People who are unemployed are the most suited for long waits for stuff. And you'll noticed I complained about the lack of preventive care in the very next sentence.

But all you seem to be saying is "those aren't the talking points dammit, *these* are the talking points", and not thinking about solving the larger problem.

A transfer of cost from the taxpayer to the end user is kind of the point of privatization, no?

but I liken this to plays - sure, the individual performance of a play is unique, but since you didn't write the script, you can't expect to be profiting from the performance without the author's permission.

I think Nintendo is shooting themselves in the foot with this. These videos act like servo tab. They direct the airflow the opposite direction that you want it to go, but because of their mechanical leverage, they cause the main control surface to move, thus directing an even larger amount of airflow in the direction you want it to go. You give up a little to gain a lot. Prop aircraft and even some jet aircraft like the DC-9 use these on their flight control surfaces instead of hydraulics.

In the same way, these videos act as free advertisement for Nintendo. Yeah a little bit of advertising dollars go to the people who make the videos instead of to Nintendo, but the videos lead to increased sales allowing Nintendo to make a lot more money. If they siphon off the advertising dollars, the videos will stop being made, and Nintendo will lose what was essentially free advertising for them (I frequently watch gameplay videos to help decide if I want to buy a game).

So yeah legally they may have the right to do this. But financially they're being stupid by doing it.

Interesting. 97% of IRS union political contributions went to leftist democrat candidates. They can't be trusted either. Academia is corrupt the same way the federal government is!

That's great because idiots who ride the train will have wasted lots of time to surf the web. End federal Amtrak subsidies now!

Really though, tablets are not a standalone device. They're an accessory and a document viewer. They've found a niche in a lot of industries that have been clamoring for a basic digital reader. Airlines and medical have been dabbling in iPads, and shipping companies have been using such devices for a long time. I doubt tablets will ever take over computing, but I think they'll have a place for many years to come.

Tablets are here to stay. I've been saying this ever since I bought a tablet PC to play around with in 2004, years before the iPad (or iPhone) ever showed up.

Tablets are what will replace the clipboard. Any time you need portable data entry or data viewing (what you do with a clipboard today), you'll be able to do it with a tablet in the future. Every business I have seen uses clipboards. The original tablet PCs were too heavy and clumsy to replace a clipboard. But within minutes of using one in tablet mode, it was obvious that that was what was going to happen as soon as the technology shrank to a more wieldy weight and size.

Remember: you're going with some heavy selection bias picking the few counter examples. For every one of them, there have been a thousand lunatics who were completely and utterly wrong.

That's the whole point. If you claim reindeer can't fly, and I claim they can, and I produce one reindeer which can fly, you can't dismiss it as selection bias and thus claim your assertion that reindeer can't fly is still valid.

That counter-examples exist is a demonstration why we should not leap to the conclusion that just because 97% of scientists believe it to be true, it must be true. A scientific theory must always be allowed to be challenged if someone puts forth a logical, well-reasoned argument, and well-collected data against it. Immediately dismissing the 3% as unscientific solely because they're in the minority is, well, unscientific.

Yes thousands of lunatics exist. But you have to give them a fair shake. If you dismiss them in one fell swoop with reasoning like "97% of scientists think you're wrong, so you must be wrong," your reasoning is no better than theirs. That's what distinguishes science from American Idol - a theory can only be dismissed if it fails logical reasoning or if the data does not support it, not because it loses a popularity contest.

You're conflating hijacking with bombing a plane. Terrorists don't hate our airplanes, you know. Hijacking is a particular threat because, as we saw on 9/11, an airliner is one hell of a weapon. A terrorist who just wants to kill a bunch of people with a bomb has far better targets than airplanes, as the only terror value in attacking an airplane is the hope of provoking irrational overreaction to it, which we can utterly defeat by not being afraid.

BTW, have you ever met a new government power you didn't like? Can you give an example of when giving up some civil rights in return for some security would be bad?

Wait, what? Is atomic food even legal?? There's should be protests! There should be a law! BAN ATOMIC FOOD

Well, China, India, South America, and the Pacific Rim - Brasil may be closer to getting its shit together than China/India, and S Korea has its shit together (and hopefully won't lose in when N Korea eventually disintegrates).

I'm strongly invested in India, Brasil, and Korea precisely because I think their growing middle classes will bring the most massive economic growth the world has ever seen. (I think China might have a civil war coming, so I'm scared to invest there, though perhaps foolishly so).

It really isn't a race to the bottom, but a coming of age. I love being "right here, right now, watching the world wake up from history:.

There are plenty of good and useful things a government can do with bullshit like these witch hunts or the TSA or other security theater. Hardening cockpit doors has basically ended hijacking in America - no intrusion into people's daily lives required.

Please cite the testable predictions that the Anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Science conglomerate has made. Please include any time when they stated a falsifiable claim. In other words, a prediction, which if found not to occur, would falsify their model.

The only one I found was made back in the 1990's which claimed that the Tropical troposphere would show faster and larger warming than all other areas of the planet.

This did not happen, and is not happening. In fact, the tropical troposphere has cooled over the entire satellite record. In response to this, the climate scientists have modified their models so they can "reverse forecast" this occurrence. Their model was proven wrong, their theory proven wrong, so they simply changed the rules.

Every time there's a heat wave or a drought, we hear, "GLOBAL WARMING!" shouted from the rooftops, yet when we have the coldest spring on record in the U.S., we're told that's also caused by global warming. We're told after Hurricane Katrina, that such "extreme weather" was going to be continuously increasing as the warming drove the weather. However, total Accumulated Cyclonic Energy hasn't increased. In fact it's been the lowest levels in history. We have gone over 2500 days without a major hurricane (Cat 3 or above) hitting the United States. Again, that's the longest stretch in the history of records. And yet, we're told this must be caused by global warming as well.

So, if it gets hotter, it's global warming, if it gets colder, it's global warming. In the end, there's no way to prove it wrong. By your own definition, that's not science.

No climate science prediction showed the current 15 year period of global cooling, and yet we see them talking about 97% agreement. This doesn't point to settled science, this points to a monopoly on the publishing of papers.

97% of people in a room can call a rabbit a cat, but that doesn't make it a cat.

No one is really "excluded" from health care in America - it's just that if you don't have insurance, you often get your healthcare in an emergency room (where they can't turn you away) instead of a regular doctor visit.

The fact that preventive care is so much cheaper than emergency room care (even if the care given is identical - there's significant abuse of "emergency" care right now) is perhaps the biggest single inefficiency in the US health care system.

But universal health insurance is a different discussion than universal health care! You do not need government-run hospitals to ensure that there's an insurance plan available to everyone. Most US states require liability insurance to drive a car, but the government is only involved in the details for the "high risk" pool - most people still buy car insurance normally like you would any other product.

But not for the same quality of care. I think we do go overboard on expensive testing done only as a CYA for malpractice suits, which is certainly inefficient and wasteful, but it would be a mistake to think you get the same process in both countries. We do get more for our extra spend (and we fund a bunch of research that way), though we certainly don't get 2.5x more.

When terrorists become more of a threat than ladders, maybe then I'll consider thinking about giving the government new powers to stop them. Until them, fuck off you dictator wannabee.