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But when someone intercepted, recorded and released an embarrassing conversation made by Newt Gringrich in Gainesville, FL after this law was passed, no one was prosecuted.

The people who taped the conversation were, in fact, prosecuted, and pled guilty to illegal wiretapping. see: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04...

WASHINGTON, April 23— The Justice Department today filed charges against a Florida couple who said they had intercepted and recorded a conference call last December among Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Republican leaders.

The Federal authorities in Jacksonville, Fla., announced this afternoon that the couple, John and Alice Martin, had been charged with an infraction, violating the Communications Privacy Act by using a radio scanner to intercept the radio portion of the conversation. It is the mildest criminal charge the couple could face in the case and carries a maximum penalty of a $5,000 fine. The Government said the Martins had agreed to plead guilty to the charges, and said the couple would cooperate with a continuing investigation into how a recording of the conversation wound up in the hands of a New York Times reporter.

Or, for more details: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jba...

Koreantoast, Militia was the first word so it was properly capitalized, but these are really lower case militia. Perhaps, even better labeled as wannabe war lords.
Far too many of us have forgotten the intent and history of the term militia in the constitution. The intent of the 2nd amendment and Militia was driven by peoples fear of a weak federal government that could not protect them from insurrections because of the scare from Shay's rebellion. In the case of Shay's the post revolution federal continental government refused to open the federal armories so that the sate Militias could respond to an upstate New England insurrection. The armories were filled with weapons from the revolution that were paid for by the "national" government, but often ended up in the hands of the local units at the close of hostilities so not having access to what the local's saw as their arms was a sore point. At any rate, the anemic response of the national government tightened many such as Hamilton and Madison and was one of the motivators of the constitutional convention. You can see the car intent of the writers of the second amendment and militia clause in the Federalist Papers, especially #29. Hamilton does go on a fair bit on the importance of federal control of the Militia, that it be well regulated and by well regulated he means well trained and under tight federal control to prevent war between the states. Chaos from a weak central government was a big concern in the nascent US - the thought of federal tyranny would have seemed laughable at the time. There has been massive revisionist history of the early republic to fit modern agendas.
If you want to see the first application of the Militia and 2nd amendment read about the Whiskey Rebellion. When some local hot heads ruffed up a federal official and take over his office, George Washington federalized 13,000 members of the state militia and using the leverage of the 2nd amendment forced the states to open their armories to equip the force. Washington lead the force, the only President to lead an army into battle, and rounded up the remaining 20 hot heads where were too dumb to go home when he arrived. By the way, even though Washington praised the militia publicly, he complained bitterly in private letters to members of congress that they were useless and undisciplined rabble.
Interestingly for recent event, Article IV, Section 4 speaks to the fact that the federal government had no choice, but to act as: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence." And the Oregon Governor did call for federal action.
So, take home lesson:
US Militia == federally run arm of internal repression,
2nd amendment == state's rights to store arms for the feds under the rules the feds make.
Federal government must suppression rebellion.

Koreantoast, Militia was the first word so it was properly capitalized, but these are really lower case militia. Perhaps, even better labeled as wannabe war lords.
Far too many of us have forgotten the intent and history of the term militia in the constitution. The intent of the 2nd amendment and Militia was driven by peoples fear of a weak federal government that could not protect them from insurrections because of the scare from Shay's rebellion. In the case of Shay's the post revolution federal continental government refused to open the federal armories so that the sate Militias could respond to an upstate New England insurrection. The armories were filled with weapons from the revolution that were paid for by the "national" government, but often ended up in the hands of the local units at the close of hostilities so not having access to what the local's saw as their arms was a sore point. At any rate, the anemic response of the national government tightened many such as Hamilton and Madison and was one of the motivators of the constitutional convention. You can see the car intent of the writers of the second amendment and militia clause in the Federalist Papers, especially #29. Hamilton does go on a fair bit on the importance of federal control of the Militia, that it be well regulated and by well regulated he means well trained and under tight federal control to prevent war between the states. Chaos from a weak central government was a big concern in the nascent US - the thought of federal tyranny would have seemed laughable at the time. There has been massive revisionist history of the early republic to fit modern agendas.
If you want to see the first application of the Militia and 2nd amendment read about the Whiskey Rebellion. When some local hot heads ruffed up a federal official and take over his office, George Washington federalized 13,000 members of the state militia and using the leverage of the 2nd amendment forced the states to open their armories to equip the force. Washington lead the force, the only President to lead an army into battle, and rounded up the remaining 20 hot heads where were too dumb to go home when he arrived. By the way, even though Washington praised the militia publicly, he complained bitterly in private letters to members of congress that they were useless and undisciplined rabble.
Interestingly for recent event, Article IV, Section 4 speaks to the fact that the federal government had no choice, but to act as: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence." And the Oregon Governor did call for federal action.
So, take home lesson:
US Militia == federally run arm of internal repression,
2nd amendment == state's rights to store arms for the feds under the rules the feds make.
Federal government must suppression rebellion.

...an elitist lock-out culture of Harvards and Yale's only the wealthy can afford, it stays that way.

Sorry, no.

