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  1. Re:take them out on North Korea Jamming GPS Signals In South Korea · · Score: 1

    So, how does this compare to ongoing NK atrocities, including starvation and stunted mental and physical growth among a very large portion of NK children? I may trigger Godwin's law here, but NK is, scaled by population, worse than nazi Germany.

  2. Re:take them out on North Korea Jamming GPS Signals In South Korea · · Score: 1

    Actually I didn't forget about that. I think the NK ongoing atrocities are worse than having to combat that artillery and suffer heavy losses from it. But perhaps the window of opportunity has been missed. If NK can reliably deliver nukes to Seoul and a few other cities, then perhaps it is statistically better to just wait and see.

    I worry, though, that the NK regime will fall and decide to go out with a bang. For one thing, Kim Jong-Un was caught with bondage porn as a student in Switzerland. A sadist losing his grip may very well decide to unleash whatever destructive power he has at his disposal. OTOH, a palace coup may fix that. Hopefully, though, this is all part of US/SK contingency planning. I can only hope that TPTB knows what they're doing and not doing.

  3. Re:take them out on North Korea Jamming GPS Signals In South Korea · · Score: 1

    Your argument has merit, my friend. If the South Koreans don't want to, then that's their choice. One cannot ask SK people to sacrifice lives in a cause they don't believe in. I'm a Swede and I'm unlikely to participate in any effort on the Korean peninsula. I certainly won't volunteer.

    However, my belief is that total suffering would be less if NK was liberated and reunified by force. The atrocities of the NK regime toward its own people is beyond belief. (If you don't know of them, please google.) War is somewhat worse, but of much shorter duration. And war might come even if we try to avoid it - alas NK is improving their nuclear arsenal as we speak and later wars will likely be worse.

    But I certainly hope that the NK regime will fall soon and without war. This has been the gamble for the last few decades, and with luck, it may eventually happen.

  4. take them out on North Korea Jamming GPS Signals In South Korea · · Score: 3, Insightful

    South Korea should simply take out those jamming trucks with missiles. If that escalates into a war, then that may be for the best. North Korea should have been liberated by force at least ten years ago. It was a much better target than Iraq, and a much nobler cause. What NK does to its own people is, on a per-capita basis, about as bad as it gets.

  5. Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction on Book Review: Occupy World Street · · Score: 1

    GDP correlates very well with everything else you'd like, and globalization is our best tool to further and broaden this human golden age. The "Cina slave labor" as you call it, is getting rapid increases in wages and hundred of millions are lifted from poverty each decade. Your suggestions sounds good, superficially, but they would create untold suffering if applied.

  6. Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction on Book Review: Occupy World Street · · Score: 1

    I fully agree about revolutions and smashing existing structures. The Occupiers doesn't realize that what we've got in the mature capitalist democracies is an improvement over anything that has been seen throughout human history. We actually have an open access social order whose foundation is free entry to competition for positions in economy and politics. This is new and rare. The norm has been that the social order is created by rent-seeking elites limiting access to positions. There is a fairly new academic framework on this: http://www.nber.org/papers/w12795

    It's very heartening that the book reviewed here is not only anti-capitalist, but also peak oil-environmentalist. The mixing, hopefully, makes it less likely that the dangerously ignorant anti-capitalist ideas get traction. Even if Occupiers are not close to understanding this, their typical ideas would make any open-access order country regress into limited-access order. Democracy and capitalism needs each other.

  7. Re:OTOH... on Japan Plans To Scrap Nuclear Plants After 40 Years · · Score: 2

    Right, anything too expensive won't happen. And that's when you need to use some kind of objective metric to decide whether you can run the plant anyway.

    If a nuclear plant has a probability of core damage of 1e-5 per reactor year, should we decommission it and build a new plant with 1e-7 probability? 100 times better is a lot, right? But if a core damage costs on average $100 billion, then the 1e-5 probability averages $1 million in disaster costs per year, and it's probably not worth it to decommission the plant and build a plant that will only average $10,000 per year. And it's DEFINITELY not worth it to decommission THAT plant and go for an even newer 1e-9 plant at $100/year in core damage costs. Somewhere, it just becomes good enough and it would be, in fact, irresponsible to add more safety (instead of going for extra road safety or something).

    So where are we at? To my mind, we're quite good if we implement the cheapest lessons from Fukushima.

  8. Re:OTOH... on Japan Plans To Scrap Nuclear Plants After 40 Years · · Score: 1

    How long does it take to debug a new "state-of-the-art" design? I am pro-nuclear and would like to see new innovative designs, but I still trust a mass-produced reactor with 30 years of proven operation (and with any design flaws found during those years mitigated) to run safely for another 10 or 20 years more than I trust a new design to run safely its first 10-20 years. I agree we should probably let go of the earliest designs, but gen2+ is good enough.

  9. Re:Bzzt! Try again (but read first) on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    You have stereotypically repeated your misrepresentation of my stance more than a dozen times. With your other post, you're up to at least 22 claims of me being a "liar" in total, and you're adding up to a (not so) respectable number of variations on "stupid" too. I'm beginning to feel bad, actually. Whether your disorder is obsessive-compulsive, narcissistic, borderline or something else I can't say, but nothing good can come from me agitating it. I'm out of here.

