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It looks to me as if she does attempt to provide a response to the dragonlady. It's pretty clear that her reading skills are limited. This surprised me. In a family where curiosity and learning are embraced, children generally teach themseleves to read fluently around the age of seven. I've seen this dozens of times, because my children and many of their friends went to a Steiner school where reading is not taught before seven. The father didn't strike me as particularly articulate (although one can't really tell just by watching a made-for-entertainment show). I wonder if he is a little insecure, and afraid of his children eclipsing him in reading and writing skills. I'm not worried for the children though, because I saw plenty of books in Dayna's house. In many ways, my own mother was like Dayna. She always treated us as fellow human beings, with respect rather than with anger or violence. But we did go to school. I don't think it ever occurred my parents, or to us (their children) that an alternative was possible. I didn't hear about home schooling until I was in my 30s, and I didn't hear about unschooling until I was in my 50s.

That's a terrible analogy. The gut has evolved to accumulate waste and eliminate it from time to time, usually according to a daily biorhythm and not "on demand". On the other hand, once you've learned to read, it's not a cyclic phenomenon.

if you use Chrome or Firefox you can download mediahint from https://mediahint.com/, it works i watched the show in the uk. Thank you for that! It worked! It's a very touching moment at 26:00 when they hang up Nasha's art and her dad realises how wonderful his daughter is. Dayna is a wonderful person.

Unfortunately, this part of the "world wide web" is not available outside of the United States. What did you think of it? Dayna discussed this a while back in an interview with Stefan, and it sounded really interesting.

There's quite an interesting discussion of this at the Laissez Faire Book Club: What Does Liberty Really Mean to You? Near the end of the article, the author suggests seven questions that could be asked of the public. They are questions to which we all know the answers, and the answers show that society is not ready to embrace freedom yet. So the author concludes that we should seek to maximise our personal freedom, and not worry about how free the rest of society is. I think that's the only reasonable approach, and it matches the approach taken by Jake's very practical podcasts at The Voluntary Life. It's a fact of life that increased wealth brings increased freedom. Rich people can do things that poor people can't. It's wrong that this is the case, of course, but the wrong is caused by the statists, not by the voluntaryists. We need to live within the world as it is. Entrepreneurship and investment are ways toward achieving increased personal freedom. Attempting to change the whole of society is not.

I'm in the north of England, and would consider travelling to a meetup.

I agree with you, but most people just don't see it. Here's an interesting TED Talk released two days ago: [View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc_-Y9rDN2g:640:480] by Laura Snyder who discusses the origin of the word "scientist", and the four principles that separated scientific inquiry from the scientific philosophy that preceded it.Unfortunately, one of the four principles that she holds in high regard is "external funding of science". Later in her talk she laments that modern scientists direct their energy towards their funding sources rather than towards the general public, but it seems she can't see why this is. He who pays the piper calls the tune. An academic was complaining to me recently that when he applies for research funding, he is required to describe the "expected outcome" on the funding application form. His complaint was that he wanted to do research in fields where the expected outcome was completely unknown. My complaint would be that the funding masters will inevitably be selective: if the expected outcome isn't what they want to see, the work won't be funded.

The relaying policy of the Bitcoin client takes care of this. Each coin is allowed to "turn over" every so often. If a spammer sends "bit dust" back and forth, a fee will be payable to the miner that includes the transaction into a block, so it becomes too expensive to spam. On the other hand, most clients will relay (and most miners will include) larger transactions or those made from mature coins for free or for a very small transaction fee. Oh, there are plenty! You can just browse the "Alternate cryptocurrencies" subforum at Bitcointalk. Most of them aren't doing very well, and many of them failed long ago. But they are all interesting experiments with some kind of variation from Bitcoin. Interesting surviving examples include Litecoin (varies some of Bitcoin's parameters), Namecoin (which ties domain name registration into a block chain), and Ripple (a distributed multi-currency chain for relationships where trust exists). Technically it's quite easy to set up a competing cryptocurrency. You just need to modify the open-source Bitcoin software. The difficult part is to gain a critical mass of users. As the first blockchain-based cryptocurrency, Bitcoin has capitalised on its "first-mover" advantage. As a result, Bitcoin now has many traders and services, and it will be much harder for new cryptocurrencies to gain critical mass. But without a doubt, new cryptocurrencies will succeed in their own niches and will be exchanged to-and-from Bitcoin.

