katz

"There is corruption everywhere, even in the newsrooms."

So? What is to prevent a rival paper from reporting on the newsroom? (I actually have memory of this happening - an editor of a major newspaper was a philander and another paper ran an article on him. Another big story happened 20 odd years ago - one paper was funded by the government and another newspaper brought that to light - the result was that one of the people who organised funding did not become president).

"And politicians don't always want to hide things."

So, if they are not hiding something they would not mind people looking? I am one of those people who think it is a good idea of a healthy dose of cynicism for public officials.

"They chose to keep quiet and accept decades of hero-worship. The truth was that they were willing participants in a rather slimy and petty act of political revenge."

The question is not if Woodward&Bernstein were upstanding citizens with good values. The question is this: Was the Watergate affair good for the country? Would it be better if it had not been brought to light?

I have not heard of a case where the press was involved in corruption - honestly. And even if they were corrupt, they were corrupt with private money.

Even in cases where the press "got it wrong" the harm of public interest was not that great. Maybe in the USA there are not a lot of corruption - but in my country it is rife.

Politicians wants to push everything under the carpet and the police system is wilfully incompetent (since it falls under the minister of safety and security, another politician).

The reality is that there are a few publications that do excellent work. Here are a few things in which the press paid a significant part in bringing to light: corruption in a massive arms deal (and by the next president), dealings of a mining magnate (who eventually was murdered), showing corruption by the national police commissioner, shedding light on numerous large fraudulent financial schemes, etc...

The list can go on. I doubt a blogger will be able to take on complex and multi-faceted corruption cases while he is being sued from all sides.

Really? I can think of numerous cases where the press uncovered corruption. Investigative reporting is extremely important - and there is no alternative to that.

" Would it have been spoken by cavemen, would it have been simpler? What would be missing, future tense, abstract concepts we take for granted?"

The caveman language you describe look a lot like the language used by modern day teens.

Journalism faces almost the same obstacle. The current business model is not working any more and there are no alternatives.

I have not bought a single newspaper this year - and I have not even looked at online advertisements on newspaper websites.

I think the newspaper industry is going to largely collapse and it is going to burn everyone (worse reporting, no more investigative reporting, etc....)

How difficult is it to move there? I am finishing up my Masters degree this September and want to go to California for at least a year to work.

But it looks to me that you can only get H1B visa's which makes you totally dependent on a single employer without the ability to change jobs.

Do you have citizenship?

I'll give it a shot (full disclosure, I have not been to Russia but have a keen interest in the country):

"and oh, goodness, weren’t there just a great number of these in unregulated America?"

Europe which is much more stringently regulated has the same (or even bigger) problems than the USA – so does Japan. So to blame everything on the Americans is not a 100% correct. Some of these regulations (e.g. Community Reinvestment Act) even had a hand in the cause of the economic troubles. Europe's “well regulated” banks are falling just as fast as American banks.

“Here he was, blowing up civilians in apartment buildings in ...”

Blaming Putin for the Russian apartment bombings is standard conspiracy stuff. It is like blaming Bush for 911.

“nationalizing all resource companies, “

The Russian oligarchy obtained most of the state assets in a pretty corrupt way during the Yeltsin era. I am pretty sure that pure nationalisation of assets would not be bad. (even though Putin is corrupt).

“working on re-constituting the old Soviet Union,”

What did Putin do to “reconstruct” the Soviet Union? Even its closets allies (and component states of the Soviet Union) were forced to pay market prices for natural gas (e.g. Belarus) – i.e. Russia stopped subsidising them.

“while people like me were warning investors for the last couple of years to get as far from Moscow as they could (too bad BP didn’t listen). “

Hindsight is always 20/20.

“The system, instead of being diverse and robust, is a monoculture with no life to it.”

The economy was in pretty dire straits when Putin took office (1998 Russian financial crises). It can be argued that the economy now is in better shape than it was before Putin took over from an alcoholic.

“I don’t think this will save Putin or his current ideation of Russia. “

As far as I know, Putin was extremely popular when he was president and he is still now pretty popular. State ownership of television stations may help with this. The United Russia party (of which Putin is the chairman) won the last elections in 2007 by an almost 2 3rds majority.

" it seems that the world is collapsing"

The world has been collapsing the past 2000 years.

“This is so common I probably don't need to give one, but a great example was the constitutional amendment last year to ban gay marriage in California. What a stupid, pointless, hateful thing to do. And all because of these "ridiculous/irrational" beliefs. Don't seem so harmless now, do they?”

What is marriage more than a label? Would there be a difference between rights of people who have a marriage or who have a civil union? In some countries the government does not know (and does not care) who marries or civil unions who.

I suspect this debate has two sides – Christians who want to “protect” marriage and gays who want to “force” acceptance. Preferably the state should declare everything as civil unions.

“However, making such points is kind of useless. We have no way to know how many hospitals would be in Africa absent the CC.”

The point is exactly that the CC is the highest non-governmental donor of aid. You can criticise than, but per person the Catholic church gives more aid than most secular and humanist NGOs.

