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We already have more people than we really have a use for, if we really think about it.

This -- http://fredoneverything.net/IronLaw.shtml -- pretty much says it, I think.

Bringing in more immigrants just means more people on the government teat, for which more immigrants must pay more taxes, and the whole thing becomes a self-reinforcing vicious circle with more and more dire consequences.

How long is it until we start the death tournaments, a la Hunger Games, to rid the excess population?

Long term, we are only going to be a viable country if we can gather the sack to solve the problem of excess population at the low end of the value spectrum.

What about people who aren't capable of doing these high-level, un-automatable jobs? Half the population has an IQ below 100. Easy to forget that when your real-world milieu consists of other highly educated, intelligent people and your online reading leans toward sites like Slashdot.

This article/rant is very much worth reading: http://www.fredoneverything.net/Commentators.shtml

Fred Reed was discussing this the other day on http://www.fredoneverything.net/DeadCarriers.shtml - he lists four cheap methods to take out modern carriers and argues that the US navy is pretty much obsolete in the modern world.

The 4th amendment does not apply. As with every other country, the US considers domestic law to only apply when you are inside the country. If you have not yet cleared customs, you are technically not in the country. Therefore, you do not benefit from the protections of domestic law. This may seem like quibbling, but it is how every country controls its borders.

It is not only laptops: many people have also been required to show the photos on their cameras, as well as the contents of other electronic devices.

Whether or not such searches make any sense is another question altogether.

Is that why I have to pay US taxes on money I make in another country?

The 4th amendment does not apply. As with every other country, the US considers domestic law to only apply when you are inside the country. If you have not yet cleared customs, you are technically not in the country. Therefore, you do not benefit from the protections of domestic law. This may seem like quibbling, but it is how every country controls its borders.

It is not only laptops: many people have also been required to show the photos on their cameras, as well as the contents of other electronic devices.

Whether or not such searches make any sense is another question altogether.

I don't know about you, the courts or DHS but,

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Seems pretty clear to me, I don't see how they get a way with it. Inspecting a vehicle or person to verify accuracy of customs declarations and duties is one thing, but seizing computers and digital devices to search for criminal activity is beyond that scope.

The 4th amendment does not apply. As with every other country, the US considers domestic law to only apply when you are inside the country. If you have not yet cleared customs, you are technically not in the country. Therefore, you do not benefit from the protections of domestic law. This may seem like quibbling, but it is how every country controls its borders.

It is not only laptops: many people have also been required to show the photos on their cameras, as well as the contents of other electronic devices.

Whether or not such searches make any sense is another question altogether.

Of course our laws don't extend beyond our borders, that's why John Walker Lindh, and Manuel Noriega are in prison. The crimes they committed inside the US border.

The 4th amendment does not apply. As with every other country, the US considers domestic law to only apply when you are inside the country. If you have not yet cleared customs, you are technically not in the country. Therefore, you do not benefit from the protections of domestic law. This may seem like quibbling, but it is how every country controls its borders.

It is not only laptops: many people have also been required to show the photos on their cameras, as well as the contents of other electronic devices.

Whether or not such searches make any sense is another question altogether.

This could truly be the death of America, as it will kill the Sciences in the USA, by draining the money out of them or completely killing the departments at public universities.

Also see Fred On Everythig, Unfinding Brains
http://www.fredoneverything.net/GAO.shtml

Back in the nineties I used to hang out with "boomer" commander (a Captain). He said all that Tom Clancy sub hunting stuff was overrated and that boomers on both sides operated with near impunity. He rode boats for two decades and was pinned twice by the Soviets. In fact he felt that it was a waste of money driving boomers with nuclear reactors because it was so easy to make your boat scarce when you had to. According to him the Navy sends the boomers on unecessarily long cruises to justify the use of nuclear power and it negatively affects morale without adding significant strategic advantage. He did approve of nuclear powered attack subs, which benefit from the extra power. At any rate, he said that the Navy was always saying there was a revolution in anti-submarine warfare just around the corner but it never materialized. Neither side could hope to interdict enough of the enemy's boomers to effect a first strike without fear of retaliation. I presume the biggest problem the Chinese have is lack of numbers. Maybe things have changed, but I doubt it. Also, quiet isn't everything. The Soviets never built subs as quiet as ours, but they built ones that could dive deeper.

...and here we have a rebuttal.

Promoting critical thinking and debate is exactly the idea of this decision.

Oh, bullshit. It's pandering to religious parents.

They have more right to be pandered to than the academic left, which sees brainwashing everyone as its inborn right.

I think it's also designed to avoid the issue ever being discussed in class again, because it makes it that much more difficult to deal with some parent mafia

"Parent mafia"?! Eat shit and die, scumbag - NEITHER YOU NOR GOVERNMENT NOR OBSESSIVE ACADEMICS GET TO DECIDE WHAT KIDS ARE TO BE TAUGHT.

