s/glib/glibc/

Gnome's glib is actually very clean and readable.

>> He's not fit to write C.
> Which is probably why glibc source code looks like preprocessor soup.

Glib looks like preprocessor soup because it has to be portable and fast. The only sane way to avoid using the preprocessor is to move the logic into the C code. This usually results in better readability, but destroys performance. The insane way would be to duplicate code, which has a disastrous impact on maintainability.

The actual `use value' of gold (as decoration, malleable flexible material, conductor) is about US$80 an ounce. The other $900 is fluff value we've assigned to it because a few currencies were based on it for a while.

How did you get this $80 figure?

I don't understand how one could separate use value and market value, since if you're using something, then you obviously believe it's worth at least what you'd get by selling it at the market price.

but it cuts the Vatican's power bill to zero, and the spare power can be sold to Italy at the market rate, resulting in a significant financial win for the Vatican.

This would only be a "significant financial win" if the money gained by selling electricity in a reasonable time frame (say, 15 years) not only covered the cost of the panels and their maintenance, but paid more than a safe investment.

If this were the case, there would be capitalists all over the world assembling massive solar arrays for electricity production.

biggoted Southern States who were violating the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

It's pretty ridiculous to suggest that the Union was interested in defending the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, because one of Lincoln's greatest acts of tyranny was the unconstitutional suspension of habeas corpus.

In fact, the civil war can be considered a power grab by the federal government, in direct opposition to the Constitution.

Yeah, because buying the slaves and land would've fixed the problem. I'm sure that the Southern States, having received said lump sum payment, would've abolished slavery after this. This reminds me of arguments that I have with left wing nuts who claim if we were nice to the terrorists that they'd leave us alone. There is no guarantee that either the states would've sold the north the slaves or that they would've refrained from getting more slaves afterwards.

Go read my comment again. I never suggested that the North should've bought the slaves. In fact, buying the slaves would raise their market price and encourage the South to get more of them. My point was that the war was so absurdly expensive that it could've paid for the slaves and land for their families.

Do you think that if the slaves were purchased that way, it would've ended slavery? Wouldn't the South have just brought more slaves in to replace the old?

Of course the South would've brought more slaves.

My point is that the war was so expensive that even buying the slaves and land for their families would've been cheaper. I never claimed this was a practical solution. If I had to propose a solution, it would involve not provoking the South with tariffs which essentially amounted to commercial blockades, and avoiding a war altogether.

Americans are taught that the US civil war was about freeing the slaves, when in fact the slaves were only an aspect of a larger economic dispute.

Exactly.

The United States holds the distinction of being the only country where a civil war was tied to the issue of slavery. To put matters in perspective, it would've been cheaper to buy all the slaves and a fair amount of land for them than to pay for the civil war.

The twisted notion that Lincoln's civil war was an act of brilliance stinks of indoctrination.

After watching PETA's ad it's no surprise that it didn't air. I doubt they even have the budget to air commercials during the Superbowl.

PETA probably commissioned a sexy ad knowing fully well it wouldn't be approved by NBC. The fact that it's "banned" gives PETA the Superbowl publicity it can't afford. (And as others have said, Superbowl watchers aren't exactly PETA's target audience.)

(...) or the ability of the government to stimulate by borrowing dollars from domestic and foreign holders of dollars and spending it in particular, focussed areas (since such policy does not rely on manipulate M1.)

The Fed's balance sheet was spent on the first bailouts, and the US is now printing money to cover the current bailouts. The government is manipulating M1.

The author of that piece attempts to confuse the issue by posting a different graph that shows a falling trend in how effective stimulative government deficit spending has been on average recently, and attempting to suggest, without any real reason, that the two graphs are directly related

You're confusing the issue by implying that they are not directly related. Manipulation of M1 leads to an even worse trend on the second graph.

The second graph does show a long-term problem, and particularly does show why, once this recession ends, the US government must, in the subsequent expansion, begin to pay down the debt or at least stop expanding the debt faster than the GDP during expansions

I love how people like yourself, Bernanke and Paulson concede under pressure that deficit spending is disturbing, but at the same time hold a Keynesian attitude of printing money to "stimulate" the economy.

There's only one correct attitude during a recession: liquidate bad debt and expose fraud. Deficit spending during a recession only drains money from healthy sectors of the economy.

If I borrow $100 now and put it to work now, that $100 will have a net effect of the $100 spent x the current multiplier

Right. And the multiplier has fallen below 1.0. The United States cannot print or borrow out of this mess, which is the point that the grandparent post was making.

It's not like the United States has a safe with trillions of dollars that can be distributed or invested in some central planning scheme. The trillions of dollars which are being offered represent money that the US government doesn't have.

From your response I can tell you are a Southern Baptist who has been exposed to "The Mormon Question" or know someone who has. It saddens me to see you so naively misled.

You're very off base. I'm not Southern Baptist. I'm not even American.

Here's the deal: Muslims claim Jesus was just a man. Christians claim that Jesus is God. Therefore, the God of Islam cannot be the God of Christians (because a regular man obviously cannot be the one and only God). QED. No need to invoke the Trinity.

Any religion which rejects Jesus as God is automatically incompatible with Christianity. Reducing the role of Jesus to that of a prophet contradicts the New Testament and the Christian concept of salvation through grace.

Actually, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Mormons, all worship the same God, they just disagree on who was the last prophet.

I respectfully disagree.

The Christian God is Triune, and this "last prophet" is actually the Christian God. The fact that Jews, Muslims and Christians disagree regarding Christ means that they have differing opinions regarding the essential nature of God.

Muslims worship a God which is not triune. Therefore, the Muslim God cannot be the Christian God.

If the prevelence of 40 as a figure is what turns you off, note that semetic languages commonly use the number 40 as a non-literal figure meaning "many" and somewhere around that order of magnitude. However, translations commonly take this literally. Hence, the prevelence of "40 days" for Noah's ark, "40 years" in the desert, etc.

Sufficiently accurate for a religious text, but not at all appropriate for a technical description.

Lending half a billion dollars to a company that's jumpstarting the electrification of transportation? Well that's just good sense right there. So take your libertarian viewpoint to a country that cares.

You don't get to pick which laws to follow and which to ignore. If you think federal funding for car manufacturers is good sense, then amend your Constitution to allow it. The law doesn't discriminate between car manufacturers simply because the Constitution makes no provision for any federal funding of this sort. And if the Constitution doesn't refer to something, then it's forbidden to the federal government.

I'm not even American but I know what the US Constitution says. It's a tiny document written in plain language which anyone with a high school education should be able to understand. You should try reading it some time.