So is a Master of Philosophy now only available to the wealthy? SO what if people go to school and study art history or whatever 'useless' degree they want? Is education so frowned upon that it is considered a waste of time unless you are already wealthy and have nothing better to do than study art?

We really need to reset our public priorities in regards to education. I don't have a problem with the fact that you might have to work at Starbucks after getting an art history degree. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with having an educated populace, even amongst the working class. Would it be so bad to be able to have that person handing you your coffee to actually be well-educated? Or would that threaten your worldview that they are greedy and useless?

Agreed. How about a poll on whether to move it back to the sidebar?

Not to be a nitpick, but the hole is closing, not closed... Faster than expected, even. But still very slow and will not be fully healed in my lifetime. Meanwhile, skin cancer rates over the last 40 years have soared, while rates of most other cancers have actually decreased. If we hadn't stopped with the CFCs when we did, we might very well have cooked ourselves with UV radiation.

ANd I don't remember any greenies saying we all had to suddenly go without refrigeration and air conditioning. The problem was that R-12 was bad, and we needed to switch to something else. But all the existing infrastructure was set up for R-12, so it seemed like it was going to be expensive. We had refrigerators and A/C before R-12, it just wasn't very common yet.

Before R-12, we used ammonia and absorbtion cycle (rather than compressor cycles). It works quite well and is actually more efficient than modern refrigerants. In an absorbtion cycle, I think even water can be used, albeit not as effectively. These technologies could have been brought back in a pinch for at least some purposes, there was absolutely no reason to abandon air conditioning as a principle. Instead we were able to largely switch to R-134a, which is pretty similar and can even be run in the same systems designed for R-12. In the beginning, I remember people complained that it wasn't as good of a refrigerant, but that is mainly because people were using it in compressor loops that were designed for R-12. It worked fairly well, but it wasn't optimal. My grandfather stockpiled cans of R-12, he was so concerned about not being able to cool his house and car with the new stuff.

So... was it environmentalists who claimed we were all going to have to go without A/C, or was it people like my grandfather, who were simply scared of that possibility because of an incomplete understanding?

Aside: I had a very, very old ammonia cycle refrigerator once. I was always nervous about it springing a leak in the night.

I don't know about California, but natural sugar maples exist sporadically in Arizona and New Mexico... I have heard of people tapping them for syrup in the spring, but I don't know how good it is.

Wikipedia Link

LOL. I've never seen that. Into the netflix queue it goes.

Well, I suppose if you are the ringleader of a large criminal enterprise, like the Gambino family, you might get suspicious if an FBI-registered airplane was circling your house. At least that part doesn't really bother me any more than the fact they use unmarked, or decptively marked vans on stakeouts.

Even the fact that there are 50 of them doesn't bother me, really. It's a huge country, and the FBI is national in scope. A little single engine prop plane isn't going to be able to go out of Indiana to eavesdrop on a suspect in Montana very easily.

SPying on a particular suspect in an ongoing investigation? I've got no problem with that, but get a warrant. The lack of any warrant necessary to send a plane after you and record your every move is unsettling. If they are indeed for specific investigations, it should be no problem to get one.

The article mentions that they were also used during the recent unrest in Baltimore. I think this type of use is probably okay, but it again depends on what exactly their purpose is, and what kind of information they are extracting from the crowds below. And we don't know that. Reporting crowd movements and/or new gatherings of people away from the riot police? Videotaping the rioters? A-OK by me. Cell phone tower spoofing? Now I think you are back into warrant territory.

Lastly, we need to know more about when these things are deployed. If they are generally flying around willy-nilly with no particular purpose and recording everything, I have a problem with that. THey say that is not happening, but we as yet have no transparency to ensure that.

And just to follow up, in case you are really only talking about things you see as "universal wants/benefits" such as parking assist and pedestrian locater... I still don't want them. First off, I'd kind of like to see a self-parking stick shift. I guess it could use a small electric motor for parking, but then you are again talking about adding a whole new and unnecessary system of components.

And that is true in general of a lot of these types of systems. To make these things work, you need radar or lidar installed, short-range echolocation sensors, cameras, and a nice view screen in your dash or console. That is all very expensive, and adds several whole new series of non-essential components to your vehicle. Again, it just increases the odds of expensive repairs down the road when something goes finnicky with your parking assist cameras or viewscreen. Even if you don't get it fixed, you simply end up with the same car that I purchased for $3000 less.

Things which actually are universally desired and improve safety are standard on most base model cars. Things like ABS, power steering, fuel injected engines, etc... These might break and cost money, but are shown to improve safety and/or reduce other long term costs to such a degree that you'd be insane not to want them. That's why they are base. Because at some point, the car companies realized that almost NOBODY was purchasing cars without them anymore, so they lost no business by making these features standard. If getting a fancy parking assist becomes standard on some brand, that brand will immediately lose a lot of people like me. It's not good for business unless you are a luxury shop. I.E., Tesla.

"That's why modifying your car is hobby that significantly more than "rice rockets" people sometimes seem to equate to it. Lift kits on trunks, snorkels on jeeps, de-badging the Volvo, computer systems in minivans... there's a metric boat of both small and large modifications people to do make their cars theirs. Google Modified cars to see examples."

I even saw a video somewhere once of a guy in Canada who had taken his minivan, removed the front passenger seat, and installed a functional wood-burning stove. He then demonstrated it while driving around. It made zero sense to me, but I guess if you are up north and occasionally sleeping in your van it might be nice...

Nope.

