Corvus.corax

Cap and trade is going nowhere at the federal level but the California program is large and expanding and the CA program allows for properly monitored and regulated offsets to be purchased from anywhere in the United States. As a result, a price on carbon is being established nationally.  As the NYTimes indicates in a very good article, once a market and a price have been established, contentious politics turns into mutually beneficial economics.

Experts who support cap and trade contend that a market mechanism can reach more deeply into the economy than any other approach, changing the behavior even of people and companies that might not necessarily care about global warming.

The Wisconsin dairymen perhaps serve as an example of that.

Even as the methane-powered generator roared on his property, John T. Pagel said he was not convinced that the climatic changes happening in the United States were a result of human emissions. He suspects they might be part of a natural cycle. But with Californians dangling cash in exchange for his willingness to cut emissions, he jumped at the chance to build his digester.

“We are doing exactly what they asked us to do to get paid to reduce carbon,” Mr. Pagel said. “If somebody else believes in it enough to put up the money, that’s all I need to know.”

The band's frontman has given more clues at what to expect from the record

KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "There is growing evidence that the center of the Milky Way contains a mysterious object some 4 million times more massive than the Sun. Many astronomers believe that this object, called Sagittarius A*, is a supermassive black hole that was crucial in the galaxy's birth and formation. The thinking is that about 100 million years after the Big Bang, this supermassive object attracted the gas and dust that eventually became the Milky Way. But there is a problem with this theory--100 million years is not long enough for a black hole to grow so big. The alternative explanation is that Sagittarius A* is a wormhole that connects the Milky Way to another region of the universe or even a another multiverse. Cosmologists have long known that wormholes could have formed in the instants after the Big Bang and that these objects would have been preserved during inflation to appear today as supermassive objects hidden behind an event horizon, like black holes. It's easy to imagine that it would be impossible to tell these objects apart. But astronomers have now worked out that wormholes are smaller than black holes and so bend light from an object orbiting close to them, such as a plasma cloud, in a unique way that reveals their presence. They've even simulated what such a wormhole will look like. No telescope is yet capable of resolving images like these but that is set to change too. An infrared instrument called GRAVITY is currently being prepared for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile and should be in a position to spot the signature of a wormhole, if it is there, in the next few years."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Adrienne LaFrance reports at the Atlantic that if you've tried listening to any of the old CDs lately from your carefully assembled collection from the 1980's or 1990's you may have noticed that many of them won't play. 'While most of the studio-manufactured albums I bought still play, there's really no telling how much longer they will. My once-treasured CD collection — so carefully assembled over the course of about a decade beginning in 1994 — isn't just aging; it's dying. And so is yours.' Fenella France, chief of preservation research and testing at the Library of Congress is trying to figure out how CDs age so that we can better understand how to save them. But it's a tricky business, in large part because manufacturers have changed their processes over the years and even CDs made by the same company in the same year and wrapped in identical packaging might have totally different lifespans. 'We're trying to predict, in terms of collections, which of the types of CDs are the discs most at risk,' says France. 'The problem is, different manufacturers have different formulations so it's quite complex in trying to figure out what exactly is happening because they've changed the formulation along the way and it's proprietary information.' There are all kinds of forces that accelerate CD aging in real time. Eventually, many discs show signs of edge rot, which happens as oxygen seeps through a disc's layers. Some CDs begin a deterioration process called bronzing, which is corrosion that worsens with exposure to various pollutants. The lasers in devices used to burn or even play a CD can also affect its longevity. 'The ubiquity of a once dominant media is again receding. Like most of the technology we leave behind, CDs are are being forgotten slowly,' concludes LaFrance. 'We stop using old formats little by little. They stop working. We stop replacing them. And, before long, they're gone.'" You can donate CDs to be tested for aging characteristics by emailing the Center for the Library's Analytical Science Samples. I haven't had much trouble ripping discs that were pressed in the 80s (and acquired from used CD stores with who knows how many previous owners), but I'm starting to get nervous about not having flac rips of most of my discs.

