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Nuclear is actually cost competitive with coal,

So the Wall Street Journal is wrong? Even they say "The only way to handicap the field in nuclear power's favor is to put a big price tag on emissions of carbon dioxide." If however emissions of carbon dioxide had a price tag then geothermal, solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources would be more competitive as well not just nuclear power. And if nuclear is so great then why does the industry need subsidies and gets loan guaranties?

and is the only green energy source that is.

Nuclear power is not clean, it is dirty from cradle to grave, oops there is no grave for nuclear waste. Ask the Navajo how clean uranium mining is. Or some First Nations in Canada, the aboriginals in Australia, or any number of other indigenous peoples throughout the world.

It's also wrong that nuclear plants need to be these massive, expensive things. We've had portable nuclear generators since the '60s, and you can build out plants of various sizes from there all the way up to the mega installations.

Is that why Finland's Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant has costs overruns raising it's cost from 3 billion euros to more than 4.2 billion? Or seen it's operation delayed from 2009 to 2012 at the earliest? Since you didn't like the previous CATO article you probably won't like this one either but Nuclear Energy: Risky Business says "the industry in the early 1990s asked for-and got-exactly the sort of safety regulations, permit review process, and public comment regime now in place." Further, it says "Indeed, if government were the reason why investors were saying "no" to their loan applications, I would expect that industry officials would be the first to say so. But they do not."

Solar is currently 3x - 10x more expensive than coal.

Saying that's true now, I don't know, solar is constantly dropping in costs. And coal does not pay all of it's own costs. Like other energy sources coal is subsidized. Mountaintop removal probably the safest way to mine coal is very destructive and polluting.

The only reason it can be cost effective is because the government very very heavily subsidizes solar installations.

If ethanol subsidies, most of which go to corn and there are better feed stocks than corn, are removed from alternative energy subsidies coal comes in first place in the amount of subsidies it gets. The graph on the page linked to says alternative energy got $4.875 billion in 2007. Of that though $3 billion went to ethanol. Coal on the other hand is broken down into 2 categories. Refined coal, whatever that is, got $2.370 billion and coal got $932 million. Together coal got $3.302 billion whereas goethermal, solar, wind and other alternative sources got $1.9 billion excluding ethanol. I do see that it has nuclear as getting less than alternatives though, however I wonder how it breaks down for the different types? As that page asks, "which pig wears the most lipstick?"

Geothermal will never amount to more tha

You are correct, but this rule won't do anything to stop people who are breaking the rules already.

We are not talking about a new rule that has been established by the FAA.

The FAA has issued an InFO (Information for Operators) reminding that cockpit distractions are bad. The InFO is located here-- is in fact referenced by the second link in the summary.

In TFA (second link anyway), they make reference of the Sterile Cockpit Rule which they did impose in 1981.

Basically, the Sterile Cockpit Rule is that pilots shouldn't be doing anything but flying the plane when they're supposed to be flying the damned plane. Most especially, while they're supposed to be doing take-off and landing.

The FAA has issued a memo indicating that operators should stress to their pilots that they need to keep the number of personal electronics and other distractions in the cockpit to a minimum so they're not violating existing FAA rules.

This is more of a reminder that pilots shouldn't really have their laptops powered up while they're supposed to be piloting.

The timing of this likely coincides with the fact that in March:

A pair of Northwest Airlines pilots who had their licenses revoked after losing contact with air-traffic controllers for more than an hour and flying roughly 100 miles past their destination airport last fall could return to the cockpit in a matter of months, under the terms of a settlement with federal regulators.

I realize a lot of people think they can text and drive a car, but messing about with other stuff while you're supposed to be flying a plane is a big deal. The FAA is reiterating that stance.

Sorry to be so vocal (and pedantic about this), but having been around airlines as part of a previous job, it's something I kinda get a little protective of when people act like the incident this is all about wasn't really a potential disaster.

