These bonds don't need to be honored and the behavior of Social Security doesn't change if they're done away with. The general fund would just be tapped to cover Social Security deficits.

Why wouldn't these bonds need to be honored? I understand what you're saying from an accounting perspective: we could wipe out these bonds, we no longer 'owe' social security this money, and we'll just payout the yearly social security benefits from the general fund. I get that, I'm not saying I agree with that approach, but I see what you're saying. What I'm talking about though, is how you could legally not honor these bonds. What makes them any different than the bonds you or I could buy from the Treasury? Let's say I bought a Treasury bond that paid me interest, could the government just decide that my bond was now erased and that my former interest payments would now be paid via the general fund? No investor would trust the government if they tried to pull a stunt like that. Their credit rating would tank and no one would buy these bonds any more.

Furthermore, you don't address the one question in my post, which is "How do these bonds represent an accounting fiction?" Is my mortgage an accounting fiction? Do I really not owe Wells Fargo any money? Maybe I'll call them up and inform them that the debt they invested in was fictional and I'll just be paying them out of my 'general fund' now. But of course the disbursements from this fund are at the discretion of my house budget sub-committee (which consists of my cat and dog both of whom want to increase spending on treats instead).

There is no concept of "solvency" for Social Security. The bonds it supposedly holds are an accounting fiction (and wouldn't come close to covering its future obligations as you admit). It has no assets to speak of. And it is running a deficit now.

Can you explain how those bonds are an accounting fiction? As far as I know, the Social Security surpluses are invested in US Treasury securities (from wikipedia "Under the law, the government bonds held by Social Security are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government."). So how are these Social Security investments an "accounting fiction"? Why isn't it an "accounting fiction" when any other bank, institution, or individual invests in treasury securities? The United States has never failed to pay back these securities.

If the US didn't pay back treasury bonds, it would be a huge deal. That's exactly what the debt ceiling crisis was all about over the summer. And it wouldn't just affect Social Security, it would affect every holder of US debt. So how are the Social Security bonds different from anyone else's? Either everyone's investment in US debt is a fiction, or Social Security is just as safe as everyone else's investment.

One of the things that I find disappointing is that probably the single largest factor in terms of whether a comment is promoted or demoted is the time after the post hits the main page. It is extremely common to see average posts (i.e. limited informational or insightful quantity/quality) rated very highly (probably too highly) simply because they are submitted shortly (within 1-2 hours, often much less) after the parent post hits the main page. Conversely, insanely high quality posts (i.e. those with tons of useful information or insight) that are submitted after the magic window either do not get voted up or are only voted up to a minor degree.

Absolutely, I've made some comments that I've meticulously researched, sourced, and massaged to get the wording just right. But because the post is old, it never gets modded up. On the other hand I've made some quick barely researched comments on a new post that get modded highly and get lots of replies. I wish there were some way to keep discussion going after an hour or two.

Yes there is warming, but it appears our activities are unrelated.

The link you gave says this:

Salby analyzed the annual variations in atmospheric CO2 levels as measured at Mauna Loa with temperatures and found a strong correlation. The largest increases year-to-year occurred when the world warmed fastest due to El Nino conditions. The smallest increases correlated with volcanoes which pump dust up into the atmosphere and keep the world cooler for a while.

Let's first address the word 'correlation' in the first sentence. In any discussion of global warming, the anti-global warming crowd jumps all over any use of 'correlation', screaming up to the heavens 'correlation does not equal causation'. So much so that I now immediately discredit anyone who uses that phrase. I'd just like to point out the hypocrisy of relying on correlation when it suits your findings and attacking correlation when it does not.

Secondly, what he found, and I'm not saying I believe the findings, I haven't seen them/analyzed them/heard anyone else mention them, but the strongest conclusion you could come to from that summary is that year-to-year, humans don't push atmospheric CO2 as much as natural causes like El Nino. However these year-to-year natural causes are generally cyclic. El Nino doesn't keep causing CO2 to enter the atmosphere because it comes and goes. Over several years, El Nino is a net-zero contributor of CO2, it's like zooming out on a sine graph, whereas human CO2 additions is a monotonically increasing line.

Thirdly, "The smallest increases correlated with volcanoes which pump dust up into the atmosphere and keep the world cooler for a while." Okay, so even when natural causes are doing their best to keep the world cool, CO2 still increases. I think that goes to show that there is some more fundamental force pushing up CO2 year-over-year-over-year.

Okay, so in South Africa, bounties for dead rats had the unintended consequence of creating rat farmers which is 180 degrees counter to what the creators of the bounty wanted. It's a classic case of perverse incentives. On the other hand, the software bug bounties are resulting in more software bugs being found and fixed. Exactly what the creators of the software bug bounties wanted. And, no one, not even the bad-analogy-maker, is suggesting that the security researchers are introducing software bugs only to 'fix' them later. So these two situations are really pretty much exact opposites... This is probably the worst analogy I've ever encountered.