“Doesn't make their Interdimensional Space God any more findable,”

It is not about the findability of their god. It is what happens here and now – and Catholics are pretty positive influence.

“and their attitudes towards eg. Third World contraception remain utterly comtemptible.”

This again is debatable. The CC has had huge influence in the AIDS programs of Uganda and it is one of the few countries that reduced its HIV prevalence rate (with an ABC program). I live in a country that places a strong influence on contraception (South Africa) and AIDS ravages at a prevalence rate that is more than 20%.

“Once you accept that taking orders from imaginary friends - or their supposed representatives on earth - is OK and valid, how can you argue when those orders swing to an activity you don't agree with?”

Or if someone tells you to make peace? Religion has both positive and negative influences – just like any other ideology (e.g. communism). Religious people were fairly well persecuted in the name of state Atheism (e.g. ex-Soviet Union, China).

“it makes it very difficult to reject later on when the activities of the "faithful" turn counter to what you know to be the best interests of society and humanity. “

As I said, everyone has irrational beliefs (e.g. Humanism). Your moral basis is probably built on several irrational beliefs.

“I confess I'm a little confused as to what an "extreme" atheist even is. I mean, a normal atheist believes that there is no God. How do you go past "does not exist"?”

An extreme atheist is someone totally pre-occupied with his belief in atheism that he will forgo generally civilized manners in conversation. A fundamentalist atheist is someone who looks down on other people with a different viewpoint/ideology or belief.

Most Christians spend one day a week in church – these atheists spends 7 days a week on atheism.

“Anyway I'd like to say one thing: pointing out others' ridiculous, harmful beliefs is good and necessary.”

Everyone has some ridiculous/irrational beliefs. I believe that everyone is entitled to their irrational beliefs – whatever they may be.

“No free pass because it's religion or because the Catholic Church did this or that. “

My point is that the CC did and still do some very good work for people (I can search for quotes on the number of hospitals, etc... in Africa but that is not the argument). In the atheist subreddit they are painted as an evil child-raping organisation.

“My point: Some things deserve ridicule.”

Why? Let everyone believe in their own irrational beliefs. My father does not believe in evolution – yet he is one of the nicest people I know. My sister believes that Jesus wants her to work with orphans. What harm does this do to anyone?

"Reddit has a pro-atheist bias, sure, and I for one am very comfortable with that."

I am atheist/agnostic yet I don't feel comfortable with Reddit. This is because I am not obsessed over religion (or lack thereof) and I treat everyone with respect (i.e. I am not a foaming around the mouth atheist).

Most atheists on reddit are extreme, annoying and post the same article and the same old comments over and over again. They are incapable of any rational thought - if you even dare to point out the good things that a religious group does you are downmodded and ridiculed (e.g. the catholic church's network of hospitals in 3rd world countries).

It is the same with the GOP-bashing articles. I am not american and I do not support GWB – but they go to far with their bashing and I sincerely doubt of the sanity of most redditors.

The problem is that most stories about atheism is not posted in the atheism subreddit. Most of those stories spill over into worldnews or math or science. Stuff about conservative american commentators gets labelled 'funny'.

"Or just don't visit the site."

That was the solution yes. YCnews is fairly tame and people are well mannered.

"talking armies of Indians and Eastern Europeans"

The problem with Reddit is the army of intolerant atheists and the anti-GOP circle jerk. If you just take a look at the front page you will see that this is true. American politics is really not that interesting after the 10th GOP bashing blog-spam article.

I was with the author until this sentence:

“that are produced without pesticides or chemical fertilizers. When possible, these foods should be locally grown.”

Uhm... I eat foods with “pesticides” every day. Pesticides increases the crop yields and increases quality. Correct use of pesticides pose no harm to humans. Chemical fertilizers also increase crop yields (dramatically) and makes food cheaper. Oh... and guess what – anything is “chemicals”.

Some areas are more suited than other areas for crop production (e.g. climate, land and labour costs). Why should everything be locally grown?

“cash for every meal they serve — $2.57 for a free lunch”

170 grams of Tuna costs me as a consumer $1 dollar. I am pretty sure they can get it for cheaper. It is fairly healthy – a healthy meal can cost less than $3 (but I guess they want to grow the Tuna locally).

She suggests that the budget should be tripled – meaning at each lunch will cost about $8. That is just preposterous.

“not to the continued spread of youth obesity, Type 2 diabetes”

I live in a third world country – and there is no problem of diabetes or obesity under the youth. Most people eat a lot less and food that costs a lot less than that of USA school kids.

“Let’s prove that there is such a thing as a good, free lunch. “

There is no such thing as a free lunch. There is however a lunch for which another person pays.

I am in the middle of a Quote 1 now... :(

The nice thing about Quote 10 is that 9 people effectively dilutes the responsibility.

"I really like the fact that its save file is PostScript."

Yes - it creates larger postscript files.

"non-obvious UI is actually pretty quick to use once you get used to it."

