Curious, I read it. It demonstrated nothing about inflation, in fact it said "I’ll consider the inflation objection at length in my next post".

However, I don't need a Interwebs wacko to tell me that you can dry water and drink it. If you produce money with no actual wealth to back it up, be it old-style gold reserve or economic worth of the issuing country, it will cause inflation the moment it hits the economic system. Of course if you kept the quadrillion-dollar coin under your bed and told no one, it would cause no inflation as no one would know it existed; but if you use to pay the US government's debts, you have more currency around and no wealth to back it up; by simple supply and demand, value of currency will plummet (there is less than a trillion dollar circulating worldwide), i.e. inflation will boom so much it will make Zimbabwe look like Switzerland.

Even if the quadrillion-dollar coin would not start inflation, it would tell the rest of the world that the US are ready to issue fiat currency to pay their debt: that would start a bank run to get rid of their petrodollars (guess what, there is no fiat fuel, and you would not be able to buy much oil with those petrodollars). See the link above, according to the Fed most dollars are outside the US, a lot of them in the coffers of countries that need to buy oil.

What the US need is not "more" or "less" spending, it is more of the right spending and less of the wrong spending. The US have humongous military spending, which is by definition unproductive (in fact, destructive by its very nature, though the destruction is usually externalised to other countries). Yes, the military also finances R&D, but that R&D would be better aimed for the US economy if it were financed by universities or the private sector with governmental financial support, instead of being trickle-down adaptations of military technology.

The US have too low welfare, with insane amounts of poverty rampaging across the country; these people have no opportunity of becoming productive citizens because they never receive appropriate education. The point is not giving the poor food and shelter (which is of course still necessary), but giving their children good public schools that give them an alternative to crime as the best option for gaining wealth.

Also, there is a disproportionate amount of inmates in US jails. US prisons house more inmates than China, not just per capita— in absolute numbers . All these have to be fed, clothed and guarded, and this is expensive. It is way cheaper to institute education programs to make sure they don't recidivate, but then again some politicians would not look though on crime, which seems to be more important than to be smart on crime. Also, several states outsourced jail management to privates, who are paid by the inmate and have thereby no interest in re-educating their inmates (in fact, they do want their customers to come back!). More government, less market here.

[...] suicides (which would occur with or without guns)

No they wouldn't. Suicide is not something that is decided upon irreversibly by the person who does it. It can be a moment of desperation that could very well wear off after a few minutes. In fact, if you have any experience with crying children (or adults), you probably noticed that there is a brief transient of desperation while the person calms down. If the desperation is high enough, and this person has undisturbed access to a gun, they can kill themselves on the spot; if they need to hang themselves, cut themselves to bleed to death, take poison, all of these operations require a minimum of preparation, and most importantly they take time (e.g. poison and drug overdose are not immediate; there is still time to call a doctor).

As far as murder rate, the US is relatively far down the list with approximately 4.2 per 100,000. Compare this to ~91 per 100,000 for Honduras.

Seriously? Then I guess the air quality in Beijing must be pretty good, compared to the atmosphere on Venus. Honduras is a crime state that went through a coup just a few years back, and is basically a failed state. The US murder rate is 4.2 (see the wiki), let's see which countries have a lower one...

• Turkey, 3.3
• Uzbekistan, 3.1
• Cambodia, 3.4
• Niger, 3.8 (the poorest country on the planet)
• Afghanistan, 2.4 (war casualties excluded)
• Syria, 2.2 (again, war casualties excluded)
• Jordan, 1.8
• Sri Lanka, 3.6
• Iran, 3.0
• Bangladesh, 2.7
• China, 1.0
• Egypt, 1.2
• Western Europe, average 1.0

So yes, the US murder rate is unparalleled for a developed nation, and much closer to that of poor or half-failed countries. Of course if you drag into the picture narcorepublics and countries that are more like institutionalised criminal syndicates than republics, the statistics look a bit better, but it's like putting lipstick on a pig—it's still 4.2 by 100k.

Actually no he is right, regulated means trained and properly equipped in this sense. The English language has been corrupted over time to mean strictly mean only regulated in the sense of controlled under the law.

I have to call bullshit on this one, barring extraordinary proof. "Regulate" comes from the Latin regula , which means rule, as in "regulation" or "law". It can also mean "adjusted" or "tuned", but normally referred to machinery or procedures, not people or military units such as a militia.

If "regulated" ever meant what you are saying, you are telling us that English imported the word, changed its meaning by the time the US Constitution was written, and then its meaning reverted to its original one (as it is in Latin and Romance languages). I find that unlikely.

Some of the most widely respected invertebrate zoologists I know are also creationists.

Respected by whom? If you appeal to authority, then name it. I for one will not respect to a zoologist who believes in creationism any more than I would respect a chemist who believes in the philosopher's stone or an engineer who as a hobby tries to build a perpetuum mobile.

The US extradition treaty with Sweden has some very curious provisions. See this commentary by a lawyer. Section VI b of the supplement to extradition treaty, in force since 1984, states that:

If the extradition request is granted in the case of a person who is being prosecuted or is serving a sentence in the territory of the requested State for a different offense, the requested State may: (a) [...] or (b) temporarily surrender the person sought to the requesting State for the purpose of prosecution. The person so surrendered shall be kept in custody while in the requesting State and shall be returned to the requested State after the conclusion of the proceedings against that person in accordance with conditions to be determined by mutual agreement [*7] of the Contracting States.