Cheers

Two Words .... Jury Nullification

This is the worst part of our current system, is that juries are not informed of all the duties that are necessary for them to perform. In this case you were led to believe that your only duty was to judge the facts, and apply those facts to the law.

However every member of society has every right, while on any jury, to judge not only the facts of the case, but the law and how they are being applied. This is the ONLY real safeguard to a free people, and the real power of the Jury.

My biggest sadness is that you felt compelled to convict the man, because the fact and the law told you to. Just so you know, you've admitted that you've proven the state has enslaved us all to laws we can't possibly obey.

Take a look here, and after that, I leave you with two questions ....

The Average Person Commits Three Felonies a Day"

Question one, are you willing to go to jail for doing something that is right, even if it is against the law?

If not, why did you do that to someone else?

The Feds can get you anytime you want ...

The Average Person Commits Three Felonies a Day"

Schmidt was forced out due to antitrust concerns.

I'm not doubting your Norway bit but generally the recession was worse in Europe than in the U.S. It is also recovering more slowly than the U.S. is, at least according to this article (it might require a subscription but if you do a Google News search of the article's title and then click on the link, you can see the article for free): http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304159304575183971423482364.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_RIGHTTopCarousel

Here's a selection from the article: "In a survey this week, The Wall Street Journal asked forecasters: Which major region is likely to be the biggest drag on global growth this year? Forty-six chose Europe, seven Japan. Not one picked another region. 'Europe is driving along the edge of the Grand Canyon,' one said. 'It's all downside risk.'
"Economists at the Institute of International Finance, a group of international banks, recently made the first 'meaningful upward revision' to their global growth forecast in six months, citing 'more robust' home-growth demand in the U.S., Japan and emerging markets. For much of Europe, though, they see domestic demand as 'worryingly lackluster.' Michael Mussa of Washington's Peterson Institute for International Economics think tank, though more optimistic than most of his forecasting peers, said last week, 'Western Europe is the one region where the recession proved significantly worse than I anticipated in April [2008] and where the extent of recovery so far has been disappointing.'" I've read a number of articles from many different sources that all basically say the same thing: the EU is coming out of the recession more slowly than the rest of the world.

Sotomayor is definitely pro IP, but she is NOT pro corporation. The two are not mutually inclusive.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/06/05/whats-sotomayors-stance-on-intellectual-property

She is not pro-corporation as stated above. One of her first comments while being questioned made that very clear. She believes corporations should NOT be granted any rights of a 'person'.

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/09/17/is-sotomayors-corporations-arent-people-comment-a-harbinger/tab/article/

I think you may be confused: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/09/17/is-sotomayors-corporations-arent-people-comment-a-harbinger/tab/article/

The DMCA, 17 USC 512, already has a clause requiring service providers to take action against repeat-infringing subscribers. You act like the language of ACTA will be any broader.

You're misunderstanding the difference between alleged infringement and actual infringement. The DMCA requirement is based on judgments by the courts whereas the '3 Strike' example in the ACTA is based on unproven allegations.

In the Washington Post the EFF describe it as:

How could a democratic government consider cutting off Internet access for people who haven't been convicted of a copyright violation? Danny O'Brien, the international outreach coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that New Zealand changed its copyright law to be in accordance with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act in the U.S., but then chose to interpret the language differently than the U.S.

"One of the things about the Digital Millenium Copyright Act is that it's got these rather strong enforcement mechanisms, but U.S. copyright actually has quite a lot of room for maneuvering for normal users," Mr. O'Brien said. "In the U.S., it was assumed that repeat infringers would be people who are tried in the court of law. And in New Zealand, though similar language was transposed, that was not the way it was read. The outcry has been so great that the New Zealand government has said, 'Look, we're not going to enforce this, so we're going to go back and rewrite the law.""

New Zealand was going to implement a 3 strikes law but now they're going through due process, a Copyright Tribunal.

This is PARTICULARLY true when the crutch has been reduced to a mere financial draw, with no serious health consequences.