Have you looked at the actual costs of the Ivys once you take financial aid into account? List price is something like $65k but the typical financial aid package is something like $40k. I just took a look at the Yale financial aid page and there are many, many students from all income ranges. The poorer students pay basically nothing. Harvard is the same way. Near as I can tell, the easiest way to finance an Ivy League education is to be dirt poor.

(Disclosure: my daughter just applied to Yale and I have no idea how I'm going to afford it if she gets in. I'm not paying list price, it's too much.)

The Axis powers during World War II were NOT on the left

It will never cease to amaze me how Westerners keep parroting this tired bit of Soviet propaganda that doesn't stand up to five minutes of research. Yeah, Germany under the control of the National Socialist German Worker's Party which was nationalizing industry and expanding social systems was totally not on the left, you rocket surgeon. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/1708-ps.asp

No, Australia was founded by criminals. The USA was founded by people sick of being persecuted for their religious beliefs - who then turned around and persecuted people for their religious beliefs once they got some power.

Well, Georgia (of the US) was founded as a sort of prototype for Australia as a dumping ground for the "poor subjects" of the UK which included a few criminals. Maryland was also another big destination for exiled criminals.

And the degree of persecution depended on the state. Massachusetts was the most notorious, though there was religious persecution of one sort or another in the early decades of most of the original colonies. Pennsylvania and Rhode Island on the other hand were very liberal with explicit laws against religious persecution.

"Dyson contends that since carbon dioxide is good for plants, a warmer planet could be a very good thing. And if CO2 does get to be a problem, Dyson believes we can just do some genetic engineering to create a new species of super-tree that can suck up the excess." ref

Really? Because a whole bunch of other people did dendochronotic analysis of over 150,000 trees across the whole of the northern hemisphere, correlated that with ice cores, tundra boreholes, fossil lake shorelines and loesses across the whole world and found no such thing.

Interestingly, they did find evidence of an incredibly intense solar flare around 774 AD that correlated with an astronomical event recorded in the AngloSaxon Chronicle and a massive volcanic eruption in 1783 AD that caused killing fogs of sulphurous acid across Europe and North America, but, well, that's science for you.

Have you ever heard of any committee anywhere voluntarily disbanding?

FWIW,

The (informal) standardisation of Haskell 98 was an important turning point for another reason: it was the moment that the Haskell Committee disbanded. There was (and continues to be) a tremendous amount of innovation and activity in the Haskell community, including numerous proposals for language features. But rather than having a committee to choose and bless particular ones, it seemed to us that the best thing to do was to get out of the way, let a thousand flowers bloom, and see which ones survived.

Makes it even more weird. Their yearly budget is "just" $3 billion. So apparently they could pay it all out of their investment profits? I wonder wtf they are planning to do with all the money.

It does seem nuts. But when I went looking for information I was surprised to learn that in 2014 Yale's endowment fund had a RIO of 20.2% (!).

While it is ridiculous that they end up spending more on management fees than they do on students from the endowment, it looks like the managers of the fund are doing pretty well.

Planet money had a nice segment on this. Sticker prices are super high and climbing fast but the amount people are actually paying isn't. It is good advertising for the school, and shows how much they want you if they knock $40k off the sticker price.

Yale says 52% off their student are on need base aid and averages to $41,250

And while 480 millions is a huge number it is also 6%, and at the same time they seem to know what they are doing "Yale’s Endowment generated a 20.2 percent return in fiscal 2014".

Planet money had a nice segment on this. Sticker prices are super high and climbing fast but the amount people are actually paying isn't. It is good advertising for the school, and shows how much they want you if they knock $40k off the sticker price.

Yale says 52% off their student are on need base aid and averages to $41,250

And while 480 millions is a huge number it is also 6%, and at the same time they seem to know what they are doing "Yale’s Endowment generated a 20.2 percent return in fiscal 2014".

I'd like to see you try to demonstrate that ignoring the problems of global warming would be better than doing something about it.

First of all, ignoring the problems of global warming is doing something about it. It is adapting to climate change.

Second, there has been consistent bias which exaggerate the costs of global warming, while downplaying the costs of mitigation strategies and roundly ignoring the current improvements in human welfare and capability.

For example, what advocate of renewable energy was predicting that Germany and Denmark's energy policies would result in a doubling of electricity prices for most? It's supposedly a modest reduction in CO2 emissions (since some of the gain is offset by increased burning of coal, locally and in other countries), with an unpredicted high cost.

There are similar problems with renewable subsidies in Spain which have been cut back in recent years due to their high costs and unintended consequences.

Similarly, there has been a lot of dishonest attribution of other problems to climate change. For example, a few years back the Syrian civil war was attributed to climate change while ignoring the single relevant factor, the enormous mismanagement of agriculture in Syria which would have resulted in the current disaster no matter what the climate was doing.

Then there was the classic story about how ocean acidification was killing off oyster spat (the young) while ignoring that they were probably describing a phenomenon that IMHO has been going on for millions of years on that coast.

The exaggeration of global warming's harm is another case. It is routinely ignored that the predictions are for sea level rise over centuries not decades. It's a lot less credible claim to be worried about moving say, two billion people to higher ground, when it is known that the two billion people in question will have moved, naturally, numerous times in that period anyway.