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trbdavies (979982) writes 'Only in San Francisco' used to refer to issues like whether public nudity should be restricted to certain hours of the day. Now I hear it most often in connection with the interplay between the city and tech companies. SF Weekly reports on one such development: 'Anyone who's visited San Francisco for 35 minutes knows that easy parking is a rare find. Enter Paolo Dobrowolny, an Italian tech bro who decided San Francisco was the perfect spot to test out his new experiment. Here's how it works: You find a parking spot, revel a little, let Monkey Parking know where you're located, and watch the bidding begin. Finally, give your spot to the wealthiest victim willing to pay the highest price for your spot. Drive away that much richer.'" Update: 05/08 15:52 GMT by T : I suspect that Dobrowolny's a tech pro, rather than bro, or at least that's what I suspect the Weekly meant to say.

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The actor will reprise his role in the sci-fi sequel

Steven Pinker learned early that every intellectual needs an affectation. So he’s left his Spinoza-like hairdo – long, curly – unchanged since the 70s… more»

Zothecula (1870348) writes "It's easy to get carried away when you start talking about graphene. Its properties hold the promise of outright technological revolution in so many fields that it has been called a wonder material. Two recent studies, however, give us a less than rosy angle. In the first, a team of biologists, engineers and material scientists at Brown University examined graphene's potential toxicity in human cells. Another study by a team from University of California, Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering examined how graphene oxide nanoparticles might interact with the environment if they found their way into surface or ground water sources."

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sciencehabit (1205606) writes "If you know only one thing about violins, it is probably this: A 300-year-old Stradivarius supposedly possesses mysterious tonal qualities unmatched by modern instruments. However, even elite violinists cannot tell a Stradivarius from a top-quality modern violin, a new double-blind study suggests. Like the sound of coughing during the delicate second movement of Beethoven's violin concerto, the finding seems sure to annoy some people, especially dealers who broker the million-dollar sales of rare old Italian fiddles. But it may come as a relief to the many violinists who cannot afford such prices."

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Long disregarded – from a “sixth-rate talent,” “the Pepsi of Austrian writing” – Stefan Zweig’s work deserves the attention it’s now receiving… more»

A new theory explains the seemingly irreversible arrow of time while yielding insights into entropy, quantum computers, black holes, and the past-future divide.

In the event of a mega-catastrophe, a civilization-erasing event, what is the most important piece of knowledge for humans to preserve?… more»

Director had previously shelved project due to script leak

Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "Popular director Joss Whedon has taken the film world by surprise by releasing his latest offering, 'In Your Eyes', available for download on the same day it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The new release comes from Whedon's own "micro studio", Bellwether Pictures, and is featured on Vimeo as a $5 rental, (free trailer). Whedon mused, 'It's exciting for us because we get to explore yet another new form of distribution — and we get $5.' Mr. Whedon has a history of pushing the delivery envelope, as with Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, in 2008."

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For rent and utilities to be considered affordable, they are supposed to take up no more than 30 percent of a household’s income. But that goal is increasingly unattainable for middle-income families as a tightening market pushes up rents ever faster, outrunning modest rises in pay.

The strain is not limited to the usual high-cost cities like New York and San Francisco. An analysis for The New York Times by Zillow, the real estate website, found 90 cities where the median rent — not including utilities — was more than 30 percent of the median gross income.

In Chicago, rent as a percentage of income has risen to 31 percent, from a historical average of 21 percent. In New Orleans, it has more than doubled, to 35 percent from 14 percent. Zillow calculated the historical average using data from 1985 to 2000.

Nationally, half of all renters are now spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing, according to a comprehensive Harvard study, up from 38 percent of renters in 2000.

That is from Shaila Dewan.  And Ryan Avent adds comment.

Let us start with “Teheran markets in everything”:

I think this happens only in Tehran. Some people get paid to walk behind your car, so the traffic cameras can not capture your plate number when you enter the restricted traffic areas!

The photo alas does not reproduce, and that is from a fascinating Quora discussion on “what is a job that exists only in your country?”

The Vietnamese water bag carriers are impressive (you get into a plastic bag and they pull you across a river).  Here is some Indian arbitrage:

Disabled people get 50-75% concession on train ticket from Indian Railways. Additionally, they can take one person as escort who will be entitled to the same amount of concession.

Some disabled people earn their living with this scheme. Their only job is travelling between different cities and taking Strangers (who actually want to go to some city) as escorts. These strangers pay 75% of the fare to the disabled people. Thus Stranger saves money, Disabled person earns profit.

This also was new to me:

In China, when there are big traffic jams, you can pay a fee to have two people on a motorcycle drive to your vehicle, where one takes your place at the steering wheel, and the other will take you wherever you need to go on his motorcycle.

