I see it more as monopoly busting in the last mile, not socialism. The companies sitting on their last mile monopolies are not all about free markets. They are all about capturing legislators and regulators to pass laws and regulations to maintain their monopolies. It is capitalism ("moneyism") in its crudest form, but has nothing to do with free markets.

Unfortunately, the last mile tends to be a natural monopoly, as far as municipal planners are concerned. They don't want companies to come in and compete over the easiest to serve neighborhoods, and leave people in less dense areas out of luck. Planners like that often lose votes. So they have to make a company agree to cover everyone, and then make sure no competitor comes in and serves just the easy areas. See? It just ends up being a monopoly.

So rather than have some new private company come in and take over the monopoly, cities are just deciding to provide services themselves. They do it with roads, sewers, water, and other utilities. Why not internet? You need right of ways, permits, etc. But you don't need to be a genius entrepeneur to run fiber and connect people to the Internet.

There is no need to throw up your hands and give up. Chatanooga managed a high speed public interenet. http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/2.... Plus, you have people like Lawrence Lessig going after the root of the problem of corruption, and getting some serious traction with Mayday PAC. http://mayday.us./ Hell, even I am trying to fix the problems, but I am not getting too much exposure or traction. http://i-party.us./ But I still have hope. There are too many people trying to fix the problem of corruption and increasing monopolistic control for everyone to fail.

I wouldn't be too quick to trust the FDA. David Kessler no longer works there. Industry has gotten much better at capturing federal agencies, and are still learning how to capture universities. True, soda has been around for about a century, but Coke started out in 6.5 ounce bottles, and was made with cane sugar. The six went to ten (which I can remember buying), 12, 16 and now 20 for a single serving. Now it uses high fructose corn syrup. Before you start saying there is no chemical difference, check the science. http://www.princeton.edu/main/...

And, BTW, Kessler doesn't have much good to say about the food industry, and putting sugar in everything. If you don't believe Kessler, you can also listen to this Robert Lustig, who also has a law degree and a medical degee, like Kessler. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... It's a long video, but it changed my life. Mark Hyman also helped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... When I realized how addicted to sugar I was, I was able to treat sugar like a highly addictive substance, and overcome my addiction. I gave it up in May, and feel better than I ever have since I was a kid. I no longer have heart burn or attacks of the blues. I have more energy, better concentration, and I've lost 20 pounds.

Seriously? When you say "Welcome to stupidity, my friends...." There is this tiny doubt that makes me wonder if you are masterfully joking/trolling... The eight people who did the study are professors at serious medical universites (Stanford, Berkeley, etc) and you are saying none of those eight thought to correct for age in a study dealing with the length of telomeres? Or considered reporting bias? That they are all seriously stupid? And their peers at the American Journal of Public Health reviewed and published their work, but you caught the glaring flaw after reading a Slashdot summary of a Toronto Sun article about their study? I hope someone mods you up +1 funny.

There is at least one other study from Princeton directly comparing HFCS to sugar, and finding that rats gained significantly more weight when they had access to HFCS. (I also remember reading about a study from Sweden).

http://www.princeton.edu/main/...

I have puzzled about this myself for a long time. I have come up with two possibilities for why there might be a difference. First, speed matters when forming addictive behaviors. It doesn't matter that cocaine and crack cocaine are the same chemical. It matters that crack goes into your system much faster because it is smoked. I learned in my first year psychology course in college that people taking cocaine reported feeling the highest not when they had the most cocaine in their system, but when the level in their bloodstream was rising the fastest. THAT is when they feel high, and that is the feeling they crave. Rate of change into the blood stream is addictive. So, even though the metabolism may first break down sucrose into fructose and glucose, that speed difference might be akin to the speed difference between cocaine going in your nose or in your lungs. It might be just enough of a difference to make you more obese than sugar, over a long period.

Second, I have heard that HFCS is not merely fructose and glucose. It also has impurities from the process of making it, specifically enzymes that convert starches in corn to fructose. You are eating those enzymes with HFCS. Might it not affect your metabolism? Don't rush too quickly to ideological conclusions based on assumptions. Real world testing does matter.

Anyway, I gave up sugar and HFCS in May. I began to think of them as the addictive equivalent of cigarettes (which I quit ten years ago). Cutting back doesn't work, and never worked for me. Cold turkey is the only way to deal with nicotine, and now sugar. Since May, I no longer have heart burn, I have more energy, better concentration, I don't get the blues very often, and I have lost 20 pounds. From the way my body feels today, I *know* I'm going to live longer.

It's not about nuclear itself. We just can't trust the people running the industry, and that includes government oversight. They will cut corners and claim cost overruns every chance they get. It turns out that big business is just as funky as a traveling carnival show... They're all a bunch of hucksters. This is what makes nuclear look bad.

You can say that about *any* energy technology. We can't trust the people running/regulating the solar, oil, gas, wind, coal, geothermal, electric utility, and hydroelectric industries, because they will cut corners and claim cost overruns, compete unfairly, mudsling at competitors, pollute, pillage, profit, and pass costs on to the public any way they can. And that would only be a half-truth. The other half of the truth is that they would also produce usable energy for the public. Your statement is a call for government/corporate reform overall-- a reform of the system, not a valid criticism of a single sector that is different from other parts of the energy sector.

