turar

I meant more that Iran has a deployed US military or US-guided military on both its sides.

Iran, by the way, never actually called for wipe-out of Israel: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/israeli-minister-agrees-ahmadinejad-never-said-israel-must-be-wiped-off-the-map/?_r=0 It was a mistranslation that was played into global public conscience by various media outlets. Now compare that single mistranslated statement to a lengthy discussion of Israel's attack planning on Iran just in the article that you've linked in your first post. And that's just one article among many. Iran is a sole Shiite nation sharing a border with US-created chaos both in Iraq and Afghanistan, Sunni nuclear Pakistan, hostile Sunni gulf states, including KSA, as well as nuclear Israel, whose leaders openly discuss the various angles of attack on Iran (again, compare to the shitstorm created by a single mistranslated statement). So yeah, I think any country in that situation would want to make sure it can defend itself.

My point is that no end of the world will happen if Iran goes nuclear. In fact, it will be better for the region's stability.

When did a country with nuclear weapons ever attack another country with nuclear weapons? When did a country without nuclear weapons ever attack a country with nuclear weapons? When was the last time Iran attacked another country?

In the linked article Yadlin says that if Israel strikes Iranian nuclear facility, Iranians will react rationally and not commit a full-scale retaliation, because the third round of counter-retaliation will be huge. Well, in that case, why would Iranians not act even more rationally should they possess a bomb? His arguments that MAD will not work are not serious -- it's easy enough to setup those de-escalators that he's talking about. The bottom line is, if Iran already had a bomb, Israel wouldn't even be talking about striking Iranian sovereign territory, and the balance in the region would be set, similar to India-Pakistan. Iranian leadership doesn't hate the West, but they do want some respect. As Yadlin said, they've learned from North Korea, that once you have a bomb, nobody will touch you. They also learned from Iraq, that if you don't get the bomb soon enough, you are fair game.

Regarding retirement and property taxes, some states have senior exemptions and other perks for homeowners over 65. E.g. in Georgia, you don't pay any property tax if you're over 65, AFAIK. Other states, you don't pay school portion of the tax, or get up to a certain amount back. And anyways, once baby boomers start retiring en masse, they will make sure to turn the laws to their advantage and tell the school districts to eff off, since they don't have any school-age kids no more. Fun times ahead. :)

Baby what now? ;) http://www.myplaniq.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/nyt-best-stocks.gif

I think phones/cars/cable are too superficial to be the right markers of the standard of living. It makes more sense to go back to basic Maslow pyramid: food, housing, health, childcare, education, free time with family, etc. Are these better or worse than 15 years ago?

Don't have TV for a few years either. We also have a toddler who is growing up without a TV (albeit with computer screen at times), and feel that is in part contributing positively to his development (reading before 3). Also, we recently went to relatives house for a visit, and watched some TV, and I couldn't believe the amount of advertising that they show nowadays along with actual content. It really jumps out at you if you haven't watched TV for a while.

Should have just taped it on a phone camera, then it would have been perfectly legal porn. ;D

They won't be the first to try. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tully%27s_Coffee

Funny story. In Seattle, the self-proclaimed capital of coffee, there are tons of boutique coffee shops and their loyal customers, who look down on corporate Starbucks, and think their coffee is shit. One large Seattle-based corp was routinely stocking Starbucks in their break rooms and there were constant complaints that they should dump them and choose one of the better local coffee providers. So they obliged and did a blind test/study to try to figure which of the local coffee places to go with. But they also included Starbucks in that test. Guess who won the blind test. ;D

I tried reading their annual report, but couldn't deal with all that visual overload, Martha Stewart style.

Philip, I'm not yet sure that I'm with you ideologically, but I've been "with you" by circumstance, having been renting all my life so far, I'm in my early 30s. It definitely helps with mobility and being able to pack-up and move wherever you want or wherever a new job is with a short notice. But at some point, especially with family/kids, it might make sense to settle down for a decade or two into owned real estate, until the kids are grown, after which the freedom of not owning real estate is again a good proposition. On the other hand, real estate is a good way to diversify your overall asset base, instead of renting and having all your money in equity markets.

I thought that this article would be interesting to some here: http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

How about $1 million and a buy recommendation to put twins through preschool? :) http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123782&page=1 http://nymag.com/nymetro/urban/education/features/n_8065/

Does anyone know where I can find lithium spot prices, preferably historical too, and preferably already charted? The closest I got by googling was articles like this: http://www.mining.com/painting-a-rosy-picture-of-lithium-and-tantalum-99638/ "The current spot price for battery-grade lithium carbonate is $6,600 a tonne, that’s up from $5,500 a couple of years ago"

Autocover can probably double as a good child safety measure.

Haha, this 100 times. When I first saw the thread title, I thought it would be either about Snowden/NSA affair; or Guantanamo which is still open, where prisoners are being force-fed through tubes everyday; or the decline of American middle class; or free hunting passes on Blacks in Florida, aka "Stand Your Ground" law; or the highest incarcerated rate in the world; or Iraq/Afghanistan invasions; or maybe even all of the above. I was wrong.

Vitaly is also Russian-born by the way:

Also read about Magnitsky and Magnitsky Act: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Magnitsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act And how Russian lawmakers reacted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dima_Yakovlev_Law (by basically cancelling all American adoptions and forcing children in process to remain in orphanages). It's really messed up.

Another article in a similar vein: https://blog.wealthfront.com/college-vs-retirement-savings-silicon-valley/

Not necessarily paradigm shifts, but pretty significant leaps. It's obviously true that all innovation is based on previous work, but the nature of the leap from A to B was what I meant I guess. People keep mentioning things like Internet, mobile phone, or wireless, but those were all created more than 30 years ago. Even in software, most major innovations paradoxically happened more than 30 years ago, even though this may sound ridiculous to a layperson. First flight was 1903, first man in space was in 1961, 58 years later. It just seems like a LOT has happened in terms of technological progress in that half of 20th century of time, compared to the later part. And to the discussion regarding free time, an interesting article to read: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2962/

What they mean is that there weren't many fundamental, ground breaking innovations. What's described in this thread so far, are mostly incremental progress based on innovations that occurred more than 30 years ago. Internet was invented in late 60s - early 70s. Last major genetics breakthroughs were in the 50s. It's like a Buzz Aldrin said, "You promised me Mars colonies, and all I got was Facebook."