Nor had I known about the “pet food taster” (Simon and Marks) or the costumes of those Australian Meter Maids.  India is prominent on the list but Mexico makes an appearance as well:

In Mexico we have men who make a living by discharging electricity into the bodies of consenting drunk people (who gladly pay a couple of dollars for the experience). These men usually hang around bars and areas where nightlife abounds and yell “toques toques!”(“discharges, discharges!”) while banging the two metallic handles of their contraption together. The device is a battery-operated metal box with a voltage regulator that can increase the intensity of the electrical current depending on how much the customer can take. It is generally accepted by Mexicans that a bit of electricity will increase your buzz…

It costs about $2-$4 per jolt.  Maybe the real winner should be this one:

United States of America: Man who walks on the moon (currently on hiatus).

I believe I owe thanks to somebody on Twitter, alas I can no longer recall to whom.

A beautiful Chrome Experiment featuring an interactive 3D visualization of the stellar neighborhood, including over 100000 nearby stars. Created for the Google Chrome web browser.

(Via ThisIsColossal)

DFA act mixes acid prog, disco and house in irresistible style

Parenting these days is patrolled by the language police. Sometimes it seems like the worst thing you could ever say to a kid is “Good job!” or the dreaded, “Good girl!” Widely popularized...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

A sequel to the classic 1982 sci-fi thriller has been rumoured for several years...

What's going on in Beer World? Beer lovers of America might be forgiven if their grasp of the current brew-scape feels iffy. Alice herself would be at home in this Wonderland. It's a world in which up is down, little is big, and there's no Blue Moon on the horizon. 

It's a world in which old standbys are faltering (case sales of Miller High Life were down almost 10 percent in 2013 from the prior year). Mexican labels are dominant (Corona, Modelo, and Dos Equis, account for three of the top four imported beers). And a craft-beer company founded only 20 years ago is coming on strong ("Bartender, pour me a Lagunitas").

The March 2014 issue of Beverage Industry offers us a through-the-looking-glass portrait of Beer World in the United States today. The magazine unleashed its writers on data gathered by Information Resources Inc. (IRI) of Chicago from supermarkets, drug stores, mass merchandisers, gas and convenience stores, military commissaries, and select club and dollar retail chains for the 52 weeks ending December 29, 2014. I made graphs and charts from their tabular data.

Before we delve into the particulars, let's remember the big picture: over the past twenty years, per-capita consumption of beer in the U.S. has been declining. Derek Thompson wrote about that here last August, citing this report. But twenty years is a long lens. Let's take a look at the state of Beer World in the last year. 

Domestic Beer

If you were to hazard a guess as to which domestic beers are the top sellers by volume, you'd probably manage to guess at least half of the top ten. These are the familiar, less-expensive brands, regular as well as light, that you see everywhere—Budweiser, Coors, Miller, etc. The table below tells the story about the top ten domestic beers in 2013. 

 

This pie chart makes it easier to visualize the relative size of these various domestic brews, as measured by annual case sales. Bud Light accounts for nearly as much market share as all the other non-top-10 domestic beers combined. Lumped together, the beers ranked six through 10 also account for a smaller market share than Bud Light. 

Stephanie Cernivec's report in Beverage Industry reveals a far more interesting picture emerging when we look at what kind of year each of these top 10 domestic beers had in 2013. The following chart shows the percent change in case sales that each of the top ten brands experienced from 2012 to 2013.

Michelob Ultra Light was the big winner among the top ten, with its case sales rising 6.5 percent. But seven of the top ten domestic beers suffered sales declines for the year. In the case of  Natural Light and Miller High Life, the declines were steep—7.5 percent and 9.8 percent, respectively.

Imported Beer

While the domestic-beer category is hurting, the imported-beer category is thriving, according to Jennifer Haderspeck's report in Beverage Industry. Imported beers grew in volume by 4.5 percent in 2013. The following table contains the particulars on the top ten imported beers:

 

The pie chart to the left shows each of the top ten imports' relative share of this market segment, a category in which much of the growth is being propelled by Mexican beers. The Mexican brews grew in 2013 twice as fast as total imports (11.1 percent vs 5.3 percent). By comparison, Canadian imports as a group were down 6.5 percent last year, and European imports declined 2.1 percent. Experts attribute growth in the Mexican-beer segment to the growing Hispanic population in the United States, and aggressive marketing by these brands (think of the "Most Interesting Man in the World" commercials from Dos Equis, or the "Find Your Beech" campaign by Corona). The relative fortunes experienced in 2013 by the top ten imports are evident here:

Craft Beer

Although craft beers are popular, and this segment of the market is the one in which the most exciting things are happening, craft beers generally remain way behind the main domestic brews and imports in both case sales and revenue. Part of the explanation for this has to do with distribution. Reporting for Beverage Industry, Jessica Jacobsen cited one industry expert who noted that while craft beers have good distribution in grocery stores and liquor stores, they're less available in convenience stores and gas stations, which lack the space to accommodate a large variety. But that's changing as distribution through those latter outlets grows. And, overall, the growth rates for craft beers is much greater than for major domestics or imports. In a future post, I'll have more to say about the craft-brew industry. For now, here's the basic rundown on the top 10 brands in the craft-beer segment:

 

 

 

This pie chart offers a better visualization of the relative share held by each of the top ten craft beers. And the bar graph below shows how each brand fared over 2013. Can you say "Lagunitas"? 

 

What about Blue Moon? Whether or not you consider the MillerCoors brand a craft beer (other producers in that segment certainly don't), you may wonder why it doesn't show up on any list. If so, your curiosity may stem from a map that was ubiquitous on the Web back in October. The map came from Blowfish (the makers of "the hangover cure"), which conducted a survey of 5,000 drinking-age adults around the United States. The map purported to show each state's top beer choice and also made the claim that Blue Moon is America's favorite beer, with Sam Adams coming in second. 

Writing at the time about this map and its claims, The Atlantic's Jordan Weissmann offered his opinion about Blue Moon ("that bland excuse for a Belgian white ale brewed by MillerCoors"), and questioned the validity of the claims ("Something about these results smells a bit off."). On the basis of all the data examined above, I'd say there's plenty of reason to share Weissmann's skepticism. 

 

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Bloomberg reports that humans are taking the place of machines in plants across Japan so workers can develop new skills and figure out ways to improve production lines and the car-building process. "We need to become more solid and get back to basics, to sharpen our manual skills and further develop them," says Mitsuru Kawai, a half century-long company veteran tapped by President Akio Toyoda to promote craftsmanship at Toyota's plants. "When I was a novice, experienced masters used to be called gods (Kami-sama in Japanese), and they could make anything." According to Kawai, learning how to make car parts from scratch gives younger workers insights they otherwise wouldn't get from picking parts from bins and conveyor belts, or pressing buttons on machines. At about 100 manual-intensive workspaces introduced over the last three years across Toyota's factories in Japan, these lessons can then be applied to reprogram machines to cut down on waste and improve processes. In an area Kawai directly supervises at the forging division of Toyota's Honsha plant, workers twist, turn and hammer metal into crankshafts instead of using the typically automated process. Experiences there have led to innovations in reducing levels of scrap and shortening the production line and Kawai also credits manual labor for helping workers improve production of axle beams and cut the costs of making chassis parts. "We cannot simply depend on the machines that only repeat the same task over and over again," says Kawai. "To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine.""

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In mathematics at least the answer appears to be yes:

A computer has solved the longstanding Erdős discrepancy problem! Trouble is, we have no idea what it’s talking about — because the solution, which is as long as all of Wikipedia’s pages combined, is far too voluminous for us puny humans to confirm.

A few years ago, the mathematician Steven Strogatz predicted that it wouldn’t be too much longer before computer-assisted solutions to math problems will be beyond human comprehension. Well, we’re pretty much there. In this case, it’s an answer produced by a computer that was hammering away at the Erdős discrepancy problem.

Fortunately,

…it may not be necessary for humans to check it. As Gil Kalai of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, has noted, if another computer program using a different method comes up with the same result, then the proof is probably right.

There is more here, via Gabriel Puliatti on Twitter.

I'm a long-time reader, occasional commenter, and big fan of your writing. I also happen to be gay. I've been closely following your series of posts on stigmatizing opposition to same-sex marriage, because I strongly believe in the value of such a stigma, and I want to see the strongest argument against my position—something you can be counted on to provide. I sympathize with your support for pluralism and respect for orthodox Christian beliefs, but there's a perspective that I think is missing from your posts, and one that is perhaps difficult to understand if you are not gay yourself. For me this perspective is the decisive argument in favor of calling out people like Brendan Eich, and on the off-chance you decide to read this email, I hope I do it some justice.