And the geopolitics are ridiculously exaggerated. Most boundaries of the world haven't been stable for a century, but it's assumed that they will be for the next century. For a commonly used example, it's just silly to assume that Bangladesh can never, with a century or more lead time, make a deal with India to protect its citizens from the effects of a rising sea level.. Diplomacy can be very slow, but it's not that slow.

Here, I think we have a hard case to make that people who live on the coasts would even notice the gradual sea level rise!

Finally, here there is the ignorance of the growing wealth of the entire world. We have numerous examples of this. Most of the world is better off than the developed world was in 1900. Therefore, it's reasonable to expect that most of the world is on track to be better off than the developed world was in 2000 (especially if they should choose to forgo the two world wars). That means that the costs of adapting to unmitigated climate change is carried by remarkably wealthy societies.

Finally, there is the obvious observation that there are far bigger problems than climate change out there. I think it would be the peak of hubris to impose terribly costly strategies to slightly mitigate climate change while making the real problems much worse! Curbing CO2 emissions don't help with poverty, overpopulation, corruption, destruction of farmland and habitat, etc. Some of these problems are even made worse.

And it's worth noting that if you solve the worst problems, then global warming is easy to adapt to, while if you were to fix global warming without fixing those other problems, you'll be in the midst of global disaster. When it comes to triage of global problems, climate change just shouldn't make the cut. It is not something we should be throwing vast resources at.

And that leads to the case for non-action: namely, the harm of

But that seems like a stretch given the effective shipping to ports on the west coast.

The west coast ports for North America. are maxed out and need modernization to accommodate larger shipping vessals.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/38e0825e-c677-11e4-a13d-00144feab7de.html

The Chinese are also spending $50B to build the Nicaragua Canal in Central America to bypass the west coast ports.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/nicaragua_canal_a_giant_project_with_huge_environmental_costs/2871/

The occasional labor strike at the west coast ports and the resulting backlog doesn't help either. Alternative routes may be worth the money for the Chinese to get their products to U.S. consumers.

The USA can either give Canada back that coastal strip of British Columbia that was expropriated by the UK and gifted to the USA to pay off war debts OR the US can expect to pay very heavy tolls for use of Canadian roads to transport the goods coming over this bridge. Eh.

But that seems like a stretch given the effective shipping to ports on the west coast.

The west coast ports for North America. are maxed out and need modernization to accommodate larger shipping vessals.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/38e0825e-c677-11e4-a13d-00144feab7de.html

The Chinese are also spending $50B to build the Nicaragua Canal in Central America to bypass the west coast ports.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/nicaragua_canal_a_giant_project_with_huge_environmental_costs/2871/

The occasional labor strike at the west coast ports and the resulting backlog doesn't help either. Alternative routes may be worth the money for the Chinese to get their products to U.S. consumers.

The American Civil War most certainly was fought over slavery.

Indeed it was. Here are the official words of the southerners themselves, expressed at the time of secession:

From the Mississippi declaration of secession:Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.

From the Texas declaration of the Causes of Secession: ... maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits

From the South Carolina Declaration of Secession: ... an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery

From the Georgia Declaration of Secession:The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition [of slavery] to the last extremity.

In every declaration of secession, slavery was given as the first and most prominent reason for secession. Secession was popular in flat states, where large plantations were viable. It was less popular in mountainous areas, where slaves were less common, including what is now West Virginia, and the mountain state of Tennessee which was the last to secede and the first to rejoin the union. There was a rebellion within the rebellion in the hilly areas of northern Alabama. By the end of the war, every state but South Carolina (the flattest state, most dependent on plantation agriculture) raised volunteer regiments to fight in the Union Army, mostly from mountain areas.

This same Paul Ehrlich says we're in a Golden Age of Discovery finding many new species "with a small range". I have to question how accurately they can calculate the background extinction rate when biologists couldn't even identify subtle differences between species that were collected in the field.

While you shouldn't necessary pick a major based on the hottest job, you definitely need to pick something in consideration with how you will use it. And you sure as heck should go to college to learn and make yourself better--not just to receive a piece of paper. Racking up 5 or 6 figures of debt without learning anything of value is a terrible idea. Unfortunately, we haven't given students the tools or perspectives to understand the consequences of the decisions they are making. Everyone is always warning athletes coming into college "the chances of you making it as a pro are extremely rare". And yet, the chances of someone making it as a tenured history professor at a major university are probably just as rare. At least the athletes aren't going into massive debt.

Add onto the fact that we have massively watered down many majors to the point of uselessness. The reason liberal arts majors get a bad rap isn't that it is a useless subject. If people came out as hard working critical thinkers they would be valuable contributors. Unfortunately, it is filled with people who just want a piece of papers and do the minimum to get by. This is a generalization, of course, but I believe is backed up by stats on plagiarism http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...). And the courses are watered down to be worthless. For example you can graduate from Yale with an English without having a Shakespeare course (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/04/23/skipping-shakespeare-yes-english-majors-can-often-bypass-the-bard/). So in 4 years of education in English, you don't have to actually take a course in the most influential English writer in history. But, you know, he is challenging to read and understand. As an alternative you can take a course in Literature for Young People http://english.yale.edu/course... which includes J. K. Rowling and Dr. Seuss.