  10. Re:10 ways - all local on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    Enough is known about nutrition to take a reductionist stand on this matter. Do you think your body need veggies, or do you think it need the fibers and micronutrients that some veggies are abundant sources of? Moderately intelligent and knowledgeable people should be aware of the implicit basics of the WHO text. I'm sorry your school failed to provide you with these tools.

    I can only assume that the reason you keep pounding on your original misinterpretation is the fact that you cannot defend your original claim (that poor people need to eat bad food because they can't afford anything else) against my real stance. I've provided, as a counterexample, a cheap base diet that covers macronutrient needs, fibers and most micronutrients. It needs little variation to cover any micronutrient deficiencies. This diet is based on rice, whereas your examples had a nutritionally inferior potato/wheat base.

    Btw, that's 3 more "liar", now we're at 20.

  11. Re:Bzzt! Try again (but read first) on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    Again, you prove my point. Do you know how many times you have said I lie or called me liar? I counted to 17, but I probably missed some. You should seek help, both for you obsessive behaviour and for your sadistic streak (not that I hurt much, but anyway). And you should read up on nutrition.

  12. Re:10 ways - all local on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    I provided a citation earlier, but your "pretend ostrich" tactic makes you unable to acknowledge it. Btw, there ain't no such thing as "deficient in vegetables". You're looking ever-more ignorant.

  13. Re:Bzzt! Try again (but read first) on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    That really proved my point. I hope your dysfunctionality doesn't show very often IRL.

  14. Re:10 ways - all local on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    "Deficient in vegetables, meat, cereals"? Man, you really don't know the first thing about nutrition, do you? Btw, the "pretend ostrich" seems like a formidable defense, superficially. It enables you to disregard any proof and just keep on being a trolling bitch. However, in the eyes of me and any (very unlikely) bystander, of course, that is all you are.

  15. Re:Bzzt! Try again (but read first) on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    It's a bit funny/sad to see how violently you react when exposed as a liar. And even sadder to see you talk about MY pride. You should see yourself.

  16. Re:10 ways - all local on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    A diet based on brown rice is quite superior to potato based and wheat based diets - that much should be clear even to you. And you have already looked at deficiencies in rice based societies, and I guess you've stumbled across stuff like this pubmed citation that gives indirect support: There are a few prevalent micronutrient deficiencies in poor rice based societies, and China and others are looking into fortified variants of rice to mitigate that. Another trivial possibility (at least in urban settings), is adding a few cheap complementary foods (and/or a multivitamin) that close the gaps.

    I've made clear that I can present the numbers I've collected, but you reject that and demand proof by appeal to authority on the exact base diet example I provided, and I won't even bother to look for that. So we're stuck with your obsessive lies and abusive tantrums, aren't we?

  17. Re:Bzzt! Try again (but read first) on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    I guess I was a bit too polite and subtle when I pointed out your references were irrelevant. My bad.

  18. Re:10 ways - all local on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    Your use of the "pretend ostrich" as an endgame tactic would've been more believable had you not been so obsessive earlier.

  19. Re:The Real Question on Kepler Discovers First Earth-Sized Exoplanets · · Score: 1

    Why? I said "the smallest candidate get 100 parts of the money".

  20. Re:Bzzt! Try again (but read first) on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    So childish. We both know I'm right, and that's good enough for me. I won't do a back-and-forth of "you lie, no you".

  21. Re:10 ways - all local on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    I think you did read - you're way to obsessive not to. I know my argumentation is effective when you aren't able to make a stand. You dish out abuse over me being insensitive to the poor, and then when I point out how that's all a figment of your imagination, you flee to safe ground by abusing me for not providing proof in the manner you demand (essentially you ask for the fallacy of "appeal to authority"), and when I answer that, you switch back again.

    No surprise, really. Your combination of being abusive, wrong and dishonest can't ever prevail against calm, correct and honest opposition. The best you can hope for is getting the last word in before this thread is archived.

    Btw, I mentioned my main takeaway from this thread earlier. The biggest laugh, however, was when you implied that you were big fish in this pond. You're a moderately good flame warrior, but you have issues that will prevent you from ever being great.

  22. Re:The Real Question on Kepler Discovers First Earth-Sized Exoplanets · · Score: 2

    It would be easier to get that going when we really have confirmed a planet with life on it, so I propose we start with that.

    I'd like to see crowdfunding of research like planet-finding. Let's say 100 million people give $1/month for planet-finding. Every month, the money is distributed according to these rules:
    - All money is distributed within the highest category of planets that has any confirmed planets in it.
    -The money is divided among the 100 smallest (radius) candidates (promoting resolution) with the smallest candidate getting 100 parts of the money, the next smallest 99 parts, and the last 1 part. (5050 parts in all, the smallest one gets almost $2 million per month).

