Okay. So, honestly, look at the people who work the mines. Not the engineers or supervisors, but the bulk of the 9-5 guys. What percentage of them, in less than a year's worth of school/retraining, would be really good coders - the kind you could put on a project in an office in SF and expect to get a similar result to someone who's first chosen profession from their teens was coding and spent 4-6 years in post-secondary school learning the art, science, and math of coding?

I say this because Bloomberg is probably right. I'll bet at least 80% of them can't make up for lost time in a year or less (which, if you want to completely fund their retraining, including costs and living expenses is going to run towards $100k each). I'd bet more than 50% couldn't do it in 4 years. I say that because more than 50% of the general population wouldn't make it, and coal miners are no different.

As you said, coal miners are the product of their families, and often families where higher education is neither valued nor rewarded. It's not about better or worse, smart or stupid, it's about expectations and preparation. Take a 35 year old who hasn't done more than 3rd grade math in the last 20 years and put them into a math-intensive program. Most will fail miserably. Doesn't matter if they're a farmer, a coal miner, an automotive assembler, a construction worker, a retail cashier, or a salesman.

Bloomberg's words may feel like a put-down, but they're about as straight forward realistic as it gets. It's hard for "smart" people to understand that mere's applying yourself to a higher field of study often isn't enough to master it.

Note that they didn't say - "Hey, we're going to do this merger, here's a check for $50k to help you do the right thing." Money that is considered for this "story" goes back to 2009, long before anyone was talking about a merger, or even the NBC/Universal acquisition.

That's not to say the whole system isn't corrupt - people and corporations buy influence with congressman all the time through donations. But this isn't a case of a bribe - it's buying recognition and face time. Something which is not illegal but should be as it skews the perspective seen by those who are making laws.

#cancelcolbert gets SC off of CC and the show dies...but only because he got promoted to a prime network spot with more visibility and more money.

Colbert's writers couldn't have scripted this as well as it was performed in real life.

misattributed

Somebody apparently stole my ability to spell, or at least to spell-check before hitting submit.

The authorship was misattribited

No doubt, but it won't do much more than dent anything that has been hardened against HE (or even large LE) munitions.

Golf clap.

1/2mV.terminall^2 since 83 miles away we presume it will be on the downslope of a parabolic-ish arc. 23lb at 300mph - 10kg at 136m/s = 10 x 136^2 = 185kJ give or take. So about the same as a Toyota Yaris going 40mph or a Ford Focus going 35mph.

I presume the 100 mile targets will have to be soft. People are quite soft, as are unarmored vehicles.

Well, the questions he asked were pretty on point, and "we" modded them up (at least, in theory). Let him have his moment in the sun - he get's so much shit around here for the fucked up headlines, poor editing, and dupes (well, he and Timothy) I'm okay even if he did pull rank. At least the questions were good ones.

The last, and only, computer language in which I was ever fluent.

*sigh*

Ed isn't the naive one - he's playing the naive ones for all the cash in their pockets.

Imagine being able to spread out headlines for the next decade:

"NSA keeps a list of KKK members"
"NSA following the actions of NRA members and directors"
"NSA spied on the NAACP leaders"
"NSA monitored phone records of the Republican leadership of the House"
"NSA monitored phone records of the Democratic leadership of the Senate"
"NSA has database on transactions related to CEO offshore accounts"
"NSA is actively invovled in cataloging grandmothers knitting groups - was your grandma targetted?"

We all *know* the NSA does this - they've been doing it since inception. But Ed Snowden needs a way to make a living outside of being an IT admin, so it pays for him to string this out as long as the tinfoil-hat* money keeps flowing.

*it's not paranoia if they really are watching you, but most people really don't give a shit, and the only people who do care are those with actual (or future) power who are justifiably afraid that someone will get in and use this info politically and the ones wearing tin foil hats who have a wildly inflated view of their importance.

Drop that first sentence and you've got yourself a good argument. It will never happen as long as the protestants are in control, but it's a nice idea.

The problem is that you've conflated it with the wrong reason. Mozilla needs a strong CEO, yes, however the first thing a CEO is is a manager of people. You cannot effectively manage people of mixed composition if you genuinely believe that a certain percentage of them are not deserving of basic human rights. If he was a member of the KKK, would you expect him to treat black employees equitably? If it was public knowledge, would black employees even expect him to treat them fairly (even if he did, would they believe it - knowing he was KKK)?

This will be good for creating random toys and knick knacks. The problem with 3d software for the masses is that it's technical. When you create a part for use (as opposed to a blob of toyness), holes, edges, parts have to be in a specific place. That requires math, which is beyond the reach of the average user. It's like trying to create a technical drawing with an iPad sketch program. You can make pretty pictures with your finger (okay - artists can, you can just make ugly dogs and weird looking trees), but you can't make a scaled technical drawing for fabrication.

Oh, and kickstarter is not a mainstream consumer outlet. Call me when they have the model for sale at WalMart or Staples.

TSA doesn't give a shit. Go charter a private jet and you can skip all that silliness and they won't care. They want us to feel safe, not be safe.

FAA on the other hand will not be amused.