The figure I was talking about the amount of money U.S. spends per pupil for public schools. i.e. the government money, the tax money (not all federal; I think more than half comes from local taxes like property tax).

The perceived failure of public school system is the failure of the government, yet another evidence why we shouldn't trust it with more money, more power, and more spending discretion. Catholic schools, on the other hand, are doing well, and guess what, they are teaching evolution (compared that to some public schools in certain states).

There are very few things that the government does well or even should try to do (the few things being making war or arresting criminals). Anything else should be done by private citizens, who are the most qualified people to judge exactly how their money should be spent—tax takes that power away from them, and that's why it's evil, even with the supposed "representation".

Yes, keep repeating the lies.

As for the education, U.S.A. spends more per student than any other country (including the socialist European ones). If there are any problems with the public school system, it's not a matter of funding, as you suggest.

As for health care, why is it that nearly all new, more effective drugs are invented by American companies and, all over the world, for the best medical care money can buy, people come to America?

Socialism may help you provide leeches and substandard medical care to all the masses, but it's only by the brilliance of capitalism and individualism that good medical technologies can be invented in the first place. Whether you can afford it, well, the free market is still the undisputed, most efficient resource allocation mechanism (if central planning could even begin to compete, U.S.S.R. would've won the Cold War). Those whose lives are worth the cost of the system will be able to afford the care they need.

There's the saying (in fact, you can buy a T-shirt saying this at Washington D.C. airports): "I love my country. It's the government I'm afraid of."

America is the greatest country in the world in the human history, and it's precisely because it was the only country to celebrate individualism for what it was—the only practical way to promote collective good, given that men are men and angels do not govern.

America (the people, that is, not the bureaucrats or politicians in D.C.) will even be greater if she has more money (naturally), and one of the ways to do that is to reduce the amount of money taken by the government, and the easiest way to do that is to reduce tax, and the easiest way to reduce tax is to cut income tax, which is also the best way to uplift the middle class—there's no easy, arbitrarily set invisible line that separates the middle class from the ultra rich, and given that the ultra rich do not, as a group, pay so much tax anyway (or so you claim), cutting all income tax will help the middle class most, the exact group you want to help.

Horribly unrealistic. Consider the moon:

For an "asteroid", it's a fairly large asteroid—it's large enough that its own gravity keeps it roughly spherical (many asteroids are not large enough to do that).

It's also very close to the Earth. It's probably not very realistic to get anything that's nearly the size of the moon much closer to Earth.

Now, imagine what happens in a solar eclipse: a tiny patch of land on Earth gets the shadow of the moon—even during a full solar eclipse most of the hemisphere sees the sun and receives the solar radiation normally. You cannot cut off solar radiation by any significant amount by placing an object between the sun and the Earth.

A "solar shade" that covers the almost all the surface of the earth might be more realistic, but given that the whole "global warming" is half invented "problem" in the first place, I think for now we should stick to painting streets white, rather than engage in a massive project with no doubt enormous engineering challenges.

Bush was a politician. But then, so is Obama. Expect politicians to cater to their main constituents. These days, such little things like "principle" is out of fashion anyway.

As far as this whole attitude of either administration towards science goes, I'm just pointing out that both administrations are exactly the same—a lot of lip service, and not a whole lot of change.

As for the whole stem cell issue goes, you know, being against funding of stem cell research with federal dollars isn't the same thing as being against scientific progress. Either way, the federal budget for scientific research remains the same, so the funds that weren't spent on stem cell research were spent on some other hopefully worthwhile projects.

One could almost argue that such hot topics as stem cell research shouldn't be funded by the federal government, given their ability to attract private funding—after all, doesn't the whole argument about why we should have federal government funding for science in the first place begin with how basic science research cannot attract enough funding (otherwise why not just let capitalism and market economy, the most efficient resource allocation mechanism known to men, do their job)?

communism?

At least that's the impression one would get reading /., with all the claims about how Internet was never meant to make money (as if the architects of the Internet actually intended anything).

