Incorrect.

People who advocate a scientific approach to life are dedicated to the process: Investigate observed phenomena, formulate explanatory hypotheses, test them, and when those hypotheses match observed phenomena, they tend toward scientific acceptance as explanatory theories. Many theories are observed to be successful for explaining questions that did not even exist when they were originally formulated. Evolution (as a general concept), quantum theory, relativity, etc. are all successful theories.

The scientific process is hardly "standing there with their arms folded, ignoring the other one". People practicing hard basic science and people applying the lessons learned thereby are engaging in a constant process of observation, discovery, explanation and invention. That's why I wonder what's going in the minds of those who reject science as a way of informing their actions. Science works.

Contrast the scientific process against Faith, whether it's deeply held and closely attended, or simply the acts of charlatans. Either way, the most common response to a challenge from anywhere outside the faith often boils down to "it's a test of faith! Resist it!" On rare occasions, the faithful actually try to discuss the question, but ultimately such discussions end up with believers standing with their arms folded, demanding proof. Or, more often, writing their demands while sitting in their air-conditioned houses, often having received medical treatments informed by evolutionary biology, typing on computers whose existence results from scientific study of quantum mechanics, information theory, and myriad other principles.

I am 54 yrs old, been studying electrical engineering and software development for 42+ years (both parents programmers; it was possible though not easy back then). I've had the opportunity to experience directly and first-hand, the many many orders of magnitude of increase in the power of the stuff we use so glibly every day. This is only one small part of the result of "scientific study".

The phrase "science stands there with arms folded" is diametrically opposed to the truth, which is that those who apply scientific principles to their life's actions are racing to meet an inevitable future as well prepared as possible.

"Rent" in common usage has come to mean "paying to use while not owning", a normal commercial provider/customer relationship.

"Monopoly rents" has the classical meaning:"you have no choice: 'rent' from me, or starve."

As one who bought, renovated, and leases a home to my customers, we *totally* had to add value. The alternative was to pay a bunch of money for a house, then lose a bit of the investment each month because we could only collect low "rent"....

Your statement is true, though. Everybody wants to collect "monopoly rents" which exist in a context that does not require the rentier to add value.

Every valuable real estate, market segment, marketplace, position, technology, system, etc etc etc will *ALWAYS* be regulated. The choice is whether it's regulated by the force of those who wield their power in secret, preserved by any means necessary including deadly force.... Or by an imperfect set of entities whose names are publicly known, are occasionally and inconsistently subjected to public scrutiny, and inconsistently removed from their positions of power.

As imperfect as "government regulation" is, regulation by thugs running the marketplace is consistently less competent, consistently more violent and consistently less productive.

Interesting point on thumb2. I've been working with a radio module running an Atmel AT91SAM3U, whose processor core is a Cortex-M3. Totally an embedded SOC, but its lack of tons of RAM and MMU is a function of its application market positioning, not the ISA. Upon beginning the project, I was doubtful about the thumb2 ISA, but it has surprised me:

The fact that it's not the original ARM ISA has never been an impediment. In fact I would say that its code density is likely a contributor to performance, as it either runs well with small cache, or runs really well with larger caches.

Our project has been implemented using a normal GCC 4.3 series compiler, and I have not hit any compiler/ISA strangeness at any time. This includes our use of some software floating-point arithmetic (not much, though).

The Raspberry Pi would be a *fabulous* micro-server. (I am not a gamer or media enthusiast, YMMV)

I don't know about now, but when I visited my grandparents in Yonkers as a child (many decades ago), the tap water was wonderful.

No.

Look about halfway down the page at a graph showing gender choices in interracial marriages. A smaller fraction of black women intermarry than black men, but the ratio is 22.0 % to 8.9 %. Not "almost always". Additionally, the fraction of mate selection (white, histpanic, asian, other) among those who do intermarry is nearly identical between the genders.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1616/american-marriage-interracial-interethnic?src=prc-latest&proj=peoplepress

I should know better.. Don't feed trolls, especially cowards... But this whole race thing needs to be stomped where ever and whenever it appears.

So in your stock investing process, do you tend more toward a "technical" or "fundamentalist" style?

It seems to me that the style embodied in HFT should be called "hypertechnical at warp speed". I've had a really hard time finding good quality investments in the classical retail investment world. It seems to be much more difficult to get ROI given standard trading time horizons. Consequently, I've moved to the "slow hard capital" route, buying and renting out homes. The basic investment is keeping up with inflation, and the rent (minus costs) is the return. Historically, real estate (not REITs, but the real thing) matches the core rate of inflation closely.

The physical work of managing the real estate would be OK (maintenance is usually good exercise :-) ), but it's getting difficult with my 70+ hour weeks.

Part of what pisses me off about the current financial sector is that it appears that they are skimming investment quality way faster than a normal investor or trader can, resulting in a much more difficult time finding investment opportunities.

Good point W.R.T. college loans.

