spikels

70 ms·

721.
by spikels 13y ago
You misquote the OXFAM claim. They actually say: The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world.[1](p2 bottom) See the difference? The richest 85 people have about $1.7 trillion in wealth[2]. T
722.
by spikels 13y ago
You're absolutely right. They say a picture is worth a thousand words - animated gifs even more so. I could almost imagine a world where animated gifs replace all kinds of communication. Press releases seem particularly ripe for change
723.
by spikels 13y ago
Rather strange and confused comment. Many people have expressed concern "Saving lives leads to overpopulation". It is a common concern of donors[1] and this view seems to be particularly common among those primarily concerned abou
724.
by spikels 13y ago
As soon as Tom becomes President he gets a Secret Service detail with dark sunglasses! That animated gif is hilarious.
725.
by spikels 13y ago
OBAMA DECISION: Not addressed in speech.
726.
by spikels 13y ago
C'mon it is not the Republicans. At the time that executive order was issued Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. There is no bad team and good team (i.e. your team) but a rotten sport. Your thinking has fallen victim to their
727.
by spikels 13y ago
Obama admits this is "to restore public confidence" not to fix a broken system. He doesn't even think there is an actual problem. This is all about PR and very little, if anything, about reform. Our power-mad leaders never gi
728.
by spikels 13y ago
You have calculated the mean. This is only the first step in calculating the MAD (mean absolute deviation). You then need to take the absolute value of the difference (deviation) of each datapoint from this mean - for your x you get (.3, .3
729.
by spikels 13y ago
You gotta love the acronyms: STD versus MAD! Taleb is definitely mad but his use of the MAD acronym (mean absolute deviation) is actually correct. However the STD acronym (all caps) refers to "sexually transmitted disease" and not
730.
by spikels 13y ago
Neither of your links offer support for your statements. As the BBC article notes glyphosate is considered one of the "most environmentally friendly" farm chemicals by the World Health Organisation (glyphosate breakers down in wat
731.
NSA Data Have No Impact on Terrorism: Report(bloomberg.com)
4 points by spikels 13y ago|0 comments
732.
by spikels 13y ago
Keep in mind $90m Accenture contract is only part of the annual cost - there are other contractors as well as the cost of HHS itself. While we don't have the Accenture contract terms the renewal cost is usually the same (or slightly hi
733.
by spikels 13y ago
How would universal healthcare reduce politics, bureaucracy or mismanagement? I'm sympathetic to arguments for universal healthcare but after the way the ACA was both designed and implemented I have little confidence our leaders wouldn
734.
by spikels 13y ago
Exactly right but these buyers & sellers don't care about anonymity too much. It is the banks who are worried. If governments were really devious they would replace their cash with a non-anonymous cryptocurrency like BitCoins. That
735.
by spikels 13y ago
So true but HSBC's standard cartel account minimum balance is a billion dollars.
736.
by spikels 13y ago
This article is crap. When the evidence does not fit your theory you don't complain about the evidence: Stupid American don't want to move to the rust belt and get rich! Perhaps ideology is getting in the way of thinking. What abo
737.
by spikels 13y ago
The authors of the recent book "Single Page Web Applications", Mike Mikowski and Josh Powell, took a similar approach - avoiding frameworks and using jQuery and just a few JavaScript libraries. Mike gave good talks on their philos
738.
by spikels 13y ago
Exactly right! Same with PHP (originally "Personal Home Page" scripts for an talented individual) and Djanjo (two talented hackers at small newspaper). Most of today's popular web framework had humble beginnings while many of
739.
Obama works to craft response to surveillance uproar(mcclatchydc.com)
1 points by spikels 13y ago|0 comments
740.
by spikels 13y ago
You are correct that Marx is important in the HISTORY of economics (and it's idealogical cousin, political economy) but he has contributed almost nothing to modern economics. When he wrote a 150 years ago he understood little of what y
741.
by spikels 13y ago
No they don't! [1-6] The author of this piece, Mike Koczal, is an ideological blogger. You can catch him on Salon, MSNBC, TNR, etc. The main economist mentioned, Arin Dube, is not mainstream. He is actually sympathetic to Soviet centra
742.
by spikels 13y ago
You see this differently than me. I see it as people coming to an agreement if both feel it is mutually beneficial. You (and the author of the NYT piece) see it as surrendering an priceless principal despite your strong resistance ever actu
743.
by spikels 13y ago
I think the fact the use and abuse of legal opiates are much more common (abuse is estimated an 10% of US population each year) than heroin (use is estimate at only 1.6% of US population even once during their entire lifetime) explains this
744.
by spikels 13y ago
You say you want the right but never expect to use it. If that is the case it is probably not worth very much. Perhaps they can pay you something for it... You don't have to sign severance agreements that give your rights and employers
745.
by spikels 13y ago
It's pretty sad but you what you say is correct: We can no longer just read our laws in order to understand what they say. Instead we need to pay lawyers to tell us what they mean even when they appear to be very clear like the first a
746.
by spikels 13y ago
The $1/day figure was actually the estimate minimum survival income calculated for a number of poor countries then averaged and rounded. It's not perfect but not arbitrary either. In fact it is now usually quoted as either $1.25 o
747.
by spikels 13y ago
Everyone should agree that a college degree has some positive impact on future earnings. The problem is that the real cost of that degree has been doubling every decade for more than 30 years while the real earnings of college graduates hav
748.
by spikels 13y ago
I disagree the details are not the story. If the perfect information was available it would almost certainly tell the same story: the cost of college education is rising rapidly relative to the income benefit of that education. Do you disag
749.
by spikels 13y ago
Good points! There must be a law of diminishing returns in education just like in almost everything else. As the opportunities to get more education have greatly expanded, the quality of both the students and that education have probably su
750.
by spikels 13y ago
We can argue about the details but the underlying story is accurate: the cost of higher education has gone up a lot while the income of college graduates has been flat or declined slightly. This is not news[1a][1b]. The big question is will

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