Slashdot Mirror

Examples of Exxon's animosity towards green energy, and items outlining their profit motivation:
1. Exxon records huge profits this year amidst recession: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/30/AR2009013003744.html
Why not help us out and lower oil prices? Or show interest in alternative energy besides publicity stunts?

2. Exxon's own website: http://www.exxon.com/USA-English/Lubes/Products_Services/Products_Services_Collection.asp
Not a single service regarding 'green energy'. And this company make billions, but where are the alternative energy options? They don't care. They have the monopoly among many others in the OPEC conglomerate.

3. "In this class action, the class representatives proved that Exxon failed to provide the agreed reduction in wholesale prices...":
http://www.exxondealerclassaction.com/faq.php3

4. Exxon buys out global-warming, green energy think tank, denies global worming: http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/02/news/companies/exxon_science/index.htm

5. Exxon flips on global warming because the rockafeller tell them they will lose money: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/28/climatechange.fossilfuels

6. Exxon contaminates water amidst its own scientist suggestions otherwise: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125598438080394827.html?ru=yahoo&mod=yahoo_hs

7. Oil Congress: http://www.exxposeexxon.com/ExxonMobil_politics.html

8. Overall campaign contributions: http://www.campaignmoney.com/exxon_mobil.asp

7. I know correlation is not causation, but consider the following: Exxon is the largest publicly traded oil company: finance.yahoo.com
They even state that on their own website. They have flip-flopped on global warming to please politicians, so they can please their constituency. They have donated money to people who have money in their company. Lets see, largest traded oil company, has Washington in it's back pocket, they protect their financial interest over anything else.

That's mostly because uninsured people wait until they're very sick or injured and then go to an emergency room

That's part of it, but a bigger part is that doctors get paid a lot. A heart surgeon can get paid $500,000 a year, for example. Another part is, of course, malpractice lawsuits. Another part is that European countries tend to get better deals on medicine. So there are lots of reasons healthcare is more expensive here.

If we truly want to cut healthcare to be equal to that of European countries, we will need to cut the salaries for doctors. Some people suggest that the Baucus bill is designed to do just that. In that case it's the doctors who are getting screwed.

I am all in favor of helping people out who don't have healthcare, but calling it a 'right' is silly.

While your second argument, that current plans are good in principle but bad in execution, might well be true, it certainly appears that a large number of Americans are opposed to health care reform simply because "government == bad."

Yeah, and obviously the government programs can work if they are set up right, but Obama hasn't made this argument. He hasn't even come close. If he did, then healthcare reform would be a lot more popular.

Yet many (most?) of the world's government health care programs are cheaper and are consistently rated as providing better care than the current US system.

OK, you're conflating two issues here, the first is, why is US healthcare so expensive? and the second is Why is American healthcare so bad? They should be answered separately.

Healthcare is expensive because doctors get paid a lot ($500k for a heart surgeon), because of government insurance mandates (for example, some states require insurance to cover acupuncture and massage therapy. So when you buy insurance you're subsidizing others' massages), because of emergency room costs for uninsured, and because of improving coverage (new treatments like hip replacement surgery that you will be happy for when you get old), among other reasons. Some of these problems can be easily fixed. Why don't we focus on the easy stuff first?

Secondly the US healthcare system is not so bad, if you can get it. Yeah, we hear scary stories, but there are scary stories everywhere. Here's a story of a Canadian coming to America where the service was better. The fact is, if you need a doctor, you're already in a situation where things are bad, and sometimes problems happen, no matter what country you live in. If you are basing your opinion of the quality of US healthcare on our longevity rates, then you've fallen into a logical fallacy, because longevity rates are determined by a number of factors, including smoking, exercise, diet, murder rates, retirement home quality, etc. Going by cure rates, the US does better at curing some diseases than other countries, and does worse in others. Going by responsiveness to patient problems, the US does very well.

Overall the problem is significantly more nuanced than a lot of people understand, but there are some easy solutions available that will make things better immediately. Why don't we focus on these instead of trying to force through a reform of dubious value at a significant cost?

I'd like to point out that we may suffer many fewer flight and road delays if our country had a well-developed passenger rail service.

Busy routes like LA-SF, LA-Phoenix, and Miami-Atlanta could easily be replaced by fast trains and therefore take a lot of load off of our air and highway infrastructure at a relatively small price.