You are not owner of the kids and though neither the parents are, THEY have the right to decide what their kids are taught. Not you or a few shallow careerists and leftie lobbyists. Get your hands off kids or you will have them shot away. Dumbass.

and stick to whatever their crazy ideas of "alternative views" are. Do you think the parent in question would be happy with alternative scientific opinions? I don't think so. He wants religious views included. In science.

It's not, idiot. Evolution is probably right - at least the part on natural selection - but it's still _ex post_ hypothesis. No predictive power = not very scientific really, hardcore falsifictionist would say not at all.

The critics are right, whatever their motivations. Painting all the critics of evolution in color of a fundie idiot is exactly against the core of scientific method, or at least falsification a la Karl Popper: it's argument ad hominem and trying to intimidate the critics with a lot shouting and hostility as opposed to involving in intellectual debate.

Vicious morons like you are little but "Darwin rottweilers", so aggressive that they don't even understand they are caught in Catch-22s and other fallacies:

http://www.arn.org/docs/williams/pw_dawkinsfallaci es.htm

You're a believer really, a lot worse than those fundies. They at least are not driven by viciousness and mindless screaming like you are.

Evolution per se has problems, and not just religious people noticed that. This guy put it very well:

http://www.fredoneverything.net/EvolutionPhiladelp hia.shtml

I used to think that criticizing evolution at school is a bad idea, because all in all, it's the best hypothesis we have, but after reading about the issue I came to conclusion that it is actually very good: kids learn there are no simple answers and textbook problems almost always are skewed towards finding one and easy solution, while in real world it doesn't work like that.

Yes, this is done for sake of education, but it has bad side effect of too many people leaving school acquiring habitual attitude towards problems that resembles that textbook exercise attitude, and so they become simpletons like you, expecting one correct answer, evolution in this case.

1. She would go into a store with a group of her black friends dressed up very hip-hop gangstery and be very loud.

2. She had one white friend who would go into the store seperately, looking demure and wearing a skirt with big inside pockets.

3. While the people in the store were paying attention to the black group, the white girl would rob them blind and leave.

Shoplifting: Life Among The Boosters

Me, as a minimum wage employee in a store, I was taken a few times as part of a confidence game. Usually nothing as complex as the scenario described above. "Quickchange artists" attempt to confuse you about how much change you've given them. The way they do this is they come in late when everyone is tired from a long day, and they are very agressive with you and make you doubt yourself. There are other scams involving claiming that something they are holding was something they brought into the store to check the battery size. The way these work are not by fooling you, but by being agressive and insulting. It's basically the hard sell, which you may have run into in other aspects of your life.

I remember working in a store that was victimized by a "smash and grab" in New Jersey. I almost got in trouble for it and the manager did get in trouble for it. Basically, she had tied a bunch of Street Fighter II games for the Super Nintendo onto a rack (as a display), she thought securely. Well, someone figured it out and grabbed them all while we were all distracted.

Of course, most of the people applauding this stupid prank were probably in diapers when that happened.

Well That happensalot More than you would expect

Well That happensalot More than you would expect

Remember: China is a brutal communist regime; a man on the moon would boost its international stance, and help silence critics at home.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.h tm #289

http://www.fredoneverything.net/ChinaTrip.shtml


Looking For Commies In China
You'd Do Better In The Harvard Faculty Lounge
September 11, 2005
by Fred Reed


Just finished the last bag-drag back from China, jet-lagged, brain fried on caffeine, edgy groggy. Maybe I'll kill something. Or hibernate. What province am I in? Why do these Mexicans have round eyes? It's not natural. Some thoughts, barely:

I couldn't find the commies. Conservatives, who apparently preserve their minds in amber at birth, ramble on about Communist China. I guess their brains have parking brakes. Things are much less confusing if you have only one idea and stick with it. Anyway, if China is a communist country, I'm Julius Didianus. Who ever heard of a communist economy growing at nine percent? Or at all?

I grant you, the rascals used to be commies, but they've degenerated, and lost their touch. I could do it better. When I landed at Beijing, I got through passport control in about thirty seconds. They didn't even glance at my baggage. Grabbed a cab to my hotel. The driver tried to overcharge me. It looked like capitalism to me.....

....Chungking is what New York would be if New York were a big city. We're talking forty-storey high rises that somehow don't look as dull as ours, massive highways and bridges. Every time we landed the airport turned out to have been completed four years ago, one year ago, what have you. Those cities aren't Guadalajara. They're Chicago.

The clunky Russian aircraft are gone. Now you see new stuff from Boeing and Airbus.

OK, that's the up side. The downside is lots, and smart people see real instability that could lead to an explosion. The Chinese explode well, as the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 demonstrated. One problem is that said Revolution also left a generation of jobless ex-radicals who can't read, a bit like New Orleans. You can criticize Mousy Dung all you want, but you have to give him credit for being an unconscionable ass with no concern for his people. Anyway, those kids, no longer kids, could be trouble.

