To be fair, that's a legitimate complaint. There's no justifiable reason for that delay nor is there one for not giving a grace period until the end of it before finalizing the overdraft fee. The only reason that historical processing delay is still there is to screw customers out of a fee that wouldn't happen if they put as much emphasis on processing deposits as they did on withdrawals. There's no technical justification for such a difference between the two nor for the lack of forgiveness.

He may be ignorant for not expecting to be screwed in that way, but it is still him getting screwed for no better reason than that it's a revenue stream for the banks.

You know, I count myself firmly as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, but one of the strong suits of conservatism as a philosophy is a belief both in the value of self-reliance and self-responsibility, especially in a financial realm. I have no surprise seeing this come from a red state, and I wish more states would embrace such a curriculum.

It's irresponsible that we don't teach kids how to manage money, and it's a good place to get in their heads that math is useful for something, even if they don't like it. We need a society that values saving and long-term rewards over short-term consumption.

We spend too much time thinking of the other side as "the enemy" because of "wrong" beliefs that don't match our own and not enough time looking seriously at their strengths and how we can embrace those as common values -- places where we need to step up our own game in a bipartisan fashion.

So, good for you, Okies. May this be an example for the rest of us.

I'm not likely to ever lose my iPhone (except in my bedroom, at which resolution I'm sure its of no use), so the positive use case for the ability is nigh zero for me. I'm far more worried about hackers from somewhere random in the world deciding to to disable phones for the lulz. I'm also (in a minor, abstract way) concerned about the carrier / government interest in being able to disable phones.

However, the fact that it has to be enabled and requires an iCloud account is a relief since I'd never do either.

That statement sent a chill down my spine as an iPhone user. Is there any way to disable this? I'm far, far less worried about my phone getting stolen from my pocket or house (the only two places it resides) than I am about a hacker bricking it.

If you were thinking clearly, you'd notice that it was a headline on a website that gets its money from page views and that inflammatory headlines are a great source of clicks. It's journalism you should be blaming here, not environmentalism.

That is, unless you want to engage in exactly the same kind of attribution error to smear the opposition that you accuse them of making.

I hope you've got a big mixer to make sure that blends evenly, because it turns out that dropping stuff in the ocean isn't like putting food coloring in a glass. The ocean is big and has currents and thermal zones that prevent even, global mixing. That's why Fukushima raised Strontium-90 levels 100-fold in some hot spots in the three months after the disaster.

They can't. Almost every time someone tries, it gets taken out of context by either the deniers or the fervent believers and distorted.

It's not the scientists making crazy predictions: it's the laymen who have listened to what the scientists tried to explain and not quite understood it all and who are rightfully concerned by it but either (a) get irrationally scared or (b) think the other side's irrational people and the undecided won't listen unless it's scary enough.

Well, there are (to broadly generalize) four positions on AGW:
1) Scientifically informed acceptance.
2) Fervent, incorrect denial.
3) Fervent, incorrect acceptance. ("OMG! Hurricane Katrina was directly caused by Global Warming!")
4) Easily swayed people with the memories of goldfish.

#4 is the group of people that keeps "swing voting" on it depending on the current weather.

Why? If you already can't care about the future of other humans, then why should we expect you to be interested in contributing later?

That flow is also a reason why it's heavily used for hydroelectric power. The Columbia River is also both a major protected wild salmonid habitat and also a major shipping route for the NW.

Draining it to feed CA would not go over well in OR/WA.

America also has a number of socialist programs: social security for national pensions, free healthcare for the indigent and the elderly (though managed through terrible public-private collaborations), the minimum wage, progressive income and inheritance taxes, etc.

We just have a lot less than the Europeans do, and believe me, there are plenty of far right-wing people in America who do think of the UK that way thanks to the NHS. But honestly, the UK is at the far right end of the scale economically in Europe. Much more like the US than the EU.

There are about 13,900 vehicle fires per year without structural involvement and 366,000 home structure fires of which only 8,9000 started in a garage or vehicle storage area, according to the NFPA. Cars don't even make the 1% cut-off for inclusion in their table of sources of ignition. Your washer and drier are a far bigger risk (15,200 house fires).

By far the most common causes of house fires are cooking accidents (43%), heating equipment (16%), arson (8%), faulty wiring or other electrical (6%), and smoking accidents (5%).

Yes, but what do you do for special days?

Japan is not the model that places like China and India are going with. Auto use is on the rise in both countries, since ownership of a car, just like in America, is partially a status symbol and partially a means of great autonomy. China passed the US for largest number of auto sales in 2009, and they've multiplied the number of miles of car-capable roads by tenfold from 1999 to 2011. There's roughly 3 cars for every 5 families in China right now. Imagine what it's going to be like when it reaches 2 per family like the U.S. India's sales have been on a slump since the global financial crisis, but they are still the 6th largest automobile market and are expected to continue growth. Per capita, people in the US consume 4x the oil that the Chinese do.

But it's not just oil. Food is the biggest concern, especially as Western diets start to dominate. Meat takes a lot of land to feed by grazing. It takes less land to feed with grain but more water and energy. Converting diets from traditional, more plant-heavy diets to more affluent and meat-heavy diets will put a strain on world land and water resources.

Water is also a huge issue, especially with climate change reducing snowpacks and the resulting unreliability of streams and rivers bringing greater droughts and floods. Increased agricultural use of water will not aid in matters either. Desalinization can help, but that's energy costly.

Speaking of energy, people in the US use about twice as much power as people from the EU, and they use about twice as much power per capita as the Chinese, who use 3-4x as much as people in India. That's going to rise, and it's probably going to come from coal due to no one wanting to compromise growing their standard of living at the fastest possible rate despite the long-term consequences for everyone. As air conditioning and consumer electronics and appliances spread, so will energy consumption.

In short, trends do not look good without a massive shift towards lower birthrates.