MetaFilter posts tagged with America and government

How Tyler Cowen Would Fix the Current Healthcare Bill

reenum — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:06:39 -0800

What should we do instead of the Obama health reform bill?

Government using Facebook and MySpace to find tax cheats

reenum — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:49:49 -0800

Tax authorities using social networks to find tax cheats Yet another reason to be careful who you accept a friend request from.

I've been waiting for me

cashman — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:21:37 -0800

Change.gov, office of the president-elect went live today. Submit your story. Share your vision. Get a non-career job in the administration, or get ready to get involved.

The Movement Begins...

kliuless — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:22:10 -0800

Generation WE: How Millennial Youth Are Taking Over America And Changing Our World Forever (v i a) kinda over the top imo :P but ymmv! cf.

There Could Be Blood

kliuless — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:36:53 -0800

Andy Grove on Our Electric Future - "Energy independence [viz.] is the wrong goal. Here is a plan Americans can stick to." Perhaps some infrastructure spending^1,2 is in order? [etc., &c., cf.] also see :P - "Tesla Motors Is Delivering Cars" - "Superconducting Power Grid Launches In New York" - "New heights reached in polymer based solar cell efficiency"

[S]pray a sheet of glass with a mixture of dyes combined with a substance called tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminium. In combination, the dyes and the glass act as the waveguide, preventing light from escaping. Meanwhile, the interaction between the different dye molecules and those of the tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminium allows a quantum-mechanical phenomenon, called Förster energy transfer, to come into play. This eliminates the reabsorption loss by ensuring that light is re-emitted at a frequency which the dye molecules cannot then reabsorb. On top of this—literally—Dr Currie and Dr Mapel have come up with another trick: placing a second sandwich of dye and glass over the first. The upper layer of dye intercepts high-energy light, such as ultraviolet. The lower one captures longer wavelengths that have passed unperturbed through the upper, and also any lower-energy light that has been re-emitted within the top layer and somehow escaped. The upshot is a device that, even as a prototype, converts ten times more of the incident light into electricity than a conventional solar cell. [and btw]

cheers!

The Saddam Sessions

kliuless — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 22:33:50 -0800

Saddam's Confessions - Given Saddam Hussein's central place in the American Consciousness over the last couple decades and particularly in recent years, I found 60 minutes' interview with FBI interrogator George Piro pretty fascinating.

We’re too sophisticated to allow bioregional commerce.

ZachsMind — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:22:05 -0800

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal by Joel Salatin. This Saturday will mark this article's four year anniversary. Frankly, I was mildly surprised not to have found it mentioned before in MeFi. It's a good read about a sad state of affairs; how our government is turning its own people into outlaws, because freedom has been traded in for an illusion of security. ...but then we already knew that. Don't we?

... the replacement of my secular education with a curriculum guided by God. ...

amberglow — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 14:02:45 -0800

Through a Glass, Darkly How the Christian right is reimagining U.S. history--from Harpers. ...producing a flood of educational texts with which to wash away the stains of secular history. ...

Of matrícula accounts and ITIN loans

kliuless — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 22:49:11 -0800

Embracing Illegals: Companies are getting hooked on the buying power of 11 million undocumented immigrants - The Underground Labor Force Is Rising To The Surface [pdf]

mr_crash_davis — Sun, 21 Jul 2002 18:32:15 -0800

Welcome to Amerika? Tom Ridge (with the blessing of George W.) thinks it's time to re-examine the Posse Comitatus Act with an eye toward giving the Armed Forces more power to act in a domestic law enforcement capacity. After having the National Guard here during the Winter Olympics, I'm not so keen on seeing armed soldiers patrolling the streets again.

mapalm — Mon, 01 Oct 2001 20:22:49 -0800

"First they came..."
Just a friendly reminder for all those folks who think it is somehow acceptable to allow the US government to infringe upon our civil liberties in the name of...[fill in the blank].

lia — Fri, 16 Jun 2000 08:15:06 -0800

We can try who we like, but don't anyone try to try one of ours.

From the article: "The Clinton administration is offering a "Get Out of Jail Free" card to future Saddam Husseins and Slobodan Milosevics, simply in order to pander to the Pentagon and the Republican right on Capitol Hill. American diplomats are fighting a rearguard action in New York, in tandem with Congress in Washington, to emasculate the International Criminal Court that was established by the United Nations last year in Rome.

"Why does the United States oppose a way to punish the world's greatest villains? In short -- and in no uncertain terms -- congressmen such as Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms demand that no such court have jurisdiction over potential American criminals."

Silly me, I thought the law was supposed to apply to everyone or to no-one at all. Am I just being old-fashioned, or is anyone else bothered by the hypocrisy at work here?