The original article in the Times makes no such claim and the blog post that the /. article links to, which was based on the Times article offers no evidence that this sweeping claim has any validity. In fact, I remember bridges collapsing and financial institutions collapsing, which leads me to believe that there are many cases where regulations are not cautious enough.

Give me a break. What happens is the EPA acts based on scientific evidence like this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/science/earth/03air.html?pagewanted=all and then the politicians caves in to industry. Mercury regulations were delayed 20 years despite that based on the scientific evidence.

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/bd8b3f37edf5716d8525796d005dd086!opendocument of course, now industry is suing to block the new regulations. http://www.edf.org/health/timeline-delay

Five centuries ago people collected tulip bulbs. They became an investment and a bust followed. A century or two ago people commonly collected birds eggs. They've been around a lot longer than Legos too, but a bird egg collection today is not worth much. The postage stamp collection market is not what it once was because it is a lot cheaper to print stamps then it is to buy them. I'd not bet on Legos enduring because they've existed for 40 years.

One study found that you are less likely to die young if you drink wine instead of beer. It's not because beer causes death or because wine wards death off. It is because at the time the study was done the ratio of wine to beer consumption was strongly correlated with income. Having a higher income was positively correlated with adequate nutrition and health care. Just because drinking coffee correlates with something doesn't mean that it causes it.

In the class war that has been raging for the last couple of decades the wealthy have pocketed the lion's share of the gains in productivity, partly by passing corporate friendly laws. Now, some are arguing that they should have the right to any idea that I have at any time. Why not also give them the right to any vegetables I grow in my garden? After all, I can talk to other employees about gardening around the water cooler and dream up new gardening techniques at my desk. Oh wait, didn't we decide that you can't own a person in the 1860s?

Indeed. I just got one too. I try to waste their time with a live operator occasionally, but they have gotten very good at figuring out that you are stalling.

Sorry, didn't mean to post as an anonymous coward. Clearly, I did not learn quite enough it that class after all.

Just checking total overhead is not very useful but the overhead is broken out, showing things like which officers got how much in salary, on the form 990 that the charity files with the IRS to maintain its tax exempt status. They also show what the non-overhead money funded (I frown on foundations that spend lots of their program money making grants to other foundations). You can look at the past few years of 990s for free at http://guidestar.org/ We've used it to guide our families charitable giving.

but it is shameful if 90% of the money goes to the CEO and board of the shelter. Looking at the 990 lets you know what the money has paid for in the past.

No weapon kills people, people do. That's why no one should deny me my constitutional right to buy a tank and build a nuke.

When my wife went to medical school twenty years ago every lecture was transcribed and a copy distributed to each student which obviated the need to take notes. My understanding was that was pretty much universally true in medical schools. I doubt that has changed and now that she is teaching in a medical school I know that all of the lectures are also videotaped and posted online.

It sounds to me like your son, like me, is not going to spend a lot of time designing sites. I've helped with the occasional site done in a WYSIWIG editor. Every time, I have a steep learning curve and when I come back to it 2 years later because the owner needs a hand again I have to learn a new version of the software in which they have inevitably moved something on the menus, changed the layout of the controls, etc. It's a royal PITA. Sure, if your son is going to code a site a month a WYSIWIG package may be worth the effort, but I'm betting he has better uses for his time than designing sites at this point in his life.

Obama didn't wait. He implemented TARP (passed under Bush), bailed out the automakers, did cash for clunkers, a two year extension of the Bush tax cuts, a partial payroll tax holiday, home energy efficiency credits, etc. He tried to get the banks to voluntarily renegotiate mortgages. Meanwhile the Fed cut interest rates to zero, did two rounds of quantitative easing, and loaned money to banks foreign and domestic.

Remember that Obama inherited a real mess. John McCain was so worried about a collapse of our financial system that he suspended his campaign and went back to Washington to make sure that TARP got through. Bush had turned the Clinton surpluses (I remember talk of retiring the twenty year treasuries) into record deficits.

While he did all of that the Republicans screamed about deficits and the threat of inflation. If he'd tried more stimulus, perhaps they would have been right. Trying to Do more would also have increased the chances of more of his agenda being blocked. It seems to me that you are faulting Obama for making choices that didn't magically turn what many feared would be the next Great Depression into an economic boom. Given the pickle he was put in, I say he did a fine job of balancing the need for stimulus, political compromise, the threat of inflation, and the size of the deficit.

Let's face it, FaceBook can't provide every shred of information about me. Sure they know who my friends are, but Google will be able to layer on top of that things from the location of my cellphone (android), my search history (google.com), what books and movies I've bought (google play), websites I've visited (adwords), and even the contents of my e-mail (gmail) and files (Google drive). Since my primary goal is to only see relevant ads I'm going with Google+ and I assume advertisers will push me in that direction anyway once they realize how effective Google ads can be.

The solution is not to allow my genes to be patented but to have the government fund basic research on what genes do and let the private sector slug it out. Many companies can then produce tests that are cheaper, faster, and better. That way they would compete on price and quality, not on being first to gain a monopoly position. We have lots of public infrastructure, like roads, that companies like UPS and FedEx share. It keeps costs low. Imagine if UPS could get exclusive access to Interstate 80 while FedEx got I-75. Not an efficient system if your goal is serving society even it FedEx and UPS funded their individual highways.