Motivation doesn't need to be lead directly by achieving profit.


Alternatively and more realistically, does it benefit BP to keep the region screwed and continue paying out billions in claims? No, that would be eroding their profits. As would losing oil to the ocean vs barreling and selling it. Dispersants thin the oil to say, prevent less birds from being mucked down in heavy crude.

I know, I know: But this big bad corporation!!

You actually look through your address book? I just start typing...

After this law, contentlessness will be a disease afflicting many a website...

You stated Pascal's Wager but for climate science.

If I don't believe in God, and he exists, he's gunna be pissed and I'm going to burn in hell for all eternity.
If i do believe in God and he exists then I'm good to go!
If I don't believe and God and he doesn't exist, no harm no foul.

Actually, I'd start at the horrendous entitlement commitments we have. Like, the ones with outstanding liabilities that equal all the private wealth in the country. Then, maybe the military. Or maybe fending off more entitlements, like the Federal gov't being the only originator of student loans. And maybe cut off Fannie and Freddie from the taxpayers pockets. Just some thoughts.

In a natural monopoly like utilities, roads, bridges, etc, you're going to pay through the nose if privately owned.

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=4213016

I would leave things up to investors to take care of getting full disclosure here; the information was out there and they chose to restrict it. Could it be argued that it is material information that should be disclosed? We already have laws about that...

Unsurprisingly authoritarian attitudes from academia! It's not "their" classroom - W&M is taxpayer funded and I am paying for a service to be provided (education). I will choose to learn how I decide to while I am footing the bill.

I had a limited number of professors who banned laptops in their classrooms. Typically it was only the insecure professors who sucked pedagogically who resorted to such bans. If you have a stimulating lecturer on a worthwhile topic, the issue of attention solves itself. Ultimately, it's only the student who suffers anyway. Sort of the old "you can lead a horse to water..." type deal, just involving technology as an inhibitor to learning which is only a distraction because of lack of inherent attention/motivation in the student.

Laptops are no more distracting than elaborate doodling, fidgeting, or sleeping students.

Disclaimer: I totally fucked around on my laptop in classes I didn't care about (General Education Requirements!) or with professors who sucked. However, it's also nice to be able to lookup something you don't understand or is tangential but interesting...

I've never understood why people use the "teabagging/teabagger" phrase in a negative context politically. You're insisting I keep teabagging. I will indeed continue to be the one putting my balls on your face. Now go back to the DailyKos.

Can you explain how a newspaper with plenty of competition is anything like a utility? News is highly competitive with blogs and internet sites in the market places. The parent's mention of Comcast (a monopoly with high distribution & infrastructure costs) and Shell (sells a very limited-supply good, oil, not information like newspapers do) are false comparisons.

Actually, we live in a republic. You also seem to forget anti-corporate attitudes are frequently self-defeating. Those corporations account for a huge amount of employment in this country.

Correct. The free market assumes perfect access to information (information wants to be free, no?). We just got more information on this product. Thus we can make decisions based on this new information (it gets "priced in"). We then return to an equilibrium after the use of this GM corn falls in disfavor. Of course, I'd also like to see more studies confirming this before any conclusions are drawn. How about a simple comparison of how widespread this GM corn is, when it was released, and national rates of organ failure over a long period of time?

At William and Mary the CS department uses Eclipse. It's not a bad program but it's definately a little behind on Java standards.