I think I see why you're confused. The curse was an effective way to kick off the revolt, yes. Not any way to start an earthquake, though. Reality doesn't work that way.

OK, let's squash some of this nonsense right now.

I never believed the 2010 Haiti Erthquake was caused by a voodoo curse, and I'm astonished that anyone interpreted that post in that way. What I found anthropologically interesting is that something like Robertson's "satanic" invocation seems actually to have taken place. Not actually "satanic", but within Robertson's impoverished terms of reference that's about the only way he could describe an invocation of the loa.

I believe, and have repeatedly said, that the supposed "scientific consensus" on CAGW is not a conspiracy but an error cascade. I think most scientists are honestly trying to do right, but have been overly credulous about data and models that have been (and continue to be) fraudulently manipulated by a tiny minority of them. Those of you who think this makes me some sort of nut are going to have some explaining to do when measured GAT drops out of the bottom of the IPCC's 95% confidence band, which looks set to happen before the end of 2014.

I might reply to some of these other questions at more length, but these two deserved to be dispatched immediately

That's desperation and a horror right up there with the "Saw" movies.

We, as a people, in MY country, forced a young woman to work right into the grave. We might as well be Pharoahs running the blocks right over anyone who weakens and falls.

Why is it we can give pharmaceutical giant Amgen 500 billion dollars for free in the cliff deal, but we can't find a way to let a helpless young woman die in peace?

Yes, Kuhn was full of horse puckey. Not only doesn't his book describe science outside of physics at all well, it doesn't even correctly describe 20th-century physics, its ostensible paradigm (using the word correctly now) case.

Years ago I wrote a more detailed takedown in Brother, can you Paradigm?

The only amplification I'd write today is that the shifts between large theoretical models generally (and contrary to Kuhn's claims) go smoothly in physics because test by correct prediction of experimental results is so difficult to argue with. The soft sciences have more trouble setting up repeatable experiments, so it's easier for people to hold on to broken theoretical models.

My family's sweat and blood, spilled in the defense of this great nation, says differently. My family has not held the funerals we have held to watch this nation's manufacturing base handed over to the very thugs our previous generation just got through fighting.

Not only is taking advantage of an exploited labor market immoral, since handing money to our sworn enemies is pretty much the definition of treason as well.

Glad to see at least one other person remembers this "quaint" old idea.... :-)

Basic Contract Law would disallow this. Contracts are only valid when they are legal, mutual and entered into freely by people capable of a "meeting of minds." Contracts between two people of unequal understanding are void on their face. This is why you can't make contracts with children, the intoxicated or people of unsound mind. This is why the Courts generally protect "unsophisticated investors" from financial cardsharps, and why they take a very dim view of certain types of auto dealers who try to sell cars "as-is." It doesn't even have to be an "unconscionable contract," though I would argue that this case certainly would be. Any contract that obviously has one party taking advantage of the other is void on its face.

Think of it as the "Fair Fight" Principle. The Courts would generally allow Tyson and Ali in their prime to square off and call it "good." They wouldn't allow me to step in the ring with either, even if I agreed to it, because the Courts should not be in the business of providing legal cover to homicide.

$320/month lease, $700/month mortgage. You'll lose money either to rental costs, or (mortgage interest + mortgage insurance + taxes - mortgage tax deductions). The deciding numbers would be at the end of 20 years, does the equity in the home exceed the value of the $380/month savings you've been banking and investing for 20 years? In some cities right now, the equity is more. In other cities, the investment account is more.

I suspect the poster is talking about a long-term auto lease, which is a notoriously poor financial decision, as opposed to renting a car for a few days.

The concept you're looking for is "hubris." The guy's ego was writing checks his productivity couldn't cash. I worked with a really talented kid fresh out of school a while back. He'd been a big fish in a small pond his whole life, and couldn't fathom a world where some people might have more talent than he did, and worse yet, might be talented in different ways.

He kept insisting he was the only one competent to get this done, and that done, and the other thing until he finally met an old man who let him try.

The crackup was pretty spectacular.

Last I heard, the kid was doubling down on a bad strategy. Not sure what it's going to take to get the kid far enough past his own ego to work with other people.

But his time is running out.

Well, for one thing, you can bill the living daylights out of the government agency for providing it. And since each specific circumstance will likely require its own special patch, you have a guaranteed revenue stream for years to come...

Two liters of soda carries in the neighborhood of 800 calories. The usual number quoted is that running burns about 100-120 calories per mile. Roughly speaking, you're gonna pay for that two-liter soda with a seven mile run.

