If Obama were questioned on live TV about surveillance practices I would assume his responses were lies too.

But this is not relevant to question of the Putin/Snowden interview.

Putin is under no compunction to tell the truth. And there's no reason to expect he would.

I don't really have a specific argument about the numbers. Truthfully I couldn't pay attention long enough to really find a flaw in the argument. That said, my gut is telling me author is wrong.

Damn, why didn't I think of this?

People, is it true? Would the market bear a "Republican Technology News" site?

You say that like it's necessarily a bad thing.

We've got to stop acting as if the Founding Fathers were like Moses descending from Mount Sinai with the Constitution chiseled on a couple of stone tablets. They were brilliant, enlightened men for their day, but the Constitution is not a document of divine inerrancy.

The US Constitution is the COBOL of constitutions. Yes, it was a tremendous intellectual innovation for its time. Yes, it is still being used successfully today. But nobody *today* would write a constitution that way, *even if their intent was exactly the same* as the founders.

For one thing it's full of confusingly pointless ("To promote the Progress of Science") and hoplessly vague ("securing for *limited times*") phraseology that leaves courts wondering exactly what the framers meant, or whether they were just pointlessly editorializing ("A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State").

It's also helplessly out of date. The Constitution was drafted before the existence of mass media and advertising; before photography even. It was the appearance of photography in newspapers that woke people up to the idea that they might have privacy rights that were being threatened. A Constitution written in 1900 would almost certainly have clauses explicitly recognizing a right to individual privacy and empowering the government to protect that right. A Constitution written in 2000 would almost certainly have clauses restricting the government from violating individual privacy.

And then there is slavery, an outright *evil* which is enshrined in the founder's version of the Constitution. That alone should disqualify any claim they may have had to superhuman morality.

So if we take it as given that the US Constitution is not divinely ordained, it's not necessarily a bad thing that the current generation should choose to butcher what the founders established. Would you re-institute slavery? Allow *states* to deprive citizens of liberty and property without due process? Eliminate direct election of senators?

So it's perfectly reasonable to butcher anything in the Constitution when you're proposing an *amendment* to the Constitution. That's the whole point. We should think for ourselves. In doing so, we're actually carrying on the work the framers themselves were doing. Every generation should learn from its predecessors, but think for itself.

This will only harm computers that make use of the patent. If you don't run Bill's software, your computer will be fine.

Hmm. That sounds familiar, somehow.

So your suggesting that Glass be made more covert?

No, I'm saying why people don't like it.

So you're saying people would dislike it less, if it were more covert. Whether Google or their competitors should take that as a product design suggestion, is left to the reader. Understood.

So in other words, what somebody says is less important than who says it.

That's true of social science research as well. The difference is that social science research has to pass peer review, and stand up to contrary reearch in the literature.

Of course, y'all have significantly more accidents than us mollycoddled city slickers, so you may want to reconsider the use of "fine" in this context.

If everything the medical industry has been doing has been wrong, why has human life expectancy consistently gone up?

That's an illusion. You only think life expectancy has gone up, because you look at evidence. But suppose we ignore dubious things such as evidence, measurements, math done on those measurements, inferring general rules and then testing them, as well as all our everyday experiences where reality seems to be functioning according to understandable rules. Then what reason is left, for believing that life expectancy has been going up? None, that's what.

Balancing out that nothingness, there's my feelings and intuition and paranoia and whatever dogma I've been exposed to. And those things tell me medicine is bad. Ergo, it sure looks like life expectancy is going down.

HTH.

Sinews (aka "tendons") are bundles of fibrous collagen bound together with an organic glue of proteins and polysaccharides. Sinews can be pounded to extract those collagen fibers, and then those fibers can be spun into cordage of any desired length.

The process is exactly the same as spinning short wool fibers into skeins of yarn, or transforming cotton bolls into cotton thread. The fibers are bundled together and twisted so they lock together and the axis of the resulting cord cuts across the axis of orientation of the fiber, producing a very strong thread. As the fibers are locked together into a thread, you continually add more bundles of fiber to the loose end. You finish by tying off the end of the thread you've created, or twisting the thread into a multi-strand rope.

Collagen fiber from sinew is an excellent cordage material, but less available in large quantities than plant fibers. For that reason you don't see sinew ropes. Although such a thing would be physically possible, sinew is a costly material so it is only used in specialized, low volume applications like fishing line and bowstrings.

Primitive people are every bit as smart as engineers who design microchips or airplanes; they just express that ingenuity through materials they can harvest and process themselves.

Well, my first choice would be to use surplus and scavenged materials, like polyester or silk. In the long run as these materials become more difficult to find, I'd go for hemp or flax. Just about any fiber can be spun into a workable cordage. Shredded animal sinew yields extremely strong cordage.

He MIGHT let the NSA do it, OR he MIGHT NOT. That's a credible a statement as anyone could make.

You can always concoct a situation in a scenario where your skills aren't important.

You're a farmer? Seems like your skills would be useful but wait -- what if the neighboring tribe burns all your crops and steals your seeds?

You're an emergency room physician? How will that help you when bandits club you to death in your sleep?