rkbabang

I just did a little searching and this is the insurance that my old bank had. D.I.F.

Mine's buried under the chicken coop. Just kidding. I don't keep a high percentage of cash, so I'm under the $250K limit. Just some ideas off the top of my head: 1) How about a safe deposit box? No interest, but probably pretty safe. 2) Is there private insurance you can buy for cash deposits? I remember years ago (about 17 years ago I think) I was with a credit union that claimed all deposits were insured in full with a private insurer for any amount over the FDIC limit, if such a thing still exists you might look for a bank which has this.

God how stupid can some people be? "Johanna Pimentel said she and both of her brothers had taken out multiple title loans. “They are everywhere, like liquor stores,” she said." Yes and just like liquor stores you don't need to go in.

I'm up 9.68% YTD, but I'm actually down 7.4% from my high water mark in April.

Road Trip!

I watched the first episode of that. It seemed pretty good. Keep watching. I've seen both seasons and it is excellent.

Netflix making a statement about the police? http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/netflix-sure-picked-interesting-time-tweet-about-above-law-cops-161748

No not me, but I agree with the author. Government is violence. Saying: "Government should prohibit X" is the equivalent to saying "people should be kidnapped and caged like animals or killed if they do X". "Government should require X" is the equivalent to saying "people should be kidnapped and caged like animals or killed if they don't do X" "There aught to be a law ..." = "People aught to be kidnapped and caged like animals or killed ..." Libertarians simply think that not all of the worlds problems can and/or should be solved with violence. Lol, well the author of the article would probably frame it differently than that He's just attempting to get the concept across in a way that isn't as blunt.

No not me, but I agree with the author. Government is violence. Saying: "Government should prohibit X" is the equivalent to saying "people should be kidnapped and caged like animals or killed if they do X". "Government should require X" is the equivalent to saying "people should be kidnapped and caged like animals or killed if they don't do X" "There aught to be a law ..." = "People aught to be kidnapped and caged like animals or killed ..." Libertarians simply think that not all of the worlds problems can and/or should be solved with violence.

The war on drugs goes along way to explaining how things got this bad, this fast. Just look at no-knock raids. The only reason for a no-knock raid is to prevent drugs from being flushed as the police knock on the door. But this goes against everything the founders envisioned about warrants being necessary describing the place to be searched and the evidence to be seized. This implies that the warrant is available to the property owner to review before the search. I highly doubt having gangs of men in ninja suites, break down doors with battering rams and stomping through the house with automatic rifles is what the founders meant by "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects..." When masked police officers dressed in black break down your doors in the middle of the night and you shoot at them thinking it is a home invasion (by private thugs, not public thugs), why is this not a legitimate use of force by the home owner? Why wouldn't it be legitimate even if the cops had the right house? Yes, sometimes these cases end up with juries or grand juries freeing the person, but they are always arrested by police and either charged with crimes or put before grand juries. And sometimes imprisoned or even sentenced to death for murder as in the case of Cory Maye. And sometimes they are just shot dead at the scene. Then there is police departments funding themselves by seizing property (most times without even enough evidence to ever charge the owner with a crime). Then there are the cops that are on the gangs' payrolls. That said, war on drugs or not, police corruption will always exists to one extent or another as long as police work is a government 'service'. We can thank the smartphone for shining the light of day on a lot of this stuff. Go to facebook and search for 'cop block' and like the page, you will be horrified to see posts daily with pictures, videos, and local news stories of police doing horrendous things. Before everyone carried a video camera in their pockets, it was the victims' & witnesses' words against the police. And every good law abiding citizen just knew that the police wouldn't lie and those nutty dark skinned criminal types were just crazy when they talked about police abuse.

A brutal police beating, and paid vacation (for the officer administering that is) Yes. A bat to the head and a boot to the face. That is what 'customer service' looks like whenever participation in the 'customer/service provider' relationship is forced rather than voluntary.

The way I look at it is this. A police officer is a human being just like you or me. Therefore a police officer has no right to kill other than the rights that you or I have to kill, which is in self defense or immediate defense of an innocent 3rd party. Therefore in every instance of police officer involved violence the question I ask myself is "What would happen to me if I did that?" If the answer is "It would be ruled a justified use of force in self defense" then the police officer acted appropriately. If the answer is "I'd be in deep shit", then the officer did not act appropriately and should also be in deep legal shit. I know this isn't the way it works (the police practically have a license to kill), but it is the way it should work.

Not only that the police have all kinds of surplus military equipment which you can play with now! Some departments even have tanks! At a time when private non-government violence has been falling dramatically the police are more heavily armed and shooting more people than ever. And unlike private thugs they can get away with it, because the other police officers will gladly look the other way or even lie to protect each other. Given all of this, ask yourself: What personality type is most likely to want to become a police officer? Because those are the people who do. Back to Pizzacracy, Can you opt out of police "protection"? Can you refuse to fund them? Hire another protection service which you think better suits your needs and moral values? Get together with your neighbors and decide to provide a different solution for the defense of your neighborhood? Try telling a cop that you pay his salary, that he works for you, and he's fired. See what that gets you.