At least with Engineering/Math/Hard Science you have to demonstrate via projects and tests that you have actually learned something.

So, you're saying that nitrogen, oxygen, and CO2 are the only components of the atmosphere? Sorry, I did the math. You are leaving out quite a bit, especially WATER.

Heat capacity IS spectral absorption. RAMAN+IR spectral absorption. If you disagree, then one of us doesn't know what he is talking about, and I have the degree in the subject.

No, it most certainly is not. You take a transparent vessel, put a heat lamp in front of it, and stand on the other side. Normal air? You can feel the heat through the vessel. Fill the vessel with CO2 gas, and you immediately notice a significant reduction in the heat felt. You can quantify the decrease using IR sensors/FLIR cameras and plate thermometers. Very straightforward.

[citation needed]

More gas, more absorption.

Yes, until 100% of the radiation is absorbed, which happens at a pretty low concentration, one that we already passed. IE there is no difference between an atmosphere where 100% of photons are absorbed within 20 meters, and one where it happens within 10. This is because it is SATURATED. More doesn't matter. That is what the word "saturation" means.

"so the CO2 does not stay where it is generated for very long"

Yale begs to disagree. http://e360.yale.edu/digest/co... CO2 domes are a well known phenomenon, and any organization that DENIES their existence should immediately lose credibility in this discussion. Luckily for NASA, that isn't at all what that web page is about.

Also, please stop making shit up because it sounds like it supports your argument. All you are doing is destroying your own credibility. Ideas are not soldiers. You are not obligated to support ideas that are on your side even if they are wrong or weak.

"[citation needed]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://news.nationalgeographic...
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/v...

Really, just a duckduckgo search for "percentage of land that is irrigated" and "percentage of land that is paved". Its a lot. If you don't believe me, take the window seat next time you fly across country and MARVEL at the number of huge circles of irrigated farmland. Or just look out the window of your apartment and note how much of the area that you can see is or isn't paved.

... 3. A full-recycle system, which uses a fast neutron spectrum reactor that can be configured to 'breed' plutonium that can subsequently be used as either nuclear fuel or weapons material.

To date that one little word disposal has been the biggest problem for the nuclear Industry they can not figure out a way to get rid of the Plutonium that is in the waste so why would you create more ?

http://e360.yale.edu/counterpo...

When did the War Powers Act become some nebulous catch all for everything not authorized by law?

Here is the text of the war powers act.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20t...

SEC. 2. (a) It is the purpose of this joint resolution to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgement of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations.

(b) Under article I, section 8, of the Constitution, it is specifically provided that the Congress shall have the power to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution, not only its own powers but also all other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

(c) The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.

So 1) we are not at war (or quasi-war by specific statutory authorization by the Congress), and 2) the war powers act does not authorize bulk metadata collection. It really only covers the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities. I suppose you could argue that the United States Armed Forces are engaged in hostilities against the citizens of these United States of America though...

This point was rebutted by the people who wrote the general welfare clause, in Federalist 41.

To paraphrase: But what color can your objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.

Essentially, if the "general welfare" clause included things like a militia to defend the homeland, and post offices, as you presumably maintain, why even bother listing them separately?

It is hard to find a prediction that coal use will increase for the next 30 years. Predictions that it will soon peak are common. http://e360.yale.edu/feature/p...

Nice trick - pretend you have 98% consensus in order to proclaim all who disagree with you as quacks - all while neglecting to say of course what exactly constitutes "agree"...

Then when you disagree with anyone in particular who was in the original grouping, you can claim they were part of the wacky 2%.

When you have people disagreeing with your position on the level of Dyson, you really need to re-think how grounded your position truly is, as opposed to "consensus through fear and intimidation".

Oh, and Soon being paid for by Koch? That was in studies long ago, not even the current study in question... but there's another fact you'd hate for people to know, because it means that you are lying when you claim the study you don't like is funded by Koch.

All that matters of course is you discredit anyone who disagrees with you, just like the Scientologists. We all know how trustworthy they are. If I were you I'd think much harder about the intellectual company I keep.

The truth is there is indeed a biological component that drives humans that can be repressed but not eliminated. And there are dire consequences for repressing them as well. Scientific studies have proven this repeatedly but even many scientists ignore the facts because they are so unpopular.

I don't know which studies you refer to, but there are also "scientific studies" which demonstrate gender bias towards science students.

http://news.yale.edu/2012/09/2...

OK, you're up. What studies are you referring to? Game on.

"You can get more stuff done with Facebook than any other tool that we know of"

Sounds like a candidate. Let's use Facebook at Work for Linux startup management.

Kind of like how we all use the Lifestreams interface for our OS's http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/lifestreams.html with much improved workflow.

It might not be just lobbying and and campaign contributions that turn legislators' heads. It could be tax revenue as well. According to this document a lot ff tax revenue is created by car dealerships.

States earn about 20 percent of all state sales taxes from auto dealers, and auto dealerships easily can account for 7–8 percent of all retail employment. The bulk of these taxes (89 percent) are generated by new car dealerships, those with whom manufacturers deal directly.