Originally when the summary was posted (I read it when there were just two comments), the title said "Human Fresh Searching". At some point, the title was corrected to say "Human Flesh Searching".

That's some of the most ridiculous assertive rubbish I've read in a long time. Of course the president can fire the head of the NSA. Any political appointee serves at the pleasure of the president. Even the bureaucrats in the senior executive service in the federal government agencies (On the SES pay scale vs. the GS pay scale) can be fired relatively easily by the president or his appointees. Civil service protections are greatest at the lower levels, in the GS pay grades.

And your point about board members not wanting to fire the janitor at the behest of a 99% shareholder because the board members want clean toilets? Are you on glue?

Well, if you would like to put simplified words into my mouth, how about I return the favor? "The coal barons told me you are going to outlaw my car, and I will have to walk to work! You are a big chicken, and there is no such thing as global warming!" That's your argument. Saying that this is "science" is a slur. As I mentioned, we don't have a set of planets on which to do double blind experiments to determine by scientific proof that our current climate is about to heat up significantly. But I know these things:

1. Carbon dioxide absborbs infrared radiation better than other components of our atmosphere. Thus, when the planet heats up on the bright side, carbon dioxide lets the light through, because it is transparent to visible light. Then, when the earth rotates, the warmed earth radiates heat into space. I learned to calculate "blackbody radiation" in college, and I understand the basic principle here. So increased carbon dioxide traps more heat. It is somthing like putting a layer of foil on your house to prevent radiative losses. You probably have such a layer of foil on your own house.

2. Burning fossil fuels in the atmosphere releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The amount we are putting into the atmosphere is significant, and above all historic levels.

3. Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are above all historic levels.

From these three points, it is reasonable to hypothesize that AGW is real. Going back to the earlier point, we have no set of planets to confirm with double blind experiments. The system is incredibly complex, and there is no hope for absolute certainty without said set of planets. There are many subsystems and interlinks and feedback components, so each time we look at something that seems to suggest AGW, there is always room for doubt that other causes are in play. But doubting at this point is not very reasonable. It's as if someone took a gun from a drawer, pointed it at another person, fired the gun, and the other person dropped. I would suggest that the one person shot the other. Science? Not according to you. We don't know the gun was loaded with live ammunition. What if it was a blank, and the other person dropped for an unrelated reason, such as a heart attack? We don't know this. What if this is just a movie set, and we are watching a movie being filmed? Yes, yes, all great questions. While you were asking, the murderer escaped. ("But we don't know he was a murderer!" Do you like having words put in your mouth to make you seem ridiculous?).

Here's the thing. Nobody wants to take away your car, or outlaw electricity. Stop listening to the fear mongers. They are sitting on a trillion dollars worth of fossil fuel reserves, and they want you to be scared that [admitting AGW] = [walk to work, if you even have a job left]. Actually, a domestic renewable energy industry would create more non-exportable jobs, and more middle class, healthy and clean jobs than fossil fuel production. So here's your new equation. [admitting AGW] = [drive a Tesla to work].

Couldn't agree more. The parent poster (Karmashock) stated, " They noted less sea ice, they noted the walruses, they noted AGW, and just linked A to B to C without bothering to any science in between. That is my problem." So, Karmashock would have liked a scientific study showing how AGW led to the Walrus landing. So, when an abberation occurs, it can't be accepted as related to anything else, unless there is some "science in between". Really, it is too late for that. The abberation has already occured. Do we *now* start a study on the frequency of Walrus landings? Where is the baseline behaviour? How long should the study last? 10 years? Sure, let's study the Walruses for ten years. Maybe we can get a science award for our troubles. It reminds me of a situation in Africa, where a local doctor was fighting Ebola with some success with an AIDS drug. The doctor reasoned that Ebola and AIDS had some similar charactaristics, and that there were known antiviral drugs to treat AIDS. He tried one drug, and it didn't seem to work. He tried a second, and the mortality of his 15-20 patients dropped to 13%. A reporter interviewing him asked if he thought he should wait for some clinical studies before using the antiviral. He scoffed, and said that he was trying to save as many lives as he could. There was not time for clinical studies. When you have a disease with a 70% mortality rate, and it is infectious, you are talking about a serious threat. You need to use your brain, and take some educated guesses. AGW is a serious threat, and we don't have a set of planets on which to do double-blind experiments to satisfy Karmashock's thirst for science. We need to use our brains, and take some educated guesses. If we wait around for all the studies to come in, the situation, be it ebola or AGW, may be out of control.

You moron! Jefferson wasn't even at the Constitutional Convention! He did not write patnets into the Constitution!

"...the laws were made by people with no standards in the first place." I think you are right. Thomas Jefferson had no scientific evidence when he wrote patents into the constitution, passed the first patent laws, and examined the first patents. He was a very dumb person, with no standards!!!!! He should have randomly divided the country into sections, randomly assigned some sections to have a patent system and others not to have a patent system, and then ascertained the monetary effects of a patent system on the different sections of the country using double blind techniques. Only then should he have been allowed to write patents into the constitution.