But that's exactly the question isn't it? "the groups say e-cigarettes have yet to be proven safe... 'Nobody knows what the consumers are actually inhaling,' says Erika Sward, director of national advocacy at the American Lung Association." "[The FDA] has examined electronic cigarettes and determined that they meet the definition of both a drug and device under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, according to legal filings. Drugs and delivery devices must receive FDA approval before being marketed."

So, if this were any other new drug or medical device on the market, we would expect some testing to be required before approval. But since it is perceived as an alternative to smoking, which is almost certainly much worse, the case could be made for lowering the bar in this case. But does that argument has any legal basis? People are assuming these are safe; if it turns out otherwise, there could be a lot of upset. We could blame individuals for assuming they're safe without proof, but did you feel like you were going out on a limb when you asserted "no serious health consequences"?

The WSJ has something to say about that very thing today:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303828304575180243952375172.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion

This is why I cannot get on board with the Democrats. Their "good intentions" are seriously misguided, and in fact fly in the face of all modern economic research. We now have unemployment benefits extended up to 2 years - 2 YEARS!!! Talk about an incentive to not work! Meanwhile, the Republicans are cast as heartless because they want to force Congressional Democrats to follow their own PayGo legislation! I would hardly call expecting someone to find a job doing SOMETHING in under 2 years' time "being heartless." It may not be your dream job, but if you live in America then you still won the Ovarian Lottery as Warren Buffet would say.

I agree. Training skills to the point that they become second nature is how to get REALLY good at the skills. I read a really good article on Larry Fitzgerald's ability to catch footballs, based on extensive training.

http://blog.motorists.org/6-cities-that-were-caught-shortening-yellow-light-times-for-profit/
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2008/04/red-light-camera-monkey-business-may-be-a-national-trend.ars
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123975737976619187.html

You see, in theory socialism means that everyone owns the means of production. In practice it means that the state controls/owns the means of production.

What, you mean like AIG or GM?

Cleveland is a rotting cesspool, but it is also one of America's greatest cities. The same is true of Pittsburg and Chicago. Cleveland excels in healthcare, has a killer art museum, and a world class orchestra. In fact one of Cleveland's suburbs comes in at number three in per capita income, while in an incredibly cheap metro area. What you are seeing in the Great Lakes area is a huge wealth disparity. Each of those cities is basically two worlds one filled with crushing poverty and endless despair, and the other representing the elite of American society. http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/in-search-of-the-worlds-most-livable-cities-106/tab/article/

You do realize that currently on the fed balance sheet there are more than a trillion dollars worth of mortgage backed securities that we've bought from banks, right? There's a reason the banks were able to pay TARP back so quickly, the money hole was just moved from one pile to another. The AIG, Bear Stearns, and auto-company bailouts were small in comparison. Check out the current Fed balance sheet for more info.

The federal government is now starting to build the institutions that will try to reduce the soaring growth of health care costs. There will be a group to compare the effectiveness of different treatments, a so-called Medicare innovation center and a Medicare oversight board that can set payment rates.

But all these groups will face the same basic problem. Deep down, Americans tend to believe that more care is better care. We recoil from efforts to restrict care. ...

From an economic perspective, health reform will fail if we can't sometimes push back against the try-anything instinct. The new agencies will be hounded by accusations of rationing, and Medicare's long-term budget deficit will grow.

So figuring out how we can say no may be the single toughest and most important task facing the people who will be in charge of carrying out reform. "Being able to say no," Dr. Alan Garber of Stanford says, "is the heart of the issue." ...

None of these steps will allow us to avoid the wrenching debates that are an inevitable part of health policy. Eventually, we may well have to decide against paying for expensive treatments with only modest benefits.

A reader comments:

...So there WILL be rationing?....doctors controlled by a monopoly payer in all but name?....private medicine outlawed as in Canada?...

So does this mean that Sarah Palin was actually right?....about the death panels...er, Medicare Practice Advisory Commission?

When do the liars apologize to her?

Don't hold your breath on that one. James Taranto adds:

Having taken on, over the objections of the public, the responsibility for everyone's medical care, the federal government may not be able to keep its promise: "Eventually, we may well have to decide against paying for expensive treatments with only modest benefits."

