I have noticed over the past few years that ants in my area have "learned" to avoid consuming Raid borax laced syrup. I remember early on in my house that ants would feast on the stuff, sucking large drops dry in a matter of minutes. Now, the new ants crawl up to the syrup I have left, seem to probe it, and then run away quickly. Even if I applied the syrup to an established ant pathway, they go around the drops without consuming any of it. I don't know whether they are averse to eating the sugar, or whether they can somehow sense the borax in the syrup. There seems to be some evolution going on here.

they just happen to have religious beliefs that match the science on a few points.

Isn't that better than religious beliefs that don't match the science on any points?

According to TFA, the fat lady has finished singing, the umpire has determined that RP was guilty of knowingly making false squatting accusations.

Panama:
Have you considered that Hary Alderson in Vermont would be a fool to legally entangle his personal assets (such as his house) with his very public political advocacy sites?

Have you considered that registering a company (or two) in Panama might be the cheapest way to avoid the very real possibility of personal bankruptcy should the web sites be sued out of existence for some reason?

Have you considered that separating the sites into two different legal entities means that one can continue if the other goes belly up? It also means one can be a business and the other a tax deductible charity.

Have you considered that your affection for RP may be clouding your judgement?

Have you considered RTFA?

A comprehensive mailing list for RP fanatics, and a revenue stream from advertising.

While we are on the subject of "fairness" according to TFA the umpire found RP to be engaging in "reverse domain name hijacking" (knowingly making a false accusation of squatting).

I think it would be just as foolish to dismiss this outright, considering the " tantalizing hints that there may be something to it" and the developing theories as it would be to start dumping your life savings into Rossi's company.

No, not really. It's the "tantalizing hints that there may be something to it" part which pretty much screams bullshit. Fusion is not exactly subtle; if it's going on, it's not hard to detect, and hasn't been. Furthermore, according to the Wikipedia link, the device was covered up during demonstrations, actively hindering any kind of measurements. Add those together and shave with Occam's razor, and you get "conman".

Also, fusion is not really all that hard to achieve. For example, a fusor is simple enough for a hobbyist project. What's hard is a fusion device with a net energy output; we don't even know if Rossi's device is doing fusion at all, so why would we even begin to assume it's not only doing so but generating more power than it consumes?

So yeah, with the information we have, this seems like exactly the kind of thing that should be dismissed outright.

Compare this with (old copper based) pennies, where the metal value is more than double the face value at 215%.

I sense a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of pennies suddenly screamed out in terror and were melted down to scrap.

Write a robust system that has a sufficiently complex job to do, on time and on budget.

This is true of any imaginable language.

For personal loans this is true - not so much as illegal as a lot of regulation to discourage it. Most bonds have penalties for early repayment.

When we're talking about public expenditures/loans to business, early repayment penalties don't make sense. As I said, the government isn't making these loans in order to profit from the interest. They're making the loans to help industry and the economy.

And your data on how government investments have been very profitable? profitable for who? and by who's standards are you measuring this profitability?

Do you really need data to tell you that the interstate highway system has been profitable for everyone? The Internet?

The fact that there is even an argument about whether government investment has been beneficial shows just how far the country has shifted from fact-based to tribal/faith-based when it comes to politics. All I can say is "Good luck with that".

Those who would trade their freedom for security deserve neither freedom nor security.

Ben Franklin

I know the episode your talking about and remember the message. It's probably no coincidence that Nixon split his guts to David Frost in 1977. The FBI under J.E. Hoover had been spying on US citizens for decades, they routinely infiltrated and sabotaged non violent groups such as anti-war protesters, as an example of how absurd it became they had a huge dossier on John Lennon. I'm not an American but I was 17 at the time and watergate was a huge affair, it was clear that the kind of thing that happened at the Watergate hotel was routine, the scandal was followed by some significant legislation on what data government could collect, and under what circumstances domestic groups could be infiltrated. It doesn't seem to have worked, I would not be at all surprised if someone found a similar dossier on the "Dixie Chicks" buried somewhere in Homeland security's basement.

As an Aussie I would like to give Letterman a pat on the back for what he's been doing with his "stooge of the day" segment, regardless of your views on gun control, the point he keeps hammering home is that all the stooges voted in direct opposition to the expressed wishes of an overwhelming majority of their constituents. Every single stooge on Letterman's show is a specific example of an individual politician doing their bit to "steal your liberty". Sure politicians should lead rather than follow the opinion polls, but when they are so out of kilter with them (in some cases taking a position opposed by over 90% of voters), they have some 'splaining to do.

One pundit called him the "Magic Negro"

Well, isn't that what he was voted into office as? "Hope and change" - if you vote for him, everything will miraculously be fine again, rather than continue crumbling. That it actually worked - twice - tells something about how desperate people are getting.

I recently listened to the excellent History of Rome podcast, and one thing that struck home is the politics of the old Roman Republic. It would be trivial to sort many Roman politicians into left-right.

Because they actually were or because the podcaster had already done so when preparing the cast? After all, every political idea can be fitted into a left-right axis, just like any point on Earth's surface has a latitude. That does not mean it's sufficient information to capture the essence of the idea.

The more complex the subject and the less certain the data, the easier it's to see exactly what you expect to see.

There's a good risk of loss in many cases (see the history!)

Taken as a whole, government investments like have very rarely lost. Even in the contentious past 5 years, the government investment in emerging technologies have been very profitable, even with the poster boys like Solyndra which are used to argue that all government investment in technology is a bad idea. This argument is usually made on the Internet, which is more than a little bit ironic.

Did Tesla have to pay a penalty for early repayment?

Early repayment penalties are illegal in most of the US.

The benefit of this kind of loan program is not in the interest earned, but in the fact that you get a successful company that creates jobs and pays taxes, which used to be considered a good thing. Having an additional player in a heavy industry also creates competition in a fairly consolidated sector, which also used to be considered a good thing.

These kind of government loans to business in the US go back to the 18th century, and were considered a very good idea until recently, when one of the two political parties lost its mind.