Shoot. How many users do we have on this board, Parsad? A good example. Many of us do pretty well, but then again we make our own decisions and no one is forced to participate. Would you like a system where the users of this board (not just the frequent posters, but all users) took a vote on which stocks you had to buy and when you had to sell? How about a system where everyone in the country gets to vote on how you must save for retirement? Oh wait we already have that, it is called Social Security. That is the basic premise of Pizzacracy. Everyone is free to discuss the situation, then only those who wish to act may act, those who wish to form smaller groups to discuss other options may do so, and those who wish to opt out all together may do so without consequences.

How about on comets? FROZEN HYDROCARBONS IN COMETS

There is also the fact that hydrocarbons are found elsewhere in the solar system besides Earth. To the best of my knowledge there has never been dinosaurs nor plankton on Titan. I am not necessarily buying the abiotic theory whole cloth, but it is feasible that at least some of the Earth's hydrocarbons are not derived from once living organisms.

very true. So hard to predict these things. Often the reason you like something can be very unexpected. And it is generally very difficult to predict how you will feel about something. I think it's like investing. It might not be possible to know the outcome of a decision ahead of time, but it's not like nothing about the situation can be known; it's certainly possible to tilt the odds in your favor by thinking about it carefully, analyzing the situation, making sure you have all the relevant information (gathering evidence about the top choices, thinking of ways to do trial runs or find proxies (people who have done what you are thinking of doing) to gather more data to make a better decisions, etc), etc. I have a friend who told me once that she doesn't take any supplements (vitamins, Omega 3, etc). I asked why, and she said: There's so much information, a lot of it is contradictory, the science changes with new studies, how can you know what's the right thing to take? The thing is, by taking nothing, she's also making a choice. She's not actually avoiding the problem. It could turn out to be a very sub-optimal choice. If rather than think "I can't know for sure, hence I'll do nothing", she said "let's see what I can know, what seems most likely to help, less likely to do harm, and I'll do what seems best based on the best information I can find", she might be doing something different that has a higher chance of being closer to the optimal path, whatever that is. Very good analogy, because everyone is different, so the "optimal path" (if such a thing exists) will be different for every individual. This is true with both supplements and careers. And, because you can only choose one path, in the end you will never know if you've achieved it. And since we are both just paraphrasing a Rush song, let me post the relevant lines: Your post (Liberty): "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." My Post: "Each of us, a cell of awareness Imperfect and incomplete Genetic blends with uncertain ends On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet"

Any farmers on the list? Apparently SpaceX is hiring: Farmer, Texas Basic Qualifications: Minimum of 10 years of row crop farming experience in the central Texas area which shall include a working knowledge of every process required for crop production in the region Experience in repair and preventative maintenance of John Deere agricultural equipment High school diploma or general education degree (GED) Preferred Skills and Experience: Valid Class A Commercial Driver’s License Positive relationships with suppliers and contractors in the area Texas Applicator License or sufficient requirements necessary to obtain such

I had a similar (but not identical) decision to make 3 years ago. My wife and I have always lived near our families (or within a 30min drive anyway) and our kids had always lived in the town we were living in. So there was the issue of uprooting my kids from the only place they have ever known away from all of their friends, and moving hours away from our families (parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc...). The differences from your situation was that the new job offer was clearly superior in both pay and opportunity for advancement (they also offered to pay all moving costs) and my wife was not working at the time. So we ended up making the move. Also we liked the idea of moving to a state (New Hampshire) that we would feel more comfortable in politically (being libertarians and living in Massachusetts was endlessly frustrating). I don't know how old your kids are, but my kids were ages 10 and 11 at the time and it was extremely difficult for them at first. Especially my son, who is kind of quiet like me and doesn't make friends all that easily. He had a hard time adjusting and was pretty depressed and maybe a little angry for a few months. But he adjusted and has a great group of friends now, he even told us a little over a year after we moved that he is so glad we moved, because he would have never met all of his new friends if we hadn't. He still keeps in touch with his old friends as well, using email/FB/facetime/etc. My daughter is very social and had a whole new group of fiends the first week, so she didn't have any problems adjusting at all. As far as family goes, it is only about a 2.5 hour drive to see them or for them to visit, so it isn't like moving thousands of miles away. Also the kids weren't babies anymore and we don't need babysitters and such anymore. And with communications basically free nowadays you can skype/facetime/email/facebook/or, even go old school and call, as much and as often as you like. All in all it worked out great for us and I'm much happier in my new job. We are financially better off than we would have been had we stayed, and we have all grown to like our new state and town much better than we liked living in our old one. The schools are much better here too, then where we were living before. I was also pretty confident that my old company would take me back if I asked. I think they still would. That also made the decision a little easier. If you think that is the case with your current position, then why not give it a try for a year or two and see if you like it. Of course the only problem with going back, would be uprooting the kids yet again. These types of life changing decisions are never easy, good luck with whatever you choose.