Or you are a selfish tool who is unappreciative of the advantages that the rich are already sharing with you (especially in terms of income tax, for which the rich pay more than 30% of their income and the poor pay none) and are demanding ever more and more.

I hope one day you realize that—preferably before the rich break the shackles of slavery you have placed on them.

And do you know what one of the complaints against Bush's No Child Left Behind was?

That it required pedagogical methods to be scientifically proven [1].

Teachers didn't like that because then they couldn't use anecdote-based or other methods that they would prefer than methods that were "scientifically proven".

Expect similar complaints from the doctors (after all, if they were really scientists, they would've gone into research; there's a reason they chose the career that they chose), and yes, the "O admin" believes in the scientific method just as much as the Bush administration did—it's just the left-wing distortions in the media that made you think somehow Bush stood against scientific progress (remember last year, Bush proposed a relatively generous science budget, but it never got past the Democratic congress).

[1] From Department of Education website, "It only funds curricula and teaching methods that are scientifically proven to work."

But how much are you willing to spend to do it? Or, perhaps more precisely, how much would the people be willing to spend to do it? If Al Gore hadn't lied and made them believe in global warming, would they be willing to pay twice as much for "clean energy" as for "dirty energy"?

It is a good idea not to pee in your own drinking water. But, when the choice is between peeing in my own drinking water or not peeing at all, you know what, I think I will pee in my drinking water and somehow purify it afterwards.

When the "dirty energy" makes so much more economic sense (it would be nice if "clean energy" made economic sense, of course), the only way to get people to make sacrifices for this climate change agenda is to lie to them—as Al Gore apparently realized (see factual misstatements and exaggerations in his "documentary").

For a SIM card? Probably something around $3 to $5. At least that's what I paid in Poland (I know, if I love Poland so much, why don't I move there—I'm just comparing, not saying that Poland is better than U.S.).

Note that I am providing my only phone, and you know, with the SIM card, the expectation is that I will be buying additional minutes on the account, so even giving the SIM card free to me could make market sense. Kinda like how your credit card company (or bank) "gives" your credit/ATM card "for free", because you make them enough money and the card really costs peanuts.

Same here. Just replace "lynx" with a commandline Python script that downloads the Flash video from the YouTube page, which I then watch with MPlayer.

It's so much safer, less burden on my computer, and so much less annoying.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "SIM-only cell phone plan", but there are pay-as-you-go plans from major wireless carriers, like T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon (although Verizon's "pay-as-you-go" is just subscription on daily installment, since you pay daily "access fee" even on days you don't use your phone).

And you don't have to get a new cell phone when you get the SIM cards for these services, so if you have an unlocked cell phone or one that works with the carrier, you just go to the dealership and get the SIM card.

Granted, this is far less convenient than some places overseas, where you can just buy SIM cards at newspaper stands (and I don't think I should have to pay $10+ just for the SIM card, as I did when I got it from T-Mobile), but if you plan on using the same SIM card for a reasonable length of time, like most normal people, it's a minor inconvenience.

Oh, and yes, this is something else I learned from my gay friends. I don't actually have the time to research all these things. I know as much as I know only because I overhear these things from my gay friends when I am at their place for social events.

If I didn't know any gay people, my gut feeling would simply have been "no, don't change the meaning of the word, and especially not by a government action", without any details of issues (such as the unequal powers of spouse and domestic partner). But because I have gay friends, I do know those things now—but even then, my position stands; forcing acceptance on people goes against libertarian values.

You should know that some of the prominent "libertarian" thinkers before and after the Civil War opposed any federal government action or law against the slave states even while encouraging slaves to escape (after the war, they would speak against the forced integration). Just because something is good doesn't mean it's good to force it on people—that's the way liberals think, not libertarians.

Er, no. Abraham, one of the most respected figures of the three largest monotheistic religion, was a polygamist—and his grandson, Jacob (who was renamed "Israel" later in life) also married a cousin (actually, two cousins). And I believe Muslims (who are most emphatically monotheists) still practice polygamy.

