When Bill Gates started doing his foundation work, I remember him talking about bringing computers to everyone in the world. Then a year later I remember reading a quote from him about how wrong that was. He finally realized that many people don't have basic food and water. Now he seems to be doing some decent things with his life but it took a long time (and a lot of immoral business practices) before he woke up. Better late than never, I guess. While these people certainly understand the business world better than I do, to say they are smarter or more worldly is highly debatable. If you want to use an example of someone that's smart and worldly, pick someone like Nelson Mandela. Not a CEO.

Devon

Admit when you don't know how to do something.

And then tell them that you're willing to accept the challenge of figuring it out. Honesty is even better when combined with a can-do attitude.

Devon

Most of these things are too small to have been found by scientists. They've done a good job over the last few years finding most of the big ones (1 km diameter - stuff that'd wipe out the planet) but there are still plenty of smaller ones that they have no idea about. Most of them, in fact. I believe the only one that's ever been known in advance of its impact was in Sudan last year. And that was only known a day or so in advance.

Devon

So your suggestion is that nothing good ever enters the public domain?

Devon

What are you smoking? That's not remotely true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_debt

Notice how the debt increases during Republican presidents and decreased during Clinton.

Devon

Wow. I was lucky enough to be in a small country school that got one of the Apple IIs that Apple was handing out. No one knew what to do with it so it basically sat in the corner. A friend and I heard there was a computer in the school and figured it would be something like HAL. When we asked if we could use it, the teacher in charge had no clue so she just gave us free reign. Same at the next school I went to where they gave me a key to the lab with about six machines. Then at home where my parents gave me a TRS-80 Model III. Then in college when the department gave me a VAX (which no one was interested in because it ran something called "UNIX"). I basically learned by people giving me machines and getting out of the way. And thank god for that.

Devon

It may be true that your social life would suffer by leaving Facebook. But that's only because you've set up your life that way. The most interesting friends I have are those that don't have time for Facebook. And someone inviting me to friend them is usually a good warning sign that they aren't. Previously, I used to have to tell by how much a person talked about TV.

Devon

Immediately before the war American support was around 80%. But before Bush beat the war drums support was less than a majority. When he first mentioned the idea of invading Iraq, he had less than 40%. Bush created that 80% with all his WMD talk. As crazy as it sounds, before Bush's push for Iraq the American people were focused on Bin Laden and Afghanistan.

Devon

The difference is that firefighters prepare because they are absolutely sure that there will someday be a fire. Just like buildings built in earthquake zones are pretty near certain to be hit by an earthquake in their lifetime. This was a single flu season with no statistically significant evidence to indicate it would be different than any other. Now huge amounts of money has been thrown out the window on this one incident. And most of this preparation (the vaccine) is useless for the next event. That's not only a poor use of resources. But it will also dampen future efforts when the media is not crying wolf.

Devon

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, 3,000 children, teenagers and young people died this year from the H1N1 flu. These are otherwise healthy young people who would not otherwise have died. A lot of them were infants under 5 years old.

Did you really just use a "think of the children" argument?

Devon

A friend does statistical models for a government health agency and was giving me the latest-greatest swine flu stats all the way through the media storm. The stats were never really very scary.

Devon

Or check out any of the charity comparison sites that are easily found with google. They'll give you the basic financials and such in an easy to digest tabular form. Then you can look deeper into one or two that look interesting to you so you can really understand where your money is going. Of course, then you actually have to care enough to invest both money and time. Complaining is probably easier. ;-)

Devon

Hey, that's my annual rant. Get your own. ;-)

(I deal with it by remembering that their memberships make mine cheaper.)

Devon

You listed Jon Stewart as a "traditional news" source? That's like listing SNL's "Weekend Update". Though I guess if you're defending FOX News as being news, then I can see how you'd lump him in there to help stretch your point. (I should also note that most of the things you mention that no non-FOX watcher would ever hear about, I saw on Jon's show. Black gun owner, ACORN, etc.)

Devon

I once heard that traffic circles generally increase the number of accidents but decrease the number of fatal accidents. So that's also a factor.

Devon