If States allow direct sales there goes the tax revenue. I am not saying it is a good thing just another incentive for States to keep the franchise laws.

Nothing is new here. J. Robert Oppenheimer was legally crucified by Lewis Strauss, recently appointed head of the AEC, back before most slashdotters were born, in May-June, 1954. That was, in many ways, the mother of all swiftboating.

by 50 years or more, and reflect the situations surrounding the time in which they were passed. One can hardly expect an existing dealership system to use legal means, especially those existing laws, to protect their interests. This ought to be obvious even if one disagrees with the premise of the laws. And by the way, these laws were passed in all states over decades of time, usually in response to some bad action by the manufacturers (such as forcing dealerships to accept cars they did order, so manufactures could offload dead inventory, or not reimbursing dealerships for warranty repairs).

You cannot simply point at today's lackey Republicans as the source for these laws, nor claim them to be "anti-Tesla" anymore than 50-year-old telecom laws are "anti-Google".

A far better resource than the source in the original posting is

http://faculty.som.yale.edu/Fi...

This is an analysis predating Tesla's trouble by a bit, focusing on the government-sanctioned decimation of dealerships through the TARP process, circa 2010, and includes a nice history of franchise protection laws.

For example:

The regulation of auto franchises arose as a response to car manufacturer he regulation of auto franchises arose as a response to car manufacturer
opportunism early in the twentieth century. According to Surowiecki (2006), in 1920, Henry Ford took advantage of its established dealer network by forcing
dealers to buy inventories of new cars that they were unlikely to sell. The reason that the company could “force” dealers to take the cars was that they had all made important investments in their facilities and reputation. Thus they had sunk costs that could be expropriated. Ford and General Motors used the same strategy again during the Great Depression. These episodes demonstrated to policymakers that the franchisor, with its greater information and financial resources, might exploit investments made by the franchisees. Federal regulation followed these periods.

The starting point for auto franchise regulation is the 1956 federal act generally known as the Automobile Dealer’s Day in Court Act (ADDICA), which
provides that a car dealer may recover damages if its manufacturer fails to act in good faith in complying with the terms of the franchise agreement, including on
issues of allocation of vehicles to dealers, or matters of termination, cancellation, or transfer of the franchise. However, by the time the ADDICA was enacted, 20 states had already passed auto franchise laws. Today, every state has a law governing car manufacturer/dealer auto franchise laws. Today, every state has a law governing car manufacturer/dealer relationships.

All states require that car dealers be licensed. Even 30 years ago, 44 states had such a requirement. This regulation prevents the manufacturer from retailing cars through other means. In particular, this regulation has been a major impediment to the development of Internet distribution of new cars.

You seem to hold some mistaken ideas about what "those who stand with liberty and freedom" actually do in some cases. The people that wrote that text you quote employed spies and kept some matters secret, both before and after the Revolution.

Resolution of Secrecy Adopted by the Continental Congress, November 9, 1775

Resolved, That every member of this Congress considers himself under the ties of virtue, honour, and love of his country, not to divulge, directly or indirectly, any matter or thing agitated or debated in Congress, before the same shall have been determined, without leave of the Congress; nor any matter or thing determined in Congress, which a majority of the Congress shall order to be kept secret. And that if any member shall violate this agreement, he shall be expelled this Congress, and deemed an enemy to the liberties of America, and liable to be treated as such; and that every member signify his consent to this agreement by signing the same.

Maybe you should read that again just so it sinks in - not keeping certain secrets could make you an enemy of the liberties of America in the eyes of the Founding Fathers.

Do you understand the meaning of representative government? The consent is to be governed, not to every single individual action of government.

So how would one go about taking away home ISPs' ability to get away with charging both sides of the connection?

Title 2 reclassification, which the President has proposed, is *exactly* how you do this. Common carriage, a form of title 2 regulation which governs the phone system, among other things mandates that phone infrastructure owners resell service at a reasonable wholesale rate to other phone providers. This is why you can buy phone service from any phone provider - not just the one who owns the cable that comes to your house.

The problem you're articulating - a hugely important problem - is exactly what the President is trying to tackle here. Net neutrality is part of it, but title two reclassification gives the FCC much, much broader powers to keep the eyeball networks (i.e. home broadband providers) in line. It doesn't predetermine what the FCC will do with these powers, but this is the right track.

For more details, I recommend Susan Crawford's excellent book, Captive Audience. http://yalepress.yale.edu/book...

The cost of said odyssey is around 300 million dollars, and is a one-time cost, with dividends for your leisure society. Specifically, biologically synthesized aramid fibers on the cheap would enable the construction of better buildings for humans to live in, better clothing for humans to wear in hazardous situations, and possible medical applications as suture material. It's something you can get almost for free, when you consider that the scientific trajectory of your leisure society objective also encompasses many of the same goals. The question is not "Why do this", it is 'Why overlook doing this?"

So far, the reason you have given amounts to "because it makes my butt hurt to see other people's dreams come true and not mine!"

Your florid language points to something on the schizophrenic spectrum.

Your own language suggests somebody that is borderline sociopathic. Does everything other people choose to do have to result in your getting something to be considered of value to you?

Care to provide some citations of these mass-extinctions so I can have a TV? (I don't even have a TV BTW).

