Economically, the intrinsic value of something is approximately

Nothing has intrinsic value. Individuals decide how much value things have for themselves.

The concept of "intrinsic value" requires the existence of an "Uber-Evaluator" who dictates that intrinsic value. Because that value can and will be radically different to different people at different times. But no such evaluator exists, so I must agree with the AC comment that nothing has intrinsic value. Items can have radically different values to individuals and markets depending on circumstance.

Item: An artist spends 2000 hours creating a life-sized Salvador-Dali-esque image of Donald Duck in marble. Intrinsic value? Determined by who?
Item: An operational car a family just wants to get rid of. They donate it to a car-reseller charity. Intrinsic value of the car? Determined by who?
Item: 27.5 pound block of gold. Intrinsic value? Determined by who? To a starving Ethiopian child, it's without value.
Item: Side of beef. Intrinsic value? Determined by who? To the starving Ethiopian, extremely high value. To a vegan, no value at all.

The concept of "intrinsic" value is a lot like centrifugal force - it doesn't actually exist, but we have an idea of what you mean: a "typical price" fetched in a "functioning market" in "typical circumstances." Is a bubble market a functioning market? Heck, this year's Nobel Prize in Economics (yeah, I know it's not named that specifically) was awarded to three co-winners. One, Robert Shiller has done extensive work on bubbles. Another, Eugene Fama, denies bubbles even exist!

A good tutorial book. A. GOOD. TUTORIAL. BOOK. Or even a good online tutorial. But a tutorial is what is necessary, not a reference.

You can't just pick up a reference book and start coding or solving problems from that. That's not what references are for. You need a good tutorial. A good tutorial is worth its weight in gold in my opinion.

Some recommendations:
For LAMP + Javascript development? Try "Learning PHP, MySQL and JavaScript" by Robin Nixon (O'Reilly).

For Java? The Java Tutorial by Zakhour et. al. (Addison Wesley).

You need to spend time finding a good tutorial. And work through the problems. That then leaves the issue of getting a job. With your existing background, and being conversant in the language, it won't be easy (without experience in that field specifically), but it will give you a definite leg up.

What about certifications? Well, I took the Java 6 Programmer certification test. I'm typically pretty good at tests. Because I prepare well. I did just about every problem in the Java Tutorial book. I got some question/answer sample exam from Oracle. I prepared like I always do. And I got raped. Failed miserably. I was shocked. I have a CS degree with a high GPA and my IQ has tested well enough to join those pretentious high IQ organizations. And I got totally owned. So, just throwing that out there for that particular certification.

But that model fell apart when I tried to learn an OO language. I wasn't prepared for that and am still struggling. Luckily my job doesn't require me coding it, but I need to talk intelligently to my programmers so I am still trying.

Think of an object oriented language in this way: It is designed to stop code duplication and help to group similar functionality. It puts frequently used code in "containers" (i.e. "classes") that you can instantiate. Once the object (i.e. class) exists, you can just call its "member" functions / methods. Similar to C.

That's it. It's a just an organizational tool for the programmer.

I have to say, it does require much more planning to come up with objects and their member functions / methods right off the bat. You can write object oriented languages like C functions, call each one when you need it. One issue I've encountered is I'll sketch out a list of actions that need to get done. I'll start coding. Get the five or seven functions needed to do that. Typically something like building a data structure. I realize somewhere else that I need that same functionality. I don't want to run through the whole rigamarole of going through that initialization again. So I make a class out of it. With one line: Classtype X = new Classtype() [ed. note: the Classtype() is a function call to the "constructor" - a standard function across object oriented languages - which instantiates and initializes the new object) Voila! With that line, all the initialization is done and I can use the object / data structure as I need to, with X->doWhatever().

I think the net result is that it is more difficult to plan out an object-oriented program. Actually... if you want to get forced into an easier-to-use mandatory object oriented language, try Java (as opposed to C++). The structure of the language and the source code forces you to create classes. A good tutorial is "The Java Tutorial" (Addison Wesley publishers, authors Zakhour et. al.).

I worked for one. This fellow was extremely smart, gregarious, and just naturally comfortable leading people. ALSO, he was the one who handled the really tough problems, along with the lead programmer. Interesting thing about the lead programmer versus this manager - both extremely smart but two very different personality types.

B) probably shouldn't consider the democratic process as a kind of war

Politics is war without bullets, to paraphrase von Clausewitz.*

In other parts of the world, where assassinations and the like are common, that definition is a bit more flexible.

The reality is that the top political positions in the US are the most powerful positions in the world. And they are bitterly contested. While the face the parties must present to the public is of little girls with pink bows in their hair, puppy dogs and rainbows, to the politicians and their dedicated operatives, it is a vicious business. And the RNC accidentally revealed a bit of that.

