Leaving out for a minute that all western nations are socialist to varying degrees. We all collectivize portions of our societies. In most western nations primary and secondary education is free, post secondary is private in most, but free or near free in others. (France has some free university, Cuba all university is free) Ditto for health care and a variety of other sectors. In Cuba you can buy a house privately if you want to, but they have what you might call a subsidized housing program on steroids. Not different in kind from the social housing we have in Canada, just a larger program so that everyone has a home. In Cuba (and China) you vote for your representatives. Each district has candidates but their ability to advertise is limited (no money in politics). Its just that all candidates are from the same party. Not saying that their system is perfect at all, just that all western nations are on a spectrum and Cuba is not so far down that spectrum as many would think.

It is not illegal for me to lie either is it? Its only the reason I lie that can make it illegal. I tell my wife I was at the dentist when I was really in the pub, not illegal. Sell someone a diamond ring when i know for a fact that it is not really a diamond, illegal. Lie to catch a crook? Not illegal

I think maybe these philosophers have not done enough LSD. What does artificial really mean in this context? Are clams artificial because enzymes make their shells from minerals found in the environment? A collection of "Lower" intelligent entities making larger more complex creatures with "higher" intelligence has been going on since the slime molds right? Here on earth robots will just be the enzymes within the larger connected organism of our planet. Differentiating between mostly carbon, and mostly...polymer, steel, copper, etc makes little sense.

Life on earth has been about one part of the earth turning other parts of the earth into more of itself. This boundary of Natural vs. Artificial sounds like something people are supposed to get over by at least grade 9 isn't it?

Correct. As described its a "pump and dump" scam. BitCoin behaves a lot like baseball cards. Or maybe scans of baseball cards to make them digital and make them easy to trade online. The trust chain protocols are neat, but they don't make it a currency. It will be interesting to see what happens when all coins have been mined. In our fiat currency system the money supply is manipulated by the central banks to keep prices stable. We increase the money supply in step with the increases in the size of the economy. If the size of the money supply remained static while the economy grew by 5% a year. Then the value of money of each unit of money would grow by 5% a year. Or to put it another way prices would fall by 5% (deflation). We actually aim to increase the money supply ahead of the growth of the economy by exactly 2% when we can. This bit of inflation helps introduce flexibility into wages. So what happens when the size of the bitcoin money supply is static? If the number of people accepting bitcoins increases than prices would have to continually fall. Its fine to say that a bitcoin is infinitely divisible so something can cost 1bt then 0.5bt then 0.0000005bt. If I advertised my billable rate as 10bt/hour then every hour that went by my rate would be more and more expensive for people. I would have to write some algo that constantly monitored the growth in the size of the bitcoin economy and adjust my rate downward in lock-step. That is kinda crazy. The way it is now, I post my rate and leave it to the central bank to monitor and adjust the money supply so that my rate can remain constant. Also, in a growing bitcoin economy a bitcoin saved, even at 0 percent interest would appreciate in value. The faster the economy grows the more incentive I have to sit on my money (not necessarily a problem since we do the same thing now slowing growth by raising interest rates.) Well anyway, none of these crypto currencies have me worried about the imminent demise of fiat currency and central banks. They just seem like baseball cards and toys for scammers.

2FA

Correct. One needs only to read General Smedley's 1935 book "War is a Racket" to know this is true. At the time General Smedley was the most decorated soldier in American history and was better placed to anyone to know the purpose of American foreign policy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

He is right. It is the same as Christianity was before we put their ideological zealots in their place.

I wonder if the recording industry rights holders in Europe can or have already used this to have links to pirated material removed from Google.

We just need ultraviolet only grid designs on the first 3 or 4 floors of glassy reflective buildings. People wouldn't notice any difference and birds would stop flying into them. The question is can something similar be done to get birds to avoid windmills. With the answer you might get a yummy patent as a reward.

http://www.skepticalscience.co...

However, You have to read the fine print of the cap and trade program. In Canada our version of the republican party tried to peddle a cap and trade program that included something called "intensity targets". The idea was that the "Cap" was not an absolute cap on an industry segment but a cap on "per unit" emissions. So you could reduce you emissions per unit by 20% but double your output leading to a ~180% increase in absolute emissions. It was smoke and mirrors. So read carefully if it is proposed in your jurisdiction.

But it increased — a lot — instead of shrinking

Did you read the part of the summary that says " two dimensional area". The volume of ice is not increasing, not even a little. Below is a link with a pretty thorough explanation with lots of citations pertaining to how the data is gathered and measured. The last line clearly states "Antarctica is losing land ice as a whole, and these losses are accelerating quickly." http://www.skepticalscience.co...

Can you clarify that? Because from my understanding some predictions have been off on one side or the other. Some changes have been faster or more dramtic then expected, while others have been a bit slower or less dramatic but still heading in the same general direction. In fact hasn't the underlying trend has been confirmed over and over by observation? So if a prediction was for all sea ice to be gone but only half is, what would that be proof of to you?

The article states "two dimensional area". A couple of years ago satilite images showed more ice coverage then expected. What they found was that instead of the meters thick ice they found chucks of ice that had melted and then refroze, it was thin and brittle with notice loss of over volume of ice.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Envir...

The same decline can be seen in northern lakes
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activit...

Are you trying to suggest that the earths ice sheets are NOT diminishing?

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