I remember the year when Slashdot set all manner of cookies with names like "mothersmaidenname", "creditcardnumbers" and "bankinginfo". That was a good April Fools joke.

now get off my lawn.

This is something everyone loves to clobber the US with, but it is a case of "statistics" - as in "lies, damn lies, and statistics".

Before comparing the mortality rates of different countries, it is helpful to know just what the numbers actually represent. For example, in the US, an infant born at 28 weeks (two months premature) who then dies soon after birth is counted as an infant mortality. This is not the case in countries with "better" child mortality rates.

As to the bill itself, it might make some folks feel good, but it does not address the cturcural problems with the healthcare industry. I understand it will take 4 years before it really kicks in - for good or bad, but:
1> many docors have stated their intent to cease practicing under the new law for economic reasons
2> medical school takes 8 years and considerable money (and generally massive debt)
3> We already have a shortage of doctors (and nurses as well)

That is an example of a stuctural problem.

You fail to understand how govenrment works. They will not re-assign "US Tarde Reps" from their vital-to-national-security role in the ongoing ACTA negotiations. They will simply hire more "US Trade Reps" and raise taxes to pay for them. Since this will also mean at least the appearance of increased taxes on Disneywood, Disneywood will move more jobs offshore AND raise prices on their fine products. The increased local unemployment will require local govenrments to hire more workers to deal with the unemployment claims so they will also have to raise taxes.

I think these petty (WTO) squabbles would be better resolved via bikini jello rass'ln. It would certainly be a classier form of entertainment.

As I said, "by current standards" TJ would be considered cruel and brutal.

Rape also has a different definition now than it did back then. I suspect we may both be "traditionalists" in the definition we use, but it is not the one the law uses.

Now it is "rape" whenever the female decides it was rape - and that includes changing her mind after the act. There was a very recent case where a man was released after 8 years in prison for rape. The accuser falsified her story because the friends whe went clubbing with were angry that she ditched them when she picked up the guy. What is the appropriate penalty for perjury in such a case?

Child molestation? Consider Traci Lords. Every X-rated movie she made (except the very last one) she made while she was a minor. So should every one of her "co-stars" be castrated? After all, not only would all of those sexual acts be rape, they would also count as child molestation. Back in that time frame (she started at age 15) she was one of the most famous of the adult stars and made a great many films. And further, trailers for her films wound up on other films - this caused a major headache for video stores at the time.

Yes, he really said every 20 years, I did not drop a zero.
But you have to remeber that TJ was a revolutionary fellow - and by current standards quite cruel and brutal. For example he advocated castration as the proper punishment for rape

All we have to do is determine who is going to fill those roles...(It looks like Congress in general has been nominated for the role of tyrants)

Of course, old TJ also felt that armed rebellion was a good thing - something that should perhaps happen every 20 years or so. And he also felt that the Constitution should probably be changed at like intervals.
Since I personally am not trying out for the role of patriotic martyr, I'm going for voting against the incumbents first. Even though my rep and senators are supposed to be good guys, they have been there too long and the taint of DC is heavy upon em.

So, you would "double down" on consensus science?
I am in agreement with you in general principle, but I expect that your "scientists" will still be comprised of mostly people. People have a distressing tendency to alter their interpetation of reality when money/power/celebrity is shoveled on them. I expect that far too many scientists have been corrupted (to either side) to ever achieve your 90% target.

But, I offer an alternative methodology to your blind trust in scientists:

Let one or more scientists develop a theory to explain the overall planetary climate:
1> This theory must not only predict what the climate is going to do, but must explain how it deals with the all the data used in reaching their conclusion. This includes any data that might suggest different outcomes.
2> The theory must be able to predict how a proposed change in the environment will affect their outcome.(ie reduce human GHG output by 10%, hold it steady, or triple it).
3> all data involved must be made available - anything excluded must be noted as such and why.
4> the theory must be capable of accounting for past climate changes as well. (able to "predict" the Medieval Warming Period for example)
5> The limits to the theory must be explained as well (interaction with other GHGs limit the maximum effect of CO2 on temperatures at "X" concentration)
6> The theory must be written in language that can be followed by a reader of the National Enquirer - or at least a reasonably educated fifth grader with an IQ of 100. (skipping past the actual equations, but there must be a clear and detailed prose explanation of what the equations show)That means that our non-scienttist reader will still be able to ask informed questions if they have developed the ability to engage in rational thought.
   

Evidence? I had the evidence, but I seem to have misplaced it.
Hey if you think it works for Phil Jones then you must accept what I say as equally valid.

Once we actually have climate science, it wil be about the long haul. Right now we have a bunch of power hungry nutjobs with political power dangling grant money in front of people claiming to be scientists. The Earth has not been continuosly warming. If it were even at 1 degree C per century, then the entire planet would have been a frozen snowball (- 30 C average temperature) a mere 6000 years ago. It would have been at near absolute zero less than 30K years ago. It would be kind of hard on T-Rex to get around and even if he did, he'd break his teeth on the hard frozen flesh of his prey.

