Our government currently beleives that some companies are too big to allow to fail. That if they fail they will bring down the entire economy with them, or at the very least bring down their poll numbers due to unemployment temporarily going up by a point. But what does it mean for a mega company to fail? Take a look at the auto industry, we have a variety of newcommers, something unheard of in markets controlled by incumbants. Companies like tesla motors are coming and providing niche ...

People who support obama-care are acting as if there are two and only two sides right now. 1. On the one hand there are those who wish to reform a broken system 2. On the other those who wish to oppose reform because they like the status quo, are stupid, evil, or just ignorant (ignorant means don't know any better; and is not an insult). They go on and on trying to prove how "bad" things are right now by giving personal experiences, or second (or greater) hand stories of people who had bad ...

I heard on the radio today that the CDC is working on making circumcision mandatory for all newborns in the USA. A quick search revealed plenty of articles confirming that claim. Have we fell so far as to rob people of their rights to their own body? Circumcision is tauted as "cleaner" and "less likely to pass disease". You know what is even cleaner and even less likely to pass disease? complete removal of the penis. Also why not rip out everyone's nails so they don't have to clean under t...

I will make you an offer. I shall give you 50$ to come to my house and clean my toilet, floors, and carpets. Or 100$ to sit at home and do nothing. Which one would you choose and why?

Look at this chart:     Ultraviolet and things to its right will give you cancer. Visible light and things to its left will not. That is because they simply do not penetrate your body, and the few photons that do, do not produce free radicals like UV light. When a UV photon hits a molecule it can cause free radicals, anti bonding bonds, emission of light at a lower wavelength, heat, etc... The reason is the significant amount of energy contained in it. As you go dow...

In recent news, europe banned incandescent light bulbs above 100 watts, leaving only CFL bulbs, and is moving towards banning incandescents soon. The USA is on tract to do the same by 2012... and so is pretty much every other western nation. CFL bulbs are a lot cheaper, they make sense. In fact, a quick bit of algebra shows that throwing away you perfectly working incandescent and buying a CFL replacing will save you money. Yet some people choes incandescents for various functions for vari...

The CEO of whole foods mart recently came out against Obamacare... http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=8322658&page=1 Interestingly enough, the biggest supporters are the pharma companies and wallmart: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124640564559176649.html

Today in college (organic chemistry 2 lab) a girl asked me about my country of origin. We got talking and i mentioned i lived in canada from age 1-4... this spurred her to comment that canada was great, much better than here; because their government pays for all healthcare. I pointed out the varied problems with that, and finished with quoting what obama was saying about "making a decision about end of life care" and how it affects the elderly. Her response? "well those people are no lon...

  Censorship... it's not just for authoritarian states anymore. Such issues are increasingly part of the discourse in democracies, including Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority democracy. The government there is working up Internet censorship rules  to crack down on sites that offend "public decency," including pornography (child and otherwise). In a sign that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has rather  peculiar  views on freedom of speech, he complained at...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_incandescent_light_bulbs#United_States http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/business/energy-environment/01iht-bulb.html?_r=1 Various governments around the world are banning Incandescent light bulbs in favor of "greener alternatives" such as CFLs. Specifically: Philippines, European Union, Ireland, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Canada, Cuba, Oceania, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Venezuela, and the USA. In the USA, California, Connecti...

I can hardly believe it, it is as if a huge weight lifted off of my chest. I had already written off america, certain it is doomed to fall into a third world communist country due to the people wanting such "change". I was listening to the radio and heard that martha coakley was defeated in  Massachusetts. A republican in victory in that state is amazing enough, but it finally sealed the deal with the horrible healthcare nationalization bill. Democrats are jumping ship left and...

  People have discovered that people are naive, trusting fools... you just need to frame something the right way to gain instant support. This is why the american "creationist" movement have renamed themselves "intelligence design" and later "scientific critique"... (see the book "of people and pandas", the book on which the movement is based and the 3 crazy leaders of the movement. the book has had several editions where the term creationism was simply replaced with intelligent desig...

  I wonder what soldiers who were waterboarded to be "toughened up" think about this whole "waterboarding is torture and should be illegal to use on terrorists" crap. To quote wikipedia: All special operations units in all branches of the U.S. military and the CIA's  Special Activities Division   [ 14 ]  employ the use of a form of waterboarding as part of survival school ( Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape ) training, to psychologically prepare soldiers...

I wonder if I will get banned from wikipedia for this. In the water boarding article, waterboarding is declared torture (if looking to edit, there is a warning that a "wikipedia discussion" declared it to be so. Only evidence supporting such a claim is presented. If you go through the entire article, way near the bottom, is a short section that details the use of waterboarding on american troops to toughen them up... yap, its a training exercise for the military. Well, lets do a little experi...