Oops, sorry about that, Gramps!

It seems as though this is a pretty strong argument against ObamaCare. But we need to encapsulate it in a pithy phrase. What would you call governmental institutions that empower bureaucrats to decide when to deny medical treatment--panels, as it were, that have the authority to determine when a patient's death is necessary for the health of the fisc?

Why are the Democrats determined to ration health care? Because, having sold endless health care at someone else's expense as an "entitlement," government at all levels is going broke. The Democrats need rationing to free up government funds for the social programs they yearn to implement, but can't afford. Your mother's hip replacement is standing in their way, so she has to go. That, in a nutshell, is what Obamacare is all about.

So, if Christine Varney - who is making some noise that she MIGHT just stick her boot up Verizon's behind - actually starts filing stuff and pushing Congress to back her - you would support that? You would support an Obama administration pushing for that?

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124689740762401297.html

or it was a flaw they new about over a decade ago.

Perhaps the helo did internal encryption, but just as likely the video was also being broadcast prior to that encryption for the reasons you say and I pointed out. Getting everything upgraded in real time is hard not too mention the computing horsepower of doing it on remote small systems.

If the transmission of the video from the helicopters is similar to systems used on the drones then getting the video may have been trivial: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html

We can all find quotes for the health benefits for just about anything.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703580904575131611338379340.html

Lengthier smoking habits--but not more intense ones--seem to reduce the odds of developing Parkinson's disease, according to a study in Neurology. The inverse association between smoking and Parkinson's--the neurodegenerative disease characterized by difficulty in controlling movement and speech--was first reported half a century ago, but this is the first study to separate the number of years smoking from the number of cigarettes smoked per day. Researchers compared the smoking histories of 305,468 elderly subjects, 1,662 of whom had been diagnosed with the disease in the previous decade. Compared to the nonsmokers, subjects who had smoked at least a pack a day for one to nine years were only 4% less likely to develop Parkinson's. But subjects who smoked as many cigarettes a day for more than 30 years had 41% shorter odds of developing the disease. The number of cigarettes a day, however, had no significant independent effect on Parkinson's risk. The results suggest that any Parkinson's-protective effects of tobacco reach saturation at low doses, the researchers said.

Chocolate is good for you?
I'm sure it was really healthy for these girls:

http://media.photobucket.com/image/chocolate%20fatty/markd2009/singletrack/sexy_women.jpg

I've never smoked in my life but I detest smug arseholes who think they have the right to dictate how other people should run their lives.
Humans are capable of and have every right to make choices to do things which are bad for them.

Eating fatty food, eating high salt food, eating chocolate, smoking, drinking alcohol, using drugs, very high risk sports.
All these things are irrational.
All these things can hurt or kill you.

but the world contains an unlimited supply of smug arseholes like yourself who are certain, absolutely certain that they Know Better.

You talk about cognitive dissonance and then claim that a high fat, high sugar, mildly addictive substance with little nutritional value like chocolate is good for you.
Let be guess- You like chocolate and so you've decided that you couldn't possibly be making a mildly self destructive choice and valuing pleasure over health.

People who consume chocolate live longer?
Can anyone say "sample bias".
There's similar crap about alcohol where it's claimed that a couple of glasses are somehow good for you because people who consume a glass or 2 a week are healthier.
You know how they get those results?
They separate people into groups of people who drink a little and people who don't drink and don't take into account people who can't drink because of health problems and so a former alcoholic dying of liver failure will go into the "doesn't drink" group and drag down the life expectancy for the group.
Lets see if those lovely studies which show chocolate as healthy factored in if parts of the "non chocolate eating" groups were diabetics already obese and on diets to try to lose the weight or otherwise unable to eat chocolate for health reasons.

Or we could just let your cognitive dissonance continue and assume it's good for you and that you're a perfectly rational actor.

Actually, you may not be too far away from an iPhone on Verizon.

