Where are my mod points? That is insightful.

There is a decided link to promoting eating more sugar and starch and the US population turning fat.

But, but, but The Government told us to eat more starches! So did all the Registered Dietitians! And Michelle Obama! I mean just look at the food pyramid. How could they all be wrong? It would have to be some kind of conspiracy for all the authorities to be so wrong on this.

Are you some kind of conspiracy theorist?

Also implicit is that the only real sin is hypocrisy. Its okay to live an immoral lifestyle; but how dare you hold up morality and yet fall short. So its okay to be a Bill Clinton and dip into the intern pool, but don't be a Larry Craig and be for morality and tap your foot in the bathroom.

Everyone is news media now.

The Tesla has a higher cross sectional area than a prius or a volt(which note are shaped very similarly)

Coefficient of drag and cross-sectional area.

Which goes into my point number two. The curriculum creators don't know how to track back to the requirements. Thus we see crap like this common core math problem

The AC was right, and knows what he's talking about. You aren't actually listing the complete standards, just the summary. Here are some of the complete standards:

CCSS.Math.Content.1.OA.A.1 Use addition and subtraction within 20 to solve word problems involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing, with unknowns in all positions, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.1 CCSS.Math.Content.1.OA.A.2 Solve word problems that call for addition of three whole numbers whose sum is less than or equal to 20, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.

Jason Zimba and William McCallum may be a competent mathematicians, but they do no't know how to write requirements, alternately if they do know how to write requirements and this is what they intended, then they are evil.

Here is the interview with the two guys who wrote the common core math requirements/standards.

From it we see this quote:

"“Like it or not, the standards allow a lot of freedom. People think the Common Core is a curriculum, and it’s not. The curriculum authors are going to interpret the standards in different ways,” Zimba said."

If you admit that the standard/requirement you wrote can be interpreted in many different ways, and I'll add in ways you don't agree with, you've just admitted your requirements were badly written.

Here let me give you an example:
Develop a high school math problem that will demonstrate that a "Mathematically proficient students start by explaining to themselves the meaning of a problem and looking for entry points to its solution."

Or from grade 4:

CCSS.Math.Content.4.MD.A.2 Use the four operations to solve word problems involving distances, intervals of time, liquid volumes, masses of objects, and money, including problems involving simple fractions or decimals, and problems that require expressing measurements given in a larger unit in terms of a smaller unit. Represent measurement quantities using diagrams such as number line diagrams that feature a measurement scale.

Now write a problem that demonstrates a fourth grade student's mastery of that.
Any fourth grade math problem that would show a students full mastery of that is a bad problem. There is too much there. Adding that requirement into a traceability matrix gives you the bullshit we see in common core math problems. These guys seem to know and understand math, and what a student should know, but they don't know how to write requirements.

The main problems with common core aren't the standardized testing, though that is a problem.

Put on your developer hats and think about it like a software project:
The problem with common core is the requirements were written by people who have no idea about requirements development. Not only didn't they know how to write the requirements that had no input from any stakeholders, or users.
These fatally flawed requirements were then implemented by publishers of curriculum that do not know how to do a requirements traceability, nor how to fulfill requirements.
These massively fatally flawed curriculums are being implemented on the students by teachers who cannot follow the badly written code that is the curriculum.

Everyone who was involved in this massive failure to develop a working product should be fired and barred from working on anything similar ever again.

If you don't believe me go and read the math requirements for the what is to be taught. The guys who developed the requirements were complaining to a journalist a while back that it wasn't their fault, and that the publishers just didn't correctly meet the requirements. But upon reading the requirements anyone who's done requirement based development will see that they were a soup sandwich.

And in unrelated news Jon Corzine hired a new 28 year old assistant with banking experience in Moldova...

It seems that if you use a sewer treatment plant as a spider farm you will get much better results.

National Security Letters are not court orders they are administrative subpenas. And that is what are used. Further they can't be a warrant because it would be a general warrant and that is unconstitutional. The Government's position is that any papers of yours that are not in your control you have no right to privacy for them, thus doesn't require a warrant( Smith v. Maryland, 422 U.S. 735 (1979)). That is how come a subpena can be used to compel and no warrant. But they are still your letters. If they were the papers of the telco then the telco could refuse short of anything but a warrant. They could squash the subpena under the business's fourth amendment rights. That this can't happen shows who's papers they are.

Depends on what kind of blackmail the NSA has on him. If its as much as they had on Obama; damn fast. If he's had a squeaky clean life; then probably take a near death experience like Reagan's.

Just because it's illegal or not authorized doesn't mean that they will stop. They'll simply continue and do their best to keep it hush hush

This is true. It also severely erodes the rule of law. As more mundane average productive Americans realize that they're following the rules but the government isn't, and get screwed by it, they'll start to realize they should only follow the rules when they would get caught. This is a recipe for an uncivil society leading to a societal collapse.

Or to paraphrase a saying from communist countries; They pretend to enforce the law and we'll pretend to follow the law.