For some reason xcircuit adds extra pages without any warning - which forces you to edit the .ps file by hand.

The wires also does not "connect" (i.e. when you move a component).

The best would be Orcad with ps export.

Most "user" open source software sucks a hell of a lot. I am currently having a running battle with xcircuit.

This program is supposed to draw circuit diagrams, yet it saves it in PS format! It manages to fuck everything up. The user interface and everything about the program is unbelievably bad.

Most open source software without a large market share is like that. It is unfortunately the OS mentality.

And don't even get me started on the entanglement of all the software packages. If I download a program to install on Windows it install. For linux the program depends on 120 other packages (a type of incestuous package relationship)

What amazes me is that Adobe Acrobat gets larger and larger in every new version. And it always wants to access the internet.

I don't know about flash - I disable it by default. Disabling it gets rid of both annoying moving advertisements and crap plugins...

"I'm not sure there is such thing as an inherently boring software project."

Have you never heard of SAP?

"I have to wonder why that, culturally, seems to be linked to Asians?"

It is not Asians - it is most cultures where the parents are fairly poor and the children have a chance to succeed in life.

A second generation rich (well off) person will not work as hard as someone whose father is poor.

I doubt that the stressing and pressure that this guy is going trough is good - but the hard work that a lot of Chinese school children do is a good thing.

Or just take an ordinary attorney and TMS him...

"So all the torture, repression, and extreme poverty during the Pinochet era was worth is huh?"

I never said that the oppression during Pinochet's term was right. What I said was that Chile's macro-economic policy was right. The economic growth under Chile was better than the inflation under Allende. Even critical things such as infancy mortality rate was a 4th under Pinochet as it was under Allende.

“And there HAS been socialist change since Pinochet. “

From WP:

The implemented economic model had three main objectives: economic liberalization, privatization of state owned companies, and stabilization of inflation. These market-oriented economic policies were continued and strengthened after Pinochet stepped down.[1] Successive governments have continued these policies for a quarter century.

Chile has the 8th highest economic freedom in the world – this shows that a lot of policies are still the same.

Chile is one of the best South American countries. It has a lot less poverty than its more socialist neighbours. Here is a quite from WP:

> Currently, Chile is one of South America's most stable and prosperous nations.[5] Within the greater Latin American context it leads in terms of human development, competitiveness, quality of life, political stability, globalization, economic freedom, low perception of corruption and comparatively low poverty rates.[7] It also ranks high regionally in freedom of the press and democratic development.

During the Pinochet era the economy grew and created a stable base for the current day Chile. The economic policies of Chile has not changed course from the Pinochet era.

> and some parts of mainland China

China is screwed up and has many problems. When you compare China now with China pre-1978 you will see that people are a lot richer and more well off than they were then.

> Singapore

Compare Singapore with its neighbour Malaysia. Singapore has a high GDI and a lot less social problems than most other countries.

You can try www.reddit.com/r/math although it is not that good. You may be able to digg up something nice at http://planetmath.org/?op=forums .

I don't think there is really a nice discussion forum for math :(

Ouch. There is a huge degree of truth in that. Situations differ however and I know of at least a few local book exchanges that are making a living (i.e. in operation 2+ years).

I do however not know of one central/large one. There are several reasons why in some cases it succeeds and in others not. In poorer regions/countries people would look for more ways to save money (the pressure isn't really on an Ivy League guy to buy a $50 book instead of a $100 one when his tuition is $40,000. In countries where students live on less than $3000 a year it is).

A solid business idea I have seen is a chinese copy center - you hand in a book and the next day get your book and copy for about $20 (this business is in operation more than 7 years without any uhm... legal problems).

There is another bigger one: College Book Industry.

The current system is pretty inefficient. This probably differs from country to country. The current system here works like this:

The universities give lists of subjects and prescribed textbooks to brick-and-mortar bookstores. They then buy the books and sell them at a huge mark-up.

Students generally do not order online because of the time delay/import BS and many do not have a fixed postal address. Secondhand book sales are a bit of mess because it is not centralised, etc...

There are possibly quite a few ideas on how to make this system more effective (esp. in countries in which the internet penetration is not that high but the cellphone penetration is).

Or different countries. There are quite a few countries in which CraigsList never really "caught on" and where there isn't really something similar.

"1) Keynesian beauty contest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest"

This is so true. Most of the other sites degenerated into karma wh*ring.

Another problem is that the behaviour of a dominant group attract others from the group and puts pressure on those that differ.

This is so true. South Africa is in the same situation – its banks are extremely strong (the majority of the UK Barkley Bank's assets is its stake in a South Africa bank).

The reason why SA banks are so strong is that there is simply no competition. The banks ask what they want to and have an unspoken rule not to compete.

Hmmm... I love investigative reporting - but it will completely die out when good newspapers come along.

The problem is that 80% of the news newspapers sell are commodities. Go to news.google.com and you get 10 articles from different papers on the same subject.

90% of people will not pay anything to read the 10% of investigative stories.