Or, it's a fundamental problem that Wall Street has the opportunity (Citizens United) to do this sort of thing.

You didn't actually read Citizens United, because you don't know what the decision says.

Citizens United was a non-profit corporation that was attempting to publish a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton. It was advocating against the election of a political candidate. The decision had nothing to do with giving money to politicians, and the CU decision did not overturn limits on either corporate donations to particular federal candidates or on how much money individuals can give to federal candidates.

The government argued in support of its case that it has the power to ban books. If you're on that side of that argument, I don't think you have much cause to object to SOPA.

Do you think government is corrupting Wall Street, or is Wall Street's money corrupting government?

That's a false dichotomy; the interest swings both ways.

But the fundamental problem is that the government has the power to do this sort of thing. So long as it has that power, it will be attractive for corporations to influence it in order to seek rents. Doesn't matter whether you make the money train more opaque, doesn't matter what limits you set: if buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first thing that's going to be bought and sold are the legislators.

Bitcoin price over the past year: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg360zvztgCzm1g10zm2g25

What every asset bubble looks like: http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/graphs-bubble-lifecycle.php

Bitcoins are going to keep falling, they're not at the "despair" part of the cycle yet.

I wonder how much they're getting in tax breaks for this installation. Note that they're doing this in California, not in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and other states in which they presumably receive at least as much sunlight.

There's no such thing as "proving something to be safe." It's not possible. If the bulk of accumulated evidence doesn't indicate sufficient safety, what would?

Stop being a whiny little pussy and get on the plane.

We could also, if we wished, eradicate widespread vaccination and the refrigeration of food.

Yes, this.

Remember when Sony used rootkits surreptitiously distributed on things that appeared to be standard Redbook audio CDs and then used those rootkits to install secret CD drivers on users' computers, which contained no uninstaller and would render the drive inoperable if the user attempted a manual uninstallation, and which also left the users' computers open to invasion by other malware from other parties?

Remember all the people who swore they'd never give Sony money again? They ran out and bought PS3s.

Let's see what they use as examples of excessive hours and draconian rules.

        â- Excessive overtime is routine, despite a legal limit of 36 hours a month. One payslip, seen by the Observer, indicated that the worker had performed 98 hours of overtime in a month.

98 hours of overtime. In a month. I'll grant that's a lot of overtime. If he's working a 48-hour week, call it 192 hours straight time a month, and then 98 on top of that? If he's not working weekends, yeesh, that's a month of 14.5-hour workdays. That's hard, is really is, most people won't work days like that for a sustained period of time unless they're medical residents. Even if he *is* working on weekends, which if you're working that much OT you are, then it would take working 12-hour shifts on the weekdays and then coming in for 10-hour days on the weekends. *That* I've done, and plenty of other people have too without it being "inhumane."

And that's the article's outlier. Look at that legal limit. 36 hours a month? Jesus, the unions in this country would strike long and hard if an employer instituted a flat cap of 1.2 hours/day OT. Raise your hand if you've never worked more 36 hours a month OT. Now get off the computer and go get a job.

        â- Workers attempting to meet the huge demand for the first iPad were sometimes pressured to take only one day off in 13.

Wow. Really? There's a rush of demand and you're so busy you have to work through the weekend? That happens so often in every business that it's a standard joke. And note even the wording: they're not required to, they're *pressured* to, and that only *sometimes*. Again, raise your hand if you've never worked two weeks off without a break.

        â- In some factories badly performing workers are required to be publicly humiliated in front of colleagues.

Okay, this has never happened to me, it's not really a Western culture thing, outside of British public schools. American schools used to stick poor performers in the corner with a dunce cap, if Gasoline Alley and other such comics haven't lied to me, but I guess that's gone out of style.

        â- Crowded workers' dormitories can sleep up to 24 and are subject to strict rules. One worker told the NGO investigators that he was forced to sign a "confession letter" after illicitly using a hairdryer. In the letter he wrote: "It is my fault. I will never blow my hair inside my room. I have done something wrong. I will never do it again."

