You worry about having kids. That's normal. Are you worrying about the cost of having kids or the costs that they might incur?

Because "in the long run" it's going to be awfully expensive when your children, say, get cancer, have to pay their Sorry-we-fucked-over-Java reparations, have to relocate away from the newly classified flood zones, have to ship in potable water, have to pay extra for bread because the wheat zone decided to move a few parallels north.

Those are REALLY expensive things that your kids might have to pay for. And collectively, if any of this climate change scaremongering is true, they're going to pay for it one way or another. It might even be you paying for it, if you live long enough or get unlucky. It's like an education. It might be expensive, but ignorance is usually more expensive.

If you were just looking out for yourself, and you didn't expect to live very long, your argument would be valid. But if you plan of having kids... well... it's time you started looking at the long term costs and realize that your pocketbook depends on larger issues just as much as it depends on how much you put in and take out. As sappy as it is, we're all in this together.

Uh, yes. Well, the value behind it at least. That $20USD is in a fiat currency. It's not worth anything other than what other's will trade for it. It has no intrinsic value. You value it as $20 because everyone else values it at $20.

Otherwise it's just a slip of paper.

That's... actually perfectly fine. It's not sad at all. That's just normal bragging. Ok, I guess it could be a little uncouth, but the alternative is an intentional FOR-PROFIT outfit of misdirection and lies. The sort of con-artist "in" that let's them pilfer the banks of naive and ignorant investors. It borders on organized criminal fraud. Bragging about your own company because you have something to profit from it isn't on the same level. It's almost expected.

No, the fact that they're getting paid to do it is the sad part. It's "Shilling".

Art and science. Both have an unlimited amount of effort that could be thrown at them. A lot of people don't have the sort of mental capacity or creativity to do meaningful or desirable work in those realms. But if you're looking for what to do with the masses you could do a lot worse than steering them into art and science.

I'm pretty sure people are employed to loudly name-drop companies in conversation at various Starbucks in Silicon Valley.

Well the weather here is terrible for one. More importantly though, while we have a mass of geeks, I'm not sure we really have a critical mass that's required for "idea guys" to come in and tempt ill-content quality geeks to abandon everything at the shot for the big-time. Although there's some minor action around the universities because fresh grads haven't gotten a job yet and aren't tied down, per se. I mean, if I was shown a job offer for a startup with a good idea, I'm not sure I'd abandon my secure position for it. We have enough to start a few hackerspaces, but not quite enough to foster a startup culture.

And that's just it. The startup culture. Even now you have those people that flock to Silicon valley because they want to go make their million. That applies to idea guys looking for investors and makers, investors looking for the next big thing, and people with the actual skills to go make it happen. The downside to that startup culture is that you've got a WHOLE BOATLOAD of bullshit to deal with. The same sort of fame that attracts the money, ideas, and skills also attracts a wide range of con artists, delusional fanatics, assholes, douchbags, soulless profiteers, mercenaries, fakers, and a general corrupting influence of having to wade through that much bullshit. It's certainly not for everyone. The same way that being a quant-dev isn't for everyone. You know, people with souls. Nor is being a web-dev where the damn toolchain keeps changing. Nor is being a low-level bit-head that works on embedded devices where you have to implement atoi yet again. And security takes a certain breed of geek too.

But anyway, the startup culture takes a certain type, and while we have some of those guys around here, I don't think we have enough to attract the crazy shmucks with a half-baked idea nor enough to attract idiots with other people's money.

What we do have is cheaper land prices, cheaper power, some quality grads, a small group of tech-based employers with a talent pool, and we're not in California. Problem is, if you want to go cheap, why not go to the third-world?

It means a lot to the people with a vote.

Daaaaaaamn. Well, not like it washes the hands of LBJ or anything, and I already had a pretty low opinion of Nixon, but that just drops it a massive peg even lower.

You're right, that's worse than spying. Fuckin' A, millions died after we ditched Vietnam. If that could have been averted by going to peace-talks instead of fucking around in Cambodia and Laos... ok wow, I'm going to have to slide that original argument a notch further into the future and say that Bush is the worst president Nixon. I thought it was LBJ, but no, Nixon was worse than Bush.

Why do you think that the presidents before WWII "don't matter"? Do you think that the lessons of the great depression don't matter? How about the robber-baron era? Did the war of 1812 just not do it for you? Were the Federalists' ideas just not important enough? Is that all just a waste of time?

Sorry for forgetting Carter and suggesting that people don't have any personal memory of presidents before Nixon. I was really just making a point that Bush caused the worst fuckup since Vietnam. But you seem to be selectively interested in moments in history and suggesting that one period is more important than the rest isn't very sound advice. WWII was pretty bloody important and had some serious impact. But if you only study the moments of crisis, you'll forget how things are supposed to go during calm times. And if you fuck up the calm times, it's just going to be crisis after crisis.

Uuuugh....
You're desperate. They are your desperate attempts... bloody hell.