If you want to argue that polygamy and marrying cousins is good and want to legalize that at the same time as gay marriage, well, be my guest—that's the exact argument the people who oppose gay marriage have been pushing, that allowing gay marriage will open the floodgates for all these banned, ancient practices. I have no moral judgment to make, but making such argument as a proponent of gay marriage doesn't seem politically ... sane.

If you want to blame proliferation of monogamy on anybody, blame it on Christianity (I don't know how much of this blame will be justified, but at least there aren't any famous religious figures since Jesus' time who had more than one wife at a time ... unless you count some Mormons), but blaming it on all monotheistic religion is, well, historically uninformed.

Also, in your other post regarding LP's position, well, you know what, LP doesn't represent all "libertarians". One party representing all, or even "mainstream libertarians" on all issues would be the very antithesis of "libertarianism" (kinda like allowing free speech and expecting everyone to have the same opinion), not to mention that the word itself has been so diluted that even liberals can call themselves "social libertarian" these days.

As far as I am concerned, the most "libertarian" position on *any* issue is whichever position minimizes the role of the government and forces fewest people (those who were not infringing on others' fundamental rights) to act against their will. Forcing "gay marriage" down on an unwilling populus (i.e. forcing acceptance on people, rather than being satisfied with tolerance; since "right to marry", in the sense of a state-recognized union, isn't a fundamental right (give me any honest scholarly analysis that claims it is, and I might concede this point), making this an "equal rights issue" is dishonest) is not libertarian, as far as I am concerned.

P.S. And, one final point: perhaps I shouldn't have used the word "right" in describing the privileges a spouse in marriage has that no one else has. But that's all I meant: the powers (which are not fundamental rights) of a spouse is vastly different from powers of a domestic partner.

But when someone makes something an "equal rights" issue, the implication is that the rights involved are fundamental rights (i.e. rights that you have as a human being that the governments of the world could not give nor take away—only recognize and protect). Marriage "right" isn't a fundamental right, either for heterosexuals or homosexuals. So, just like I have no "equal rights" to have as much money as Bill Gates (since the amount of money anyone has isn't a fundamental right, only the pursuit of property, which the Founding Fathers euphemistically called "happiness"), gays (or "breeders") have no more "equal rights" to have their union recognized by the state.

If we want to quibble over details, we could also argue about the "equal rights" of straight people to enter into domestic partnership without the hassle of marriage (current California law sets a minimum age (something around 50 or 60s, I think) for heterosexual couples, while no such limit exists for homosexual couples).

If you just downloaded it from some website, barring some very intrusive methods such as deep packet inspection by ISPs (so far, I don't know any who does this in U.S.)—or website hosts who betray you, or maybe the website itself was set up by cronies of MPAA and RIAA)—no, there's no way.

I mean, theoretically, there is a way, because most HTTP connections are clear-text, and any one router between you and the website could potentially inspect every single packet and put the picture together that you downloaded some file from somewhere, but given the effort required, how few people actually download copyright files from websites rather than P2P, or given how much easier it is to take the website itself down, if it's not run by MPAA or RIAA, they don't bother with downloaders in these normal web traffic.

The same goes for FTP, and that one network that we are not supposed to talk about.

As for any other P2P, well, if you connect to one of MPAA or RIAA baits and download, then that's how they will know you downloaded (although in that case you could argue that it was an "authorized distribution", since you got the file from the agents of the copyright owner). But most of the times, they will try to get you by downloading from you (and if anyone connects to you via P2P, they *have to* know your IP; that's how Internet works, there's no way to spoof the IP completely—i.e. no proxy, just spoof to a completely unrelated IP address—if there is any actual data transfer, as opposed to SYN floods and such) ... but in this case, people have made arguments that such downloads (upload from your point of view) is also "authorized distribution", since people downloading are acting agents of the copyright owner.