Sure. The industrialization of china has resulted in the destruction of many species in the yantze river due to overfishing and poorly managed industrial effluent discharging. Further inland, the processing of rare earth metals required to sustain many modern high tech industrial products being manufactured there has caused tremendous loss of biodiversity, and terrible problems for human inhabitants. That's not even counting the consequences of the petro-chemical processing needed to turn crude oil into the plastics necessary to produce the TV, which is having profound and measurable consequences on many animal forms globally. And of course, there's the highly critically acclaimed and "Controversial" issue with fossil fuel use, and the entering of the "anthropocene era", which I dont think really needs a citation, since slashdot covers it basically 5 times a day now.

"Be careful there kettle. It's not wise to call the pot black bottomed."

Your grasp of English idiom is lacking.

Care to elaborate on how I used it incorrectly? That particular epithet is used to discourage people from engaging in hypocrisy. The kettle is being a hypocrite by calling the pot "Black bottomed".

As I have just demonstrated, your "Leisure society" is just as guilty of mass ecosystem tampering for poorly justified reasons as my purposeful creation of a biosphere on a world that currently has none is. I was pointing out that I have just as much "Right" to do so, as you do here on earth.

But please, elaborate on how I misused the idiom.

The fish ladders allow the Salmon to migrate and been the main concern, this news is just bad.

Except they don't. That's the problem.

"In 2014 dollars the mid-level salary for recently-tenured faculty was about $300,000 / year"

I'm extremely skeptical. Look at the below link for data on the Ivy League (not exactly the bargain basement when it comes to faculty). Average salary for a FULL professor at Yale is $192k. Newly tenured faculty would be associate professors - average salary $118k.

http://oir.yale.edu/node/87/at...

There are no charges. The GP is correct.

mmm...since when has the US needed charges to pluck a non-US citizen off the streets of a foreign country? After all, there's "lacunae in the relevant legal frameworks" that allows our agents to "arrest" wanted individuals anywhere else in the world without nary a charge being filed.

Because, to paraphrase the late computer science pioneer Alan Perlis, Alice in Wonderland is the best book ever written about anything.

I refer you to this analysis of American attitudes toward global warming issues: http://environment.research.ya... (produced in 2007).

Short blurb from the beginning:

Overall, a large majority of the American public is personally convinced that global warming is happening (71%). Surprisingly, however, only 48 percent believe that there is a consensus among the scientific community, while 40% of Americans still believe there is a lot of disagreement among scientists over whether global warming is occurring.

What is striking is that there is ovewhelming consensus among climate scientists that global warming is occurring, and that it is being caused by humans - in effect, by "economic growth".

How do we explain the discrepancy? In part, I think, because people have a vested interest in believing that there is no problem with their lifestyle. But in a more sinister vein, the problem is that in their efforts to counter the solid scientific consensus, vested industrial interests have been marketing anti-scientific ideas to the general public. These efforts have had some success. Unfortunately, loss of scientific literacy among the general public has been part of the collateral damage.

Strict consistency does not conflict with high availability: deterministic approach to DBs.

You can have your ACID and eat it too.

Further, if you have read The Federalist Papers you will see both how naive Madison, Hamilton and Day were on the tax issue, as well as their ideas on taxes in general. They square, more or less, with how things are done in that those who make more should pay more not as a form of punishment but only because they can.

You have to remember there was no income tax at the federal level back then. The argument was against the states paying the taxes based on the values of land owned within them. What they were pushing was that the tax was equally divided among it's populous with the division of slaves only being three fifths. So the government would say we need to raise $1000 in taxes, it would then present a bill to each of the states for their share based on the number of people living in those states. The states would then tax the people and pay it. Under the articles of confederation, the states would have to assess the value of all lands, buildings, and other improvements within their boundaries and then tax the owners based on a portion needed to pay the federal taxes. They were also pushing for the ability to tax imports and exports.

As to taxing the rich, see above. It's not a punishment, regardless of what some on the left will say, but only the fact that they can afford to pay more without that extra money affecting their lifestyles. Compare someone making $50K/year who has a 2% increase in their federal tax rate to someone making $250K/year. That 2% impacts them significantly more than the second person even though the amount is more in the latter case.

And the argument is convincingly made that $1000 is less than $5000. The antithesis of the impacts on lifestyles is that if more people had an impact on their lifestyle, they would be on the government to spend what is only necessary and avoid waste. In fact, that is one of the premises behind these so called fair tax schemes- people will be exposed to the cost of their wants from government and choose only the ones really necessary while avoiding the rent seekers and dependents.

Something like 43% of working Americans pay no federal income taxes and quite a few get back more than they paid in. It's kind of like having skin in the game. When they pay- when they are the owners, they tend to take better care of things. It's because when it breaks and comes out of your pocket, you notice it more than when someone just replaces it. If more people paid federal income taxes (Not social security or medicaid taxes), they might have more of an interest in their governance.

If we're going to lower taxes we need to make across the board cuts. There are no sacred cows. Reduce the Social Security programs, cut out military projects, stop most food and fuel subsidies, remove tax loopholes and tax benefits to a bare minimum (mortgage deduction, depreciation, etc), and so on.