So let's lose the "continuously warming" and "no doubt about it" nonsense. The reason Phil Jones et al have got to be considered discredited is becasue they ignored incovenient data. He and the folks at the CRU and Hansen at NASA set themselves out as theoreticians and promptly cherry picked the data they would use to support their "theory". A scientific theory is not like a legal/political theory. A scientific theory has to account for all the data - if it does not it is not much of a theory. It is certainly not sufficient to justify the political chicanery that is happening as a result.

Note that I consider the promoters of "climate change" aka global warming to be discredited. That is the people invloved have been corrupted and their opinions should not be considered in serious policy discussions. We need some real scientists that can come up with a useable (ie capable of predicting) theory - and not one that denies the Medival Warm Period in order to fit the data into a hickey stick curve. We will know we have such a theory when it can be tested by its ability to "predict" temperature/climate trends for any given 500 year period. I expect it to be able take into account the effects of cloud cover and solar activity as well as volcanic activity (all items beyond the capability of the current "models" that are being used by the corrupted climate charlatans. We have other "sciences" that ignore data because the theory says something else "should" happen. They are also generally heavily involved in politics and have degenerated into arguments about what data should be looked at much like lawyers try to get evidence disallowed in a court case.

Go read up on the history of Einstein's General Relativity. He didn't come up with a theory that said that graivity bends light. He came up with a theory that predicted how much light would bend and suggested experiments to gather data that would support or refute his theory. And when the first experimental data came back it did not match his predictions. He revised his theory accordingly - he did not revise the data.

Dang It! I was replying to Andrax's comment:

"All units are a factor of 10? Sure about that? How many seconds in a minute? 10 or 100?"

but Wound up as a reply to something else.

(And remember the French invented the metric system)
There would be 100 "seconds" in a "something" and 100 "somethings" in a "something else" and 10 "something elses" in a day. And of course GMT would be replaced with the "Parisian Meridian Standard Time" which would skip once a month to eliminate Leap Years.

it would be really, very surprisingly if AMD could have won out in the long run against intel. that's what makes intel's actions all the more perplexing.

the problem is that no one has a crystal ball that is going to tell us how much intel's market manipulation contributed to their success. if they manipulated the market, they have to pay for it regardless of how much of an effect it had. i hope for them it had a big effect considering the deep poopoo they are in because of it.

IBM would certainly find productive uses for that amount of capital, but part of it would be paying for the mandatory retirement of their US R&D people who did not want to move to India.

"not just the outsourcing for cheap labor." (note to mods - before modding check for whoshing sounds)

Well, that was may have been a mistake on the Administration's part. I think that they may have let a crisis go to waste here:

As I see it, those development jobs would have been better handled by civil servants. I'm just pulling numbers out of my umm...hat here, but I figure 2 or 3 GS8-9s could be easily as productive as a single offshore contractor. And since the stated purpose of the project is to help with the US employment problems the Administration could point to actual jobs being created right here in the US - and even back them up with being located in real Congressional Districts with real zip codes. Not only would these be US jobs, but the taxes those employees would pay would exceed the cost of the offshore programmer so it would help to reduce the deficit.

To really get things moving, the project could even set up a pilot training program to turn dipslaced auto workers and investment bankers into web developers (perhaps even becoming certified Front Page developers) so there would be more civil service positions in an embryonic Department of Re-training - who would in turn pay even more taxes. The instructors could be hired from the displaced programmers in Michigan(?) who were left high and dry when that state offshored development work on their unemployment system.

And if Obama had a political strategist even half as good as Karl Rove, there would already be emergency relocations of the re-trainers and the displaced workers to politically "sensitive" areas where they could be counted on to vote properly. These relocations would have to be carried out using union labor which would mean more teamsters paying more taxes.

And in a worst case scenario, the project could always quietly (for reasons of national security) hire offshore contractors to do the actual work - after all the civil servants are paying more than enough in taxes to offset the cost of hiring them.

So, in conclusion, it looks pretty bad, but I think some actual data is needed. I further believe we have an actual way of determining if this is a real problem or not. If Bo (the WH dog) is walking funny, then yes it is indeed worse than anyone could imagine. Otherwise it's one of those "move along - nothing to see here" things.

It's a good example. You're depending deeply, very deeply on the underlying technology. You may have no choice and as long as it is well understood, that's probably a much lower risk than depending on humans or other systems... but unless you've done the deeep, deeeep inspection of the system, all you've done is outsource human lives to a company with limited liability.

I'm torn as to what kind of testing and understanding is necessary to adequately trust an electronic security system for that kind of application. Is it possible that simply the existence of corporations make it impossible to trust the security of manufactured goods? Are these systems engineered like bridges, where the "engineer" is held criminally liable for failures in the system, or is it just a lot of passing the buck until everyone makes money and nobody goes to jail?

Do you "certify" it? Is it like many "certification" processes, where only the conformance to a standard is tested, but no real-world intelligence is applied to the system as a whole? Again, just passing the buck because the guys earning six and seven figures can't handle the thought of being responsible for human lives, unlike the guys working the floors at the airports?

Does anyone go to jail if a certified, tested system fails to meet its own requirements in the field? does anyone go to jail if they neglected to include a requirement in the certification and testing of the environment? Does anyone go to jail if they missed an "obvious" requirement?

Are the requirements so complex or dependent on secrecy that you don't feel comfortable commenting on them without a lawyer? If so, is it because you're afraid for the public? Afraid for your job?

I know... I worry too much.