Fusion has been discussed here in the past. This is an article on another possible path to a fusion reactor. And at the end of the article there is a list of some of the other groups/companies working on fusion (but not all of them). Inside the Dynomak: A Fusion Technology Cheaper Than Coal

I think evolution designed people for being very efficient in small groups, not in large groups. Evolution did not technically design anything, but you get my drift. If you have a small group of people with some very smart people in that group who listen to the smart ones, then that group is going to be very efficient. But with larger groups there will be more divide. That is why the army has such strict discipline and is not a democracy. And that is why democracy works better in some scandinavian countries where tough decisions are handed over to small groups of highly educated people. It is very interesting to think about. We could probably fine tune democracy a lot better if a lot of people at least realized this concept and the importance of knowing your circle of competence. I'd agree with all of that. You can think of a small group of friends in a room deciding to order pizza as an efficiently sized group, anything larger than that becomes less and less efficient, until finally you are dealing with a mob (in every meaning of the word). Pizzacracy works!

I've posted this before, but I like the science fiction author L. Neil Smith's equation*: Ieff = Imax / n Where: Ieff is the effective intelligence of any group of human beings Imax is the intelligence of the most intelligence member of the group n is the number of people in the group He calls the facts that strength is additive (more people are stronger than fewer) and intelligence is not (quite the opposite as the effective intelligence of any group is equal to the intelligence of its brightest member divided by the number of people in the group) as one of the largest tragedies of the human condition. *He first mentioned this in a speech to the Boulder County Libertarian Party in 1989 which he called "The Tyranny of Democracy - Majoritarianism Versus Unanimous Consent", but others have referred to it as his "Pizzacracy" speech or "Pizzacracy as Hyperdemocracy".

1) Unions are not bad. Not sure where you got that from. The libertarian position is that people have a right to unionize and companies have a right to fire them if they do. There shouldn't be government laws giving more power to one side over the other. Laws requiring closed union shops take away the right of every individual who wishes to work for a company from making his/her own decision whether or not to be part of any collective bargaining group or agreement. Most libertarians I know support unions under those conditions and yet don't support the entire idea of corporations to begin with. There is nothing wrong with partnerships and even joint stock companies, but there should be no way to shield individual human beings from being held fully accountable and fully personally liable for the entirety of his actions. There should be no situation where an Angelo Mozilo walks away scott free with his millions while outside shareholders are left holding the liability for his actions. Along with increasing responsibility and increasing compensation, comes increasing liability. 2) I disagree. It is those who think giving unlimited money and power to a limited number of human beings and think that they will solve all the worlds problems are not taking into account ignorance, fear, and greed. As well as racism, sexism, nationalism, and pure power lust. The market puts these things into check somewhat, where government lets these things run amuck completely unchecked. The market will never be perfect, because human beings will never be perfect, but government is a disaster. 3) See above. You can't give people unlimited power over others, with the almost unlimited ability to steal money and property, give favors to one group over another, all backed up by overwhelming force and think that they won't be subject to all the base human desires like greed and power lust. This is a recipe for disaster. 4) Politics = crime (theft, racketeering, and violence). What you are saying is that you can't study economics without taking into account the effects of crime, especially organized crime. This is indeed true, but it shouldn't be legitimized and encouraged, it should be called what it is, an unfortunate cost of being human and living among other humans. A cost that can not be eliminated, but should be minimized whenever possible.

+1 for Hazlitt. This is probably is the only good, yet short and easy, book on Austrian economics. And it is available on-line for free: PDF

You mean just like we do for Africa... it doesn't seem like it's good for us in the long term. In sociology, instability breeds instability nothing good would come out of it. What's needed in the middle east like anywhere else for that matter is good incentives for the leaders to act on the best interests of the population they represent. Get that straightened out and you have another bright billion people to solve the world's problems. BeerBaron +1 and I have no confidence that the US would stay out of the Middle East and let them fight it out among themselves any more than the US has stayed out of Europe in the last hundred years. There were two big squabbles in Europe that the US inserted themselves needlessly into, well the 2nd one might have been necessary, but it was caused largely by the US involving itself in the 1st one. The problem with the US is that it can't seem to mind its own damn business. Causing chaos in the Middle East is just playing into the wet dreams of the lunatics in charge of the US war machine, who are just itching to let it loose "for real".