Xard wrote:China is relaxing its one-child policies

UrsusArctos wrote:It's too little, too late.

drinian wrote:If it were only the one-child policy causing this, why isn't female infanticide and selective abortion lower in rural areas of India, where there is no family-planning policy?

It's not of course. If I were to guess, it's likely the age-old economic pressures of not having enough food to feed a girl who won't develop quickly enough to help on the farm is the culprit.

As food production grows, and poverty becomes less of a barrier, it will diminish, as poverty in India in general has diminished.

but I can certainly understand the need for population-control policies

There is never a "need" for them. Birth rates wax and wane at their own discretion, we see looking back in history where women voluntarily had less children for a generation, then two generations next started having more, and then two generation next back to less. That people in urban centers having less children than those in rural areas is equally proof that birth rates are something that can take care of themselves, given healthy sociological conditions.

Further, having "enough resources" even if that was a concern, is not a collective issue. Rather, it's a personal one. Only families know if they have enough to feed and provide for their children, central planners have no such knowledge and generally assume (wrongly) that whatever the birth rate is currently, it will continue undaunted into the future. I say this both for those planners who say it's too high, or too low.

Chuckman wrote:Denver has deployed a new police technology to capture dangerous and elusive criminals:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/denver-cops-use-smell-oscope-sniff-pot-smokers/

That sounds like something ripe for a Constitutional challenge, especially if the ordinance is as broad as the article made it appear.

Brittany Murphy was murdered! Murdered I say!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/18/brittany-murphy-death-poisoned_n_4296590.html

Guy Creates Assassination Kickstarter

“Majority support does not make a leader legitimate any more than it made slavery legitimate. With this market the great equalising forces of capitalism have the opportunity to work in politics too. One bitcoin paid is one vote closer to a veto of whatever legislation you dislike.”

It'd be funny if it wasn't for the subject matter.

CJD wrote:Guy Creates Assassination Kickstarter

Pretty big deal. EFF's page on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

EFF wrote:The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, is a massive trade agreement that's being negotiated in secret by 12 countries across the Pacific. It has 29 chapters covering all kinds of regulations, and we only know what's in it based on outdated leaks and government statements.

But last week, we had a huge development. Wikileaks published one of the most controversial chapters of all: the one related to “Intellectual Property” issues. This leaked text, from August 2013, confirms long-standing suspicions about the harm the agreement's copyright enforcement provisions could do to users’ rights and a free and open Internet. This includes terms that would incentivize ISPs to police their users' activities (ISP liability) and enact criminal penalties against people for interacting and tinkering with their devices in new ways. Its monopolistic patent provisions also confirm that the TPP would have tragic implications for people's access to medicine and innovative medical procedures.

There have already been reports of this, and I'm pretty sure I remember a petition against it about a year ago.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/news/monty-python-reunion-surviving-members-to-reform-for-a-stage-show-8948661.html

OH MY SWEET CTHULU IN R'LYEH YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Years of dealing with seventh graders who just discovered Monty Python and the Holy Grail ruined them for me.

CJD wrote:Guy Creates Assassination Kickstarter

"You might throw your rock, hide your hand, work in the darkness 'gainst your fellow man; but as sure as God made black and white, what's done in the dark will be brought to the light..."

I had more to say, but teh Cash took over and soon it was gone.

Pentagon forged financial documents amid failure to manage budget.

According to those responsible for inserting the numbers into the books at the Defense Finance and Accounting Services (DFAS), military agencies failed to supply a clear monthly account of the money they spent. In a flurry of activity, DFAS would contact the appropriate personnel in order to record accurate data, but many numbers remained a mystery.

At this point, employees would be ordered to enter fake numbers, or “plugs,” that would match up accordingly with what the Treasury department expected to see.

Probably the most surprising part is that this is all being painted as a laughable act of silly incompetence rather than a criminal scandal like when Enron did it. Or maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

Monk Ed wrote:Pentagon forged financial documents amid failure to manage budget.