Good Grief. I have a first-gen iPhone, and will consider upgrading when the next version comes out. So you can expect that I'm excited about the possible specs on. But, really, the linked article is a ridiculous i-gasm. If you are going to report this stuff, stick to the original sources, rather than linking to second-hand articles that lace their copy with unabashed fanboy-ism. If you want color commentary along with your tech news, check out the relevant post on Engadget.

What actually kicked off this latest wave of speculation was an an article from the Wall Street Journal, stating that Apple is developing a CDMA version of the iphone for Verizon. The WSJ is a fairly reputable source that wouldn't print unless they had some solid evidence, so this should be interpreted as a bit more than a typical rumor.

Let's walk through the math. In 2008 almost half of all state and local government expenditures, or an estimated $1.1 trillion, went toward the pay and benefits of public workers. According to the BLS, in 2009 the average state or local public employee received $39.66 in total compensation per hour versus $27.42 for private workers. This means that for every $1 in pay and benefits a private employee earned, a state or local government worker received $1.45.

The BLS study breaks down where that 45% premium comes from. It turns out that public employees earn salaries that are about one-third higher on average than what is provided to private workers per hour worked. But the real windfall for government workers is in benefits. Those are 70% higher than what standard private employers offer, as shown in the nearby table. Government health benefits are twice as generous as what workers employed by private employees earn. By the way, nearly this entire benefits gap is accounted for by unionized public employees. Nonunion public employees are paid roughly what private workers receive.

Aaand it's a good time to mention that government employees make 30% more than non-government employees, and that doesn't include benefits (if you want to get around the paywall, check out this link). This shows that in New York at least, the pay isn't spread around equally, some people are getting paid far more than their private-sector counterparts, so presumably others are getting paid less.

The article mentions that in most states with deficits, if pay were more reasonable, it would easily close the deficit in most states that have them.

http://www.ap.org/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/
http://online.wsj.com/home-page
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
http://www.cnn.com/
http://www.c-span.org/
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/

Need I go on?

Colombia (a nation that is not even close to being able to stage a successful attack on a country like Venezuela)

Under the 10-year deal, the US military will not only have access to military bases, but also be able to use major international civilian airports.

So? There are US-run military bases in Japan, but it's not like they're invading China anytime soon.

The U.S., which Japan relies on for its defense, has to proceed cautiously. U.S. diplomats are now dealing with North Korea's arrest of two U.S. journalists on the North Korea-China border on March 17.
The U.S. has been leaning against trying to shoot down the North's projectile and a senior U.S. official this week said the administration has ruled it out.

Colombians are determined to get rid of guerrillas even if it means hosting some gringos in your bases so they can help kick FARC/ELN butt. I hope the "right-wing" paramilitary are next.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the 2003-2006 demobilisation of the "brutal, mafia-like, paramilitary coalition known as the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia)" was a failure, despite repeated government claims that the paramilitaries no longer exist.
The 122-page report, the result of two years of fieldwork, says that after the demobilisation process had come to an end, new groups almost immediately "cropped up all over the country, taking the reins of the criminal operations that the AUC leadership previously ran."
"The emergence of the successor groups was predictable, in large part due to the Colombian government’s failure to dismantle the AUC’s criminal networks and financial and political support structures during the demobilisations," adds the report, which was released in Bogotá Wednesday.

Eh, what are you talking about?

Found resources by drilling more oil? Gee that was hard, anyhow Russian military is a joke -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7837342.stm. Everything that is still valuable, like the nuclear industry, was built in Soviet time, and hasn't yet completely fallen in disarray, this applies to the space agency as well; for comparison the budget of NASA for 2009 is 17 Billion, Roscosmos 2.4 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Federal_Space_Agency) even if everything is very cheap in Russia, which is not, the difference is staggering.

About nuclear power -- let me remind you in which country Chernobyl happened and this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seversk, and lots of other really bad things. As much as I like the idea of nuclear power, Russia doesn't have a particularly good track record using it even for 'peaceful purposes'. Anyhow, the latest government's pet project is this -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station which in my view seems to be a rather dumb idea.

