Actually I completely support this kind of NASA test, but I question why NASA would want their trial balloons in the Wasthington @#$ing Post.

The article and comments miss the point. http://washington.cbslocal.com... They are trying to regulate the use of the drones for peeping in neighbors yards and windows. They are trying to regulate it in a way without banning them, the over-reaction which will probably occur the first time a nude child shows up on youtube from an evil neighbor's google glasses. The CBS article - and most articles via news.google.com - point out that you can buy these pocket yard drones on amazon and are more nuanced about the policy debate than the /. "government is gonna take your toys away" article.

Mensa members appear to treat IQ as a fixed point, like an SAT test score or GPA that stays in your recordbook forever. But people obviously slow down over time, or suffer psychological symptoms such as paranoia or obsession which may have a deleterious effect on IQ. Some think the act of joining Mensa itself is a contraindicator of highest intelligence (perhaps why they had to dip to 98th percentile, the top thought better of enlisting).

What dating sites actually need is not more dating sites, but a Kayak,com service where I can find dates simultaneously from MENSA, Match.com, EHarmony, FarmersOnly.com, AdultFriendFinder, ChristianSingles, AshleyMadison, HinduConnections, etc., with search-by boxes for attractiveness, income, and other values-based searches. Oh wait, i think the NSA has that already, maybe we can lower the national debt by making it a paid search service.

Agreed. I have no problem with Wikipedia editors being sued. I recently ran across a Wikipedia biography of El Salvador ex-presidente Jose Napolean Duarte which was written atrociously, basically accusing him of being a dictator behind a military coup. I corrected the article, noting he was actually popularly elected (a mayor of San Salvador, not a military coup leader), ousted in a coup, and then brought back in a counter coup, and then again popularly elected. Had to repost it twice, it kept getting "reverted" (it did get fixed but someone has since added "His military regime is noted for large-scale human rights abuses and massacres amongst the civilian population, supported by the Reagan Administration and the Central Intelligence Agency" to the first paragraph). Sure, Duarte was criticized for accepting the invitation of the second coup, but most people feel the human rights abuses were the work of the first junta and those opposed to the Salvadoran land reforms proposed by Duarte. But who has time to fight an idiot editor?

This could get modded "off topic", I guess, but IMHO Wikipedia should encourage defamation lawsuits against its volunteer editors. The main problem is that people with extremely hostile views edit more perniciously, and moderate editors don't have time to fight about it. Unfortunately, that's a remedy of the rich, not for people who don't have the means to sue for defamation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Joseph Benson on the "bullyboys". He is illiterate, never attended school, but knows TV repair.

Pyrolysis for "recycling" plastic waste into oil (or tire waste into oil) has been around since at least the 1990s. The main problems are 2: A) As Irate Engineer states, a polymer is an "added value" and deconstructing polymers back to oil always fails economically when actual recycling to like-polymers is available, and B) as Itzy says, the comparative value of returning it to fuel, vs. leaving it in an Municipal Solid Waste to energy facility and burning it, is small.

I read TFA and cannot figure out what differentiates this from the pyrolysis "waste investments" of the 1990s, none of which really sailed.

Mod parent up. This is a silly idea. Yes, the Non-OECD growth in carbon emmissions is growing enormously. But the non-OECD still has LESS CO per unit of production than the OECD. In other words, a carbon tax would benefit China production from the start. Plus, over time, China's already investing a lot more in CO free energy (as a percentage of GDP) than the OECD is. http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/i.... Trade agreements don't allow WTO members to apply rules specifically against a certain member, they apply to all members, and the West still produces more CO per capita

Obesity too is increasing in China. But if you tax obesity, you aren't going to advantage western countries. .

News at 11. Or is it...? (organ music) Dunnn Dunnn DUNNNNNN!!!

The article winds up with "Another fix would be to prompt users to press a button confirming their okay before an app launches on their TV, as well as regular reminders that apps are loading or running whenever they switch channels." Well, I don't look forward to having to click my remote to approve apps from my couch, but it's not exactly an emergency. Seems appropriate to wait for Miller Beer or Dr. Evil to actually execute the attempt first, before worrying much about the potential for television broadcast content impurities.

Mostly it comes from Marx, "commodity fetishism" (see wikipedia). Using the same concept Marx used to describe how the labor added value of goods and commodities are unseen but known and measurable. Similarly, in regulating an object which is "waste" or "discard" differently from the same material mined and smelted attaches a fetish, ignoring hidden environmental and economic costs of production a waste or secondary commodity. I learned the concept from papers by Josh Lepawsky and Ramzy Kahhat on electronic scrap, but it goes back at least to 2003 http://oae.sagepub.com/content..., or more recently by Graham Pickren of Univ of Georgia 2013 "Political ecologies of electronic waste: uncertainty and legitimacy in the governance of e-waste geographies"

Parent link George Carlin (Q:"Why are we here?" A:"Plastic, asshole.") routine was insightful. Reporting on environmental problems needs to better distinguish between serious harms like habitat loss and species extinction, resource conservation issues (one generation using everything up - like fresh water - disadvantaging later human generations), and what researchers call "fetishizing". The "fetish" is used when people are made to feel guilty about something (e.g. "waste") and continue to attach guilt and responsibility to the item based not on risk but on past human ownership. This can lead to regulations which disadvantage recycling (secondary copper smelters), secondary markets (e.g. used display devices and cell phones) disproportionately to the risk.

There are some interesting academic papers on environmental fetishes and untended consequences of fixations based on previous human 'ownership' and 'guilt association'. Many environmentalists are scientists and are aware of the 'quasi-religion' of moral risk association, but are afraid to speak openly about it the same as the Renaissance's great thinkers were afraid to publicly pose their doubts about Christianity. The philosophers doubted much about sources of Christian ethics but were concerned about replacing it with anarchy. Scientific environmentalists have similar concerns about exposing "fetish" environmentalism without discrediting actual moral progress on stewardship.

Thought this had to be a joke, maybe not. http://www.ibtimes.com/faceboo...