It seems to be working for Iceland, for that matter.

The fact that the military didn't even know about this snap-decision (after TEN YEARS of "on again, off again" negotiations) shows that Dilma Rousseff is simply stomping her little feet angrily at the US. The US/Brazil relationship has always been touchy - Brazil is hypersensitive, and the US *was* overbearing and arrogant.

Ms Rousseff is either acting or stupid. Let's be absolutely candid: Brazil is NOT a first-world country. I would imagine that *any* first-world security agency that has wanted to spy on Brazil HAS been spying on Brazil. Frankly, the only people not spying on Brazil would be anyone who doesn't give a shit about Brazil, and for Ms Rousseff (or anyone with a brain) to not recognize that is simply ignorant or in denial.

She has public constituencies to salve, and is merely making political capital out of the always-useful-bogeyman, the US. That they decided on SAAB in such a snap decision suggests to me, in fact, that they'd qualified either vendor to their own standards, and were just waiting for the bribes/'compensations' to rise to the level that finally justified selecting one vendor or the other.

Not if there are votes to be bought.

...at all levels.

As I calculate, the cost to the government is REALLY more like net $70 billion, when you take the $50bn aid, the devaluation, the forgiven loans, and then deduct the small amount that came back to the government as it sold off its shares.

The FACT is that government handouts validate, enstantiate, hell, they ENCOURAGE and reward the sorts of shitty decision-making that caused them to be necessary in the first place. At ALL socioeconomic levels.

....and she mentioned that they had an elderly woman come in for a doctor's visit.

As usual, the woman was told to bring her current medications, so they could make sure about what she was taking, cross reactions, etc.

She came empty handed. The doctor proceeded to gently explain to her (right away) about why it was so important to bring them while the whole time she tried to explain: she doesn't TAKE any meds.

His reply was an astonished, "At all?"

Eventually she got through to this (young) doctor that no, despite being 74 years old, she was on NO ongoing medications, except the occasional aspirin for when she had a headache.

It was this nurse's impression that the doctor was a) disbelieving, and b) absolutely determined that this woman MUST have some sort of undiagnosed malady that she wasn't being treated for. They tested her all over the place - no diabetes (but rather high blood sugar...she said she'd just had coffeecake that morning), high-ish blood pressure but nothing needing treatment, etc. She was just a normal, healthy old person.

Why would you think a heat pump is more efficient?

If I use the 10% light output, and the rest of the energy is coming out as heat (which I definitely need, and directly decreases my heating bill), how could a heat pump be MORE efficient? I'm using all the output of the bulb?

While the whole system is very cool and 200' sounds like a lot, remember that at highway speeds, a car is covering ~100' per second, so 2 seconds to identify, contemplate, and react to that obstacle.

Logically, in oncoming situations (as a worst-case), two highway-speed vehicles 'detecting' at 200' have only about one second (actually less thanks to inertia, given that control-input and -effect isn't instant) to resolve, contemplate, and react.

I have to imagine the guys working on these systems are acutely aware driving home every day of how astonishingly capable our brains are.

Let's be semantically clear: they prove the system can work, not that the law can work. The law includes the federal end, which - despite desperately optimistic coverage and rationalization by all the major media except Fox who swings 180 degrees the other way (that *everything* is a disaster regardless of evidence) - is still pretty badly fucked, to wit: yes, the Federal website is minimally functional. The rest of it? You know, the functional working bit? Not so much.

Depending on who's reporting, something between 33% and 75% of the people "signed up for care" through the website either have no paperwork, wrong paperwork, or something else preventing their insurer from getting that person signed up automagically; further, nothing happens until the insurance companies actually get PAID. And take a wild guess exactly who the bill says is responsible for paying the insurers if they don't get it from those people? Yes, the taxpayers. So in March, we could already be talking about a mitigatory payment from the government to insurers of TARPish proportions. Why do you think the insurance firms were lobbying IN FAVOR of the ACA? They get MILLIONS of new customers and a 'guarantee' they get paid.

On which basis then, to be logically consistent, we should be talking about water vapor, shouldn't we?

...thing takes on a much less catastrophic feel when you recognize that honeybees are an INVASIVE SPECIES, and that this continent was perfectly-well vegetated without them.

$70bn to save 1 million jobs...so, about $70,000/job?

That's almost as dumb math as "cash for clunkers".

Light duty industrial robot: $60,000.

So, 4000 hours of labor (can work continuously) = about 6 months of 8-hour-day $15/hour labor.

Thank you for COMPLETELY validating everything I've always thought about environmentalists. Much appreciate the laugh on a Monday morning.

A nation of 1.4 billion people, with a gdp of $8 trillion, the largest nation in the world, will manage to reach the moon before a couple of handfuls of mostly-private teams with budgets perhaps 1 MILLIONTH of theirs.

Go China!

I'm 100% certain that in this circumstance, environmentalists WOULD be complaining angrily about 'destruction of saline environment' and 'harm to local species'.

I'm not kidding at all.