Can't speak for him, but probably because defense spending has been trending down, has been for some time, and will likely continue to do so into the future. As defense spending has gone down, the money has gone mainly to entitlement programs, whose cost is projected to rise into the future.

I agree that the GPs anger is misdirected, but so is yours: in 2009 interest payments on debt costs will be equal to 40% of revenue. Anyone should be able to see that's not sustainable, and will probably come crashing down sooner rather than later.

Also, it appears that the oft-repeated "36,000 people die from the flu every year" number is also bogus, being a bad extrapolation from a set of people who are already seriously ill, and not numbers taken from actual sampling the population at large. The actual toll may be well under 1,000. So much for any epidemological studies that support big numbers with bad guestimates instead of hard counts.

You have a cite? The WSJ article doesn't support your claim. It just shows that the 36,000 per year claim has some large error bars.

And the rest of your post isn't justified. I see no evidence that the death rate from the flu is as low as you claim. And your analysis of susceptible populations is bogus. Maybe a bit over 10% is unusually susceptible to the flu (insulting labels such as "lardos" and "fatties" really further your case here), but the rest can die from a more lethal variation of an existing flu strain. That's the point you seem to be missing here. It can get worse. A flu that rapidly goes through the population as this H1N1 variant does, is more likely than normal flu variants to become unusually lethal. You're likely to be right, but that's merely because you are betting against a low probability event, not because you have an understanding of what's going on.

I fully second that. I subscribe to the wall street journal online, , and non subscribers can see the title and first phrases of the article; I can see the whole content, for what I think is an adequate fee. I do not see why any publisher who posts the entire content free on the Internet can have anything bad to say to the googles of the world.

April 29, 2009
A member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has dismissed claims that more than 150 people have died from swine flu, saying it has officially recorded only seven deaths around the world.

Vivienne Allan, from WHO's patient safety program, said the body had confirmed that worldwide there had been just seven deaths - all in Mexico - and 79 confirmed cases of the disease.

"Unfortunately that [150-plus deaths] is incorrect information and it does happen, but that's not information that's come from the World Health Organisation," Ms Allan told ABC Radio today.

Also, it appears that the oft-repeated "36,000 people die from the flu every year" number is also bogus, being a bad extrapolation from a set of people who are already seriously ill, and not numbers taken from actual sampling the population at large. The actual toll may be well under 1,000. So much for any epidemological studies that support big numbers with bad guestimates instead of hard counts.

Anyway, on to your other remarks ...

So even you admit that for at least, say, 30% of the population (I'll let you keep 8% for the chronically ill), the vaccine is not really needed, since they already are immune to swine flu from past exposure? Well, that's a start.

So how about removing the other low-risk groups - those over 5 years, under 6 months, the non-pregnant women? That's the vast majority of the population who simply aren't all that much at risk.

I'll give you the obese, because they ARE at risk, but that can't be more than ... oops, we're talking America ... 67% of the population over 20 are either overweight or obese. Fuck, why are you people even worried about swine flu when you've got a pandemic of excess flab? Okay, let's see - morbidly obese - 3%. I'll give you the fatties. Pick a reasonable number for the number of pregnant women, and the number of kids between 6 months and 5 years old ... both combined, along with the Lardos certainly won't bring you to even 20% of the population. ALL the under-5 is only 7%, and if we take 10% of the people between 20 and 45 and say they're pregnant, that still only yields 3.5%, and we have to remove half of them, because they're men ... which gives us 1.75% of the population who are pregnant (still high, but who cares).

So, between the morbidly obese (3%), the pregnant women (1.75%), and ALL the kids under 5 (7%), you're only at 11.75% of the population. How is giving the other 88.25% of the population a vaccine they don't need going to help the situation? And if the virus mutates, the vaccine is useless anyway. Now, since it's more likely that the vaccine will mutate to a weaker form, as happened in the past, people will crow about "how the vaccine worked", when it did nothing of the sort.

There is NO justification for hyping vaccines to people who aren't at risk. That's 88.25% of the population who are being buffaloed into doing something that only profits the drug companies, as opposed to simpler (but less glamourous) solutions that will also help prevent them from catching other variants of the flu, and colds.

