falk

I will always remember watching the first moon landing on TV as a young boy. Very special.

Yes, but you claimed that it was easy to shut down crappy charter schools. My point is it's not when they lie and they will lie to make money.

Finland has the best school system in the world and they aren't driven by the free market.

Are you claiming that teacher's don't have copays? Because that's patently false. How about before Obamacare when you could be kicked off your insurance roles for having a "pre-existing" condition and then you couldn't find healthcare anywhere? Do you think that didn't effect teachers? People in the U.S. pay more for healthcare than people in Finland do when you take into account the amount of taxes they pay. When the costs of programs are spread among the public, things tend to be cheaper.

Let's take a look at the Finland school system. They have strong unions that are allowed to take an active role in helping decide what's taught. They have seniority. They don't care about standardized tests, which differs dramatically from the U.S. They don't have any No Child Left Behind bullshit.

The students defer drastically, as well. All the students in Finland have healthcare. When they are sick they can go to the doctor and not have to worry about a gigantic bill. They have a poverty rate of 5.3% compared to the U.S. which has a rate of 23.1%. I'm also willing to wager that a significantly larger chunk of their population believes in evolution and global warming compared to the U.S. It's hard to learn when your hungry and sick.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-ame...

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands...

Your argument is borderline dishonest. Teachers in Finland don't have to worry about a lot of things U.S. teachers do because they're taken care of by the government via taxes, which results in said utilities and services being cheaper. For example: health care. I also bet that Finland teachers don't have to spend their own money on buying supplies for their students, which is sadly really common here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_in_Finland

Unless they cook the books. Which happens.

It's worth pointing out that the author of that New York Times article, Mike Soraghan, has in his Twitter bio "Frac(k)ing is my life" and that he links to the same articles you linked to.

https://twitter.com/MikeSoraghan

There's obviously something nefarious going on. Why else would all of these natural gas companies be paying people off and making them sign confidentially agreements?

Side-note: Before today I didn't realize how lax the laws on natural gas companies are. The New York Times has a great graphic on the subject.

"The natural gas industry has exemptions or exclusions from key parts of at least 7 of the 15 major federal environmental laws designed to protect air and water from radioactive and hazardous chemicals. Below are the seven laws listed in the order they were passed."

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/03/us/20110303-na...

Read these for more information on the six months rule. It's rather ridiculous and I didn't believe it when I first heard about it.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/ecpa-turns-twenty-f... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act

Bullshit. Their political leanings that stem from their religion. You could say the same thing about Islamic terrorists.

Funny enough, they actually edited that article. I believe the quote was originally something along the administration losing all credibility without the specification on the issues of transparency and accountability.

http://gawker.com/the-new-york-times-quietly-softened-its-sc...

I hate Intuit. They have a huge lobbying arm and are viciously against making taxes easier to file.

For more information see: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/04/auto...

Most countries don't have a 21+ year old age limit on alcohol. It's actually a rather poor idea and harms 18/19/20 year olds who attend college and get busted drinking. It's pretty silly to draw parallels between porn and alcohol. You've said you're a /r/nofap reader. You obviously have a bias against porn.

You need to be a responsible adult and talk to your children about pornography. If you don't trust them then you need to install a porn filter. But if you don't trust your kids, you're going to have a lot of bigger problems then porn.

It's been reported that Dropbox is "coming soon" to PRISM.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/06/prism-comp...

This doesn't negate the fact that Toms makes a shitty product that fall apart easily, especially in the 3rd world.

Have they never offered free shoes we wouldn't be talking about them. They make it seem like they are giving away a pair of shoes worth $50, when they are really just spending a couple of dollars on a marketing expense. I bet they pass the cost of giving away a "free" pair of shoes onto their customer.

I can't speak for OP, but I have no disdain for Apple or Nike in terms of their markup because they are not masquerading as some sort of quasi-charity that is supposedly helping people in need. Also, they make good products.

