BearOfNH

Got any firm numbers? The article managed to avoid conveying any facts along those lines.

The U.S. government may not like it but there is little they can do about someone melting down coinage, especially outside the country. (But don't do it -- silver coins are worth more than their melt value).

Paper money is different, of course.

The newer, cheaper MLC technology flash drives have far less useful lifetime, somewhere in the vicinity of 5,000-10,000 erase cycles. These drives just won't cut it for usages defined here, though they will work fine in your cell phone.

See (e.g.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Write_Endurance

California has been teetering on the edge of default -- not always making payments on time -- despite having the ability to raise taxes. CA also owns vast assets it too can sell off.

Admittedly we'll probably see places like Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal default first, but it can happen here too.

In my mind it's debatable that something like that can be done practically, or that a "living will" would really work in practice. I am reminded of the "duck and cover" drills from my youth. Still, something needs to be done.

Or sometimes the Search box doesn't work well (try entering "allen wrench" to the Search box on WestMarine.com).

As a general rule I don't like ex parte hearings for all the obvious reasons. There needs to be a means to limit their use, and a heavy fine for being wrong is about all that comes to mind.

Nevertheless, I suggest it would be wise for the USA to maintain its own stockpile of REs, much as we have a strategic petroleum reserve. While the dollar can still buy something, go buy a million ounces of Terbium and put it on an empty :-) shelf in Fort Knox. That may drive the price up enough to stimulate domestic production. Even if not, it would provide a cushion against the day China embargoes exports. There's a lag between (say) the time you reopen the California mine and fabricated metals are created; the strategic reserve would be used during that interval.

The point behind stockpiling is not to raise the price. I don't see this as a subsidy any more than I see education funding as a subsidy. The USA is trying to ensure an adequate future supply: metals in the one case and capable workers in another.

This is not to imply there's an equivalence between people and essential materials. The obligation to children today is clearly greater than the obligation to have materials tomorrow. But you really should have both.

I agree, and often ponder what play I would call were I a coordinator.

Note this is also the argument political columnist George Will used to enshrine baseball as the "thinking man's sport", where there's no hard limit between plays. But I prefer football precisely because of the time pressure; it's rather like chess without clocks vs. chess with clocks. (Pitcher checks the runner, steps off the rubber, runner retakes base, pitcher steps on the rubber, gets sign from catcher, winds up, checks the runner again, batter steps out, grabs some dirt, rubs bottom of bat, reseats helmet, steps in box, pounds plate with bat, pumps a couple times, pitcher gets sign from catcher ... lather, rinse, repeat. I've had my fill long ago.)

Back when I was a tyke, televised baseball games (with Dizzy Dean and Buddy Blattner, sponsored by Falstaff, Pabst or Hamms beer) usually took about two hours. Now it's three hours for the same amount of action, and the beers are only slightly better.

I would think so, but maybe there's self-selection bias involved.

(Edit: "random" meaning unrelated to the user's page fetches, as opposed to "a random sample of actual pages fetched").

I don't know how measurable this is but it is patently obvious it is preventing progress.

Do we really need more Steve Jobs's? Based on his examples it looks like Friedman is asking for more engineers instead. The USA can of course import more engineers, e.g., statistically India probably has 4 Steve Jobs types but maybe 400,000 engineer types.

On the other hand, there are a lot of unemployed American engineers who can't find work currently so that's not likely the solution either.

Given that YC applications always exceed the funding slots, I suspect what we really have here is a shortage of capital. For Obama, that actually makes the problem easier to solve: increase funding for NSF and (say) NIH, i.e., promote science and health. To fund this I would suggest we take money away from NEA and CPB (arts and public broadcasting) not because I'm Pat Buchanan, but to incentivize students away from those areas into more productive fields, as implied by Obama and Friedman.

Amen to that. The article mentions "The secretive trading operations within banks that use large doses of leverage, or borrowed money, to make huge bets on the market". This is just not true -- and the WSJ should know that. You can generate leverage without borrowing a dime. Options contracts can be highly leveraged yet involve no borrowing. Futures contracts can be highly leveraged with no borrowed money. In both cases the exchanges have put in place elaborate mechanisms to ensure a losing side can pay up, and guarantees the winning side will collect even in case of complete counterparty failure. There is no borrowing here but there's plenty of leverage.

Unfortunately a lot of the bad trades behind the meltdown (AIG derivatives, etc.) were basically private contracts, with no exchange mechanisms in place to mitigate counterparty risk. That's also one reason nobody knew what was really going on.

Good science. But it's kind of difficult to undo mis-spending of taxpayer dollars, not to mention the economic damage caused by policies based on such mistakes.

I'm with you on reporting donations. Sunlight is still the best disinfectant.

And more generally, because here in America there is little downside risk in filing a lawsuit.

I believe it's also true that the ancients distrusted polynomials (e.g., x^3+7x^2+2x+9=0) because who would be silly enough to add a volume to an area to a length, etc.

If they had just done the mathematics without relating the numbers to real world, we might have far more advanced maths today. All the more reason to pursue topics for their own sake.

I agree with that, but things get murky another year out. Apple's well-earned dominance is maybe 50% apps and 50% cool/fashion. A year from now Android will have most of the important apps as well, plus maybe a few fancy ones Apple can't support currently. As for fashion, well, that's fickle and not reliable.

Of course Apple may already be one move ahead, and next year we might be arguing about tablets or E-readers or two-way wrist TVs. Maybe then Apple won't mind competition in the phone space, having once again redefined the "must-have" product.

Of course the State knows this too. In April 1933, less than one month after taking office, FDR signed an executive order confiscating all the private gold in the country. I wouldn't be surprised to see that happen again some day.

FTA: "It's shocking that taxpayer money is being used to support a researcher who seemingly showed little regard to the basic tenets of science - a dispassionate search for the truth," said Tom Borelli.

I disagree in one respect: cable companies are still highly innovative when it comes to lowering their internal costs. It's not something a customer would notice (well, not if done right) but the technology curve helps them deliver more data bits over the same wire for the same cost, or the same data bits for lower costs.

Not that you'll ever see a dime of it, but some very sharp people are squeezing every drop out of their cash cows.

I would say that challenge might exist because unemployed people are desperate enough to take jobs in Boston, only to find the job isn't worth it.

To be fair, I've worked in MA and NH for over 30 years now (yes, you can call me a geezer) and indeed there are a lot of tech companies of varying maturity and markets. But there are a lot of techies here too. I've got a pal with 20+ years experience, good C/C++ coder, does great Eclipse plug-ins, unable to find a job for over a year now. And I've known other guys (C/C++ coders, mostly) who have made (downward) career changes for the same reason: no jobs.

This is kind of a rah-rah article and maybe we can excuse the author because those numbers might be real. But don't infer that companies here are hard up for employees -- like most-everywhere nowadays each advertised job opening invites a thousand applications.