Probably the most surprising part is that this is all being painted as a laughable act of silly incompetence rather than a criminal scandal like when Enron did it. Or maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

It's not like they're going to have "Alien spaceship storage" and "hookers for foreign dictators" on their balance sheets.

Monk Ed wrote:Pentagon forged financial documents amid failure to manage budget.

Probably the most surprising part is that this is all being painted as a laughable act of silly incompetence rather than a criminal scandal like when Enron did it. Or maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

Enron claimed it had money it didn't have and created phony companies to keep up the masquerade, whereas the Pentagon just fiddled around with the numbers to account for money they did have and were expected to spend. These two things are not the same, nor even really similar. Laughable act of silly incompetence vs. criminal scandal is about the best way to summarize both cases.

Someone could siphon off a couple of hundred thousand dollars here and there and then leave accountants wondering why the numbers aren't matching up. Rather than making sure that there's no corruption, embezzlement or wasted spending, they go ahead and make the figures match, therefore hiding the loss and the wastage. That may simply be incompetence, but it's incompetence that completely obscures the loss of billions of taxpayer dollars - and that is criminal.

UrsusArctos wrote:Someone could siphon off a couple of hundred thousand dollars here and there and then leave accountants wondering why the numbers aren't matching up. Rather than making sure that there's no corruption, embezzlement or wasted spending, they go ahead and make the figures match, therefore hiding the loss and the wastage. That may simply be incompetence, but it's incompetence that completely obscures the loss of billions of taxpayer dollars - and that is criminal.

But there is no loss. The problem isn't that the numbers didn't add up, the problem is shoddy bookkeeping. No one stole money, they just didn't keep their receipts in order. I'm not making hypotheticals here, either -- I work for the government, and I know how these things work. I guarantee you that incompetence is a thousand times more likely than fraud. That doesn't mean this isn't a problem, of course, not by a longshot. Several people will be written up over this and possibly fired. But that doesn't make this a criminal enterprise, and certainly not one on the scale of Enron. It's just bureaucratic incompetence at work.

Bagheera wrote:But there is no loss. The problem isn't that the numbers didn't add up, the problem is shoddy bookkeeping. No one stole money, they just didn't keep their receipts in order.

Not directly related, but many DoD budgetary practices definitely straddle the line of "stealing" from the people paying for these services. Independent audits have found hundreds of billions of dollars of redundancy within DoD. (And of course they can't even maintain a fax machine for FOIA requests, let alone use an Internet fax service like anyone sane).

Corporations do a lot of stupid accounting, too, but it's understandable why people get angry about the relatively little things like this when the big things are so problematic. And this is coming from someone who feels most large corporations spend too much time trying to audit every moment of their employees' time for accounting purposes.

drinian wrote:Not directly related, but many DoD budgetary practices definitely straddle the line of "stealing" from the people paying for these services. Independent audits have found hundreds of billions of dollars of redundancy within DoD. (And of course they can't even maintain a fax machine for FOIA requests, let alone use an Internet fax service like anyone sane).

I'm not about to claim government spending is not wasteful or ill-considered; plenty of stupidity on that front. It's just not malicious or criminal, y'know? Government drones are slaves to bureaucracy and policy, for good or ill. That's a good way to waste money, but theft for personal gain? Good luck.

Even if it's not malicious, it's still a crime without a culprit because it wastes billions of dollars that could be put to very good use. And who's to say how genuine fraud is being obscured by the accounting? That sort of thing has happened before. Remember, it's not just about what you've seen, it's about a colossal and byzantine system in which you're seeing a small part. What you see is just a small part of all there is.

Prince William wants a PS4 but Kate might not let him have one

"It's very addictive," he said, as he was shown the £349.99 console that goes on sale later this month. "I'd like to get one but I'm not sure how my wife would feel about it."



[url]http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/prince-william-fears-kate-middleton-2805410[/url]

CJD wrote:Guy Creates Assassination Kickstarter



It'd be funny if it wasn't for the subject matter.

Amazing. They might have created actual value for bitcoins, if only as a limited, horrifying political statement.