rjdevereux's comments

Peter Thiel wrote an article along these lines..

http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-l...

"A monopoly like Google is different. Since it doesn't have to worry about competing with anyone, it has wider latitude to care about its workers, its products and its impact on the wider world. Google's motto—"Don't be evil"—is in part a branding ploy, but it is also characteristic of a kind of business that is successful enough to take ethics seriously without jeopardizing its own existence. In business, money is either an important thing or it is everything. Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money; non-monopolists can't"

I understand the sentiment, and promoting civil discourse is a wonderful goal. But the way forward is figuring out how to promote the good, and discourage the bad, not disengagement.

I don't think I can say why it is important to engage better than Charles Krauthammer, so I'll just put his words here.

"While science, medicine, art, poetry, architecture, chess, space, sports, number theory and all things hard and beautiful promise purity, elegance and sometimes even transcendence, they are fundamentally subordinate. In the end, they must bow to the sovereignty of politics.

Politics, the crooked timber of our communal lives, dominates everything because, in the end, everything – high and low and, most especially, high – lives or dies by politics. You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933… Politics is the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns."

What's the tl;dr; ?? :)

Sounds great, I'd like to see the assumptions in the financial model that show how it is cheaper than conventional roofing material.

Video of it being made https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuRLaO1G5A0

What's Ben doing next?

East vs West Germany, and North vs South Korea are good examples of how different governments result in different standards of living.

I thought this was gong to be an article on hiring kind people and that the title was screwed up.

Spite driven development: when you develop something just to prove someone else wrong.

Yes, this is skipping over overlapping theories in the field like explanatory style and learned helplessness.

Why is residential solar important to the plan? Aren't large solar installations a more cost effective way of switching houses already on the grid to solar energy.

Can't tell if this comment is sarcastic or not

A Federal judge said "legit"? Times are a changin'

If customers are getting paid to use electricity, is it legal for them to just send it to a ground wire the whole time rates are negative to get paid as much as possible?

Great quote about this...

I’m a Great Believer in Luck. The Harder I Work, the More Luck I Have

What you are talking about it school choice, and in many versions of this parents are allowed to have the choice of private, charter, parochial school in addition to district schools.

Milton Friedman, a Nobel Laureate in economics, set up a foundation to advocate for it. I am not sure you are correct that biggest group blocking this is wealthy homeowners.

http://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/school-choice-in-ameri...

Yes, that's one way to do it. That's how it works for a lot of charter schools.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKTfaro96dg&feature=youtu.be...

>16-year old firm is headquartered just outside of NYC in Cambridge

hmmmm... Cambridge Massachusetts?

As in an April fools joke

Related book by the former head of the FDA

"Dr. Kessler shows us how our brain chemistry has been hijacked by the foods we most love to eat: those that contain stimulating combinations of fat, sugar, and salt"

http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Overeating-Insatiable-American...