It's possible to mine on 56k dialup by connecting to a mining pool. For Bitcoin transactions on 56k dialup, you would need to use a client that doesn't download the whole block chain. It's currently possible to run a full client on 56k dialup, but if transaction volume grows much more it will cease to be practical and you will need to use a client with Simplified Payment Verification (or else an online wallet from a trusted provider). That is perfect for Bitcoin mining. If you would otherwise be using resistive space heating, you are effectively getting your Bitcoin mining without any electricity cost. However, the noise from the fans might mean you can't put your mining rig in exactly the same place as you would have had your resistive heater. It's an interesting question that has frequently been discussed, but with no consensus being reached. Firstly, note that the Bitcoin network is already much larger than the biggest supercomputers, so the NSA can't just turn on their big machines and damage Bitcoin. They would probably need to buy lots of ASICs. Secondly, I doubt they could they do any lasting damage even if they had lots of ASICs. For sure, they could reduce the profitability of existing miners, but that doesn't damage the Bitcoin network as a whole. They could even use their hashing power to double-spend their own transactions, but if they did that people would soon learn to distrust any of their transactions. If they had enough ASICs, and mined so hard that the difficulty factor rose rapidly, then switched off their mining, transactions would take longer to confirm until the difficulty factor decreased again. This would be inconvenient but not devastating. So in my opinion they can't do lasting damage, and therefore won't bother. Much more likely, in my opinion, is that Bitcoin transactions will be punitively taxed, or that Bitcoin will be regulated to such an extent that only the big corporations can afford to play.

Please do tell where and how one goes about shorting them... The easiest way to profit from a drop in the value of Bitcoin is to buy positions on the binary market offered by IG Markets. Oh, that thread. JackB pretty much summed up my thoughts when he posted the following: "If a new form of money comes into being and is successful in the market in a manner not predicted by theory, then it's up to the monetary theorists to adapt to the new evidence."

I can ascertain utility by observing non-monetary use. That observation shows that the thing has some non-monetary utility, but it doesn't measure how much utility it has. Bitcoin does actually have non-monetary use. For example, you can cryptographically sign messages with it, or use it for secure timestamping. I really don't want to get sidetracked by the Mises Regression Theorem. Just because most forms of money originated as commodities, doesn't mean that they all must. Historically, there is Yap Stone Money as a counterexample. In the modern world, we are sophisticated enough to understand that a new method of payment (if it reduces the friction and insecurity of fiat money) can be useful for that reason alone, without the need to trace it back to gold or salt or coffee beans. Bitcoin is a distributed, universal ledger of agreed balances. That's something which has never been possible before, and which has massive utility in its own right. I think Ludwig von Mises would have said that Bitcoin is something new and different, outside the scope of what he had previously described, and which isn't going to behave the same as what came before.

How would this be any different for gold or silver? How do you measure their utility except by checking the price on a market? Sure, you can melt your gold and turn it into a necklace, but then how do you measure the utility of that necklace except by pricing it on a market? Even if you just want to wear the necklace yourself for pleasure, you can't measure its utility (what units would you use?). Utility (of gold, or a necklace, or a bitcoin) can be measured by what you can exchange it for. I like Rick's video because he actually understands Bitcoin. Then he says (at 0:59) "If you are my age, you want something ... tangible". Fair enough. And if you prefer three ounces of silver to a bitcoin, that's absolutely fine provided you're not one of those who will complain about movements in the BTC-Silver exchange rate.

Not if you properly define the term. Then they will be wiped out. If a person perceives that Bitcoin provides no value to them, that person can ignore Bitcoin, They needn't feel threatened by it. Yes. And this will certainly be no exception. If you're certain that Bitcoin will fail, you can make a massive fortune by shorting it. You can be one of the "early adopters" amongst those who predict Bitcoin's failure. Haha, so your bet is that the whole world is going to jump on this bandwagon. That's quite the bet. I have made no bet. I'm responding to those who express early adopter envy, by pointing out that there is still plenty of time to be an early adopter. That does not depend on the "whole world" jumping into Bitcoin. It just depends on substantially more than 0.01% of the world's population jumping into Bitcoin. Bitcoin's fundamentals are very strong: a provably-honest shared ledger, no need to trust any third party (e.g. a bank), fast and low-cost global payments. Sure it might fail though. For example, Google could release a competing crypto-currency before Bitcoin reaches critical mass. My personal opinion is in five years' time, Bitcoin will have either failed (and be worthless), or will be in near-universal use and will be worth much more than it is now. That's all. I'm not making any "bet". I own some bitcoins, and I own some fiat. For those who are only holding bitcoins for speculation, then of course it's just a speculative bet. (There's nothing wrong with speculation bets, of course.) For those who are holding bitcoins because they want to be part of the process that will make it easier for people to trade around the world, that will reduce the overheads associated with old-school businesses such as banks and PayPal, that will help people to protect their savings against the predations of the Cyprus government, etc, then holding bitcoins is likely to provide spectacular benefits and a bit of excitement along the way. You can either grudgingly adapt to the future when it arrives, or you can help to shape it. Dude, they invented hyperlinks for a reason. For me, the third-from-the-bottom in page 7 (standard view) is something by Neilsio about cash registers.

That's true, but it's only useful if you know which piece of mathematics describes the physical behavior in which you are interested. A scientific theory links the behavior to its mathematical model. Obligatory xkcd comic follows:

The time to start with GPU was already over by the start of 2013. But the big price rise to over $200 made GPU mining insanely profitable again for a short time.

Quoted for posterity! My hunch is that you will be happily using Bitcoins (or a derivitave such as a Bitcoin-denominated credit card) within two years.