I had always kind of figured the Freakonomics guys were more pop-pseudo-science than actual hard science. But I'm not an expert in any of the other fields they've discussed. Now I guess I know for sure that they're full of it.

Did you stop reading the transcript at some point ?

No, but you may have...

It's plainly obvious that someone else sent in an objection to this "note" that he published about the bears. The investigator is simply investigating the allegation. The investigator didn't invent all the criticisms out of his own mind. You could tell that everything he asked about related to something that someone else had alleged. It's his job to investigage:

Page 3 line 6

7 ERIC MAY: Okay, and part of the process of the Inspector
8 General's Office is that we receive allegations, and we go out
9 and investigate those allegations. And the reason we are here
10 today is that received, our office received some allegations
11 pertaining to scientif-- - potential scientific misconduct
12 perpetrated by you and your, uh, coworker, Mr. Gleason, okay?
13 So that's what the scope of this interview is going to be is
14 your participation in the bowhead - the BWASP program?

This is the part where they're talking about the 4 swimming bears one day and 3 dead bears another day and how that could be 4 swimming bears ~ 11% of the population of swimming bears on day 1 and then 3 dead bears ~ 11% of the population of dead bears on day 2, or (4+3) bears == 11% of the population of all bears. Dr. Monnett obviously say's it's the former situation where you have approx. 36 swimming bears on day 1 and then approx. 27 dead floating bears on day 2. The investigator is bringing up the allegations of someone else to Dr. Monnett to let him respond... Which he does. This quote is from an entire section where the investigator is quoting from something else, the transcript even puts his words in quotes. So somebody might be bad at math, but it's not the investigator.

Page 63 line 10

10 ERIC MAY: - let me get to that - well, let me get to the
11 final thing here.
12 CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah.
13 ERIC MAY: "If seven total bears, four swimming, uh, and
14 three drowned represents 11 percent of the population" -
15 CHARLES MONNETT: It doesn't.
16 ERIC MAY: Okay, and we'll - let me, let - "of bears before
17 the storm, then the total number of bears after the storm is 63,"
18 and that's where I came up with the sixty -
19 CHARLES MONNETT: That's just stupid. I - did you do that?
20 ERIC MAY: No.
21 CHARLES MONNETT: That is stupid.
22 ERIC MAY: I'm a, I'm just - I interview -

Then again, Agent May explaining that he's just investigating the allegations that were levied.

Page 83 line 19:

19 CHARLES MONNETT: Well, that's not scientific misconduct
20 anyway. If anything, it's sloppy. I mean, that's not - I mean,
21 I mean, the level of criticism that they seem to have leveled
22 here, scientific misconduct, uh, suggests that we did something
23 deliberately to deceive or to, to change it. Um, I sure don't
24 see any indication of that in what you're asking me about.
25 ERIC MAY: No, no, no further comment on my part. We,
26 we're - I'm just about complete with my - the interview, so -84
1 CHARLES MONNETT: Really? Oh, good. That's it?
2 ERIC MAY: Like I said, we receive allegations; we
3 investigate.
4 CHARLES MONNETT: Don't you wonder why somebody that can't
5 even do math is making these allegations and going through this
6 stuff?
7 ERIC MAY: Well, let me, let me finish the interview, and
8 then we'll, we'll -.

T-Mobile does not have terrible cellular. That is a myth that anyone on T-Mobile can verify.

Alright, T-Mobile customer here. I switched to T-Mobile because I wanted a smartphone and wasn't willing to pay what Verizon wanted.

In Boston, T-Mobile's coverage is great, I have no complaints. However I go back home to upstate NY a lot and T-Mobile sucks all along the Mass Pike in western Mass all while my girlfriend's Verizon phone has a great signal. Then once we get to her family's home, I have no signal while all their Verizon phones are fine.

I also go up to New Hampshire a lot for vacation, and T-Mobile is horrible up there as well. Usually I can roam on some network called Unicel or something, but I dare not use any data or be charged up the ass. The whole while all the Verizon people are fine, and my brother's iPhone on AT&T also has fine service.

It is absolutely true that T-Mobile's service in the city is fine, but leave it and it sucks.

Businesses don't have a 'money room' where they keep all the gold. When you say 'companies to pay' you mean: customers of those companies, in the form of higher prices. In other words, we all pay more. Which is a fine sentiment. Convince everybody. But don't pretend the money will just show up because evil C.E.O. Moneybags was hiding it in a vault somewhere.