Need to gain weight fast? One pound of fat = 3500 extra calories. Roughly, eight or nine liters or four six-packs (22 cans) of soda equal one pound. Drink a six-pack a day and you'll be a pound, pound and a half heavier by the end of the week. You'll be four or five pounds overweight by the end of the month. You can be grossly clinically obese by the end of the year, simply from drinking soda alone.

Now, yeah, I get personal freedom and, no, we shouldn't ban bacon and candy, but I have a lot of sympathy for the noise coming out of New York about banning soda. I was raised to think soda was basically "Water Plus," and the Coca Cola Company spent billions programming me to think "Coke Is It." I mean, good grief, we literally get our picture of Santa Claus from a Coca Cola ad, so deep is soda ingrained in American culture.

It took a ridiculous amount of effort as an adult to look at a can of soda and link that to feeling bad from poor health. It was ridiculous how hard it was to teach myself that I should look at a can of Coke and a cigarette the same way, since both would have roughly comparable deleterious effects on my health.

No one, nobody, is going to stay fine if they're drinking two liters of soda a day.

Because "Herd Immunity," that's why. As those "irresponsible schmucks" begin to die, they don't just switch off like a lightbulb. As their bodies' defenses begin to fail, various infectious diseases of one kind or another set up shop in their bodies and begin cranking out one communicable illness after another. Don't think of that guy with the failing liver as just some alkie getting what he deserves. Think of him instead as the walking tuberculosis distributor who breathes the same air you do. As much as you might want to think of yourself as some rugged individualist, the awful fact is that you are part of a big old herd of people, and the health of the herd eventually becomes your health. See "Masque of the Red Death" for an illustration or look up "Mary Mallon" for an example of what your the hotel maid or the fast food cook you never even meet can do to you.

Of course, that's the ROI, self-interested, purely selfish argument I'm frankly sick of making. Let's pretend your health really was firewalled from everyone else. Let's suppose we're talking about some old drunk dying of richly deserved delerium tremens. Why should we give him anything?

We treat him not because he deserves it. We treat him because we're human beings. We treat him because we are a civilized people who do not simply stand by and watch while our fellow human beings die screaming. We treat him because there's NO religious or philosophical school of thought apart from monsters like Rand and Nietzsche that condones not treating him. You can't refuse to treat him and continue to call yourself a Christian, a Muslim, a Mormon, a Buddhist, or a Jew.

Oh God, I can already hear you whine, "But that's the role of private charity..." Apart from Tesla Museums, private charity is not how we get things done in this country. This is why we don't close down the VA in favor of the Red Cross. This is why our mail doesn't get delivered by a coalition of marathon runners. When We the People choose to act, we do so under the organizing principles of government.

Why should we have to pay for this? Well, mainly because you have a choice between putting patients in hospitals or walking over the highly infectious dying in the street. Because we as a society pay less by writing a few scrips than we do by trying to employ enough cops, prisons and CDC resources to handle the chaos caused by the desperate and dying.

But mainly because if you've ever actually seen another human being suffer and die -- and I don't mean Grandma passing in her sleep -- then you'd never even ask the question.

Sure, on geologic timescales. Interestingly enough, it's the larger, more dominant predators most at risk to such an event. Know anyone at the top of the food chain you'd like to keep around?

Seriously though, if you don't define a meteor strike like the one that killed the dinosaurs to be a disaster, then the simple fact is that the word "disaster" holds no meaning for you. There is literally nothing up to and including the aforementioned "red giant" phase of the sun that will one day engulf the Earth that you find to be a problem.

Meanwhile, my concerns are a bit more immediate.

China doesn't have an adversarial and independent press (though God knows it could be argued the US doesn't have one anymore either). When things like this happen, the best you're going to get are strangled, scattered reports in fitful sporadic bursts, as happened in our own (US) revolution.

Responsible journalism would involve a reporter going out to investigate the reports and interview the people on the scene. The government won't allow it. So now you're in a similar situation where the police get a call about a wife beater. They go to the accused man's house and find there's blood on his sleeveless t-shirt, they can hear sobbing inside, but he won't let them in the door. Suddenly you have to take those few scattered reports a lot more seriously.

Various students are reporting they've been pressed into service by a dictatorial government. The dictatorial government in question isn't allowing anyone to investigate their claims. The government's behavior in and of itself tends to corroborate the students' reports, especially given the previous history of the factory in question.