And what about the latest study (look elsewhere in the thread) that shows that if you had a flu shot in the past, you double your chances of catching H1N1? Double! A study with 13 million subjects is not anecdotal - it's far more subjects than the other studies to date, which may explain why we're only making the connection now.

As for the pandemic, it IS bullshit. 7 deaths in more than half a year. Even a death a day would not be a "serious pandemic", and we're nowhere near that.

No. The real problem is that FCC has only made a very small, very expensive allocations to GSM use. The equipment can support many more channels but the frequencies are legally limited in the US. Thus why bandwidth is bad here and much better elsewhere. Ditto for cost concerns. Wireless carriers have paid a lot of more at auction to the US Government than similar allocations cost in other countries.

See for instance this recent article at the wsj

The FCC has approved a threefold increase in available spectrum in recent years, but projections for data traffic show a 30-fold increase in demand, Mr. Genachowski said. "That's a 10-to-one gap," he said. "It's a very serious challenge."

...

Wireless industry lobbyists have spent months trying to persuade lawmakers to pass legislation that would require the government to do an inventory of the U.S.'s airwaves and how they are being used. The U.S. government controls much of the available airwaves, which are set aside for military and other official uses. Rights to airwaves are auctioned off to companies to use exclusively.

Mr. Genachowski said the FCC would look at ways to promote secondary markets for airwaves, which would give people who hold licenses for airwave usage the right to lease those licenses to others. He said the agency would also try to clear obstacles for wireless companies trying to install new networks, including speeding up approvals for new cellphone tower construction, which often are met with community resistance.

So the coward was off a bit, but not much.

Sorry I wasn't clear. The 5% figure I gave was the increase from the projected deficit when Obama took office (well, from the February numbers, which're the closest I had). You can't seriously blame his policies for deficit spending that was in place before his inauguration.

The bailouts contributed to the deficit, but they were red-inked well before Obama took office; Obama agreed with and went through with them, but GWB (and, ultimately, Congress) initiated them.

Ditto the economic stimulus--Congress anticipated and budgeted for spending of that nature, although the plan Obama pushed was larger than planned. Some stimulus spending was in the projected deficit before he took office, but that number got larger later.

If you can stand a .pdf, here is the CBO's February report. I may've been hasty in attributing the deficit increase to war overspending, tho', now that I look at the source numbers. Here is another damn .pdf from the CBO analyzing spending in FY2009 based on policy changes since January. It notes a $400 billion increase in spending offset somewhat by increased revenue from the stimulus pushing the projected deficit to 1.7 trillion. This includes changes in spending prior to Obama taking office, so essentially, his economic stimulus is the only single major change to the deficit since he took office. Here is a WSJ article detailing the bailout plans and an early glimpse of the stimulus plan from January 8, with a photo of Obama as the President Elect. It notes the recent lowered tax revenue on the deficit and a recent $500 billion spending increase.

So the coward is off. Obama's policies are responsible for only a small percent of the deficit this year, which isn't surprising, since he inherited the budget. The huge deficits next year you can blame on him.

As to the ten-year projection, Here is yet another .pdf with the CBO's most recent ten-year. Note that it's a little different. By which I mean, a lot different: In it, the annual deficit returns to roughly normal in a few years (a few percent of the GDP), although admittedly a little higher than it should be since we'll have a lot of leftover debt.

It notes, however, that reducing deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan will alone reduce spending enough to service the debt somewhat. One day, perhaps we'll manage to elect a Prez and Congress that're willing to make some other cuts--there's plenty we can make that won't even hurt, but that's a topic for another day.

He was nominated just weeks after he took office. A recent push cannot be the reason.

Now, Toyota has been convicted of infringing some hybrid-technology patents and is allegedly infringing on even more hybrid-technology patents.

Before we start sympathizing with Toyota instead of the "mean, money-hungry" patent holder, we should note that patents on solid, useful technologies are valid and are vital to spurring innovation. If we lived in a society when any corporate giant can just steal anyone's ideas, then we will diminish the spirit of innovation.

However, even more is at stake here. Toyota has used its lawyers to force Ford (and now General Motors) to pay royalties to Toyota for hybrid-technology patents that it supposedly invented. A consequence of this new patent-infringement case may be that Ford has been paying the wrong business entity, and Toyota should refund all the royalties back to Ford. Such a situation would level the playing field for Ford.