It's a little more complicated then across the board cuts, but yes, all of the above need reductions.

Regarding the US permanent ownership of Gitmo - I invite you to read the actual lease/purchase.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20t...
        "ARTICLE VII. To enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own defense, the Cuban Government will sell or lease to the United States the lands necessary for coaling or naval stations, at certain specified points, to be agreed upon with the President of the United States."

Yes, there are plenty of rumors about regular Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.

Got anything better than rumors?

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/u...

http://www.rsc.org/chemistrywo...

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-a...

Rgds

Damon

Who are you to speak for the people of Gaza? How do you know that they would not rather see retribution against Israel instead of some creature comforts for themselves?

Most people say that the people of Gaza don't deserve to suffer, because the attacks were by Hamas and the people of Gaza don't necessarily support Hamas's priorities.

Hamas's attacks on Israel are the direct cause of Israel's military efforts now that are causing so much suffering. To the extent that the people of Gaza supported Hamas's attacks, those same people share the responsibility for the suffering.

There's a lot of tit for tat. Israel is attacking now because of Hamas attacks. Israel perhaps has some blame for the Hamas attacks because of the blockade. Yet the blockade was to keep Hamas from being able to successfully attack Israel. Hamas put, in their charter, this statement: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad." This is why I say it all comes back to Hamas. Hamas doesn't want a cease-fire; they want to destroy Israel.

The people who protect Israel are not angels and needless suffering has been inflicted on Palestinians. But as far as I can tell, Israel is perfectly willing to leave the Palestinians in peace. Israel is not willing to let Hamas build stockpiles of attack weapons or build tunnels into Israel.

At this point, Israel may decide to just crush Hamas and re-conquer Gaza. Years down the road, maybe Israel can hand off Gaza to the Gaza people, but it won't happen if Israel thinks Hamas or some other jihadi group will regain power.

If I "gift" you $1M but send it as cash via uninsured US Postal Service and you never get it because it's stolen en route, can I really say you received any sort of gift from me?

I think it would be fair to say that you tried to gift me a present. I don't like this example because there are reasonably secure ways to send money; the analogy is imperfect. The donors who sent money to buy the greenhouses clearly meant to give a gift, not to temporarily enrich a few looters. Before Israel pulled out of Gaza, the greenhouses produced crops which sold for actual money, and the clear intention was for the people of Gaza to benefit. I don't think the donors could have foreseen the looting and I don't know any way they could have prevented it.

Well, no one is quite the expert at mass murder that the Israelis are, as they're proving in Gaza right now by butchering 4 civilians for every enemy "soldier" that they kill.

The Israelis are fighting an enemy that intends to destroy Israel and kill as many Jews as possible. The Hamas Covenant says (exact quote from the English translation): There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.

Hamas has repeatedly fired rockets and artillery shells into Israel, indiscriminately trying to maim and kill anyone in Israel. Hamas started this, not Israel.

Israel has been dropping leaflets: "Get out of here, we will be attacking the area soon." They have telephoned houses and sent texts: "Get out of the area, it's not safe." They have dropped non-exploding payloads on buildings before dropping the bombs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/07/14/video-this-is-what-an-israeli-roof-knock-looks-like/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israeli-troops-raid-rocket-launching-sites-in-gaza-as-residents-are-urged-to-evacuate/2014/07/13/4c1a0528-0a68-11e4-bbf1-cc51275e7f8f_story.html

Hamas has been using schools, churches, hospitals, and people's houses to store weapons or launch rocket attacks.

Given all of the above, there is total moral clarity here. Hamas literally wants to destroy Israel, started the conflict, and endangered its own people; Israel has repeatedly shown that they would be willing to accept a two-state solution, but Hamas will only accept a one-state solution, i.e. Israel destroyed and that land part of Palestine.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-moral-clarity-in-gaza/2014/07/17/0adabe0c-0de4-11e4-8c9a-923ecc0c7d23_story.html

http://online.wsj.com/articles/israel-expands-ground-operation-in-gaza-1405836870

So, yes, it's true that Israel has not managed to fight a war with no collateral damage. But what would you have them do?

How patient would you be if someone was shooting rockets that were falling in your home town, and from time to time some innocent person (possibly a child) was maimed or killed? How long would you let that go on?

I am grateful that my own decisions (and especially my mistakes) don't have life-or-death consequences. I don't envy the leaders of Israel, deciding how to handle an implacable enemy that uses the innocent as human shields.

They never changed the name. Please stop being so freaking stupid.

Please, people, PLEASE just stay on message. It's important that we use the proper terminology to maintain more intense worry about the issue, and instill in the shitizens a greater sense of personal threat.

And the amount it has actually risen in the Marshalls is roughly about 3". Even then, attributing this to "Climate Change" is a bit of a leap. Even though water has risen there "more than the global average", that's really not saying much since the global average is something like 1/4" over the last century. (Roughly... I don't remember the exact figure.) [Jane Q. Public]

Quoting 3" for the Marshalls makes it clear that Jane is talking about the total sea level rise, not the annual rise. Total global average sea level rise over the last century (1914-2014) is more like ~6 inches (see fig. 5 of Church and White 2011. Jane obviously doesn't remember the exact figure, because the rise Jane's memory provides is ~24x smaller than the actual observed rise.

