Your friend in the Antichrist,

Kim Jong Il

"hippocampus blabber' - I like it....

The quality of the prose and logic suggests that the entire article was written after a double skinny natural vanilla flipped cappuccino at the local Starbucks and uploaded to the NYT using the Starbucks WiFi network without any sort of encryption at all.

We'll probably find her new passwords on Gawker next week.

Sorry, we're already there.

All healthcare workers that can access financial or 'personal' data (which means everyone north of the janitor) are now subjected to background checks that have to be redone every six years. Next up - constant monitoring to ensure we don't steal Grandma's SSN. Interestingly, the way the rules read, they're not much worried about us stealing medical information, just financial. One has to have one's priorities.

And it's polygraphs all the way down.

You were doing good until you started off with 'meaningful'. That really doesn't have anything to do with the current discussion.

That's actually one of their tamer fetishes. The more, shall we say, involved ones, would make any /b/ denizen puke.

1. Because Government is a Big Business (about 40% of the GDP) and,
2. The Military Industrial Complex is a large portion of that (particulars unimportant for now) and
3. The MIC arguably does deal in quite a bit of classified paper ("We have top men looking into that....") and, most important
4. When you have the only tool you know how to use is a Top Secret stamp, everything looks like a Classified Document.

You need some sort of government level power to track them from Bitcoin universe to real world.

Is tracking them necessary? Why couldn't miners set a cost-prohibitive verify price on transactions to known "stolen" addresses?

Presumably nobody is being dumb enough to sell a gallon of water for 50 cents and then buy it back for a dollar. So who the fuck cares?

Because these are not market forces at play, they are government forces.

It's so bad that government gangs will send men with guns to your house to haul you off to prison (or kill you if you resist) if you collect rainwater from your roof for irrigation or fire protection.

Especially in the Colorado River basin, because "that's California's water." So people who live in the deserts there can have lush shubberies tended by Mexican servants and grow alfalfa for Asia. Have you ever walked down a street in, say, Palm Springs, and noticed the landscaping difference on a vacant lot? It's quite impressive.

If there were strong property rights and markets at play here, then, sure, let the prices fall where they may, but that is entirely not the situation at hand.

"Monkey! You left the airlock open again!"

Somehow, it just doesn't strike me as a good idea.

You'll probably end up getting rolled in Anchorage and get stuck at the Motel 6.

That would be a horrible way to go.

Actually good advice whether or not you're 'planning' on coming down with Alzheimers. You just don't know what the future plans for you. You could live to 90 with multiple high risk alleles for Alzheimers, you could be totally paralyzed, turned into a vegetable tomorrow after the drunk down the street plows into you.

Keeping your brain active (quit posting here), keeping your body active are good things to do no matter what your genetics or past history stay.

Oh, and people who worry about these sorts of things and continue to smoke should just give up. Now.

Also, given the expected life cycle of the Baaken fields (30 years or so), their isolation compared to the rest of the country along with the costs of a 'general purpose' refinery, putting those large plants there makes little sense. Of course the industry has looked at this carefully.

The mini refineries are getting to the point where they can be trucked in, bolted together and disassembled later. But they can't make the variety of products that a 'real' refinery can and cannot be easily modified for different grades of crude.

Don't forget that OPEC countries have been found financing anti-Keystone XL 'environmental' groups as a means to keep competition out of their oil markets and keep prices up. Then there's the railway owners, who would lose out if a pipeline was built. Much of the inland oil development is shipped by BSNF, a Berkshire-Hathaway company. Buffet is an Obama supporter who has publicly supported Keystone XL, but who knows what deals are going on behind closed doors? (my apologies if this is a repeat post, the last one didn't seem to take.)

There's more though. Arab oil-producing companies have been found backing environmental groups, to fight the introduction of new supply into their markets, which would depress prices. Then there's the owners of the railroads, who would lose out if the pipe network was expanded. If I remember correctly, BSNF railway ships much of the recent inland oil development, and it's owned by Warren Buffet, a notable supporter of Obama. Buffet (again IIRC) has come out in support of the Keystone XL pipeline, but who knows what deals are going on behind closed doors?.