Crowding? And strict rules? In China? Getthefuckouttahere.

        â- In the wake of a spate of suicides at Foxconn factories last summer, workers were asked to sign a statement promising not to kill themselves and pledging to "treasure their lives".

Ah. The suicides. First, if Foxconn has a suicide problem, this isn't a dumb policy. The "I shalt not kill myself note" is actually a fairly standard bit of psychiatric treatment for would-be suicides, sort of like the suicide hotline phones on some bridges. Maybe it'll help, maybe it won't, but the fact that they're doing it doesn't demonstrate that they're inhumane and don't care about their workers, it demonstrates just the opposite.

And does Foxconn have a suicide problem? I doubt it. Foxconn's huge. They've got a million workers, 17 of which killed themselves over a five-year period. So that's a rate of .34/100k/year. China's overall suicide rate it 6.6/100k/year, so employees at Foxconn are killing themselves at a rate of about 1/20th that of the general population. In *China*. They're killing themselves at a rate of about 1/30th of the US population. So maybe this policy doesn't really demonstrate concern for their workers. Maybe it's just a pointy-haired-boss response to a stupid media panic fed by a general innumeracy amongst the population, I don't know. But one thing it's not is inhumane.

And then there's this bit:

        Workers claim that, if they turn down excessive demands for overtime, they will be forced to rely on their basic wage: workers in Chengdu are paid only 1,350 yuan (£125) a month for a basic 48-hour week, equivalent to about 65p an hour.

Holy shit, imagine that. If my employer requests ("demands") that I work overtime, and I say "No, I'm busy," ("turns down"), I won't get paid any overtime ("forced to rely on my basic wage")? What a bunch of horseshit!

1350RMB/month, by the way, is double what the average rural dweller in China makes, is an above-average salary for an urban dweller in China, and is more than double the annual per-household expenditure in Chengdu. Maybe that's why those Foxconn employees aren't committing suicide very often.

Look, this is China. I'm willing to accept that appalling human rights abuses go on behind the gates of every factory in the place. But the facts as presented in this article aren't saying anything than that Foxconn's a pretty decent place to work if you're living in China and want to get paid.

It doesn't mean 'virgin birth.' Immaculate Conception is the Catholic doctrine that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was herself conceived free of Original Sin. It's got nothing to do with the other Catholic doctrine of the virgin birth, which is that Mary was impregnated with Jesus without any sexual intercourse occurring.

Hope this helps.

Dogfish and McGovern also collaborated on: Jiahu, based on chemanalysis of 9000-year-old pottery fragments from China; Sah'tea, based on 9th-century Finnish sahti; and Pangaea, which is more gimmicky than most of Dogfish head's gimmicks, and includes an ingredient from every continent.

Unfortunately for the free-market personal choice crowd, you can't simply reduce salt in your diet by avoiding the salt shaker.

Most salt comes from processed food and restaurant food, and not just potato chips.

Um...that's a non sequitur. So most salt comes from processed food and restaurant food, how does that indicate you can't simply reduce salt in your diet?

*Eat less processed food*. Eat out less. It's not difficult, nor is it expensive. Problem averted. The free-market personal-choice crowd wins again.

Yes, it does.

No, it doesn't. USC 17 is the law. It was passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. Two parties can enter into a contract if they want to, it doesn't change the law for those not party to that contract.

Under the terms of the current settlement - she has lost her legal right to sue over copyright infringemen

What settlement? She's not party to any settlement. You can I can't enter into a settlement that remove's the RIAA's right to sue over copyright infringement, Google and a group of authors can't enter into a settlement that removes the right of other authors to sue for copyright infringement.

She just doesn't want to be screwed over by Google in a land grab deal negotiated by an 'Authors Guild' that doesn't represent her.

What good is a petition, then? An agreement between Google and this 'Author's Guild' doesn't change the black-letter copyright law of this country. If she's not represented by the Guild, then when Google reproduces her work withour her permission, then she can sue them for copyright infringement.

Enough exercise for what?