Growing up gay, you are constantly told—implicitly and explicitly—that you are weird, weak, and wrong. This is true even in my generation, which is undoubtedly the most progressive in American history on gay issues. Debates are held on the national level about whether you are fit to be a pro athlete, or a Boy Scout, or a parent. Politicians fight hard for the right of a business owner to turn you away. The word faggot, a word that says you are pathetic and contemptible, is used as an all-purpose insult. We're getting better, in all these areas. But to be gay is still to be kept apart from the institutions of society in myriad ways.

And that, at least for me, is what the same-sex marriage fight is about. Forget the tax benefits and the visitation rights, forget the legal recognition of a committed relationship, forget even the right to publicly acknowledge the love one has for another person. The fight for gay marriage is a fight to be recognized as a normal member of society. Every now and then, in school or at home or with friends, kids talk about how they see their future family: how many children they'd want, what their wedding would be like, what kind of person they'd want to marry. Up until very recently, no gay kid could answer those questions with any confidence. In a lot of places in America, they still can't.

 

Those are the stakes.

 

A quick interjection. At first, the reader treats "calling out people like Brendan Eich" as if it is part of our disagreement. In fact, I favor "calling out" opponents of gay marriage: I want their position to be forcefully, persuasively, exhaustively critiqued and rebutted, over and over, until gay marriage is legal not just everywhere in America, but everywhere. Condemning someone's politics is fine. Punishing them outside politics is objectionable.

Now, I agree with much of what this reader says.

My insistence that gays deserve full marriage rights, not just civil unions with the same set of domestic benefits, is rooted partly in my desire to declare that they are and ought to be treated as normal members of society. As the reader says, much progress has been made, but that fight isn't over. I also agree that stigma is sometimes an appropriate tool. In my social circles, anyone who called gays "weird, weak, and wrong" would be stigmatized, and I would certainly participate. I hope that norm spreads to America's school children. To hell with anti-gay bullying. The reader mentions the exclusion of gays by organizations like the Boy Scouts of America as well as use of the anti-gay slur "faggot." In July of 2012, I celebrated the Eagle Scouts who were resigning over their organization's discriminatory policy, and said I'd resign too if I were an Eagle Scout. And "faggot" should no more be accepted in polite company than racial slurs. (Had Eich referred that way to gay colleagues at Mozilla, that would've been a legitimate reason to remove him as CEO.) Of course, part of the disagreement here is about whether or not there is any non-bigoted opposition to gay marriage, as I believe there to be.

But before I get to my disagreements, let's get back to Hersh's email:

So when people like Brendan Eich spend time and money opposing same-sex marriage, they are directly attacking the human dignity of every gay and lesbian person. As it happens, Eich contributed $1,000 to a particularly cruel and misleading campaign—a campaign that did damage in its process as well as in its outcome. But contributing to even the most pure hearted and honest campaign against marriage equality should, to my mind, carry a stigma. I'm not sorry Eich lost his job, and that's not just out of spite. It is out of a genuine desire to make it clear that gays and lesbians can no longer to be kept apart from the institutions of American life, and that attempting to do so perpetuates a great injustice.

You say in your most recent article on the subject that "once you've gotten to a threshold within a community where lots of powerful people will stigmatize a behavior, the point had already been reached where it would be defeated without stigma." But stigmatizing Brendan Eich isn't about, or isn't just about, winning this fight in Silicon Valley. It's about the many places where powerful people do not stigmatize discrimination, but rather endorse it. Mozilla is a major company, and this resignation was national news. That sends a message to those people anywhere who would deny their neighbors the right to be ordinary people: This will not stand. And it sends a message to gays and lesbians as well, perhaps the same gays and lesbians who were told by Prop 8 that they were abnormal and dangerous to children: We are on your side.

The speed with which gay rights have moved from marginal to mainstream is nothing short of astounding, and I think the rapidity of that shift makes it easy to forget how deep the oppression ran and how brutal it was. Ten years ago, gay-marriage bans were considered an effective get out the vote tactic. Twenty years ago, DOMA passed Congress with huge majorities and was signed by a President who is largely a beloved national figure. Thirty years ago, the White House Press Secretary cracked jokes in the briefing room about gay men dying of AIDS. The people who implemented these policies and the voters who supported them didn't vanish into thin air. They are very much still with us. Some of them have been persuaded by reason to change their mind, and others by empathy or by appeals to emotion, and others still by social convention. And many more have not changed their minds at all. What I am trying to say is that fighters for gay rights are hardly conquerors imposing their program on defeated opponents. When ENDA cannot pass the House of Representatives, when same-sex marriage is still banned in most states, when over a third of LGBT kids attempt suicide, we are nowhere near equality, let alone victory.