    Categories could be something like:
    - any planet at all
    - and around a star with suitable spectral class (F to mid-K) with low variability
    - and within the habitable zone
    - and directly imaged
    - and whose images show surface- or atmospheric features or moons.
    - and whose images show show signs of life (ie. green-blue or something).
    - and has some kind of signs of intelligent life

    Hopefully, this would create enough incentives to improve planet finding and imaging tech. (The Kepler life-cycle cost is estimated to a mere $600 million for 3.5 years, or $14 million per month.)

    Of course, problems to be considered is confirmation of findings and false positives, and also how to create enough stability in crowd-funding. However, with a global GDP of some $60 trillion, it is a bit sad that most basic research in fusion/fission, astronomy, medicine and so on is based either on patent rights or on involuntary tax-based funding, and only some 2% of GDP in total. Crowd-funding should be able to supplant this to a great degree, if someone created a good enough system for it.

  23. Re:Bzzt! Try again (but read first) on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    Read where I asked "where's the veggies? Where's the fish or poultry?" See the response - the poster claims none of that is needed, with the exception of the occasional carrot.

    Now you lie, blatantly. I answered "sure, buy some carrots as well". I didn't say that nothing else is needed. The diet was intended as a base that would need little extra to close micro-nutrient gaps. I've told you so repeatedly, but you refuse to listen.

    My point, as always, has been that poor people have to make hard choices, and that eating a proper balanced diet becomes "optional" when they're looking at a "food, rent, utilities, meds, warm clothing - pick 2".

    They obviously pick food as one of two, since else they'd die. Now if they pick M&C and french fries, as you suggested, instead of a rice based diet with some additions, then they don't do that for economic reasons. Why, then? One issue is how our evolutionary history set us up with regard to preferences of sweet and fat foods. Another issue is culture.

  24. Re:10 ways - all local on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    The topic was things you can do to help people. I offered 10 constructive ways. What have you offered, except a modern-day Marie Antoinette "qu'ils mangent du riz"?

    For me, the topic was your claim that poor people can't eat healthy food since it is too expensive. I think such falsehoods are destructive, and so I corrected it.

    Your focusing on a stupid subsistence diet of only rice, milk, canola oil and the occasional carrot shows that you completely and utterly miss the point, which I have consistently tried to draw the conversation back to - that poverty has many consequences,

    I think that focus is yours more than it is mine. I simply provided it as a counter-example to your false statement. You treat my example as were it normative for poor people - it isn't. Nowhere have I said poor people should eat that diet, and nowhere have I said they should be ashamed they don't.

    one of the biggest problems is other peoples' attitudes compounding the problem, that it's not a matter of choice or bad decisions

    Yes, I see that's where you're coming from, and what blinds you in this discussion. You hate people that have a specific attitude towards poor people, and then you make some kind of logical fallacy by assuming that anyone who contradicts you in your claims about the necessity of poor people's choices have that attitude. You simply trigger swiftly, jump to conclusions, and then you refuse to let go of them.

    That most people are just one critical illness, one accident, one failed relationship, one long-term job loss, one death of a partner or child or parent, from finding out just what being poor really is.

    Sure, but don't you take the victim-of-circumstance thing a bit too far? If you say poor people can't help it and they need to eat crap and become obese, haven't you created a self-fulfilling prophesy? In reality, the likelihood of becoming or staying poor varies wildly with attitudes, culture and knowledge.

    So they'll make what to you are "bad choices" - and your solution is that they should just live on a diet of rice, milk, canola oil and the occasional carrot.

    Tell me, how could I have told you that you were wrong about poor people not having the option of a healthy diet, without providing an example and thus have you go ape-shit? How should I have sugar-coated it?

    Your answers to that particular question - like when it's at the point that they can't afford both their medication and food - "well, they'll eat, because otherwise they'll die" missed the point entirely.

    Again, I point out that your idea of food-or-medicine is irrelevant, since healthy food isn't more expensive and so doesn't preclude medicine purchases any more than crap food does. And, of course, lots of medicine is used to fix symptoms of bad diets, smoking and alcohol use.

    You can make all the claims you want to - but you missed the entire point. And you're still missing it. Where are your priorities? We're talking about human beings here. Not animals in a feedlot or rats in a cage.

    My priority is promoting correct information, and what we are talking about is you being wrong about the affordability of healthy diets. Have you seen the xkcd comic "somebody is wrong on the Internet"? That's me, while you're an irrational crusader that prefers falsehoods to admitting something that, in a later association step, could lead to someone thinking poor people should be ashamed of themselves.

    I know you won't feel any shame over this ... after all, for you, poverty is someone else's problem. You've said you've never experienced it - which probably explains why you fail to even recognize the real issues, and instead continue to focus on the utterly trivial.

    If nutritional economics were trivial, I guess you wouldn't keep being wrong about it?

  25. Re:10 ways - all local on Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? · · Score: 1

    You seem to know a lot about trolling... My main take-away from this discussion is what I learned when I looked into minimalistic diets as a linear programming problem in preparation for one of my earlier comments. What's your take-away?