Note that Ford took a Japanese-designed vehicle, the Mazda 6, and both transformed it into the Fusion and elevated the Fusion to the quality level of a Toyota Camry. At Ford, quality is now really job #1 -- after the market brutally taught Ford managers and their unionized workers a lesson that they will never forget.

...it's news because Microsoft bragged on .NET being in the LSE for a couple of years, pointing to it as proof that they were enterprise-ready and such.

Then at about this time last year, the TradElect system (which was the .NET bits which ran the LSE) went 'splat', taking the London Stock Exchange down with it.

The relevant info should be sitting right there in TFA.

Google Apps/Gmail has gone down multiple times in the past several years. I suppose that means linux sucks? I mean sheesh, this Microsoft solution only went down one time in 3 years. Google/Linux couldn't even handle the lower-volume, less-stressed, less mission critical email market...

Implementation is the important factor.

Oh, and it's not like the linux based NYSE has never had an issue. Or the Frankfurt Exchange. Or the Australian Exchange. Or the Moscow Exchange. Or the Tokyo Exchange.

In fact, we have had 8 major failures of linux based exchanges this decade.

The times they are a-changin:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124385895294472035.html

"Recent evidence suggests not only has Wall Street survived, but it is essentially unchanged."

...voters diluted the Gann Spending Limit in 1990, when they passed Proposition 111, exempting infrastructure projects, disaster spending and a number of other state expenditures from the spending limit.

Prop. 111 freed politicians in Sacramento to use the revenues that gushed in during the dot-com boom and housing bubble to grow the state budget to unsustainable levels. If Gann hadn't been neutered, a Reason Foundation study found in February, California would have been rolling in a $15 billion surplus this year.

To get there, you need an act of Congress, whose members are highly susceptible to lobbying by corporations. This has to be addressed by the Supreme Court, the same body who screwed this up a century ago. Thanks to Obama's recent appointment to the Court, this question is actually being raised, and there's at least one other Justice inclined to agree with her. Of course, they're still in the minority but it's unclear how the rest of them think, and even a strong minority opinion on this issue could be helpful in eventual change on this very important question.

I agree here!! I've been hearing rumblings that at least parts of this new Healthcare mandate they are putting forward will be challenged as being unconstitutional. This article has some information on it. And I thought I'd heard a talking head on tv cite an actual Supreme ct. case where they had ruled that medical procedures were not, in fact, subject to interstate commerce, thereby negating the feds ability to legislate it...? I can't find that one yet...but here is an article that alludes to this principal.

The Wikipedia numbers are based on 2001, which was the absolute top of the internet bubble and well into the housing bubble. If you're going to start throwing around numbers, why don't you find something a little more up to date? Is there something new and magical about this recession which makes you think it won't have the same effect as every other recession?

This jealousy is what seems to separate liberals from conservatives, from what I can see. Why do you care what other people make? Is it hurting you when somebody else gets a big bonus? Everybody who gets a PhD in physics knows going in it's not the road to riches. People who move money in circles have always made more than people who produce things. If you couldn't handle that, why did you get a PhD in physics instead of a degree in finance? And are you willing to let your jealousy impoverish everyone, including yourself? This makes no sense to me. The Laffer Curve is pretty well understood by economists. The exact shape of the curve is always contentious and changes as the economic environment changes, but there's no dispute about the general shape - revenue declines as you raise taxes past a certain point.

And yes, "we" found it to be a mistake to stifle growth and revenue with high marginal income tax rates. When Congress lowered the marginal tax rates in the '80s revenue went up, and for a very good reason - wealthy people moved money from double-tax-free munis into more profitable investments, because they could just pay the taxes and still come out ahead. What do you imagine the appetite for risk is when the government is going to take 90% of you investment income? If tax rates were raised to those levels again revenue would drop as wealthy people moved money into tax free investments or just moved it out of the country entirely. Don't get me wrong - I think we're still on the left side of the maximum, especially if you don't include growth effects (which are really hard to tease out from other factors). But just because the economy didn't collapse when rates were very high doesn't mean we didn't all end up with less money.

Personally I see no evidence the federal government has had any positive effect on primary and secondary education over the years and would just as soon have the matter left to the states. But if Washington is going to start dictating the length of the school year then Congress ought to provide money for those extra days instead of just issuing mandates.

