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True, but "mostly" is the key word. There are still valleys in the UK where crops and sheep cannot be grown for food because of radioactive dust that fell from Chernobyl.

Thanks JohnH, those are awesome.

Fortunately, the marginal cost of an extra listener is almost zero. So there's no need to feel uncomfortable about getting the "free rider benefit". If your circumstances change so that one day you can benefit from donating, then you can donate.

We know that there is ongoing genetic variation in every species. We know that genetic variations are passed on to offspring. We know that there are selective environmental pressures which cause individuals with certain genetic variations to be more (or less) likely to survive and produce offspring. Given those three pieces of knowledge, how can evolution not occur?

Thanks for sharing your own experiences, Dylan. I'd like to add one of mine. My parents wanted me to become musically talented. They paid for my music lessons, and made sure I practiced. My music teacher made sure I did all my music exams and was well-prepared. I moved through the grades quickly, and passed my exams with distinction. But I never became musically talented, never became a musician. I never got any value from my exam certificates, my academic approach to learning music, or my thousands of hours of "structured" practice. A good schoolfriend of mine never had music lessons. He developed a passion for guitar, and was always exploring new chords, new riffs, new songs. His passion then moved to electric guitar, and he was always building amplifiers, speakers, and effects pedals, and playing loads of great music. To this day he is an accomplished guitarist. Fortunately, in other areas of my life my parents were happy to let me pursue my own passions, so I was able to achieve great things with electronics and computers, and in my younger days with adventure sports.

Fractional reserve banking would be done outside of the block chain. You would send your precious bitcoins to your chosen bank, who would promise to lend them out many times over (fractional reserve or even zero reserve), and in return would pay you interest (unless they went bust). I think we will also see banks that hold your bitcoins safely with 100% reserve (i.e. not lending them out). Because the bank is not earning interest on your coins, they would not pay you interest. In fact they would need to charge you a small fee (the same as if you pay a vault to store your gold). Until now, most people just use the Bitcoin protocol to send and receive coins. But the protocol also allows a wide range of programmable contracts. You can set up rules such as "The money gets returned to the sender after 30 days, unless two out of the three parties digitally sign an approval, in which case the money gets sent to some other address". I'm paraphrasing here, because a simple programming language which is built into Bitcoin must be used for this. Not much work has been done on exploiting built-in Bitcoin contracts yet, but they're powerful and exciting. For more information see the Bitcoin wiki: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts

Fairy tales can be quite gruesome. However, the child generally identifies with the protagonist, who typically encounters some extremely difficult situation and finds a way to extricate themselves from it. That's quite a positive life message. It's usually quite clear that the people who do the most evil things are the most evil people. Underlying all of this there are some uncomfortable truths. For example, stepmothers and stepfathers are more likely to abuse a child than the child's biological parents are.

Every year is the end of some two-decade period. Every year is also the start of a two-decade period. So it's not meaningful to talk about the coldest year having occurred at the end of a period. Weather is a chaotic system with huge fluctuations due to its many interacting subsystems. There may be a long-term trend, but twenty consecutive measurements isn't enough to identify that long-term trend.

I don't envy you working outdoors in those temperatures. But it's not enough data to form an opinion on global warming one way or the other. It's expected to suffer the "coldest temps in two decades" about every two decades or so.

They say that as if it's a bad thing...

If you have changed, then you are already healed. The final step is for you to accept this, and to start feeling good about your present and future self.

Suppose there was the most draconian anti-insider legislation, and that it was perfectly enforced. Even then, it could not stop those with insider information from profiting. Insider trading laws can prohibit insiders from trading, but they cannot prohibit insiders from not trading. If an insider knows that a stock is undervalued, the insider doesn't sell when they might have otherwise sold. And when the insider knows that a stock is overvalued, the insider doesn't buy when they might have otherwise bought. This way the insider can profit from their inside knowledge without breaking the letter of the law.

OK, but don't think that this structure has anything to do with unschooling. It's a penalty levied by the state.

Inflationary currencies benefit the currency issuers. That's why governments love them so much. Deflationary currencies benefit the currency holders. That's why people love them so much. If you offer someone a choice between a $20 bill that will be worth $19 tomorrow, and a $20 bill that will be worth $21 tomorrow, they will choose the deflationary bill every time. Governments and their central banks try to scare the people with warnings of deflationary spirals, but in fact no deflationary spiral has ever happened. Inflationary spirals, on the other hand, are littered throughout history.

In a free society, there will be many competing stock markets, each with its own policies and its own (non-violent) sanctions. If one stock market is relaxed about insider trading, then those who don't like insider trading will use a different stock exchange (and may pay a different price). Rules against insider trading actually work against the outsider's best interests. If there is no insider trading, and there is non-public knowledge about a company, its stocks will be traded at prices that do not reflect the true value of the company. This does a dis-service to those who don't have insider knowledge. The sooner the prices are allowed to correct, the better. For this reason, insider trading should be permitted and even encouraged. In that way, the price of each stock will move most quickly to its true value. Remember that insider trading only benefits the insider while a stock is mis-priced.

