It seems people don't get this, so let's spell it out:

Inflation requires both demand and supply of money. You can't cause inflation simply by increasing the money supply, unless you go totally crazy with it - however, if that supply is there when the economy heats up and demand appears, look out.

Hpwever, 5-10% inflation during a good economy isn't per se a problem: high inflation is a symptom of a bubble economy but may be there without the bubble. And it's the malinvestment associated with a bubble that hurts everyone - "medium" inflation only really hurts people who made the wrong bet on the future value of the dollar.

As long as you don't actually crater the currency, inflation is merely a warning sign of the real problem, and the real problem is people working on things no one wants: from bubbles to government make-work, the stuff we have is just the stuff we make, and if we're not working to make stuff we want or need, we'll all suffer for it.

I wish I knew a good one! Most places are as crazy as ZeroHedge, in one direction or another. I read MarketWatch, but more to keep abreast of market fashion than reality (never read a stock market site for economic news).

The most useful stuff I've ever read on economics was the old-school stuff: on the business cycle, not just boom-bust but which sectors recover in which order - what leads recovery, and what's big when the end of the boom is near, and what survives best during the bust. The history of different kinds of currencies and the problems the had. The various big name economists from the first half of the 20th century, now that we can see the actual economic growth in various countries that seem to follow on or another of them. Everything old is new again.

The dollar is much like capitalism and democracy: it's the worst imaginable choice, except for everything else that's ever been tried. That's really it: the US government is just less effective at ruining the dollar than every other central bank for a major currency. Much of the current value of the euro is simply it's position as "second lest awful currency", a hedge against a reckless Fed.

When the dollar looked rough a few years back, interest in gold perked up, and interest in the Swiss franc bloomed, but the Swiss were apparently uncomfortable with the idea of becoming a reserve currency, and committed explicitly to falling with the euro. Odd choice, but there it was.

If the EU ever finishes collapsing, all the sovereign debt in the region blows up taking the Euro with it (it's only a question of when), and then finally recovers and regains financial credibility, then finally the dollar might be displaced, Or if China has it's inevitable revolution, and happens to emerge as a capitalist democracy, or when India or Brazil finally reach first-world status nation-wide. we might also have other credible currencies. But for now, the dollar is pretty much it.

That's not to say the dollar can't be destroyed if the Fed tries hard enough. But over the past downturn they were actually quite clever: while they were printing ~$2 T in no money via QE, they were removing ~$2T in money supply via bank reserves (while we continue with a 0 reserve banking system, the Fed paid attractive-enough interest that banks voluntarily increased their reserves to unprecedented levels). And the Fed did actually wind down QE. I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop, when that ~$2T in "Excess reserves" comes back into the money supply and turbo-charges inflation, but hopefully that will just be Carter-like, and not a currency collapse.

The purpose of toilets is to receive DRM. Not sure what TFS is complaining about: your cat comes along and deposits DRM in the litter-box; job well done!

Oh Hell no: cats are evil pointy animals to have as pets.

WHOOOOOSH!!!

That was GP's whole point: anybody stupid enough (or forgetful enough) to try to carry something like this onto a plane just isn't much of a threat.

TFA in a nutshell:

"We're going to discover all these neat behavioral things via neurobiology, and change the world!"

It doesn't say they've actually discovered any of these things yet. Just that they plan to.

It reads very much like this.

This is a common syndrome in erstwhile free societies: the police are always complaining that they can't catch criminals, that they need more leeway and exemptions from the law themselves in order to do so.

And when people believe them, the inevitable result is less freedom and more Big Brother.

Anybody who thinks Snowden did not ultimately do us all a huge favor isn't seeing straight.

Hey, this is Slashdot: we don't know about Unicode and we like it that way!

Please elaborate. What are these "bogus" ecological claims?

There are exceptions, but in most states they are few and specific.

Ditto.

"Seem to be absolved from" is not the same as legal. That's a straw-man argument. I wrote "they're not allowed". The dog is not allowed on the bed. That doesn't mean the dog doesn't get up there sometimes. Only that it isn't supposed to.

Having said that, again yes there are exceptions. But those exceptions are very specific and we know what they are.

Though they sometimes might not get prosecuted for breaking the rules, they sure as hell should. That's a genuine societal problem, not how things are "supposed to" be.

"They" put it in huge reservoirs. I used to live there, and I know them well. Also the Central Valley, where a close relative owned a farm / ranch. I am intimately familiar with these things.

And don't ben an ass. "All"? Of course not. Being deliberately literal when I was not doesn't make for compelling arguments. It's pretty obvious that I was oversimplifying.

Still, the basic point remains. Stand at the mouth of the San Joaquin "river" most of the year and see how much water comes out. I have pictures of my grandfather with strings of large salmon caught in that river, back before it was being mostly used up. Now, it's not very common to see more than a trickle most of the year. And ask residents of L.A. about their "river". You've probably seen it in movie "chase scenes"... a vast concrete canal with seldom more than puddles at the bottom of it.

And don't forget groundwater: they've been gradually depleting the aquifers for generations, and they were aware of it.

Yes, I certainly can, and the answer is no.

Guess what? Oregon and Washington make use of that water. Shipping it down to California seriously diminishes quality of life for those who live there, not to mention the environmental destruction that would ensue.

Let California go broke. Hell, it is anyway. People can buy their food from elsewhere.

IANAL, but my understanding is that you are not generally required to go out of your way to assist the police. You are not a policeman, you aren't being paid to be one.

Even phone companies insist on payment for allowing wiretaps, or government requests for information. And even those are only mandatory because there are specific laws that say so (such as CALEA).