You underestimate the ambition of those that would be your masters. They're so enamored with their own supposed righteousness and capability that they'll destroy anything that stands between them and the implementation of their grand vision.

Note that the Affordable Care act is now resposible for far more people losing their plans ("You can keep your plan if you like it." and if it conforms to the massively expensive requirements now in effect.) than gaining new coverage. But hey, the people who rammed this bill down our throats have good intentions, so let's excuse the actual destruction we're in the middle of experiencing.

Your understanding is incorrect. There is nothing particularly special about anti-ship missiles and there are no anti-ship missiles that cannot be intercepted by the myriad active defense systems that currently protect the US Navy. The cost is also asymmetric; intercepting an anti-ship missile is much cheaper than the anti-ship missile, so it is difficult to make it up in volume.

There is nothing that flies through the air that cannot be hit by modern active intercept technologies. The trend away from heavy armor is due in part to this technical development; you don't need armor if it is inexpensive to ensure no one can hit you.

I'm pulling that from my own personal experiences, my observations, and a great deal of reading over the years. Do you want a bibliography for a slashdot comment? Perhaps some footnotes? Don't be pedantic. If you disagree, say so and why. That cute little stick figure holding up a sign that says 'citation needed' got old a while ago.

In theory this sounds very sensible, but it would cost more to tailor curriculum to individual student needs rather than the usual uniform lesson platform and standard droning delivery method (which reaches a minority of students).

You don't need to be that specific- in my high school, we had three different levels for most topics- Gen Ed, College Prep, and Honors. It seemed to be a reasonable seperation of students into relatable groups.

I just listened to Malcolm Gladwell's latest book (I forget the title), and he makes the point that a small class size is also a detriment to learning. Apparently the ideal class size is 18-24 students- too few and the classroom energy goes down and the students are like siblings in the back of a car.

You can find similar social structures in prisons, which calls into question the fundamental design of the public school system.

The kid's presence there is largely wasted effort, so they invent oft-destructive social games to use up their intellect and energy. This suggests that making school more rigourous & purposeful.

Specifically:

1) more difficult academics for the kids that can take it

2) meaningful job training in later grades for those whose interests lie elsewhere

We also need to nuke 'no child left behind' and anything that looks like it, so we can acknowledge that different children have different interests & capabilities, and handle them accordingly.

A bunch of desert, and $3,000,000,000,000+, not counting increased labor and material costs from such a huge demand. But what's a few Trillion dollars when green dreams are on the line?

I'm curious as to how that would change the weather around there. Extracting that much power from such a large area would certainly have an effect on the local climate.

If you chase the links to the original treasury website, half of the $634 million was paid after the passage of the 'Affordable' Care Act, so I'm especially interested in the specifics of those contracts- which are still more than triple the $93 million dollar original ACA website contract.

So perhaps it's a $300 mil website instead of $600 mil. That's not really much of an improvement, to be honest.

"No, it's all lies! The website only cost a bit over a quarter-billion dollars!"

We do have to find out more specifics, to be sure. We've certainly sent that company a massive amount of money since 2010.

Should I care about his opinion? Well, I read a brief Bio on Wikipedia. While he's performed some impressive work, I don't see why, in the subject at hand, we should take his opinion over an experienced law professors, or even an ex-police officer's opinion.

Everyone's got a right to their own opinion, Bennett's in this case seems to be no more relevant that a couple college kids in a dorm bullsh*t session. Further, Bennett talks quite a bit about society's interest, which isn't a concern in the original video. It is in the interest of a Lawyer's individual client to not talk to the police- public interest be damned at that point.

Obamacare slightly reduces the cost of insurance for older people (like me) but then materially increases the cost for young males and in other ways in practice. Ever look at the demographics of a tech startup beyond a founder? At my startup, we pay for good insurance for our employees and while maybe my individual insurance is slightly cheaper, that is apparently buried in the noise floor of the increasing costs for the total employee pool. And the small difference in individual cost for older individuals does not materially alter the risk calculus for the individual in terms of whether they'll start a tech company.

It would be nice to see a little honesty that the law as written will be terrible for a lot of people. Including, empirically, tech startups. The percentage increases per employee are not small at all going forward and I know a lot of tech startups that are trying figure out if and how they can bury those new costs. I'm sure there are many policies that would reduce the direct costs for startups but this wasn't it, and predictably so. Perhaps media spin artists can contrive politically palatable scenarios where it reduces some startup's cost slightly while out here in the real world there has been a substantial increase in the cost of providing health insurance at tech startups.

Consequently, the idea that this reality will fuel a tech startup boom is some pretty strained reasoning. It may have some benefits but this won't be one of them. Obamacare might have helped some people but tech startups do not seem to be among them.

The Art of Diplomacy, it is said, is saying "nice doggy" whilst you look about for a large enough stick.

The sad thing about the administration's self-described 'Smart Diplomacy' is that we're in a position where German politicians will openly express contempt for the US- an ally- for some (German) election season points.

This is a consequence of two things:

1) An NSA percieved to be out of control and operating beyond their mandate.

2) A weak president that German politicians see no downside to prodding/angering.

No kidding! This "justification" for "war" is sounding like a broken record. Wasting money to kill others (who disagree with you) is spiritually retarded. When are people going to demand that violence is NOT the solution -- it is precisely part of the problem in the first place!

The trouble with that sort of thinking is that it fails to account for the fact that peace requires participation by everyone, whereas war can be started unilaterally. Hitler, for example, actively wanted war, and was frustrated by repeated capitulation to his outrageous and growing demands. We all know how that turned out in the end, of course, but it was a long painful trip for everyone involved.

The other related question- In the face of a belligerent, are you willing to give up everything to maintain a pretense of peace? Is there nothing you wouldn't surrender in order to avoid raising a fist in defense of property, of principal, or of a person?

And even if you would bare your neck to preserve the peace, and gladly be felled for your sense of 'spiritual intellegence', would you sacrifice your family, friends and neighbors for the same? If somebody wanted to rape your sister/wife/daughter, and it was in your power, but not hers, to stop him, would you let the offense proceed and pat yourself on the back for your restraint? War between nation-states is often merely an expansion of these scenarios.

The only counter argument I can see to my line of thinking is the notion that you can cure the evil in human hearts with enough love. I know of no basis in the history of human events for this naivety.

Other countries have single payer health care, which delivers better outcomes at a lower cost. Try learning from that.

And those countries do that by either gaming the statistics, or having a homogenized society where social pressure to conserve public resources can be successfully applied.

They can't because the world one learns about in law school, where courts are impartial arbiters of justice and where any tort deserves compensation, doesn't exist. We live in a world where Bush/Cheney's lawyers wrote the flimsiest of legal justifications for torturing prisoners and got away with it not because of their justifications but because of who they are.

Hey, I hate to interrupt your party-mandated two minutes of hate, but have you noticed what Obama's been up to lately? If you're whining about things more than half a decade in the past, I don't think you've been keeping up with current affairs- at least not in any intellectually honest fashion.