And which strength are we talking about? Tensile? Sheer?

The latter, I think. Sheer Fucking Strength!

Although, come to think of it, it might be shear strength as well.

Is the US going to print 80 billion dollars more next month? Yes.

Is the US going to print 80 billion dollars more the month after that? Yes.

Is the US going to print 80 billion dollars more the month after that? Yes.

Is the US going to print 80 billion dollars more the month after that? Yes.

It's not the 'going away' part that's the concern.

That particular colour cannot be used to indicate bushfires. I believe it's been reserved for smoke on the water only.

Okay, this post gets to the heart of it. Keynesianism says that it's okay to deficit spend when you're in recession, so I'm good with that. In 2008, the ass was falling out of everything, so yes, your surprisingly specific analogy applied.

But we are out of recession. Have been for years now.

What exactly are you waiting for, for us to obey the laws of mathematics again?

The glory days of 2003-2008? Well, we know in hindsight that that was nothing but an unsustainable real estate bubble.

The dotcom boom of 95-2000? Unless we invent a new Internet that's even awesomer, on the same life-changing scale, we are unlikely to reap the same productivity transformation again.

We have become used to a 4-5% GDP growth figure that is unsustainable. Anything less than it seems to justify maxing out the credit card at low rates until we can get back to the high life again. This past high growth rate has been underpinned by a demographic tail wind (baby boomers), a 50 year trend of women entering the work force, and the steady pace of increased automation and globalization. And with the possible exception of automation, the rest of these trends have levelled off or reversed.

If the new natural normal is 2%, and that's where we are, then this insane deficit and money printing is not investing in our future; it's pushing on a rope. It's making banks rich, resaddling students with debt, and temporarily raising expectations for everyone for a lifestyle that is not sustainable. Some pain now, rather than a lot more pain later.

Right now, the US debt-to-GDP ratio is just north of 100%. I'm not for a balanced budget. But five years of a skyrocketing debt-to-GDP ratio has got to stop. Five years of an 'unacceptable growth rate' is not a storm to be weathered. It's a climate change.

Because one of these days, interest rates will have to go up to their long-term average of 5%. Count on it. When those interest rates are inflation-driven back to their long term average, you sure as hell don't want your government debt much higher than it is now.

Maybe. But not banning guns will affect gun crime never.

Imagine if the 'Patrick Purdy' incident referenced in the GP caused a gun ban to be enacted on everything but single-shot long guns. That was two decades ago.

Got to start sometime. Plus, if you do a total ban on certain weapons, you have the moral authority to hike up punishment on gun crimes with those weapons, right away. There is no excuse for a crime-of-passion, as you are already knowingly breaking the law by possessing a banned weapon.

and from your second at 22:55 GMT:

Did business pick up rather abruptly at 22:00 GMT?

There is a pile of material at the bottom of the pool, and a blue glow of Cherenkov radiation in the water around it.

> TAKE PILE

You cannot take that item.

> INVENTORY

You have:

• a rope
• a watch
• non-radiation-resisting clothes

> GO NORTH

You cannot go that way.

> JUMP IN POOL

Sorry, I don't know what you mean.

> ENTER POOL

You have jumped into the pool.

You have died from radiation poisoning.

> NO.

How does this fit?

Not very well.

Or, if I applied your cited "Law" to your own comment title:

How does this fit?

NO.

...

The best way for me to protect myself with biometrics...is to keep the details of my biometrics out of any government or private company's database, thank you very much.

Are custom-made prosthetics for the disabled not 'noble' enough for you?

Ok. Here's something to make housing more affordable.

What else were you complaining about? Oh, yes. Humanity's presence in the solar system. Well, they've printed airplanes, so with a modicum of imagination, you can imagine printing space shuttles.

I'll leave examples of "reducing the environmental footprint" as an exercise for the reader.

I didn't dig completely into your site, but was just wondering if groups are doing work on speech recognition algorithms on your compressed bitstream? Is this an active area of research?

Of course, individuals from crowds can make false and erroneous claims. However, the beauty of crowdsourcing is that if a claim is indeed true, a large number of people would repeat and validate it, which would give the claim prominence and credibility. Social news sites like Digg, with their “up-vote” and “down-vote” system, use a similar concept.

Not to stroke Slashdot's ego, but I think a meta-moderation system is a better model. A financial institution may remain honest but piss off a lot of vindictive people who can click "Digg this". Whereas a small set of competent savvy number-crunchers may dispassionately find the clues needed to identify a fraud, with far more reliability. I believe they may underestimate the amount of noise that will come from investors who lose a lot of money from a perfectly honest, if incompetent, financial advisor.

There's also no mention in the article of financial compensation models for the crowd - except for the word "volunteer" halfway down the article. I'm not sure if this system would be better with cash rewards or not.

Really? Perhaps in a perfect world where the government prints money and circulates it to small businesses via noble banks, you might be correct.

Except you probably wouldn't be. The government does whatever it can to maximise unofficial inflation at the expense of official inflation. This allows them to pay off their debts while so-called "inflation-indexed" social security obligations are reduced. It's a zero-sum game, where the rich stock-invested people gain at the benefit of the poorer fixed-income people, such as the elderly.

So, no, inflation doesn't "lose" value...it transfers it from the poor to the rich.

And that's still in the "perfect world" scenario of printing money. In reality, what's happening today is that the Federal Reserve is printing large sums of money, loaning it to banks at 0% interest, who turn around and buy Treasuries with a 3% risk, and pocket the profits from the difference. They're not investing in "businesses" - that would be (gasp!) risky! This is why Goldman Sachs just had three whole months without a single day of trading losses. So this money is explicitly going into investment bankers' bonuses, Warren Buffett's 10% yield bonds, and other Goldman investors. This isn't a conspiracy theory - it's in the press releases!

So, yes, those of us who see the value of the gold standard don't necessarily do so to reduce volatility - we do so to reduce the bias towards the transfer of wealth to the rich and the well-connected.

Right...so the answer is to reduce political power. By smaller government. Less spending. Less taxes. You can complain all you want about the venality of politicians, but it's been a problem since Greek democracy and it's not changing now. All you can do is reduce their influence, and their ability to cause trouble and reroute public funds to their friends.

And in a true free market system, the banks would have failed. But they wouldn't, really. Because they knew there would be no bailout backstop, so they wouldn't have taken their stupid risks to begin with.

The free market hasn't failed. It hasn't even been tried.