It's like in Vietnam. There was the "Studies and Observations Group" - SOG. A mild name for a commando unit carrying out dangerous and deadly special operations. It's useful to keep the public focused on their bread and circuses, except when it becomes necessary to alarm them so as to rally to your cause (left or right).
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* "We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means." -- "On War", von Clausewitz

Google Translate says it means, "Prepare for war."

Tween girls go for pink ponies, Justin Bieber and Twilight.

Adult males in the STEM fields, not so much. For the most part.

Know your audience. Know why they come here (stories and analysis). Don't dumb it down IMO.

In trying to get more readers, make sure you don't lose what makes it attractive to the core audience. That means knowing what makes it attractive to the core audience.

How it's done is here. Basically, you test to see which of the various XMLHttpRequest objects work (basically it's several for Microsoft and one for the rest of the world), and use the one that works. I personally don't do it exactly that way, I use a try/catch block but that seems like a good answer too.

Details on the return values here.

It's quite straightforward. While there are good reasons to use jQuery, there's no need to use it solely to handle AJAX calls for multiple browsers.

If there must be change, there's something to be said for "incremental change."

Another factor perhaps? From The Economist magazine:

"That personality, along with intelligence, is at least partly heritable is becoming increasingly clear; so, presumably, the tendency to be happy or miserable is, to some extent, passed on through DNA. To try to establish just what that extent is, a group of scientists from University College, London; Harvard Medical School; the University of California, San Diego; and the University of Zurich examined over 1,000 pairs of twins from a huge study on the health of American adolescents.

The adolescents in Dr De Neve's study were asked to grade themselves from very satisfied to very dissatisfied. Dr De Neve found that those with one long allele were 8% more likely than those with none to describe themselves as very satisfied; those with two long alleles were 17% more likely.

Where the story could become controversial is when the ethnic origins of the volunteers are taken into account. All were Americans, but they were asked to classify themselves by race as well. On average, the Asian Americans in the sample had 0.69 long genes, the black Americans had 1.47 and the white Americans had 1.12."

-- "The Genetics of Happiness", The Economist, 15 Oct 2011

Insight from Spike Jonze and Ikea (SFW, 1:01 minutes)

But what's the benefit of capital punishment? Revenge? Justice? Deterrence? Closure?

Well, it certainly would have stopped these gentlemen:

1) "Man Who Killed 5 In MN Kills Again Behind Bars"

2) "Investigators have connected a 30-year-old cold case triple homicide in Iowa to a man who was later executed for the unrelated murder of a Missouri girl, officials said Friday."

3) "Escaped prisoner convicted in New Mexico of killing Oklahoma couple: McCluskey was one of three inmates, all convicted killers, who escaped from a contract prison in Kingman, Ariz"

There is a great bullshit test I came up with to give to someone who advocates capitol punishment. Ask them if our court system is 100% perfect in convicting the guilty. Then ask them if that means that means that we are murdering at least a few of the wrong people with capitol punishment. Then ask them if they would still feel that capitol punishment was fair and just if they were one of those people that was selected to die. Then ask them if they still support capitol punishment. If they say still yes, they are lying.

How about if the choice was being killed by a repeat murderer?

Or if the death penalty does deter, being killed by someone who wasn't deterred?

Getting rid of the death penalty is not a cost-free option.

Point of clarification: The financial crisis was caused by fraud and bad debt, not technology. The government actually did convene a quiet inquiry into the crisis (the FCIC - Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission) and results were found, but no action has been taken on it because it was (and continues to be) so very lucrative for many in the political-financial complex:

1) Conclusions of Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission - home page.

2) "We conclude this financial crisis was avoidable. The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire. The captains of finance and the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and failed to question, understand, and manage evolving risks within a system essential to the well-being of the American public. Theirs was a big miss, not a stumble. While the business cycle cannot be repealed, a crisis of this magnitude need not have occurred. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault lies not in the stars, but in us.

Despite the expressed view of many on Wall Street and in Washington that the crisis could not have been foreseen or avoided, there were warning signs. The tragedy was that they were ignored or discounted. There was an explosion in risky subprime lending and securitization, an unsustainable rise in housing prices, widespread reports of egregious and predatory lending practices, dramatic increases in household mortgage debt, and exponential growth in financial firms’ trading activities, unregulated derivatives, and short-term “repo” lending markets, among many other red flags. Yet there was pervasive permissiveness; little meaningful action was taken to quell the threats in a timely manner." -- From the summary document, page 3 actual, xvii in the document: Conclusions Of The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (PDF),

An amusing meme I've seen recently is attributing any standard of living improvement to the financial sector, instead of to the actual technology which causes the actual improvement.

Of Cows and Power Lines
Cattle seem to have an internal compass--one that's messed up by power lines
Posted 1 Jul 2009 | 4:00 GMT
IEEE Spectrum

A team of researchers from Germany and the Czech Republic has already discovered that, all factors being equal, cattle and two species of deer tend to align themselves along a north-south axis using some innate magnetic sense, and that this preferred alignment is disturbed when they graze under high-voltage power lines.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/of-cows-and-power-lines