According to this guy, they aren't particularly organized and have nothing much in common other than they are unhappy with the world, and the G20 meeting seems like a good time to protest it. When the police showed up there were more people trying to film the police than there were actually protesting. The police looked annoyed and one of the most active participants was John Oliver from The Daily Show. I know some people just like protesting. It's kind of fun.

Although it really doesn't do much. Unless you are trying to bring awareness to some cause that no one has ever heard of but probably would care about if they did, protests aren't going to accomplish anything. Really, when was the last time you saw a protest on the death penalty, gay marriage, the Iraq war, abortion, or really anything that made you change your mind about it? It's hard to make a sensible, reasonable argument by yelling, blocking traffic, and trying to provoke police violence. Especially these days when any event at all is going to have some kind of protest.

NBC always reports on the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. I think they commission it. They seem to do a decent job of describing how they do it:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124527518023424769.html

(that link works when clicked on from a Google search, but given that the WSJ has a mighty paywall, I don't know if it will work otherwise)

So maybe you need to talk about a more nuanced group than 'the media' (I wouldn't be particularly shocked if other major outfits were at least approximately as responsible).

Instead of creating a vaccine, Doctors could somehow manipulate the CCR-5 genetic mutation? The University of Pennsylvania is attempting to modify CCR-5 Genetic mutation. I don't know what the proper medical speak would sound like as I am NOT a medical professional. Rather,

I'm and individual trying to understand this from a researcher's perspective. It sounds promising, but who knows if or how it might work. Leave that to those more intelligent than us. The Wall Street
Journal had an article about a bone marrow transplant that functionally cured HIV/AIDS by seeking a donor that had a natural occurence of the CCR5 coreceptor mutation.
The WSJ called this a cure however, with only one known person to have this procedure. The first you instance/mention of this possibility I could find was here.

One has to wonder if this could be a real cure/treatment from HIV/AIDS, but we'll never know until a significant amount of testing/research has been done to prove this.

Good thing the current President has changed all that...

Well, that's the interesting thing of it. You give one president arbitrary powers, because you trust him to not misuse them, and, you know, you discover that the next president takes those powers, too. And the next. So you have to trust all of them not to misuse them.

Well, it's all perfectly legal. All that stuff about being innocent until proven guilty, constitutional rights-- that's obsolete. The courts said so-- if somebody says the word "terrorism," that word erases any of your so-called "rights".

the (former) president of the United States

Good thing the current President has changed all that...
(Note: First news link I saw when I Googled it. I'm sure there are plenty better ones out there.)

What you say is true, but the recent economic decline has meant that prime beef is showing up in unexpected places (like Costco) at cheap prices (like $9.99 per pound). See this article in the Wall Street Journal. It is still unlikely to have prime beef sold at your local supermarket, but if you keep a good lookout you might find some surprises right now.

While the California government overlords spend their people's time and money worrying about a few watts of electricity, the unemployment rate in California hit 12.2% and continues to rise. The San Joaquin valley continues to suffer under a drought, but the water that would normally be used to irrigate the crops is being used to protect an endangered minnow. This has resulted in nearly 40% unemployment in some agricultural communities and will lead to higher food prices for produce across the US -- yet another burden heaped on poor and middle class families.

But they have lots of time to force you to buy more expensive TVs in order to save a couple of watts of electricity.

Maybe Californians (who are not part of the elite, effete ruling class) should consider getting out while they still have something left to bring with them.

Report: Obama to use NSA to monitor Net (USA Today)

NSA Must Examine All Internet Traffic to Prevent Cyber Nine-Eleven, Top Spy Says (Wired)

In short, the NSA has been reading everything sent in plaintext since Bush II, and yet the EFF spends untold millions on lawsuits to make sure that my friends on Facebook don't know what kind of pizza I order from Domino's. What a great allocation of scarce pro-privacy resources.

I know exactly why this is: if you sue Facebook or Twitter or whatever, you get your name in the papers. If you go after the NSA you get called "soft on terror" and your campaign bid for governor of East Nowhere is sunk.

It's common knowledge that the Chinese, whether sponsored by the government or not, have concerted attacks against US computer systems. They have succeeded quite a few times in gaining access to technological data from high security sources. It's simply common sense. If you visit a bad neighborhood, you take precautions.