Anyway, sea level rise can vary regionally due to factors like the gravity of thinning ice sheets.

Well to be sure accumulation of assets was a big deal, but there are people who posit other, not necessarily mutually exclusive, reasons that farming societies invented the concept of chastity outside of marriage. One compelling argument is that they used it as a form of birth control.

From what evidence we have we can see that starvation was relatively rare in hunter-gather societies, but it was really common in farming communities, especially when there were more mouths to feed than the land could support. The lords needed some way to make sure that the population couldn't rise above what the land was able to support, so they used marriage, especially church-sanctioned marriage, as a way to control the peasant population. According to Dr. Wyman only 40% of people in medieval Europe were married(Sorry for the zip, lecture #9 is the one that lists this info if you are interested, fascinating course overall). The landlords simply controlled the church who in turn controlled marriage. Civilizations have been using marriage, and the taboos of sex outside marriage, to control population for eons.

Quite a few smart people, including me, are profoundly disturbed by the safety problems with nuclear fuels and by their limited reserves. Refining U-235 is quite expensive to fuel grade is quite expensive, and quite toxic. Moreover, the current reserves will only supply about 200 years of energy _at current rates of consumption_. That's currently roughly 12% of world energy production, for roughly 6 billion people, with many in dire poverty and quite low energy consumption.

Yes, you fucking luddite retard, because U-235 is the only game in town, and we all know that rare earth metals are in infinite supply and there are no horrible byproducts of manufacturing solar cells.

YOU are the problem here.

Googling on your drone suggestion: http://e360.yale.edu/mobile/fe...
"Zondlo recently developed a methane sensor mounted on a remote-controlled aircraft built at the University of Texas at Dallas. In October, the aircraft was used to quantify emission rates from well pads and a compressor station in the Barnett Shale region. Zondlo has been partnering with other groups that fly drones over fracking areas to detect leaks.
Robert B. Jackson, an ecologist and energy expert at Duke University, also has been testing drones to detect fugitive methane emissions. The main drawback, he says, is the payload. "Carrying a big camera or methane sensor, a drone might be able to stay in the air for 30 minutes," says Jackson. "It's difficult to screen a shale play with that kind of time."
Engineers are trying to develop lighter sensors that will allow drones to stay in the air longer. "I'm very bullish long-term on using drones to measure leaks," Jackson said. "Are we there yet right now? No."
In the Pinedale Anticline natural gas field in Wyoming, Shane Murphy and Robert Field of the University of Wyoming recently outfitted a Mercedes Sprinter van with a mass spectrometer and other high-powered scientific instruments to measure volatile organic compounds and methane. When combined with meteorological instrumentation and sophisticated software, these technologies can detect methane plumes and quantify emission rates from specific sources -- all from inside the van. The equipment records readings every half-second, which allows it to be used on the move. "This approach can cover a lot of ground," Field said."

And also:
http://www.reuters.com/article...
"No pilot was required when the Aeryon Scout took off into the leaden skies of Alaska to inspect a stretch of oil pipeline. The miniature aircraft was guided by an engineer on the ground, armed only with a tablet computer. The 20-minute test flight, conducted by BP Plc last fall, was a glimpse of a future where oil and gas companies in the Arctic can rely on unmanned aircraft to detect pipeline faults, at a fraction of the cost of piloted helicopter flights."

Also (see page 3):
http://www.seattlepi.com/local...
"Though the project has a modest half-million-dollar budget, the goal is to develop and field test a portable low-cost instrument that can measure gas odor in parts-per-billion quantities and "replace the human nose for leak detection," according to the study prospectus.
When the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration launched the project with industry financial support in 2010, it said it would be completed in September of this year. Recent changes in the federal agency's research program could delay projects currently underway, according to a transcript of an Aug. 2 meeting between federal research officials and technical advisors.
The federal government is also working on pipeline surveillance devices, which would search for leaks, including another cooperative research project launched by the federal government to mount a gas detection device on a pilot-less flying drone.
Until these devices are proven, however, experts say the industry will heavily rely on the gas customer's nose, which is not all that reassuring."

At CMU 25 years ago, I was part of a small group led by Red Whitaker where we discussed making robots that rove through gas pipelines to inspect them from the inside. So, that's another option, too, although putting anything inside a pipeline has its own risks.

Of course, if electricity gets cheaper (like from hot or cold fusion or cheaper solar panels), natural gas demand may fall quickly. But whether that leads to less leaks in the s

Sure:

http://www.irpa.net/irpa9/cdrom/VOL.1/V1_46.PDF

http://www.techmetalsresearch.com/2011/03/the-issue-of-residual-thorium-uranium-from-rare-earth-ore-processing/

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/intelligent-energy/why-safe-nuclear-will-rely-on-rare-earth-minerals/

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/boom_in_mining_rare_earths_poses_mounting_toxic_risks/2614/

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp147-c4.pdf

http://www.resourceinvestor.com/2011/06/29/the-future-of-thorium-as-nuclear-fuel

http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2016/finalwebsite/problems/disposal.html

http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2016/finalwebsite/problems/disposal.html