Honest question - would doing this induce a population crash? If so, then the results could cause more harm than good (or would the recovery cycle be too fast to have an impact?)

...and slavery, and lack of medical care, the lack of a civilized global society...

Sure, you can go out into the woods and live 'off the grid', as it were, but you do so while being completely protected from invasion, wars, raids, and etc - about the only thing you have to worry about is the occasional criminal or two. You can also do so knowing that if you get an infection or suchlike, modern medical help help is not really that far away. Finally, you do it with a huge advantage in knowledge that the 200-years-gone man never had, or could have even if he wanted it.

It's a far cry from the life of a typical family trying to settle, say, Western Kentucky in 1814, where dying young (if you were lucky enough to make it to adulthood in the first place) was pretty damned common. ...they did get to see more stars at night, though.

So, before we make that pronouncement stand as incontrovertible fact, two things are needed...

1) where can we find a completely accurate (or even reasonably accurate) climate model? Even pro-AGW climatologists would shy away from claiming that they have one. Point is, the science is not "settled", unless everyone is agreeing on the mere fact that climate does change over time (which, seriously, no one credibly argues against).

2) what is the rate of change, and is is accurate enough to take action against? If we overestimate, then our best efforts may well over-correct, and we touch off a new ice age. If we underestimate, then there is little-to-no remediation. As it is, there's still too much slop factor, and the degree of confidence isn't high enough across the spectrum of scientists.

This is disingenuous due to the fact that you left out *why* life is better now than it was 200 years ago. Was it primarily due to politics, culture, technology, medical/scientific knowledge... what? Most of what I just listed has bugger-all to do with the climate. In fact, if memory serves we were going through a mini-ice-age around 200 years ago, which makes your advocacy of dragging down global temperatures from today's averages just a touch ironic, no? ;)

Investigate all you like, but do it with two caveats:

1) climate does change, and trying to keep everything just like it is in the 1980s (or whenever) may do more damage than just letting it cycle naturally.

2) before your investigations turn into actions, you'd damned well better know for certain what you are doing - making mistakes on a global level will have global consequences, and will last for a very long, long time.

That's a bit of a problem with slow-changing things like climate... a high amount of effort is required for even a short-term budge, and when you found out you gave it too much gas, it's too late to stop it, even if you let your foot off the accelerator.

Think of it like trying to drive a supertanker or uber-sized cruise ship down a very narrow channel... it takes a very experienced person to steer and accelerate the things safely through tight quarters (and they don't really come with brakes per se).

Carrying the analogy back to the climate, no one is sufficiently experienced enough to know how to apply steering and acceleration (or braking) properly and/or efficiently. Hell, analogy-wise, we don't even fully know what the currents we're sailing through are doing.

Funny part is, there never really was a conflict, and the Church was in on evolution even before Darwin wrote Origin of Species... (you'd think the schmuck had never heard of Br. Gregory Mendel or something...)

But you know, some folks just cannot let fact get in the way of their rants (especially among heretics - I mean WTF?)

Actually, I kind of disagree to an extent...

I say we should allow claptrap like this to air, and for a couple of decent reasons:

* You never know - maybe they might stumble (albeit accidentally) across something tangential that sparks the mind of someone, and that in turn improves real science. It's happened before...
* Stifling such things only lends them credence, and a pre-packaged conspiracy theory that goes along the lines of "they're trying to shut us up because..."
* There is a danger that once you stifle the obvious BS, a strong temptation arises to stifle anything else the Scientific Community doesn't agree with, yet might indeed prove to be the more correct model/theory/hypothesis/etc (see also the debate on AGW). Eventually you end up with a monster that is just as censorious and closed-minded as the folks you originally sought to silence.

I see that an SF City worker got hisself some mod points.

Let the butthurt flow, boyo - you know I'm right. ;)

FTFY.

You are correct, but one thing disturbs me - from TFS:

Using an apartment for short-term rentals is a crime in San Francisco.

Notice the word "crime". What in the unholy fuck is the City of San Francisco doing by saying that subletting is a crime? I get the whole tax angle (but seriously, I don't; WTF is so special about a hotel that a city - any city - needs a special tax for one?), but damn... just something about calling it a criminal activity that is way the hell wrong.

...and economic coercion is harmless? Given the results, I'd disagree. A blacklist is a blacklist. ;)

Unless you "run" Mozilla, your argument is meaningless.

It actually does - if the property is jointly owned and the beneficiary/contract names the surviving member, it's solved.

Otherwise, depending on state law, the usual rules apply (which means in some states, some jackass relative can bung-up/contest the process, etc...)

...Not as much as you might think.

...only because there is the general assumption that both spouses are the biological parents of that child, and/or that any step parents have adopted said child.

Now here you have a point; however, any two human beings can jointly own property, thus erasing that question almost entirely (yes, this includes bank accounts).

I agree with this bit entirely.

Then again, marriage has always been a jointly-faceted aspect of both religion and secular rule - it was founded in early human societies to establish inheritance, lineage (hence the whole "taking his name" thing), property ownership, etc. It was considered a religious thing because religions generally outlasted kings, so it had the relative staying power to act as an authority on the subject. This is sort of why most progressive folks in the 1970's and 1980's had condemned marriage as a "curse of the breeders." Now it's just a means of sticking it to the Man, and at the same time gleaning the benefits and validation that marriage does bring to the table.

Personally? I think that sure, let the marriage laws change to include any two or more parties of any sex or combination thereof (yes, including polygamy, polyandry, whatever), but the divorce laws should change too: Jettison "no-fault" divorce. Barring proven abuse or actual crime, such things as alimony and the allocation thereof based on income should remain in place... for life. Nullify any and all attempts at a pre-nup contract. Barring (again) proven abuse or actual crime, ban both parties from re-marrying in the eyes of the state (or at least have the state not recognize any subsequent marriages). Sleep together all you want, shack-up all you want, do it in any combination thereof - but if you really want to get married, go in knowing that it is for life, and not just only as long as you and your spouse "love" each other (yes, those scare quotes go for hetero couples too.)

I bet modifying divorce laws in such a way would stop marriage from being treated as a political football, turn off a ton of people clamoring for it to be made into such, and instead make into what it was originally intended to be: a life-long bonding of two human beings for the purpose of building a family. Additionally, it would at least start to make people stop and fucking think before popping the question, and perhaps even make them become absolutely certain before they do get married. I further bet that most folks would condemn the idea right away - with the progressives at the head of the charge.

It's not that simple. I could post something that says "I just discovered that the proprietor of $locaBuisness thinks that purple wigs are hateful. I say we harass and hound and blackball him until his business closes and he is forced to begs on the street for a living. Of course, you're under no compulsion or obligation to do it (but if you were a truly caring and compassionate human being, you'd do just that.)"

It's one thing to post an opinion. It's another to demand that people totally blackball someone into penury just because their opinion on a political subject differs.

Consider this: What makes the guy at OKCupid any different from Sen. Joe McCarthy?

I've implemented a similar solution for one of my web apps.
It encrypts the data in the client with a password that they provide before it gets sent to the server. The client also decrypts the value when it receives it from the server.
The password is kept in LocalStorage (a feature of HTML5) so that it is never transmitted to the server.
Assuming the client application is not compromised, this is a great way to keep data secret even from the service operator.

Unfortunately, you won't see this scheme implemented in many apps because almost everyone's business model these days is all about scraping your data for use by advertisers.