You would rather they ignore a known security risk all in the name of being 'PC'?

Here's a few more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/24/AR2005082402318.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123834671171466791.html
http://www.securitywatch.co.uk/2009/09/02/new-wave-of-sql-attacks-from-china/

I'm just curious. Isn't it a bit of a coincidence that this warning comes out when there is a growing trade dispute with China happening now? We have been using China as our factory an major offshoring partner for quite a few years and now there are warnings.

It's not a strawman to refer to people who accept evolution as Darwinists. Besides, many staunch evolutionists (like Richard Dawkins) do profess their belief in "Darwinian evolution" and "Darwinian life" and so forth (see this article by Dawkins {scroll down to his portion of it}: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574405030643556324.html).

Dawkins is one of the main faces of anti-Creationism / pro-evolution and he does exhibit Darwin worship. Sure, he's only one person but I've met many like him in their beliefs of evolution.

Further, many people in our world may not worship Darwin but they worship science and have science as their object of faith. Science is great but it is not perfect (I mean both that science is not perfect and the scientific method is not perfect). A study of the philosophy of science and epistemology should help people understand that. We can't get too hung up on evolution because like you said, we've had "almost two centuries of refinements and advancements since [Darwin's] work" and will have many more in the future; we might have discoveries or advancements or refinements that will completely revolutionize and change what we know about evolution!

I'm not anti-evolution; I'm a scientist working in the fields of neuropsychology, neuroscience, and neurobiology but I think it's important to not put too much faith in the scientific method either.

The MySQL issue looks like a red herring to me, although I suspect it's a wonderful source of FUD for anyone who wants to delay the deal.

The Wall Street Journal actually noticed the elephant in the room: MySQL is free software, and can't be shut down by an evil monopolist (like one we all know and love).

They seem to think the EC wants a (symbolic?) divestment .. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574390512306888466.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

As for me, I want the deal to go through so there will be more capacity planning gigs for me to do (;-))

--dave

Wrong.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124138858052581321.html

Yes, it's just influenza...that kills healthy kids, teenagers, and young adults.

[citation needed]

Young people may be catching the H1N1 virus more so than older people, but it hasn't been killing or hospitalizaing them in high numbers. From the news reports I've seen H1N1 has been hospitalizing people with chronic illnesses such as asthma, diabetes and other serious lung ailments. It also seems to hospitalize blacks and hispanics more so than white people, which tend to have those illnesses more so.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/31/AR2009083100393.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125139557410564177.html

If I remember correctly, they have taken issue with turtles or tortoises in the southwestern United States (the most ideal place for solar power plants). http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123810805612252481.html

Solar and wind are still underexploited resources in this country. Combine them with better use of the energy we currently make and we will be energy independent and cleaner.

And will continue to be underexploited. There's just no winning this battle. It obstructs my view of Mars, I don't want transmission lines. We can't put them in the middle of the freaking Mojave or Carriso Plain. NIMBY

The Magicians is a surprise and delight: its language is not overly showy and yet often contains an unexpected surprise, especially at the ends of sentences, as this early description shows: "Quentin was thin and tall, though he habitually hunched his shoulders in a vain attempt to brace himself against whatever blow was coming from the heavens, and which would logically hit the tall people first." Until the last clause, one could be reading any novel, fantasy or otherwise, but saying that a blow from heaven would hit the tall first gives us Quentin's personality in a single line, and yet its ideas are spun coherently across the entire novel.

See also Lev Grossman's piece in the WSJ, Good Books Don't Have to be Hard:

It's not easy to put your finger on what exactly is so disgraceful about our attachment to storyline. Sure, it's something to do with high and low and genres and the canon and such. But what exactly? Part of the problem is that to find the reason you have to dig down a ways, down into the murky history of the novel. There was once a reason for turning away from plot, but that rationale has outlived its usefulness. If there's a key to what the 21st-century novel is going to look like, this is it: the ongoing exoneration and rehabilitation of plot.

but wiping all the innocent iranian blood off the phone sort of turned me off that idea.

