So you'd allow someone who wants to blog for a candidate to pay a hosting provider x amount of money and to pay another company to make sure they are top of google search results but wouldn't allow them to pay for an opinion piece advising people to vote to candiate x in the newspaper, local radio or TV?

I would hazard a guess that people spend quite a bit more time on land (where the bees live) than swimming in the ocean. This is like saying I'm more likely to die in my home. Well... yes my home is where I spend most of my time that doesn't make my home more dangerous than other locations.

Harley is working to expand their appeal given that their customer base is getting steadily older. Thats the reason for the new 500 and 750 water cooled base models coming out. They aren't going to do everything right and perhaps will mostly make mistakes but I appreciate that they are at least making an effort and as long as they acknowledge the mistakes and double-down on the successes I think they might be ok. I've always liked their bikes... I just couldn't justify the price and I hate the style-first clothing store feel of their dealerships.

I'm not sure I get your point. Users uploading content is the entire business model of youtube. If the artist is making money off of youtube ad revenue it stands to reason that google is as well.

Boycotts and such never really work though. Telling someone they shouldn't buy an inexpensive product that does the job because of some idealistic notion or other is never going to sway enough people. What will change China is the Chinese. As they become more affluent they will also be growing up in cities with horrible just ... horrible pollution. It will begin to impact health and then their government will begin to respond. They also won't be able to artificially keep the yuan down relative to other currencies forever as they continue to grow. Products will slowly continue become more expensive.

In all seriousness... modern diet and lifestyle. Pre-agriculture man was tall and healthy compared to the little people that populated the world prior to the mid 20th century. Well, the ones that lived. Take a look at some of the early french paintings with plains indians and frenchmen in the same scene. It's pretty laughable. Europeans looked like stunted children next to them.

Only seems weak because we live soft lives and never really fully "develop" into men these days. Most modern males have pretty weak jaws and faces (overbites no room for wisdom teeth etc) not due to heredity but instead environment. If you actually let kids use their jaws to chew stuff instead of cutting everything up and swapped out much of the carb load for more fat and protein you'd see a dramatic change in the populations facial structure. We'd look more like native americans who have stronger features.

It isn't the last mile fiber that is the problem. It isn't Verizon's network at all really. It is the bandwidth to the CDN Verizon refuses to bolster. I'm not familiar with Verizon's infrastructure but I see no reason why FIOS would be any better than DSL in this regard.

If you're not working full time you have time to work 2 part time jobs. Hell even if you are working full time you have time for another part time job

I make several times that but spend less than that amount each month and live in a mid size city in the US. Anyone should be able to live on 30K a year in most areas of this country. Now if you've decided you want to earn that much and let you wife stay home a pop out kids yeah you'll have a probelm. That problem is of your own making though.

The majority of people do not approach such things in any kind of critical way. It has been pointed out for years that just because say Europe has a higher percentage of people that believe evolution to be correct than the states that doesn't mean those folks are any more intelligent or sophisticated. Most people just believe what they are taught and move on with their lives. All they need is some sort of model whether it be solid or undefendable and they are comfortable. That holds true for evolution and pretty much everything else.

You're basically taking the position that just because the entire government is evil that doesn't mean the country is. I think for the purposes of this dicsussion the two are synonymous. The few Iranians I know are good people but that doesn't mean the country isn't really messed up. I'm also not sure that it's valid to say that Iranians as a people have some advantage because they "see through the political BS more than Americans". I mean sure, I'd get super sceptical pretty quick if my government routinely arrested dissidents and paraded them hooded in front of national TV to give forced confessions for things like going out in public without wearing a veil but that doesn't mean I've suddently become more sophisticated or gained any great insight. It just means my country got really evil.

Agreed. I use a bit of ground sea salt as an abrasive but other than that just water. I've never had better skin and it's nice at the end of the day for your face not to be all oily like most whose skins are trying to compensate for the soap having stripped everything away.

The teenagers in the "deep south" dragging down those results probably can't read all that well either. There are all sorts of systemic problems in for example rural Mississippi that go way beyond good math scores but at the same time those kids lead very different lives from the average suburban or urban teenager so I don't think it really tells you much to get an "average" math test score including these groups and then extrapolate something about about the US education system -which granted has its problems.

Sigh.. withdrawn. Canada immigration rate is higher than states. Still though most immigrants are from the states, europe and asia. I still take the position that the states have much more of poor and downtroden category of immigrants.