The good folks in Goldman and lots of other high level "fiscally conservative" executives have made sure that all but the few who chose their parents very carefully are saddled with mountains of debt on graduation.

That way, the executives can wave a few jobs around that pay well enough to let the grads pay the debts off in ten years instead of 30. The grads compete their asses off for those few jobs.

The rest can fend for themselves in private enterprise where, unsurprisingly, other executives are managing the competitive job marketplace with great effectiveness... If by "effectiveness" we mean how well their offer works: "take what you get son and don't bitch about it or I'll move what remains of this company elsewhere." Now *that* an offer we can't refuse!

A small but important improvement.

This may perhaps explain why the finance industry seems to be run by spoiled teenage boys with the keys to the family corvette.

I've *never* worked a week as small as 50 hours in the 34 years I've been in industry, and worked with motivated people, the best and brightest all along. It's just that in a bygone era, we could make a good honest income doing it, without having so many bright and motivated people poached by the finance industry.

With the finance industry raking in the cream of every reasonable investment vehicle (check returns available to retail investors these days), it's no wonder they can make young and bright people offers that they can't refuse.

Real capitalism would be great. A real free market would be great. In the meantime, the people running large and influential piles of concentrated "capital" are bitching constantly about "freedom" while limiting everyone else's freedom as fast as they can.

AT&T buying up the only other provider of GSM service in the country is a perfect example. For another example, note the generally available ROI on retail "capital investments".

Capitalism my ass. This is plutocracy.

Until the word "capitalism" is used properly, I plan to stand by every crucifixion of the lie that is modern american "capitalism" whenever possible.

Huh...
I had a 1979 diesel rabbit,
a 1982 diesel rabbit,

Am very happy with the 2010 Jetta TDI wagon I bought last September.

Good mileage (51+ highway, 35+ city driving, my commute is 6.3 miles), and is totally competent on the on-ramp due to the turbocharger.

I think nuclear power would be just fine if the plants and fuel cycle weren't mismanaged by the executive equivalent of 16-year-olds with keys to the family Corvette. I am disgusted by the irresponsibility that pervades management philosophy. I would also like to hear about more research on LFTR, the liquid fuel thorium reactor technologies, which seem to show some promise.

I work in an industry that works with power companies, allowing them to "shed" load essentially on command, and those commands tend to be issued during peak air-conditioning periods.

Sheds are usually scheduled to begin shortly after lunch and last until just before dinnertime, usually around 500PM. That's when businesses ordinarily reduce air-conditioning costs by allowing indoor temperatures to fluctuate naturally until morning.

I've been in this industry for several years and have never heard of lunch/dinner peaks.

Back to the topic of PV, though: Glossing over many important details, many of us in the emerging load-leveling industry believe PV might work pretty well where peak loads are caused by air-conditioning. FWIW, peak load is extremely expensive, so any technology that reduces the effects of peak load has a higher $/kW value than in typical usage.

I finally bought a Mac a few years ago when I found that 10.4 had most of my favorite utilities, scripting languages and a reasonable compiler, all either built-in or easily installed. I've been very satisfied with its basic openness and developer-friendliness. The hardware is excellent, and I've been completely happy with subsequent Mac purchases.

That said, I hope it keeps going that way, but I am hearing distant rumblings of trouble in Mac-land: The Mac-app store.

If the Mac goes the way of iPod and iPad, then it's over for me because I can afford the price premium for excellent hardware as long as the basic platform allows me to work the way I need to, which is (at the workstation level) cross-platform utility applications to support my day job. The day job is deeply embedded firmware and the Mac supports that work wonderfully.

I don't need to do kernel or major infrastructure development on the Mac; my opinion might differ if I ever ran up against some form of Apple-specified limit to flexibility.

Two houses and counting... It's a good thing that my wife and I are OK with tools, plumbing and home maintenance. :-)

We have *nothing* in pension funds or anything else, since such mechanisms are so "yesterday", except for those who have the right connections. We are moving our savings out of all that jazz.

I see plenty of complaints about "government", but no suggestions other than returning to a time when the boom/bust cycle was so deep and harsh that those cycles took out entire generations of families.

Unsurprisingly, there *were* families that did just fine manipulating gold in its time, or other investment vehicles in theirs. Whether the Fed and its related concept of fiat money is a good idea or bad, its invention came along as an attempt to soften the booms and depressions of the time. The time before big government that you report so fondly was killing so many people, and the depressions were setting the economy back so seriously that the people of the period felt they had to try something.

So the question remains: This "democracy" (which really should be described as a democratic republic) appears not to be ideal. What should happen then?

Call it socialist if you want, the more important question is that I am tired of busting ass only to have a few plutocrats pull 30-50% of my savings when they feel like it. I advocate for openness, honest reporting, and a simple policy of public scrutiny in proportion to influence.

So come up with a credible idea that doesn't give yet more power to the plutocrats or the mob.I am all ears.