There's no manufacturing capacity to speak of, most of the manufacturing facilities built in Soviet Union are now gone, you have no idea how hard Soviet economy crashed, all that's left, are manufactures that prepackage and deliver raw materials like oil, natural gas, nickel, aluminum, the list goes on. There's also a car maker that is getting bailed out over and over again -- http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/united-russia-to-save-avtovaz/390702.html and if you think that GM and Chrysler got a sweet deal from the government, think again. On a related note, Americans really don't appreciate American cars.

The myth that Russia is strong and it is rising is perpetuated by the Russian government to disguise the fact that those who in charge are just interested pumping more oil, and if you don't approve of current government, you want Russia to fail, I am not kidding -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Gryzlov#Memorable_quotes, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704187204575101510173019130.html

Russia is slowly dying and things will not change unless the resent government suddenly vanishes. I read on some forum in 2002 or so that Mr. Putin's Russia will end up being a version of Soviet Union with healthcare system, army and education removed and it seems that that's the way it has been going all these years.

  Also a paper to about a downfall of Soviet Union, I don't think that too many things have changed since then -- http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/72997307.html

Apparently Twitter doesn’t have secret questions at all. You can have a password reset request sent to the registered e-mail address.

TFA is rather misleading, because what actually happened was the guy broke into a Twitter employee’s Yahoo account (hello Palin! do we never learn?) and then used that Yahoo account to find other information that he shouldn’t have. — according to this article.

Sorry, I was going by this:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/03/24/twitter-hacker-ordered-to-appear-in-french-court/

It states that he accessed the accounts by breaking into a Twitter employee's Yahoo! account. I saw it elsewhere and assumed it contained the same info as the WSJ link in the summary.

The summary and the linked article are extremely incomplete ! Yes, Google was essentially exonerated from the charges - i.e. is not held responsible for the chosen adwords. But the buyers of adwords (the advertisers) can still be held responsible. To quote the WSJ article: Google isn't liable for trademark infringement when it sells linked ads to a brand's competitor. The court held that the search giant is merely a host for ads and that it is an advertiser's responsibility to make clear if its product is different from that searched for.

The good thing is that google's service/business is acknowledged as a neutral one. But the advertisers can still be held responsible if they use the trademarked brand without the right to do so.

Hogwash. Tasting the difference between two wines is often very easy.

Yes -- if they are completely different types of wine, it is sometimes easy, though not as often as you might think. There is a 1963 study demonstrating that wine experts who were given white wine with food coloring gave the resulting wine taste characteristics of red wines instead of white.

More to your point, there was a 1990 study demonstrating that when experts were given three samples of a particular type of wine (e.g., pinot noir), two of which were the same wine, the experts were unable to identify the matching wines 1/3 of the time. That pretty much debunks your thesis.

And if that isn't enough, then there are the recent studies reported in the Wall Street Journal demonstrating that the expert panels of judges in California's biggest wine competition tended to vary by a ridiculous margin in their tastings of identical wines. And when the author looked at the statistics about which wines won medals in a given year, which ones consistently won medals, etc., it was clear that the judges really weren't any better than pulling medal winners out of a hat.

These are the experts. If experts display so much variance in their ratings of the same wine over a few tastings to the extent that their ratings are almost equivalent to chance, I think you could safely say that the average person, with presumably less experience, might not even be able to tell the difference between some different types of wine, let alone wines of the same type.

If we're going to pay my senator $174,000 a year for 4 year term, plus lifetime pension and health benefits, plus other expenses*, I damn well expect them to be there every day. They already get plenty of days off, in addition to federal holidays. Maybe you make more than $174,000 a year, but I promise you, I don't. Considering it's an honor to serve your country, maybe they should rethink their payscale.
 
*Senators have free access to military jets, which cost anywhere from $500 to $5000 an hour depending on who you ask, among the many other perks

Actually, they're making new high risk pools, scheduled to be in effect in 90 days.