Congratulations! I expect your children will thank you for it when they are older. If the older one is a bit reluctant, you can suggest that she tries it for a while, and can return to school if it doesn't work out.

MGTOW Forums is a men-only online community. (MGTOW = "men going their own way").

I'm uncomfortable about the write-ups, the reports, the reviews. To me, a big advantage of home schooling is that the child spends their time exploring the world; discovering and learning as they go. To be forced to regurgitate this on paper is just wasting their childhood. Every minute spent proving that they learned something, is a minute not spent learning other stuff. Also, I feel it's too formal. A child's mind is like a sponge, soaking up all that they are exposed to. You can go a long way just by being available to discuss with the child what is going on. Do interesting stuff, and chat about it. I would definitely seize every opportunity to go places. For example, I would visit the library for all of the reading, rather than ordering books over the internet. Going out will help with their social development, and let them see how the world works. Most children love seeing how the librarian scans the books, stamps the due date in them, etc. And most librarians (in my experience) are not too rushed and are happy to talk to a child about books. We were lucky that our library had a weekly story reading just for the children. It gave me a chance to get some shopping done, after which my kids were just bursting to tell me about the book, and about the other people who where there, etc. I would not even have spelling and grammar "lessons". You can just teach these things as and when they crop up while the child is doing stuff that interests them and that they care about.

A radio host needs to keep the show moving along, otherwise the audience drifts away. I'm happy with how it is now. Extra filler may be more courteous to the caller, but it's less courteous to the listeners.

The Regression Theorem shows how a commodity can become a currency, but it doesn't include any proof that it's impossible for a currency to arise in another way. Buying and selling pizzas and alpaca socks seems like a good way for new instrument to become a currency. It certainly worked for Bitcoin. Anyway, Bitcoin started as a commodity whose intrinsic value was as a "collectible", i.e. as a shiny new bunch of bits valued by geeks due to its incredible coolness as a potential free currency.

If you're in the US, you might be interested in the "Just Us" Jury Nullification Movement being promoted by liberty-minded folk over there.

I think it's even better to not make resolutions at all. If it's in your best interests to do something, just start doing it. A "resolution" is often a substitute for doing something now.

Hi annadios, I'm sorry to hear about your situation. It's terribly sad when a person feels that they are not free to direct their life in the direction that would make them happiest. Harry Browne's book "How I found freedom in an unfree world" talks about your situation in some depth. He wrote the book just after he ended his unhappy marriage. He explains that a happy marriage is sustained not by the wording of the vows, but by a commitment of both people to work to ensure the happiness of the other. As soon as that is absent from one or both sides, the vows are no longer relevant. He believes that a happy marriage is best sustained when there is no formal commitment, and when the couple are together because it makes the both happier than they would otherwise be, rather than because of a promise they made in the past. When I first read Harry's book I found this idea jarring, because I (like many libertarians) viewed a contract as sacrosanct. But then I realised that in my business dealings I have always avoided contracts and preferred to sign a Memorandum of Understanding. This is a document that sets out the honest understanding of two parties at the time of signing, but is not binding into the future. This motivates both parties to behave in a way that increases the prosperity of both, because either party can drop out of the agreement if it ceases to operate in their best interests. Having used this anarchic approach so successfully in business, I realised that Harry was right. It is also the best approach for personal relationships: to consider the relationship valid and enduring only while both parties prosper. Of course, your situation would be more complicated if there were children involved (as they would not be voluntary participants in the relationship), but you are fortunate that your difficulties came to light before you had children. Oh, and congratulations on applying rationality to your own life and rejecting your earlier irrational beliefs.

The guy who explained it to you is correct. However, the standard Bitcoin client hardcodes some checkpoints which mean that an offline attack cannot start any earlier than the latest checkpoint. If an offline attacker suddenly released a longer block chain, it would be possible "in extremis" for Bitcoin users to thwart the attack by upgrading their Bitcoin client to one with a later checkpoint on the "good" blockchain. This would be messy, but would avoid the attack succeeding. Most of the hashpower now comes from dedicated ASIC hashing chips, whose hashing power is so high an attack by a botnet of regular PCs is no longer feasible. It would be necessary for the attacker to be hashing with their own ASICs.

There is another way to approach this. During the 20th Century there were some civilizations which had no contact with the western world, and were living a stone age life. Westerners eventually reached these societies, and recorded (and published) the verbal history of those people. One of the most fascinating books I have read is "Ongka: a self account by a New Guinea big-man". Reading it is like being transported directly back into the stone age, through the eyes and words of someone who was living that life before westerners discovered him.