So, in force of this particular clause, once in Sweden Assange may well be quickly aquitted of the trumped-up rape charges, then sent to the Guantanamo concentration camp, and the US government may keep him there indefinitely "pending prosecution" along with hundreds of illegally detained political and war prisoners. Note that section VI b makes no mention whatsoever of the conditions in which Assange would be detained, nor does it specify any time limit for the prosecution. Even if Sweden requested the US to return Assange, the US would likely just ignore the request once they have Assange in their hands, citing national security concerns.

So you are neither Christian nor Jew, since Deuteronomy 17, 1-5 clearly states that infidels must be stoned to death. Or let me guess, you are one of those Christians who never read their own bible?

They have not settled on this name, this is a temporary form to address what was known as Metro until a new name is been found, probably because there is an impending lawsuit in the works.

From TFA:

The Windows team is "working on a replacement term" according to the memo, "and plans to land on that by the end of this week." Until then, employees have been advised to refer to the Metro style user interface as the "Windows 8 style UI.

Pinochet was indicted for crimes against Spanish citizens. Just because you have a certain citizenship does not mean you cannot be prosecuted in other countries. Spain is not the only country that claims universal jurisdiction for some crimes; Italy, for example, prosecutes child molestation by its citizens in any country, and Norway prohibits buying sexual services anywhere in the world.

Also, "the opinion on the US doing it" is mostly influenced by kidnapping and torture by the CIA and other parts of the US government, not legal action from the judiciary with which I for one have no issue with. Garzón operated with legal means only, even though a US-style rendition of Pinochet would have been a poetic justice of sorts.

The provider knows only how much you consume every month or so. A major point of smart meters is that they allow metering on an hourly basis or even faster, so that if you run your power-hungry appliances at night, when power is cheaper, you can save a few pennies. The idea is good: since you make the decision of when consuming the power, you should be entrusted also the responsibility of paying up.

Currently, if you run your washing machine at 8 AM (peak) or 3 AM (minimum), a kWh is a kWh and you pay for it as such. The company simply uses the average price, and as a result people run their appliances when it fits them best, i.e. often at similar times since most people have similar schedules. This causes power surges that stress the grid, which has to be oversized.

If people have some incentive in using power when it is cheaper (i.e. less people are using it), the surges will be smaller, the grid will not have to be oversized as much, and the savings can be used to fatten the bonuses of the power company CEOs.

The privacy concern is that the company knows in real time how much power you are consuming. This can be used to assess whether you are at home, if you are cooking, have guests, have your computer on and so on. The information needs to be stored until the next invoice, hence the privacy concerns.

There are also security concerns: smart meters are small networked computers and can be hacked. Now no one would obviously want to hack your fridge, but you can imagine what would happen if a worm was written to switch off all refrigerating units in any house, mall and storehouse at the same time in an entire country. Worse, used against hospitals or as a prelude to military attack. Ransomware could be used as a ultimate weapon against an entire country. If you think our economy is critically dependent on the Internet, imagine what would happen if the electric grid had the stability of Windows 95, we would go straight back to late bronze age.

I am not sure this has much to do with democracy. Mario Capanna is a great guy, but he has no significant power in the current technocrat government, and much less in the current kleptocrat parliament.

Italy is not interested in GMO because their export focuses on quality rather than quantity. Most people I know (yes I am Italian) are likely to be more passionate about using olive oil instead of sunflower oil rather that having e.g. an honest mayor. Using industrial product such as GMO or anything too far from organic reduces the value of exports, so it is frowned upon.

I really would not have any problem in admitting GMO products into supermarkets, or even buying them, if producers would label them as such. The fact they resisted such a reasonable request has convinced the population that they are hiding something, and that GMO crop are inherently lower-grade if not outright dangerous.

I said "adjusting for proportions", so yes it's Norway and I referred to the Oslo attacks of July 22 (3000 / 300M is about half of 80 / 4M).

No one in Norway can opt out of the national health care. If you want a private practice, you pay with your money. I never met anyone who had to leave the country to find appropriate medical care. When my girlfriend last year broke her ankle skiing, two nurses were on her before she had finished falling (ok, lucky coincidence, they were passing by), and they insisted on giving us a ride on their car (they were off duty) to the hospital. My girlfriend got surgery the same night, the surgeon stayed late (no we did not know the guy), because for that kind of fracture you either operate right away or you wait 1 week and do several reparation surgeries (guess what would have been chosen in a private system?). She had a bed in a single room with her own bathroom, TV, internet access and friendly nurses (friendliness was especially appreciated). Money can't buy this kind of dedication.

I am very happy to pay 30% of my income in direct taxes if this is the level of service I get.

Surgeons don't put anyone through useless surgery.

Unfortunately reality has a known leftist bias. Here is the case I referred to (summon Google to translate). It was a private practice in Milan that put 91 people (at least) through needless surgery, causing the death of 5. The objective was to get the insurance money that would have been paid for the surgery.

This happened in Lombardy, the Italian region with the highest healthcare costs (and, you guessed, the most privatised system) per citizen in Italy. Do not think that the US are any different: a colleague of mine, married to a US citizen, lived a few years in the US, where doctors tried to convince her that she should have had a rhinoplasty, with the excuse that her nose could give her respiration problems (her nose looks perfectly normal); the unwritten idea was, you get a nose job, I give you an excuse, and I get the insurance's money. As this looked very much like insurance fraud to her she got cold feet, got visited a second time back in Norway just for safety, and had a good laugh with her Norwegian doctor.