I hope that appeals to reason and decency and common sense will prevail. But I have read enough history to know that they often do not. And I hope that opponents of same-sex marriage come to realize that they are hurting people in many ways beyond simply denying them a title. But I am one of the people they are hurting, and I have felt the pain that they are inflicting, and waiting for them to come around is simply not worth it. Thank you for reading, if you have.

I thank the reader for a powerful letter with many good points, but I am not persuaded to change my position on our several areas of disagreement, partly because it does nothing to refute some of the arguments I've made in past articles on this subject, but also because of the many ways it underestimates and diminishes the power of argument and the role that reason ought to play in self-government—as if persuasion is useful, but stigma is what we bring out when the stakes are high. If we're at our best when the stakes are high, we bring out the Declaration of Independence or the Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Stigma is nothing in comparison.

The reader and I actually agree that it's desirable to send the message, "This will not stand," to opponents of marriage equality. That can be done with articles, blog posts, and speeches; gay-pride parades; judicial opinions; TV shows and movies that portray gays with the human dignity they deserve and were long denied; activism in favor of marriage equality; and countless private interactions. In years of heated debates with gay-marriage opponents, via email and in person, I've said things like, "Your position is discriminatory, it is wrongheaded, it is harming countless individuals. It isn't what Jesus Christ would want you to do. And here is why I believe all that."

Or, "So if I were gay, you'd prevent me from marrying the person I love? And you don't think that would be cruel of you?"

Those are hard critiques to hear, as are some retorts that I've been subjected to over the years. Such conversations are fraught precisely because it's so easy and common for folks on both sides to feel judged, even when both participants in the conversation try their best to criticize their interlocutor's position, not their person. Those interactions still convey the moral imperative that gay-marriage proponents feel, preserve the possibility of dialogue, and change hearts rather than shutting mouths.

On my wedding day, my wife and I, like several couples we knew who married before us, decided to include, as one of our readings, a passage from Goodridge v. Department of Health by Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall. I'm sure there were folks in attendance who opposed gay marriage. I hope it made them think twice about their position, just as I trust it signaled to our gay friends, "We are on your side, we find it an abomination that this institution is still denied to some of you, and marriage equality is important to us."

These sorts of gestures are common nowadays.

So I refuse to credit the notion that gay-marriage proponents need to go after the jobs of their opponents to adequately show their horror at campaigns like Proposition 8, or to decisively signal that they are allies in the fight for marriage equality. It is easy to send those signals in other ways. And sending them with stigma doesn't just introduce negative externalities, like undermining pluralism and chilling civic participation. Even apart from that, stigma is an inferior way to show solidarity with gays, one focused on hating their opponents rather than supporting them.

The reader thinks otherwise. He argues that the CEO's ouster sends a message to gays and lesbians all over America, "perhaps the same gays and lesbians who were told by Prop 8 that they were abnormal and dangerous to children: we are on your side." Yet gays and lesbians all over the United States are divided over whether Eich should've been forced out. They disagree about the signal Mozilla sent.

There is no gay position on the subject. Andrew Sullivan was disturbed by what he characterized as anti-free-speech activism that would have the effect of closeting another group. Jonathan Rauch, another of the most eloquent, persuasive advocates for gay marriage, thought the anti-Eich campaign sent a terrible message.

"A handful of hotheads forgot what the gay rights movement is fighting for: the embrace of diversity and the freedom for all Americans, gay and straight, to live publicly as who they truly are," he wrote. "Both supporters and opponents of gay rights need to be able to speak freely without being punished for their beliefs. This is why the mainstream gay rights leadership supports free speech. L.G.B.T. people win when both we and our opponents can speak out. It is why most ordinary gay Americans want nothing to do with efforts to silence our adversaries." Punishing gay-marriage opponents can't be justified by "the message it sends gays and lesbians all over America" when many are upset by the message as they see it. Some gays and lesbians didn't think, "They're on our side." They declared, "not in our name."