Umm... Hello? That's exactly what I said. The higher costs to the companies would result in higher costs for consumers and we'd all share in the true costs of production. I explicitly stated that in my post. And if there are existing companies that wouldn't have a profitable business model if they had to pay for their pollution and charge higher prices to their customers, then they shouldn't exist. It's exactly as the free market would have it.

Imagine if I started a business today that relied on me being able to steal resources from my neighbor. Let's imagine that there;s no way I'd be profitable if I actually had to pay my neighbor for what I was taking. There's no reasonable argument for my business's continued existence. Imagine my neighbor figured out what was going on one day and told me I had to start paying him for what I was taking. What kind of sociopath would I have to be to claim that it's my right to continue to steal from my neighbor, and that any action my neighbor took to claim his fair compensation would constitute theft on his part? Well, that's exactly the kind of sociopath that throws around terms like "cap and tax" as if it were everyone's God given right to pollute to their heart's content.

Yes... the hypocrisy is disgusting. Here you are, using a computer, probably powered by some polluting electric company and definitely manufactured by a polluting electronics company. you fucking thief. Give me back my clean air, water, and land.

I don't believe that you, or anyone else who replied in a similar fashion, truly understand my position. I want companies to pay for the pollution they've caused, and continue to cause. They're essentially getting a free ride by not paying for the externalities of pollution. I want them to pay a fair price for what they're actually doing. This will force them to pass the true cost of their business on to us consumers, which is the way it should be. This will result in higher prices for electricity, computers, and pretty much everything for you and me. I welcome this sort of change. We all need to pay for the true costs of what we want. This would enable consumers to make informed decisions in a completely free market way. There's nothing hypocritical in my stance, I want companies to pay for their actual costs, and I want them to pass those costs on to us.

You may say, 'Well, the computer you're using isn't made out of hemp and sea shells, and the electricity you're using isn't coming from wind and solar, so you're just as much a hypocrite.' But I'm loudly advocating for a change. Put a law in front of me and I'd vote for it. Give me options and I'll take them. Show me one large company with a history of pollution who's advocating for anything like this. They want to continue their current ways and will pay an army of lawyers to keep it that way. They're the ones who will frame 'paying their true costs' as 'stealing'.

Explorer has always been "just an app". You can edit system.ini and replace 'SHELL=explorer.exe' with any other application. e.g. LiteStep, a MAME front end, XBMC, etc.

I remember doing just this on a win98 system a while ago when something became corrupted with explorer.exe. I changed it to progman.exe, the program manager from windows 3, which I was surprised to find still existed in windows 98.

And of course, the thievery implicit in the demand for more is utterly ignored.

And what of the thievery implicit in the pollution of our air, water, and land for over a century by companies who care of nothing but profit? They stole something which we all have an inherent right to enjoy. Now that some people want to tax the polluters, to pay for what they've already taken, people start crying about thievery. The hypocrisy is disgusting.

I don't know... I got a good chuckle out of this:

Everything was overclocking and running at maximum gigabits!

I might be in favor of just letting him ride if we continue to get gems like that.

I've been asked to explain this before, so let me try: Suppose the government issued a finite amount of inches and you had to use them all somewhere. Today, if you buy a piece of lumber 24 inches long it will fit into the space you want exactly. But if the government issued more inches, and you had to use them up, then vendors would end cramming more inches into the same size of lumber. Now, if you buy a piece of lumber "24 inches" long, it might be too short to fit into that space. Or, if you do buy a piece long enough to fit into that space, you will end up with more inches.

Oh, my, God... Please, for the love of anyone who might actually listen to you, do not ever use this analogy again. It's horrible. This analogy is more confusing than just describing the actual situation. It is the antithesis of what a good analogy should be. Please someone chime in here with a barely applicable car analogy, it would be a huge improvement.

Q: How can we bring jobs back home?

A: By directly -- and heavily -- taxing companies that outsource labor and manufacturing. This avoids the pitfalls of tariffs

Umm.. I'm pretty sure that will only hurt American companies that have some off shoring going on. It won't affect foreign companies at all. What's to stop any company from incorporating their former outsourced department as a completely separate company in another country and then simply buy the output of that new company? They're no longer outsourcing they're manufacturing, they're simply buying manufactured goods from another company, which in your example would not be subject to tariffs.

Tell me, how do you return to the previous screen, in an iOS application? You can't, because ever app does it differently. In Android, you *always* hit the back button.

I've got an adroid phone and would love an answer to this: You've navigated to a screen deep within an application. You then hit the home button to go do something else. Then you go back into the application in question... Now when you hit the back button, what happens? The 'last' thing you were at was the home screen, so I've seen some apps simply close and drop you at the home screen. Other apps know your previous history and send you 'back' as if you had never navigated away. There have been several times when I've found myself stuck in a certain part of an app and can't get back to the main screen because the back button closes the app.