It was only a couple months ago this companys products were helping the Iranian government
  capture freedom protesters and censor the iranian internet.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124562668777335653.html

• hyperion power
• babcock and wilcox
• NuScale power
• sandia labs
• tsinghua university

not to mention south africa's PBMR, and the travelling wave reactor (intellectual ventures). It's simple - make a mass-producable, small, efficient reactor, use it to boil water at both the pressure and temperature of your average coal-fired power plant, and *turn off the burning of coal altogether*. And do it in scale.

That way, there isn't a horrendous capital cost (pocket nuke reactors are small and you are only replacing the boiler), the fuel is cheaper, and as a side benefit current coal plants increase their capacity factor from ~75% to above 90%.

This is really the only way to combat global warming in a way that profits everybody; it allows developing countries to leverage their experience in building coal-fired power plants to build carbon-neutral sources, and given the factory approach is comprehensively scalable, as scalable as producing fighters or bombers in WWII.

We have to do this. We have to stop dicking around with solutions that only work 15% of the way, have appallingly low capacity factors (for 53 days in a row, the windmills in denmark produced basically nada in the way of electricity, texas has an average of 8.7% capacity (ref: here ).

The stakes are too high. I encourage everyone to watch:

http://fora.tv/2009/08/18/A_REALLY_Inconvenient_Truth_Dan_Miller

which shows the true state of our affairs with regards to the climate (the person introducing Mr. Miller says, in short, "He's going to tell us all how we are really fucked".

Looking at the evidence, I agree with him.

Ed

10:32: Disney: Cost savings were not the big driving reason for the deal. What really drives is synergies over time. It will create enhanced growth rate for Disney over time.
10:33: Iger: Even with DVD sales slowing, movies with strong, brand name characters such as Marvel characters will hold up better than others. "It's not bulletproof"

-- WSJ coverage of investor call (ongoing) emphasis mine

http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_39.html
http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_40.html

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/402737/The-News-of-the-World-was-the-subject-of-some-ferocious-attacks.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124713962333917725.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124710587096916143.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124725579809924597.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2528020/Met-Police-No-investigation-into-hacking.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2530062/No-truth-in-News-of-the-World-phone-tap-claim.html
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215334404
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215335802
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25762968-401,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25763994-23109,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25759684-7582,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25757545-2703,00.html
http://www.skynews.com.au/showbiz/article.aspx?id=351326
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6670747.ece

just a few links about it from News Corp. owned sources.

/deafening right?
//oh and in the end, it seems like the guardian (a rival newspaper to News Corp. in the uk) got a bit carried away with reporting this because they didnt seem to have any of the evidence of the claims that they were making.

http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_39.html
http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_40.html

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/402737/The-News-of-the-World-was-the-subject-of-some-ferocious-attacks.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124713962333917725.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124710587096916143.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124725579809924597.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2528020/Met-Police-No-investigation-into-hacking.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2530062/No-truth-in-News-of-the-World-phone-tap-claim.html
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215334404
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215335802
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25762968-401,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25763994-23109,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25759684-7582,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25757545-2703,00.html
http://www.skynews.com.au/showbiz/article.aspx?id=351326
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6670747.ece

just a few links about it from News Corp. owned sources.

/deafening right?
//oh and in the end, it seems like the guardian (a rival newspaper to News Corp. in the uk) got a bit carried away with reporting this because they didnt seem to have any of the evidence of the claims that they were making.

http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_39.html
http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_40.html

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/402737/The-News-of-the-World-was-the-subject-of-some-ferocious-attacks.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124713962333917725.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124710587096916143.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124725579809924597.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2528020/Met-Police-No-investigation-into-hacking.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2530062/No-truth-in-News-of-the-World-phone-tap-claim.html
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215334404
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215335802
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25762968-401,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25763994-23109,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25759684-7582,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25757545-2703,00.html
http://www.skynews.com.au/showbiz/article.aspx?id=351326
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6670747.ece

just a few links about it from News Corp. owned sources.

/deafening right?
//oh and in the end, it seems like the guardian (a rival newspaper to News Corp. in the uk) got a bit carried away with reporting this because they didnt seem to have any of the evidence of the claims that they were making.

You have omitted an important aspect of the problem. Uncontrolled immigration is precisely hurting those American citizens who are living in "squalor and poverty". Illegal immigrants are suppressing the wages of such Americans by about 8%.

Worse, according to the report by the "Wall Street Journal", illegal immigrants inject disease into neighborhoods of impoverished Americans.