The reader is right when he observes, citing history, that reason doesn't always prevail. Well, neither does stigma! And more importantly, while argument and persuasion may not always prevail, they are prevailing on the subject of marriage equality. That doesn't stop me from sympathizing when the reader writes, "I hope that opponents of same-sex marriage come to realize that they are hurting people in many ways beyond simply denying them a title," adding, "I have felt the pain that they are inflicting, and waiting for them to come around is simply not worth it."

I hope same-sex marriage opponents ponder his statement.

But there is no end to the policies of the U.S. government that inflict pain and ought to be reformed, at least in my view. I try to inveigh against those policies, and to critique the ideas of the people who support them. But I don't think America would be a better place if everyone who felt strongly that a policy was unjust began trying to get everyone on the other side fired from their jobs in unrelated fields. America is divided on Iraq. It is divided on abortion. It is divided about the drug war, capital punishment, healthcare, Guantanamo Bay, and NSA surveillance. Shall we live and work alongside people who support policies we believe to be deeply damaging and unjust? Or should all cooperation cease with the impure?

Those who would punish gay-marriage opponents say they don't want this sort of thing to be the norm—that this issue is a special case. But everyone thinks their own highest-priority issue is a special case. Say these pro-punishment folks are right, that they're somehow more justified in deploying this "punish them in the professional realm" tactic than any other group. They're naive to think that, if they successfully deploy this tactic, others won't mimic it, whether or not doing so is equally justified.

The reader writes, "The speed with which gay rights have moved from marginal to mainstream is nothing short of astounding, and I think the rapidity of that shift makes it easy to forget how deep the oppression ran and how brutal it was." Perhaps. But that huge shift happened without any need to punish gay marriage opponents. When a tactic isn't needed, and has huge negative externalities, you don't use it. Declining to deploy stigma doesn't diminish the horrors that gays have suffered in America or the work that remains to achieve full equality. There are just better ways forward.

The NSA knew about and exploited the Heartbleed vulnerability for two years before it was publicly exposed this week, and used it to steal account passwords and other data, according to a news report.

EwanPalmer (2536690) writes "Three scientists and Star Trek actress Kate Mulgrew say they were duped into appearing in a controversial documentary which claims the Earth is the center of the Universe. The Principle, a film which describes itself as 'destined to become one of the most controversial films of our time', argues the long-debunked theory of geocentrism – where the earth is the center of the Universe and the Sun resolves around it – is true and Nasa has tried to cover it up. The film features the narration of actress Mulgrew, who played the part of captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek Voyager, as well as three prominent scientists."

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Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "John Horgan writes in National Geographic that scientists have become victims of their own success and that 'further research may yield no more great revelations or revolutions, but only incremental, diminishing returns.' The latest evidence is a 'Correspondence' published in the journal Nature that points out that it is taking longer and longer for scientists to receive Nobel Prizes for their work. The trend is strongest in physics. Prior to 1940, only 11 percent of physics prizes were awarded for work more than 20 years old but since 1985, the percentage has risen to 60 percent. If these trends continue, the Nature authors note, by the end of this century no one will live long enough to win a Nobel Prize, which cannot be awarded posthumously and suggest that the Nobel time lag 'seems to confirm the common feeling of an increasing time needed to achieve new discoveries in basic natural sciences—a somewhat worrisome trend.' One explanation for the time lag might be the nature of scientific discoveries in general—as we learn more it takes more time for new discoveries to prove themselves. Researchers recently announced that observations of gravitational waves provide evidence of inflation, a dramatic theory of cosmic creation. But there are so many different versions of 'inflation' theory that it can 'predict' practically any observation, meaning that it doesn't really predict anything at all. String theory suffers from the same problem. As for multiverse theories, all those hypothetical universes out there are unobservable by definition so it's hard to imagine a better reason to think we may be running out of new things to discover than the fascination of physicists with these highly speculative ideas. According to Keith Simonton of the University of California, 'the core disciplines have accumulated not so much anomalies as mere loose ends that will be tidied up one way or another.'"

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On a bone-chilling morning in February last year, Nick Fernandez bundled up and took the subway from his Manhattan apartment to the Bluestone Center for Clinical Research, which is located in an art deco-style building on the Lower East Side. A 27-year-old graduate student in psychology with dark, wavy hair and delicate, bird-like features, Fernandez […]

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