It seems like a lot of people in the tech industry are smitten with the the corporate leadership of popular companies like Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, etc. These people may have created great products and companies but people need to realize that you're not their friends. They have mostly have different interests than you. I noticed this a lot when the PRISM scandal happened. I saw people actively defending these companies saying that their leaders would never allow such a thing to occur. I think a lot of this has happened because of clever marketing. Advertisements like "Dear Sophie" by Google [1] or "Music Every Day" by Apple are designed to be touching and pull on your heartstrings. You owe these companies nothing. They don't need you to defend their actions. Your interests aren't always aligned. I will be very surprised if writers at the Washington Post are now allowed to write about the hardships of being an employee at an Amazon Fulfillment center. That type of story just doesn't align with Bezos' interests.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vkVHijdQk

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDUKt_XgfJ4

Wikileaks really should have slowly leaked out information like the Guardian has with the Snowden documents. Even today people haven't absorbed the important information that Manning shined a light on.

For example, from the Manning leaks we learned that the U.S. railed against a proposed increase in the minimum wage in Hati. It would have raised wages from 24¢ to 61¢ an hour. American corporations that take advantage of Hati for cheap labor couldn't have that. I'm looking at you Hanes and Levi Strauss.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/06/us-haiti-wik...

Wikileaks exposed that the U.S. was bombing Yemen in secret.

http://www.salon.com/2010/11/29/wikileaks_yemen_revelations/

Brainwashed is the right word. Have you seen any of thr old drug propaganda videos? Check them out on YouTue. Also look up and watch Referrer Madness. In D.A.R.E my brothers kid learned that LSD stays in your system forever and drips acid down your brainstem, among a whole slew of other non-factual information.

"If a system requires nearly the entire populace to be as active (intellectually and financially) as every individual vested interest just to be successful, then it is a bad system."

We can't even get half of the country to make informed decisions. Americans are definitely the problem. They vote every couple of years to elect rich politicians that don't give a fuck about them. And they vote based off of arbitrary reasons. They find out we are being constantly spied on and they just don't care. Just like they didn't care when Japanese Americans were thrown into camps during WW2. Just like they didn't care when we were lied into Vietnam and then again into Iraq to make a few people richer. Americans are complacent.

The federal government is going to step in and start confiscating grow-ops in Colorado and Washington State. They will bust people doors down and most likely injure or kill a few. It's going to happen. The powers at the federal level are just too great.

I wouldn't blame just Republicans for drugs not being legal and the DEA being intact. Democrats get campaign contributions from police unions, private prisons, alcohol companies, pharmaceutical companies, and prison guard unions too.

The fact of the matter is that our politicians don't work for us they work for corporate interests. Also, before someone says we should elect politicians, please realize that the problem isn't the politicians. It's the American people. Americans are dumber than a box of rocks. They love their low prices they get at Walmart and don't realize how much we subsidize the company's employees via welfare programs because they refuse to pay them a living wage.

The baby boomers (and possibly my generation) will have to die off before cannabis and other drugs are legalized.

How are they supposed to know if parallel construction was used in their case or not?

Drop the exclamation point. It's cleaner.

I hope they are more ethical than Yelp.

""Privatization" where the government contracts to third parties, is not privatization."

Yes it is. The definition of privatization is simply "denationalization: changing something from state to private ownership or control."

It seems like marketing mostly. Maybe I'm just too old to understand all these crazy kids these days, but I don't see the appeal in drinking my meals. I really don't think this is going to work out.

What about the massive amount of non-violent drug offenders in jail?

You are correct. I forgot about our friends across the pond. I believe I read heroin was supposed to be a less addictive alternative of morphine. I don't know much about opioids, I wonder what the breakdown in pricing is between commercial, hospital heroin versus something Oxycontin. I'm guessing it's probably cheaper to produce hospital heroin and drug companies can't compete with it.