on day-to-day contentment. The magic income: $75,000 a year. As people earn more money, their day-to-day happiness rises. Until you hit $75,000. After that, it is just more stuff, with no gain in happiness."

There are some other practical things, like onsite day care or extended maternity leave that could make a big difference for working parents, especially working mothers.

See also:
" Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes"
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books...
" Our basic strategy for raising children, teaching students, and managing workers can be summarized in six words: Do this and you'll get that. We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in much the same way that we train the family pet.
In this groundbreaking book, Alfie Kohn shows that while manipulating people with incentives seems to work in the short run, it is a strategy that ultimately fails and even does lasting harm. Our workplaces and classrooms will continue to decline, he argues, until we begin to question our reliance on a theory of motivation derived from laboratory animals.
Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives. Programs that use rewards to change people's behavior are similarly ineffective over the long run. Promising goodies to children for good behavior can never produce anything more than temporary obedience. In fact, the more we use artificial inducements to motivate people, the more they lose interest in what we're bribing them to do. Rewards turn play into work, and work into drudgery.
Step by step, Kohn marshals research and logic to prove that pay-for-performance plans cannot work; the more an organization relies on incentives, the worse things get. Parents and teachers who care about helping students to learn, meanwhile, should be doing everything possible to help them forget that grades exist. Even praise can become a verbal bribe that gets kids hooked on our approval.
Rewards and punishments are just two sides of the same coin -- and the coin doe

...Merkel probably doesn't want to do anything that might disrupt the German economy.

Somehow it seems you didn't follow the news. And Merkel ...

1. talk is cheap. on the other hand the US has kinda stood on the opposite side of fascism and stalinism for a pretty long while now. politics will be politics but some things are still true.

35 countries where the U.S. has supported fascists, drug lords and terrorists

. I'm surprised you could even type such tripe with a straight face.

2. morality is a tricky thing, and something we're now finally fleshing out. I certainly don't believe we're more moral, but it does sound good no? :) our enemies certainly view us as such. We've been the great satan for a while now, but they hate you too :)

No, most people actually don't view your country as such. They see you as an amoral, imperialistic bully.

3. dictatorships also proclaim that food makes you less hungry, what's your point?

That your claims are bullshit. As much so as North Korea proclaiming itself to be a Democratic Republic.

4. I can't laugh that long. which allies do you think will leave... because of the espionage? lemme know.

You can't laugh hard enough about something even US officials agree with?

http://online.wsj.com/articles...

Mr. Kerry acknowledged the countries have been through a "rough period," after leaked documents from the fugitive former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden showed the U.S. National Security Agency monitored the German leader's cellphone.

And that's before you get into strained ties with Brazil, France, etc.

Oh, so we're free to buy goods and housing at third world prices?

No, mostly because people like you work hard to keep cheap good from being importated.

All the CEO's that make more than $500k a year have been fired and replaced with MBA's from India?

Why, yes, we're getting there:

http://online.wsj.com/articles...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ro...

http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/...

http://www.hbs.edu/recruiting/...

So, the percentage of foreign-born workers at the top is higher than for regular folks. But you'll find some way of working yourself up about that too.

They are producing ore, which is then shipped to their facilities in China for processing. Is that really progress?

Molycorp reopened the mine, and then bought Neo Material Technologies for its processing capabilities:

But the deal also paves the way for Molycorp to ship minerals from its California mine to the Chinese operations of a Neo Material arm called Magnequench, in a reminder of how much technological rare-earth capability resides in China.

... Republicans have been wanting to kill off science education, women's reproductive rights, immigration reform, same-sex marriage ...

No, wait.

Sorry.

Republicans are going to tackle the Top Threat to America.

Pure CO2 causation, the forced feedback in climate models and the machinations on the data that attempt to leverage a 400% CO2 rise into an extremely-slight-yet-lost-in-noise rise or flatline (depending on how you rearrange the noise) average global temperature... it has been like a bad dream that does not end.

Will the world end in ***FIRE*** or ***ICE***? Or will the world fail to end at all, that would be really embarrassing. It's time to put the steep rise in people-generated pure-CO2 and the observed not steep at all global temperature curve in proper perspective. As in, pure-CO2 causation is a non-starter yet worthy of study --- but it's time to focus on other aspects for awhile. Without all that 'climate denier' noise too.

Let's just talk about actual particulates and albedo. Stratospheric sulfur aerosols reflect more sunlight. In the Arctic, nearby soot may be a larger forcing than CO2. One effect would cause net cooling at the surface and the other a net warming as near-perfect blackbody particles settle on ice crystals. The photograph of a melt water canal with concentrated black carbon particles lining the bottom of the pool begs the question, does this melt channel owe its very existence to the presence of the carbon, or was it caused by other factors? I guestimate that the area of black is about 1/10 the size of the surrounding melt pit... so we are definitely seeing 'grey snow' in the Arctic here.

It has taken five years for the failed 'Glory' satellite mission to be re-launched as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. It is my hope that OCO2 will help to answer these questions by showing where pollution plumes originate and how they move, so that we know where to take samples and what to look for.

Politics demands simplified models and pure-CO2 causation so they can tax everybody without pissing off the coal industry. F*ck politics. It is my view that pure-science demands a balanced approach that will reveal the true impact of coal, among other manmade and natural causes.

And the folks in California would really appreciate a green-tax refund for the 29% of their pollution that is actually from Asia.