No one is claiming that recent unemployment is due to mass robotic replacements. It's something that's about to start happening soon when the stuff that's currently in the research pipeline hits the market.

Restaurants may not have replaced their employees with robots yet, but it's coming: http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/2...

I'm certainly not an epidemiologist, but i'm pretty sure there are fairly strong selective pressures for viruses and bacteria to become less deadly as they spread. In fact there is _some_ evidence that this is already taking place.

As you say, the death rate is normally between 50 and 90%, but obviously that's comparing different outbreaks, not an average of all infections from Ebola ever. Some past outbreaks have been at the 90% rate but current reports seem to indicate that the death rate for this outbreak is around 60%. It doesn't seem to me that that's a coincidence. Killing anyone you infect quickly and bloodily is not a great long term survival strategy. If a disease kills 90% of the people it infects in a week and there's a mutation that only kills 80% of the people and takes two weeks, that mutation is going to spread a lot more effectively.

To speak in an anthropomorphic way, every disease "wants" to become the next common cold or flu. Almost everyone catches it sooner or later, but very few of the hosts die statistically speaking.

Just out of curiosity, have you ever read Michael Flynn's Firestar series? There are so many little bits from there that reminded me of SpaceX at when i reread it recently. Though apparently it's not just SpaceX, but everything Elon Musk is involved with.

You can say a lot of things about the negative side of modern nations becoming so invested in the global economy, but there's a good side to those countries not wanting to disrupt that economy by getting into wars. It's the fact that those countries start less wars. There's pretty good evidence that Russia has been less aggressive in the Ukraine than they were originally planning because after Crimea the sanctions issued by other countries have already had a significant effect on their economy. (Russia's Growth Was Already Slowing - Then Came Crimea, Russian government admits economy in crisis as Ukraine weighs, Sanctions Will Work, All Right. Just Ask the Oligarchs)

If Russia's economy had been better to begin with they probably wouldn't have started this whole mess, and personally i think that would be a good thing, even if it prompted Russian ultra-nationalists to complain about the government selling out to corporate interests.

Yeah, but i'm just talking about myself. I'm pretty lazy and don't do most of those other intensive purposes. Of the intensive stuff i do at least 90% of it is on an exercise machine.

So for all intents and purposes i use an exercise machine for all intensive purposes.

That is untrue! For all intensive purposes i use an exercise machine!

You're correct, i misspoke. I should have said that to a lay-person, such as myself and most of the other people reading the news reports, the distinction between a fighter and a ground attack craft are pretty hazy, especially in relation to determining the difference between the two by sight.

And you may think that you wrote nothing that suggested a helicopter, but you said it was a "ground attack craft" that was "pretty much defenceless against fighters, unless it can keep low enough to evade them by jinking." That made me think of a helicopter hiding behind a hill, popping up to hit some ground targets and then ducking back down again. So you said something that to you clearly indicated a plane that attacks things on the ground, and i heard "helicopter," which just demonstrates the difficulty of explaining these things briefly without going into detail. When the reporters said "fighter" i expect that most readers got a more accurate vision of what the craft actually looks like than i was initially getting from your description.

Sure it would be nice if everyone could be educated about everything, and if the nature of the craft that was shot down was key to what was going on in the area then yes, the reporters should have been more detailed in their descriptions and explanations.

However it doesn't really matter in this context whether it was a fighter or a bomber or a ground attack craft or whatever. I don't believe the reporters were trying to hide anything or that anyone is confused about the nature of its mission. It was a thing that flies and kills people, it was flying over there and killing people (or at least trying to) because there's a war on over there. However it go shot down, demonstrating that the other side has both the ability and the intent to shoot down things that fly. That's what is relevant to this particular story.

The fact that you want to add more details and educate everyone about stuff that was left out or glossed over in the reports is fine. Describing reporters using shorthand when talking about non-essential details as an attempt to cover up the killing of "Ukrainian citizens" just sounds like a paranoid conspiracy theory.

Really? Has there been any pretense at all about what it was doing? I'm fairly sure it was always clear it was there to attack the separatist forces. It's unclear whether those forces mostly consist of Ukranian insurgents or under-cover Russians. However even if it is all Ukranians, there's a big difference between slaughtering civilians and attacking what is functionally an army armed with rifles, rockets, missiles and artillery.

