Or speculation. The current fad of "buy gold for your future" is meant to form a bubble for current sellers to profit from before the bubble bursts.

Yes, we've been waiting for this fiat money crash, as we've been told the end is nigh, for decades now. Still waiting.

The gold standard discussions are always interesting because they all assume that gold has some sort of intrinsic, non-volatile value.
It really doesn't help that much of the "you should buy gold!" press in the last five years has come from people who have a vested interest in the price of gold rising (like Glenn Beck) so they can sell it off at a profit and recent buyers will be hit with a loss. Pretty much the opposite situation from the one Beck et all describe would actually happen if we went back to the gold standard.

Is this that "new world order?"

I always give myself a rule of at least half a day before complaining about moderation. :-)

On one hand...

And every web page looked like Geocities. There was no interactivity, there was no visual polish, there was no load-on-demand. These days we just expect more from our experiences.

And on the other hand...

Possibly due to the decline of standards. Remember when HTML, NNTP, SMTP all how strict operating standards? As long as your client spoke the language properly, you could choose your frontend interface. Now every web site has their own private code for how to handle comments. Some sites like Disqus are trying to make a unified interface/login, but we're still at just a fraction of the usability that we had 15 years ago.

I remember when I first started using email and the Internet in 1993, people thought the idea that you could get a virus just from opening an email (any email) was a joke. An urban legend. It didn't take long for times to radically change.

That second clause is extremely important. The "97% of climate scientists" figure is often used by people claiming that climate scientists are all in agreement. They may be, but "I'm not sure" and "more research is needed before we can draw a conclusion" is an answer that shouldn't be discarded. It's just as valid as "humans are the primary driver behind AGW," and an I'm Not Sure or even "I don't want to say" should be counted and lower the 97% number.

Or +5. Same thing.

Absolutely true.

It was still US soil in 1941, an unincorporated territory.

Ba-dum!

Oh God. I had to read Ecotopia for a college course, and that was a real grind. Ecotopia is... a fucking horrible book. It presents a society that -can't- exist for many reasons, and handwaves away all the social and political issues that result in the collapse of utopian societies.

First, their was the disparaging attitude towards being hard-working, efficient, and getting things done. I think the scene where the Ecotopians were making fun of the outsider protagonist for drying the dishes quickly was one of the most egregious, and he said if he didn't work quickly, he wouldn't get anything done. The response was "sometimes a little goes a long way, John." WTF. Absolutely insipid. And the notion that Ecotopia would repel an invasion from the US by arming everyone in the Sierra with rocket launchers (which they no longer have the technology to make) was lol-worthy. That's the only way / most convenient way into the Pacific Northwest, didn't you know?

Not to mention the book was curiously racist, with blacks being segregated into certain areas (self-segregated, naturally) and gaining semi-independence, with that and the continuation of apartheid in South Africa being offered as proof that sadly, the races could never live in harmony. Of all the ways in which Ecotopia did NOT magically solve problems, that was a strange one to leave out. Somehow, Isreal was offered as proof of how resettling a race or ethnicity would work out just fine. Oh Lord.

Bitterly Books gives a fantastic rundown of the major problems. My problem with utopian societies is they completely disregard human nature and how people actually have conflicts: "A [ political ] meeting has no formal agenda [.] there are no Robert’s Rules of Order, no motions, no votes—instead, a gradual ventilation of feelings, some personal antagonisms worked through, and a gradual consensual focusing on what needs to be done. Once this consensus is achieved, people take pains to assuage the feelings of those members who have had to give ground in order to achieve the consensus.”

Jesus, that book was an assault on the brain. Between that and Atlas Shrugged, and I was almost ready to give up on Comparative Literature and Poly Sci entirely.

Here's the dirty secret most people don't like to talk about. Americans don't like getting snooped on, sure. A number of people don't like the NSA's actions. But more than that, Americans don't like terrorism, and they are quite insistent upon security. Security trumps privacy because the politicians know they'd be swinging from the proverbial nooses if they were to allow another major terrorist attack on US soil. That's what US citizens really want. They might complain about NSA overreaching, but they'll complain a hell of a lot more about security lapses. That's why you won't see much action taken by the NSA.

Are you fucking serious? You do not ride abreast. You do not ride in tandem. That's one of the primary bicycling rules and has been drilled into me by the organizers on every ride I've ever taken part of. Rule 1 is share the road. Rule 2, ride single file, dammit.

I think you should basically use whatever lane it is that leaves you a comfortable distance from the sides of cars. If the bike lane will do that, you'd better be in the bike line.

This is why I avoid many city streets -- most bikers just don't want to accept that there are some areas that are not safe to bike and should be avoided.

That's why I go on rides, NOT races. Well that and I'm not terribly fast. On the organized rides I go on, people are respectful, seem happy to be there, and everyone seems friendly and chatty. Races though, ehhh...