I tend to get cars with minimal options. I like driving a stick, even if newfangled CVTs and the latest automatics are in fact more efficient. I like the feel of it, and it's just a preference. Also, I never saw the purpose behind having a nice sound system in a car. Sure, I'll jam out with the radio on from time to time, but the car itself is noisy. Getting anything above a baseline stereo is pretty much a waste. I prefer to have my nice audio setup at home where I can appreciate it. I also have a preference for crank windows. I've never had the window roll-down feature break. My wife, on the other hand, has always had power windows and every single car she has owned has at some point developed at least one window that didn't roll up/down properly.

So no, I don't really want to increase the baseline price of cars by thousands of extra dollars for things I don't really see as necessary or even desirable. I'm glad to have the option of purchasing the few things I do want a la carte.

I am not a luddite, and I work with technology every day. But I learned in Engineering 101 in college that the more disparate features you try to roll into a product, the more likely it is that some ancillary "feature" will break before a core function. So those seat warmers, in my view, are likely just nice things that I will get too used to and then have to pay $800 to replace at some point. I opt out. You don't. We're both happy.

I have:

1) A GPS watch for running, biking, etc.
2) A Garmin navigation system that I only use when I travel to a strange city. ANd I usually forget it and leave it at home.

My phone does not have one that I know of. It is an old clamshell "dumb" phone. The battery lasts up to two weeks on a single charge, which would be astonishing if GPS were enabled... Aside: I never understood the fascination with smart phones, or why everyone thinks I need one. I spend all day at work staring at computer screens. I have a desktop and a laptop computer at home. My cell phone bill is $12/month, and I see no need to increase that to $50-60 so I can play solitaire on the bus ride home from work.

My car is 13 years old and does not have one.
My laptop and desktop computers do not have one.
I don't own a camera (it broke a couple years ago). I would like to get a nice new digital camera, but I won't go out of my way to buy one with a GPS.

I am not a luddite. I absolutely embrace new technologies. I just don't spend my money on new shiny gizmos unless they give me a real benefit in my day-to-day life. Maybe it is you who is the outlier.

I also didn't buy my wife a diamond ring. She picked out her own ring, and got one with a green tourmaline instead. Much cheaper; beautiful stone.

Can we form a club?

I don't wish to tolerate it. I also want it to go away. I question whether or not Snowden really did anything to further that goal or not. If you listen carefully, there were plenty of hints that this was happening long before SNowden came around. He merely provided some confirmation.

The CIA was recently skewered in a Senate report as being essentially a rogue, overreaching agency that violated many people's rights. Everybody knew about waterboarding and torture without any Snowden to blow the whistle. It's hard to keep 'secrets' this large.

I guess I am content to put some faith in the system. Things like CIA torture and the NSA happen. It has happenned before and it will surely happen again. It's not "okay", but as long as the citizenry control the levers of government (and we do), then I am content that the right thing will be done in the end. The problems happen when the will of the people do not match "the right thing". When it came out that the CIA was torturing people illegally, people actually defended it wholeheartedly. Same with the NSA. Joe McCarthy was pretty popular for a long while, and he was pretty blatantly violating people's rights out in the open.

What is needed is a sea change in the way that the general population thinks about these things, and that change will be reflected by government leaders who want to stay in office. Democracy is actually pretty efficient that way. That tide will turn as it always does, but it is hard to effect change when most of the population, and therefore the leaders they elect, are complicit. Snowden is not a villian, but I do think of him as a fool.

There will no doubt be a moral objection to pretty much every conceivable state secret by someone. Does someone who philosophically abhors taxes and believes them to be illegal get to release critical information that might bring down IRS servers?

I'll absolutely agree that the "Only following orders" defense is NOT a defense. There is a difference between keeping a secret, and actively enabling a governmental policy. The German higher-ups weren't charged for leaking secret information about what was happening, they were charged with enabling atrocities. If Snowden had a moral/ethical problem, he could have (and did) quit, just as those German generals could have quit in 1941 when they saw where everything was headed.

There will always be secrets from pretty much every government, ever, that you find objectionable. Part of holding a clearance is being loyal enough that you agree not to divulge that information. If the state is really that rotten, then your loyalty itself becomes guilt, because why are you loyal when someone is committing crimes against humanity? That is to say, Nazi Germany would inspire no loyalty from me.

Bad analogy: Say your spouse does something embarassing and possibly illegal. Do you help them cover it up? Or do you divorce them and air all their dirty laundry? Something in between? It depends on the situation, right? If my spouse were a prolific serial killer (your Germany example), I wouldn't feel bad about divorce and airing of dirty laundry. If I found out my spouse had been illegally spying on the neighbors and recording phone calls, well, I might walk out if he/she was resistant to change. But telling the neighbors? It's a bit of a gray area. I am not completely unsympathetic to Snowden. But if I had previously sworn to not reveal details of our relationship under penalty of law, I would probably not go running and telling the neighbors abotu my spouse's proclivities, other than in vague (read:unclassified) warnings about how their privacy was vulnerable.

There have been plenty of hints that this was going on long before Snowden, his revelations were completely unsurprising if you had been paying any attention, merely confirmation. The public is complicit. So I think what he did helped nobody, was unnecessary. But he did it anyways. My chief objection now is that lauding him as a hero sets a dangerous precedent regarding the sanctity of classified information.

Iteresting response. Thank you for taking that time.

I still think that for some drugs, such as heroin and opium, tight state control is not a bad thing and is in the purview of their charter, which is to "Provide for the common welfare". I hope I am quoting from memory correctly. We could debate if abolition is actually the best approach to do that all day long and not get anywhere, but I respect your opinion.

Fair enough, it was a cheap political jab.

I guess it's a matter of compromise on issues no matter who the candidate is. I just happen to think that many of those issues you mentioned are secondary to the surveillance problem. You apparently disagree (as do many others), and that's fine.