The Americans living in the upper/middle class simply do not experience the pain and suffering that Americans in the lower class endure due to illegal immigration. So, naturally the Americans in the upper/middle class favor uncontrolled immigration. They want the cheap vegetables that illegal-immigrant labor provides even if it means hurting the Americans in the lower class.

That is the ugly truth.

I think you are mixing two different problems, one is, how do you drive costs down? and the other is, how do you solve the emergency room problem?

For the cost problem, it's just a matter of finding waste and eliminating it, although part of the problem is that as the quality of healthcare improves and new treatments are available, the costs will naturally rise. A few years ago a hip replacement surgery wasn't possible, but now it is a great option, for example. But it's expensive. I think Safeway has some good ideas about how to cut costs.

As for the problem of people going to the emergency room for simple problems, the alternative is to give them another option, which is where healthcare or insurance for everyone comes in. If they know they have other options, then they are less likely to go to the emergency room. I suspect there will always be a little of that problem, however.

If that didn't answer the question, then I'm afraid I didn't understand what the question was.

If you consider the problem to be, "provide the best possible health care for every citizen" then that is indeed an intractable problem. On the other hand, if you ask, "how can we improve healthcare" there are numerous areas for improvement.

Let's consider some of the biggest problems in healthcare:
* Not everyone is ensured. OK, ignoring that probably not everyone wants to be insured, there are a number of possible solutions that are simpler than redoing the entire system. In Massachusetts, for example, they've mandated that everyone is required to have health insurance, and the poor are given a subsidy. Problem solved.
* People can't get insurance because of pre-existing conditions. Serious problem. Insurance companies have said they would be willing to stop discriminating based on pre-existing conditions, as long as everyone is required to have health insurance. Seems fair enough, unless your goal is to destroy insurance companies.
* Health care costs are rising. True, but if you think a single payer system will fix this, then you haven't considered the issues very well, since costs have been rising for countries with single payer systems as well. The important thing is to consider why the costs are rising, and where they can be cut. There are a lot of reasons for rising costs, but a lot of it is medical treatment is improving. My grandma had a hip replacement, and my grandpa has a heart transplant. None of these were available 40 years ago. There are places costs can be cut, but a single payer system won't make it easier to cut costs without cutting quality of service at the same time. Here is an example of how one company managed to significantly cut costs in ways that can be transferred to the current system without massive upheaval.

In short, there is no real convincing reason that I can see for switching to a single payer system.

doesn't that clue anyone in that there's something fucking wrong with the way things are now?

That's great, everyone knows the system is not perfect. I'm also upset that I don't have a pony. What things specifically do you think are wrong with the system, do you have an understanding of why the system is that way, and what is your plan to fix it? These are the important questions that need to be asked, because if we don't, then we will still be stuck with a lot of problems even if we completely overhaul the system (and probably more).

I've never actually heard of that, what country do they take obese people and put them in an intense diet program? It sounds really interesting to me and I'd like to know. Are they forced into it? Doesn't that violate their civil liberties?

Also, there are simpler solutions to that problem than switching entirely over to a single payer system. Here is one example solution used by Safeway that worked really well. Incremental changes can work, or at least make things a lot better. I don't know that we will ever get to the ideal situation of the absolute best health care possible for every citizen.

National healthcare as proposed is not the best option, and we shouldn't adopt it here in the US because it would bankrupt us. There are better alternatives that keep costs minimal while ensuring good care, which is a big part of the question. It would be less problematic to have taxpayers subsidize the uninsured if the cost of doing so were lower, and the government-sponsored option coexisted with the private sector. Now if you really want to cut healthcare costs, support tort reform. Both Dems and Repubs are to blame for lack of progress there (that's what happens when you have a government full of lawyers, elected by lawyers' money), although Repubs are the the biggest opposition.

As the Wall Street Journal points out, they're going to be layering Adobe's proprietary DRM on top of the ePub. So even if ePub is itself an open format, it's going to be contaminated by Adobe DRM. (There's still no way to read Adobe DRM'd books on the iPhone/iPod Touch, by the way, unless you crack them.)

everyone wants power. Everyone. Every individual, every corporation... everyone.

True. This includes the Government. Maybe especially the Government, as evidenced by their recent takeovers of huge chunks of the banking industry and auto industry, and their current forays into the energy industry and health care.