Most cancer can be prevented or sometimes cured with the right amount of vitamin D3 (5000 IU daily as a base for most adults with a few exceptions, but you need a blood test periodically to be sure), a diet of mostly organic natural foods (whole grains, fruits, vegetables), occasional fasting, and moderate exercise -- along with quitting smoking and some other lifestyle changes, and living in a cleaner environment (especially clean water), and some positive emotions, spirituality, and community helps too. These things (especially the right amount of vitamin D) will also sometimes prevent or sometimes cure a good amount of the many other chronic diseases of our modern society as well like heart disease, diabetes, depression, -- and maybe even autism which may result in part from inadequate vitamin D by parents before conception, during pregnancy, and while nursing (as dermatologists have told us all to fear the sun and we also live indoors more at screens). For references to all this, see:
Vitamin D:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/cancerMain.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/new-harvard-paper-on-autism.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/2008-october.shtml
http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi111.html
Fasting and better diet:
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
http://books.google.com/books?id=nRurn6C142YC
Lifestyle and cancer:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elaine-schattner/we-are-all-fat-and-have-c_b_506247.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html
Exercise:
http://www.letsmove.gov/
Community infrastructure:
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
Positive emotions, community, and spirituality:
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C

Magic bullets like this RNA-loaded nanoparticle stuff are potentially great (if they have no side effects), but how about just encouraging (and making easy) the simple things first?

We don't have to wait for magic bullets to cure most ill health. Why not put a few trillion US dollars into these things? It would be enormously cost effective. One link above suggests curing vitamin D deficiency alone in Western Europe would save US$4.4 trillion dollars in health care expense over a decade (the USA might see a comparable amount in savings). Of course, in our current economic and sick

Here's something funny:

"The first is that 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior" link

so your quote "What selfish libertarians like yourself don't realise is that a persons health is mostly unrelated to their choices." is completely wrong. now that is funny.

In a way, people seem to overestimate the impact of this bill. It is not like the healthcare in the US is part of the market anyways.
49% of the healthcare spending comes from government already.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703575004575043490639289022.html

Your own experience is subjective. I've seen blind tests where professional wine testers were unable to taste the difference between white wine with red food coloring, and actual red wine. In another test, experts rated cheap wine highly, and expensive wine poorly when the labels were exchanged. Even the background colors influence how wine is evaluated. As far as I can tell, it's all bullshit.

Cynicism not withstanding, you may be wrong.

I don't know what happened in Texas, but this guy says tort reform worked well in Missouri.

The Death of HSA?

You're (probably) not rich enough to *have* to pay for actual liberal policies.

Like the middle class? It was built with 90+% top marginal tax rates. Now Warren Buffett pays a smaller % than his secretary.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Besides, one anecdote (assuming just for the sake of argument that it's true) is nothing compared to the fact that 86% of all federal income tax revenue is paid by the top 25% of taxpayers. That's up from 84% in 2000. The top 50% of taxpayers pay 97% of all income-tax revenue. Just the top 1% (which would include Buffett) are responsible for a whopping 39% of income-tax revenue; that's also up 2% from 2000.

"In 1980, when the top income tax rate was 70%, the richest 1% paid only 19% of all income taxes; now, with a top rate of 35%, they pay more than double that share."

You might want to read up on the Laffer Curve to learn how decreasing tax rates can lead to increasing revenue.

You might realize capital gains to push you over $200,000 gross in a single year even if your salary is significantly less than that. And the Wall Street Journal said 'joint filers over $250,000'.

See the WSJ here http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/does-the-us-lead-in-life-expectancy-223/tab/article/
and The City Journal here http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html

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

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

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

Too many houses?

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

Knock em down.
 

> When is the last time you saw an atheist fly a plane into a sky scraper?

What? You want the No True Scotsman fallacy? I don't know the religion of this guy, but most of the Tea Party types I see around here hate the religious side of the Republican party.

> Or shoot a doctor dead, because some invisible man in the sky didn't like the LEGAL work the doctor was doing?