It's not just taking those characteristics, that all it ever was and ever will be! 1. You don't think Bitcoin provides value to the latecomers? 2. You don't think the early adopters took an enormous risk of losing all the time and money that they put into it, given that every previous digital currency had failed? Anyone who wishes to be an early adopter can still become one. Fewer than 0.01% of the world's population holds Bitcoins (conservative estimate), so feel free to join the Bitcoin economy. So why is everyone is not jumping in? It's because there is a market where the price adjusts until the benefit of owning bitcoins (adjusted for the risk) equals the benefit of not holding them (adjusted for the lack of risk). That's why there is (and always has been) a seller for every buyer. A free market is a rare and truly beautiful thing.

Scientists like mathematics which agrees with data AND which has predictive value. Then the mathematics can be used to improve life. Suppose a scientist compares the amount of fertiliser added to a fruit tree, and the yeild of fruit, and gets the following results: 2kg fertiliser = 200 apples 4kg fertiliser = 400 apples 6kg fertiliser = 600 apples The scientist may propose a formula that "apples equals 100 times kg of fertiliser". That formula agrees with the data. Furthermore, the formula predicts that 3kg of fertiliser would produce 300 apples. But if it turns out that using 3kg of fertiliser produces (say) 95 apples, the formula has no predictive value and will be discarded or refined. Even if the formula predicts the correct yield for all values of fertiliser between 2kg and 6kg, we may still need to refine it. You can't get ever-increasing yields by using infinitely-increasing amounts of fertiliser, and once we start measuring yields for amounts of fertiliser above 6kg we will need to use a more complicated formula if we want it to continue to have predictive power. To take an example from physics, Newton worked out the "laws of motion". These were found to agree with experiment, and to have the ability to accurately predict the result of new experiments. Therefore they were considered to be accurate, and proved to be very useful for designing locomotives, machines, plumbing etc. For "improving life", to use your words. But when we deal with extremely high speeds we find that the predictions of Newton's formulas don't agree so well with experimental results. However, a more complex refinement of those formulas ("relativistic physics") works extremely well. Relativistic formulas proved to be very useful for designing communications systems, orbiting satellites, the global positioning system, etc. For "improving life". But when we deal with extremely small sizes we find that Newton's formulas and Einstein's relativity don't agree so well with experimental results. However, the more complex formulas of "quantum mechanics" work extremely well. Quantum mechanics effectively predicts the outcome of a wide range of experiments at very small sizes. The formulas of quantum mechanics are what enable us to design semiconductors for computers, music players, etc. To "improve life", to use your words. No-one claims that the formulas of quantum mechanics explain the outcome of all experiments. There are some important situations that we can't currently explain. It's clear that there will be further refinement of the fundamental equations of physics in the future. But this is not something we should fear or reject.

Here's some interesting commentary on the fundamentals from Eric Vorhees, who owns a bunch of Bitcoin businesses: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170547.msg1773089#msg1773089 Here's a summary of his reasons for why the price is going crazy right now: 1. A handful of "respectable" online merchants are now accepting Bitcoin... 2. Cyprus scared the hell out of everyone... 3. Venture capital (and private investor) money is moving into Bitcoin... 4. An increasingly wide swath of the libertarian/gold & silver "hard money" types are buying into Bitcoin... 5. The FinCEN ruling clarified the government's stance on Bitcoin about 3 weeks ago... 6. The press attention gained from all of the above real-world events is fueling a huge amount of hype (justified or not). 7. Ignorant, foolish people are buying bitcoins simply because the price is going up and they think (consciously or unconsciously) that this means it'll go up tomorrow...

Very well put, Nathan. It can hardly be called "tanking" when something is trading at the same price as a few weeks ago, and trading at many times what it was trading for a couple of months ago. The price should just be called "volatile" instead of "tanking". The price may indeed "tank" in the future. Or it might go to half a million dollars. Max Keiser advocates putting 2.5% of your wealth into Bitcoin. That's a small enough proportion that most people can afford to risk losing it all. There's no point holding bitcoins unless you are willing to ride this thing wherever it takes you. It's going to be an exciting year!

Scientific understanding of the beginnings of the universe consists of taking what we can observe today and "running it backwards" to see what we find. Beyond a certain point, science cannot (currently) obtain useful information. So, before that time, science can't say much about what might or might not have happened. Where there's no evidence, pretty much anything is possible. But it's likely to be more productive to speculate about simpler more-straightforward proposals than about wild far-fetched proposals.

That's a great selection of products, nicely done. I'm glad you included some Bitcoin stickers. However, the prices on the UK site are so much higher that they're out of my range.

No, of course not. When you spoke of withdrawing your funding, I thought you meant to somehow take back funds you had already donated for the funding of the documentary.

I didn't realise donations could be made conditional on such minutae as the documentary's title.

As Jeffrey Tucker likes to point out, statists want much the same things in their lives as we do: peace, friends, food on their family's table, a satisfying and enjoyable job, shelter, security, etc. The only difference is that they don't (yet) realise the most moral and most effective way to achieve those goals.