Awwww that's so cute that you read part of the actual leaked cable.
And yes, that's a quote from the first part of the cable. That's not the blackmail part though. It's kind of referencing it, so I understand your confusion, but keep scrolling down. Or, here you go:

5. (C) In follow up to the April 2 meeting, EconDep met with Pfizer Country Manager Enrico Liggeri in Lagos on April 9. (Note: Liggeri has years of experience in Nigeria because his family operated a business in Lagos from the early 1960s to the late 1980s. He spent most of his childhood in Lagos. End Note.) Liggeri said Pfizer was not happy settling the case, but had come to the conclusion that the $75 million figure was reasonable because the suits had been ongoing for many years costing Pfizer more than $15 million a year in legal and investigative fees. According to Liggeri, Pfizer had hired investigators to uncover corruption links to Federal Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa to expose him and put pressure on him to drop the federal cases. He said Pfizer's investigators were passing this information to local media, XXXXXXXXXXXX. A series of damaging articles detailing Aondoakaa's "alleged" corruption ties were published in February and March. Liggeri contended that Pfizer had much more damaging information on Aondoakaa and that Aondoakaa's cronies were pressuring him to drop the suit for fear of further negative articles.

Don't like a lawsuit coming against you? Keep digging up dirt about the lawyers until they stop whining about all those dead children. Because hey, clinical trials are expensive and Nigirian children are cheap. Right?

And as for the smuggling one.... yeah....
" The PM claimed that Chevron had told him that it had already raised the issue of a cross-border development with Tehran as well. "
There you go. Chevron isn't allowed to deal with Iran. Because we have sanctions against them. Doing so is illegal. This leaks shows that Chevron is negotiating a deal that would break those sanctions. If that deal goes through, it's smuggling.

Oh, wait. I see what you're saying. Since the PM (Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki) said that he will of course not go through with the deal if violates US law, then of course nothing bad happened and Chevron is in the clear.... Dude, Nouri al-Maliki is the PM of IRAQ, not IRAN, you slack-jawed fucking nitwit. He let slip that Chevron told him they were dealing with IRAN. Which if ILLEGAL.

On prostitution: And yet no one is in jail, and this is recurring behaviour with Dyncorp, and they still get US contracts...

On spaying: It doesn't matter if it's not new, it's still ILLEGAL.

You're desperate attempt at deflecting the accusations with blatant misinformation and casual acceptance of illegal activity has me terrified. Who the fuck are you?

I believe I've identified the issue. It's sorta like how rogain stops working after you stop taking it. Or how the muscles go away after you stop steroids. Or how coffee doesn't do anything for me the day after. Which is kind of a good thing. There are times I want to sleep.

Meth?
It's got some bitchy side-effects, but I hear it's one hell of an upper. The sort of thing that tired immigrants drift to when they desperately need to keep awake or lose their hand in the looms. Or whatever immigrants lose their hands to now a days.

I also hear you can party all night on cocaine.

If you want something with a milder punch, stick to caffeine.

Child prostitution -SOMEONE at Dyncorp and the US government for employing them to do so.
Blackmail -SOMEONE at Pfizer.
Smuggling -SOMEONE at Chevron.
Espionage Hilary Clinton and the State department.
It goes on and on. It's almost as if there's a systematic flaw that's so pervasive it's hard to see the trees for the forest. Seriously, haven't you looked at any of this?

Perjury - James Clapper.
Illegal warrantless espionage against US citizens on US soil. And no, FISA is not looking over their shoulder.

Yet as a legal body we HAVE decided that email is private for the first 180 days. At least by US law. And we're pretty damn sure even as an amorphous cultural body of billions of people that encrypted communications is private, so suck it.

You can try to refute all that citation (and hey, some of it might even be off), but you'd best bring a big-ass list of citeable sources and have a DAMN good argument for why I shouldn't believe what appears to be really bloody obvious to me.

Well because it was a shit-ton better before Bush. Back then the USA was riding high after the cold war and the worst that the president did was have an affair. Or raise taxes after promising not to. Or have an ill-conceived tax reform. Or just kinda not get much done. Or a crook who abused his position to spy on his political adversaries. And that was bad. Seriously bad. A stain upon our history. And that's getting to about the extent of our memory. I had to google who was president before Nixon, and I had forgotten about Carter. Sorry, there's only so much history I have at the tip of my mind.

Let me make this perfectly clear. Bush was FAR WORSE then ALL OF THAT. He took an emotionally unstable first-world super-power in a post-9/11 trauma and decided to invade Iraq. He lead us into a quagmire that cost a shit-ton of money, got a (historically small) number of US troops killed, got a SHIT-TON of civilians killed, and didn't have much to show for it all except something to put on his mantle and funneling billions of dollars to his friends. Let me repeat that: He pre-emptivly invaded a nation. He started a war based on a lie. He was objectively a far worse president than anything in the last 50 years, doing absolutely retarded things that damaged this nation and brought about hardship to us all.

Before Nixon is the long long ago where we had an idiot that double-downed on Vietnam. Or the guy who thought make-work would fix the economy. Or the asshole who thought sitting on his hands would keep it all from falling apart. And to be fair to Bush, Vietnam was worse, although LBJ didn't exactly start the whole thing. The atrocities that the CIA did in the name of fighting the commies was probably worse. Arguably it lead to 9/11, but that's almost a philosophical debate at this point.

Yeah, even Bush didn't straight up openly assasinate US citizens. That's a new terror. But most of this bullshit with surveillance really got going under Bush with the excuse that it was to fight the terrorists after 9/11. Obama certainly picked that up and is running with it, but we can still lay a portion of that blame at Bush's feet.