They killed lots of doctors during the Stalinist purges, among other people, because they didn't match the Communist doctrine (which, among other things, was officially atheist). But you're going to tell me that they're Communists, not atheists, right? Even though they were actually both. So you can see that someone can be more than one thing (e.g. fascist and religious), but you can't pin the blame correctly unless it's about you (e.g. on the fascism, rather than the religion)? Because I'm sure you won't mind splitting off the beliefs there, but you don't mind accusing me personally of all the sins of anyone who ever claimed to be religious.

What I'm saying is not that you have to accept blame for the Stalinist purges, but that you paint us with a wide brush and you merely laugh if we point out what would happen to you if we did the same (e.g. blamed you for Stalin... hey, he WAS an atheist!). My point is that the wide brush is ridiculous. If you want me to point out random atheist sins, I can find MANY. Stalin and Mao killed far more than Christians ever have. But several million deaths is a "statistic" right?

You'll forgive me if I have a hard time accepting that all religions everywhere should bear collective responsibility for anything done by an allegedly religious person while atheists cannot accept any such thing, given that they're not actually a group. Never mind that many of the religious people you tar with the same brush have NOTHING to do with each other... for example, I personally know absolutely NO pedophiles, NO suicide bombers, etc. and it's not like I ever had a chance to talk someone out of doing those things.

> Have any ministers, reverends or priests (even the PEDO ones) been assaulted by bands of roving atheists?

See also: Stalinist purges. Heck, they're STILL doing this in China! Or will you defend them because it's legal in China and their churches are not registered? They regularly kill or imprison the leaders of house churches. Not that you would know anything about that. You guys always go on about how Christians aren't persecuted (pointing to the USA) when we point out that it does, in fact, happen abroad. Heck, there are plenty of churches getting burned in places like Indonesia. But they don't matter if you don't know about them, do they?

Who are these people who would entrust every detail of their business and personal life to a for-profit company?

Chances are, it's you.

Do you have business-critical conversations over the telephone? Few suspected AT&T would open up their network to the NSA to listen to your conversations.

Do you use a social network to share with your acquaintances? Can you trust Facebook to keep your messages private?

Do you do anything on the Internet? If so, can you trust your service provider to not be doing the same sort of thing?

People trust companies with this sort of information all the time, but in the end we tend to continue to trust these companies until they do something to lose our trust. In the end, trust is just another economic value proposition; we weigh the cost of trusting with the cost of not trusting, and so far Google hasn't done anything to erode my trust. They came close with Buzz, but the end result was that they saw that they could improve things, and they did.

I've never seen Google sell the information it collects. Yes, it does perform data analysis, but it does this using automated systems in order to better-target their advertising, which is a far cry from my idea of "data mining". The closest that they come to data mining is with their GoogleGeist aggregated analysis, which they give away for free to everyone. Not offering services "out of the goodness of their corporate heart" doesn't have to be nearly as nefarious as you would lead us to conclude. I'm not saying that Google doesn't have the potential to become evil or careless, but I am saying that I don't think they have yet.

And yes, everyone, please keep asking these difficult questions. But don't try to lead us to false conclusions by asserting false assumptions, especially about Google's "silence". We're smarter than that...

Yep, I had a slashdot submission on this that got accepted. In fact, just yesterday this got published by the WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703447104575118092158730502.html

You're one of those types that hit a wikipedia page, see some claimed fact without attribution, slap a [citation needed] on it, and then bugger off, aren't you?

You could just hit a search engine with some key words to see if you can find any corroborating source(s), of course:
http://news.google.com/news?q=toyota%20911%20neutral

Oh hey, look at that.

uring the 911 call, the operator urged Mr. Sikes to shift the car into neutral. He later said he was afraid doing so might cause the car to "flip" or shift into reverse.

- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704734304575120001542947616.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

For comparison, US consumers spent almost 10 billion in theaters and almost 9 billion on DVDs in 2009. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704789404574636531903626624.html