And as others have pointed out, the distinction you're making between a "fighter" and a "ground attack craft" are pretty hazy. From your description i thought you meant it was a helicopter, but after looking at a picture i would have called it a fighter myself. Or maybe just a military jet. In any case i think you're making a mountain out of a non-existent molehill.

Looking at pics and descriptions in a couple live blogs, and based on that i've got to say that i didn't like live tiles when Microsoft created them and i don't like them any better now the Google seems to be copying them.

Also, reportedly "Each of your active Chrome tabs shows up individually in the app switcher". If that's true i so do not want. I've got over 90 tabs open in chrome on my phone right now, and about an equal number in Firefox. I do _not_ want to have to sort through all that just to switch apps.

If one has to have a short and specific word (instead of just "photo" or "video" as has already been suggested) then i would go with "SelfPic" or "SelfVid" as appropriate. It may not roll off the tongue quite so easily, but it's only one character longer than "selfie" and, most importantly, it doesn't sound like you're performing some kind of sex act on yourself.

[Citation needed]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

I've only looked through the rules for about ten of the states, but so far it seems pretty damn easy to either get an independent on the ballot or get yourself declared as a major party and thus be on the ballot, assuming of course you've actually got enough people supporting you to actually have a chance of winning the election. (Generally it seems to require an indication of support of anywhere between 10,000 people and 20% of the registered voters.)

So what evidence do you have that it's not actually as easy as that page seems to indicate? And please note that despite being a relatively small group, the Libertarians have succeeded in getting a number of their candidates onto the ballot.

Your #1 is patently false, given the premises. If everyone agreed on a choice, they could elect anyone they want. Getting on the ballot is not as hard as you make it out, and in most places write-ins are possible anyways. Again, you're conflating the reality that many people are lazy and easily misled with the idea that the system can't work. The system _can_ work, it just doesn't because many people are lazy and easily misled, so they don't fight to find the best candidate and make sure that person gets on the ballot.

As for #2, you're arguing that it is impossible to find approximately 537 honest people in America. (Or 1074 if you want to have both a liberal and a conservative option.) Or do you believe that getting into office instantaneously makes one irredeemably evil? And also stupid given that they were elected for essentially a single issue and if they don't follow through they have zero chance of getting elected in the next term.

And remember the disagreement we're having is whether the political process gives the public control over the government. You say they have no control, i say they have control but in aggregate they choose not to use that control. I think we both agree we're never going to actually see the results we'd like, but you seem to think it's because there's something wrong with the system, while i think it's because there's something wrong with human nature.

So don't elect politicians. Pick a regular bunch of people who've never held office before. Get them to sign a binding contract that if they're elected they will disband the NSA. Then elect them. It's entirely possible. We have the _ability_ to do so. We just don't have the collective will and agreement to actually do it.

The voters have _all_ the say. The voters can elect whoever they want. The problem is not a lack of control, the problem is that about half the people abdicated their responsibility and control, a large percentage of the remainder do not actually study the issues in depth, and the remainder are too fractured in their opinions to agree on any one candidate or set of policies.

If we could get everyone in the US to agree that NSA surveillance was bad, and then only support candidates who agreed with that position, then we could end it about 5 minutes after the next election. (Well, about 5 minutes after the new people got sworn in anyways.) The problem is not the system, the problem is the people. And sadly it's probably harder to fix that problem than it would be to reform the system.

Because i generally have no problem going to sleep with the lights on, but often have a tough time getting up in the morning. Having the lights on when i wake up in the morning helps with the staying awake process... a little. (I think i might also have originally gotten into the habit during i time when i was single and lonely. Having the lights on seemed more... cheery somehow. That's obviously not a problem at this point however.)

Given how quickly and deeply i can fall asleep under various circumstances, that i can get up to deal with things like cats throwing up and then go back to sleep right away, can shift my sleeping schedule forwards or backwards with ease, and get by on a couple hours of sleep if i want or sleep for 8+ hours without interruption if i let myself, my girlfriend is convinced that i have some kind of sleeping superpower :)