The ADP and BLS numbers aren't exactly the same metrics and don't use exactly the same methodology. They're pretty well correlated over the longer run, but they often diverge for short periods, especially when there's a sharp change in payroll or when government payroll changes don't closely track private sector ones.

The good news is that in any given month, it allows yutzes on slashdot to choose the one they like better and shout that the other one is clearly propaganda.

The worst are the ones that deliberately select a number in your own area code and local prefix; those are almost impossible to screen out because they look like a cellphone call from someone local.

That's the root of the problem that needs to be addressed and I think it's what most people mean by "spoofing" in this context. If your caller ID number isn't a number your company owns, we take you to a shallow grave and shoot you in the back of the head. Spoof numbers from within your company's phone number registry all you want. I don't care if the AT&T rep's desk phone caller ID shows up as AT&T's 800 number when they call me. I do care if a scammer in India's caller ID shows up as a number in my area code that has nothing to do with the call center he called me from. Eliminate that problem and you've pretty much solved everything.

I'd add a fourth rule: If it was important enough to call but not important enough to leave a voicemail telling me who you are and why you called, it probably wasn't important enough to make the call.

If I don't recognize the number, I don't answer. If you leave a voicemail that convinces me I should have answered, I get back to you pretty quickly. But answering the phone to talk to random strangers about whatever scam they're running has gone out the window for me the same way answering the door to talk to random strangers about Jesus has.

Moving is often an expensive and disruptive thing to do, and there are risks associated with moving to a place far away from other job options. Maybe you're a great employer, but are you the only great employer in the area? If so, it's only sensible to move to work for you if it's easy to move if you go out of business / downsize / etc. That means buying a home near you isn't a great idea, and having a spouse quit his or her job to go along with the move isn't so smart either.

My wife and I are both professionals at about the same income tier in industries with a lot of hiring overlap. If I get a nice job offer somewhere far away, I can't just go home and tell the little lady to quit her job because we're moving somewhere for mine. And unless the offer is truly great, we can't just make the leap and assume she'll find an equally good job after we move. We pretty much have to plan this stuff out together or stay where we are, which is why we're paying more to live in a place with a lot of job opportunities in a lot of directions nearby. We can change jobs without selling our house or dragging the other person through the job hunting process.

The days of, "drop everything and move for a new job" had more single income households that could devote all of their planning energy to optimizing for that one job. And even then, moving for work tended to be moving from a low population area with few employers to a higher population area with more employers.

A large chunk of the "no jobs" complaints are about the world economy moving on and leaving some people behind. Stuff gets automated. Trade happens. It's rough, and unless somebody has a brilliant solution the the displacements caused by those changes, it seems like retraining and a social safety net are about the best we can do.

The Democrats don't have a better solution and they're not good at pretending to listen and pretending to have a solution. The Republicans don't have a solution, but they're masters at pretending they care and that they have an answer. Trump is going to wave his hands and make human labor more efficient than robots. He'll stop all of the cheap imports competing with US products and still keep prices at Wal Mart low. Sure, if they can just build that wall, the manufacturing and mining jobs in places where there are no Mexicans will come back. The robots will be put out to pasture and we'll start relying on human labor in manufacturing again.

Well, he's 100% in charge now, so it will be interesting to see what happens. I wouldn't bet against the fundamental rules of economics, though. Those have a pretty solid winning record, especially when you compare it to the record of politicians promising jobs.

Personal anecdotes trump data every time. They're the cornerstone of great policy.

Not that I think the embargo was a particularly good policy, but I have to point out that if your awesome alternative to capitalism specifically requires trade with the US in order to succeed, it's reasonable to wonder if you really have an awesome alternative to capitalism.

You can't 100% censor anything, but you can get pretty darned close if you put your mind to it. If, say, software piracy carried the death penalty and the UK government was given all of the technical tools available to to chase down software pirates, you'd better believe that causal piracy would drop a lot closer to zero than it is right now. Then the only remaining question is how much people are willing to fight back to get the law repealed, or if they'll just say, "Meh, it's not worth making an issue of."

In that sense, there's nothing special about the Internet. It just happens that in most modern countries, they haven't tried all that hard and the stakes have been pretty low.

Even more to the point, you can reject the conclusions snopes comes to and just use the raw data they use to make their arguments. They do perfectly good research, so even if you think their conclusions are slanted, the actual checking of base facts is still good and 99% of the value of the site.

But can it steal your iPad from your checked bag?

Can it roll its eyes at you because you don't know that the latest rev of the asinine rules about which things go in which bin?

It's going to be a while before we can truly replace everything humans do for us.

We should also tell the truth about seatbelts: Some people still die in car accidents, and sometimes they cause people to get trapped and prevent escape from dangerous situations.

I feel a lot better now that we all know the truth and can stand up to Big Seatbelt.

Actually, the Japanese, who had followed this discussion, decided to postpone the measles vaccination, after which the autism rate in young children suddenly and spectacularly dropped.

The only study I'm aware of is from 2005 and it shows nothing of the sort. Is there some new data that shows a change in trend later on? If so, how do we account for the timing?

Funny enough, Prof. John Walker-Smith had the money to actually appeal the decision of the GMC in court, and was vindicated by the judge. So he (and Wakefield) was right after all.

What was the ruling, specifically? I'm having a hard time finding it. Given the truly damning findings against Wakefield, I'm very interested in seeing which ones they repudiated and why.

However, later the CDC found out by itself that MMR led in a disproportional way to much more cases of autism in African Americans than in white Americans.

Do you have a source for that?

Calories? That's a gluten.

That is a good thing and I'm glad people with real medical problems have more options. At the same time, if it became trendy to roll around in wheelchairs, we'd see a lot more accessibility work in cool businesses, but I'd still have to roll my eyes at an able-bodied hipster giving a business owner shit because there weren't enough accessible tables for his wheelchair.