"In the bizarre math of global economics, it takes less diesel fuel to ship something to California across the ocean from China than via truck or train from New York..."

I'm confused about what makes this 'bizarre math.' Ships have lower carbon footprints than trains which are lower than trucks.

That isn't global economics nor cheap labor or anything...just the simple math of how much can you carry how far on how much fuel.

If carbon taxes become truly high _maybe_ we'll return to sail...how romantic :-)

Or did we not learning anything from the McCarthy tragedies?

George H.W. Bush is not responsible for the current monstrosity.

We don't believe in collective guilt.

OTOH, I'm just parroting what used to be common sense. Perhaps the current situation has corrupted the left as throughly as the right. I hope not, but I hope for a lot of things that don't happen.

You probably are as well. Let's put a stop to this absurd political ownership of 'values' by fundamentalists.

I value gay marriage, abortion rights, the rule of law, checks and balances, civil liberties, liberty, privacy, science based policy, minimization of religion in public life, cultural liberalization of sexuality, and a half dozen other things they fundamentally despise.

My positions are not accidents, they are not perversions, they are quite literally articles of faith and values for me. They define large swaths of my character.

They are my values. And I vote.

I mean, I don't want to be all blaming the victim and shit, but at 21 you seem old enough to decide if you want to fuck a priest or not.

Personally the whole collar thing does nothing for me, but I could get into the nun habit

Damn...I just had to do that :-)

And no snarky scare quotes are warranted nor are they appropriate just because the intellectual property at issue takes a form you don't respect.

I'd go further and say that Vivid has a stronger case than Viacom. I think it is easier to make the case that PornoTube's display of Vivid's content has a larger effect on Vivid's ability to market their content, which is _not_ ad supported, than does the possibly illegitimate posting of Daily Show clips.

(I'm not convinced that Viacom has any case, since posting clips seems the essence of fair use).

I am arguing that Vivid is just as entitled, possibly more entitled, to legal protections for their niche product which is sold on DVD than Viacom is for their ad supported content.

But with that said, screw Vivid and Viacom both. The DMCA is horrible in granting rights holders near infinite powers. But in this case the safe harbor provisions basically simply require Vivid to STFU and monitor the site and send take down notices.

Pablo writes "Bottled water also represents a major ethical dilemma, given that millions of people around the world lack access to clean and safe drinking water."

I don't see how this constitutes an ethical dilemma. Millions of people lack many things, but that does not mean that people who do have those things have done something ethically questionable.

It appears I am alone, but I liked this story. I liked the details, I liked Mark's attempts to warn us that things would just sort of fizzle out, I liked the details, and I liked the scene presented of someone who might actually have something gnawing at his soul, but was unable to get to it at that moment.

Thank you!

This has been touched on, but again, what happens after use.

Please correct me if I am wrong here...(remember, the best way to get a question answered on the internet is not to ask, but to post an answer you know is wrong :-)

An unrecycled Al can just sits where it is dropped. Al makes up about 8% of the Earth's crust, so as far as I understand there is nothing particularly hazardous about Aluminum.

Plastic OTOH, is this freaky new creation of humans, with scary and unknown potential consequences.

I respect McCain is being one of the very few principled presidential candidates. His writings on torture are still powerful.

Unlike Bush McCain is not Evil.

But he is sure as heck a conservative, and I'm not voting for convervatives, even if he isn't evil.

Elephantman wonders how someone can go between Obama and McCain in spite of their deep and fundamental policy differences.

It is because most people (including me at least a quarter of the time) actually don't care about policy positions. People care about character.

People didn't like Kerry, which sort of makes sense since Kerry acts like a total douche, and so in spite of having better policies they didn't vote for him.

McCain and Obama radiate 'character.' The rest of the republican field not so much. And Clinton, well, whatever. I'll of course vote for her, but I don't like her even as much as I like McCain.

You got it right that the Internet works on trust, and potential censors are likely to get their bite of the censorship apple.

But only once. Trust can be revoked at a highly granular level.

The architecture of the net is reasonably well equipped to deal with routing censorship from a rogue host (or rogue country).

It is sort of cool to watch the architecture initially designed 30+ ago by really freaking smart geeks interact with all of the other social and technical forces in the world.

Here we have a scholar who has studied some of the worst things which people have done to each other in recent history. She knows what she is talking about. I think if Samantha Power thinks Clinton is a monster we should listen.

Unlike the political hacks who fill most of Clinton's campaign Samantha Power actually knows something and is someone who matters.