It might just mean less practice required for a chorus-line or synchronized swim team! Any untalented hack with the right implant could walk in off the street and become one of the Rockettes!

I heard an interview on an NPR podcast where they mentioned it, too... not that some random guy on the internet is much better than Wikipedia.

I understand where he's coming from. It more than likely does contribute to higher demand for college educations, and thus higher prices. Cost reductions would come from lower demand... not exactly something we should be encouraging.

Fair enough, but It's easier to judge stability from within.

Then again, I've seen people jump to a "better" job, only to be laid off 6 months later. Knowing that you like your situation and that it's stable is worth something, too. I'd probably talk to my employers and be frank about the situation. If you really are that tight, they'll either match the offer or wish you luck! If they're dinks about it, then the choice is certainly obvious.

The net effect of a lack of a mandate is that we absolutely cannot eliminate preexisting conditions (something with near-universal support).

Maybe a Constitutional lawyer will come along and straighten me out on this, but that seems to be a clear-cut instance of regulating interstate commerce.

Just make sure you don't try to pick up the "precipitation" too soon, or you're going to get punched.

Won't be the last time... If that's the case, I agree with you that they should be just as responsible as an individual customer. Having it both ways is bullshit!

ISPs are a "common carrier". They're expected to be agnostic about the content going over their network (which is part of why filtering is so heinous. They're having their cake and eating it too, but that's another conversation). As a consumer, you're supposed to be in control of your traffic, and you don't have the same protections.

I've never been a fan of grain ethanol (except for the amount in beer), except that I've viewed it as a bridge to create a market for cellulosic ethanol. If we were driving around cars with high enough compression ratios, a lot of the efficiency shortcomings could be overcome. However, turning food into ethanol is not sustainable over the long term. I really would have hoped we'd be turning waste into ethanol by now. I'm not quite ready to give op on that, but it's time to go about it differently.

While I don't believe BitCoin will ever be accepted widely enough to make this happen, there are dangers if it were universally accepted.

I will admit that this is an oversimplification, but in an economic collapse, either the value of the currency falls or wages fall. Austrian school economists don't see a problem with that, but as anybody who's ever bought a more than one tank of gas in the US can attest to: prices are SLOW to respond to the reduction in the price of the inputs. Wages could fall much faster than the prices of things like food... Eventually, there will be surplus goods, causing prices to fall, but that's going to take a while. People need to eat more often than that. The logical response by producers would be to produce less, thereby employing fewer people, leading to further reduction in wages. Lather, rinse, repeat.

On the other hand, if a government can devalue its currency in one fairly dramatic step, you create a situation where goods are temporarily cheap, causing people to consume more. Eventually, the prices of the inputs will go up, and the goods will become more scarce, but if you can borrow consumption from the future, you can head off the feedback loop. This has been used to good effect in the past.

If everybody were paid in BitCoins, devaluing a national currency would be ineffective at heading off a recession, leaving few tools in the toolbox.

That's no reason not to treat the "symptom", too. People respond to incentives. If you make the disincentive against piracy stronger, there will be a reduction in the number of pirates.

The problem lies in what the remaining pirates do to make it worth their while. They could become more violent in response, because they need to extract more money to make the extra risks worth taking (which could be a reason not to treat the symptom). It's also possible that the whole endeavor becomes too risky to make it worth doing... There's really no way to tell in advance. My hope is that no matter what they do about piracy, that they are wary about unintended consequences.

Are they worried about how many people would be sticking pins in it?

The Navy only allowed them to fire on real missile during the making of "Top Gun", and the rest were done in miniature. So, the odds are pretty solid that the footage they posted was "fake" anyhow.

Maybe the Chinese should work on their own special effects dept.

Downloads of Avast! antivirus drop significantly...