Then the policy of one child per family, combined with a preference for boy children, has left huge numbers of excess males who aren't going to find wives. They too might become disagreeable. I would. Add that the new wealth isn't reaching a whole lot of people. Corruption is rife. Poverty remains horrendous in many parts. Finally, China is said to have eighty million evangelical Christians, which means that it will likely attack Iraq, as well as a lot of Moslems....

...Mau croaked. You really can't rely on communists. China now appears to be doing what Taiwan did. My take is that the Communist Party figured out that Marxism was great except that it didn't work, and anyway it could bore a tax accountant into the shrieking gollywoggles, so they decided to keep the name while doing whatever worked. This is a novel concept for the West, which tends to eschew reason for organized imbecility, as for example liberalism and conservatism. Anyway, Katie bar the door. Better, open the bar....

Remember: China is a brutal communist regime; a man on the moon would boost its international stance, and help silence critics at home.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.h tm #289

http://www.fredoneverything.net/ChinaTrip.shtml


Looking For Commies In China
You'd Do Better In The Harvard Faculty Lounge
September 11, 2005
by Fred Reed


Just finished the last bag-drag back from China, jet-lagged, brain fried on caffeine, edgy groggy. Maybe I'll kill something. Or hibernate. What province am I in? Why do these Mexicans have round eyes? It's not natural. Some thoughts, barely:

I couldn't find the commies. Conservatives, who apparently preserve their minds in amber at birth, ramble on about Communist China. I guess their brains have parking brakes. Things are much less confusing if you have only one idea and stick with it. Anyway, if China is a communist country, I'm Julius Didianus. Who ever heard of a communist economy growing at nine percent? Or at all?

I grant you, the rascals used to be commies, but they've degenerated, and lost their touch. I could do it better. When I landed at Beijing, I got through passport control in about thirty seconds. They didn't even glance at my baggage. Grabbed a cab to my hotel. The driver tried to overcharge me. It looked like capitalism to me.....

....Chungking is what New York would be if New York were a big city. We're talking forty-storey high rises that somehow don't look as dull as ours, massive highways and bridges. Every time we landed the airport turned out to have been completed four years ago, one year ago, what have you. Those cities aren't Guadalajara. They're Chicago.

The clunky Russian aircraft are gone. Now you see new stuff from Boeing and Airbus.

OK, that's the up side. The downside is lots, and smart people see real instability that could lead to an explosion. The Chinese explode well, as the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 demonstrated. One problem is that said Revolution also left a generation of jobless ex-radicals who can't read, a bit like New Orleans. You can criticize Mousy Dung all you want, but you have to give him credit for being an unconscionable ass with no concern for his people. Anyway, those kids, no longer kids, could be trouble.

Then the policy of one child per family, combined with a preference for boy children, has left huge numbers of excess males who aren't going to find wives. They too might become disagreeable. I would. Add that the new wealth isn't reaching a whole lot of people. Corruption is rife. Poverty remains horrendous in many parts. Finally, China is said to have eighty million evangelical Christians, which means that it will likely attack Iraq, as well as a lot of Moslems....

...Mau croaked. You really can't rely on communists. China now appears to be doing what Taiwan did. My take is that the Communist Party figured out that Marxism was great except that it didn't work, and anyway it could bore a tax accountant into the shrieking gollywoggles, so they decided to keep the name while doing whatever worked. This is a novel concept for the West, which tends to eschew reason for organized imbecility, as for example liberalism and conservatism. Anyway, Katie bar the door. Better, open the bar....

Latin America is the new India...Who knows, might be a more attractive spot to immigrate to than south asia too, for those willing to follow the work

Getting way off-topic, but what the heck:
http://www.fredoneverything.net/ExpatGuide.shtml
http://www.mexcentralexpats.com/

Second, evolution seemed more a metaphysics or ideology than a science. The sciences, as I knew them, gave clear answers. Evolution involved intense faith in fuzzy principles. You demonstrated chemistry, but believed evolution. If you have ever debated a Marxist, or a serious liberal or conservative, or a feminist or Christian, you will have noticed that, although they can be exceedingly bright and well informed, they display a maddening imprecision. You never get a straight answer if it is one they do not want to give. Nothing is ever firmly established. Crucial assertions do not tie to observable reality. Invariably the Marxist (or evolutionist) assumes that a detailed knowledge of economic conditions under the reign of Nicholas II or whatever substitutes for being able to answer simple questions, such as why Marxism has never worked: the Fallacy of Irrelevant Knowledge. And of course almost anything can be made believable by considering only favorable evidence and interpreting hard.

The reason education sucks is because, we as a society, don't fucking care.

Growing Up Dumber Than Anvils

If we really did, we'd do something effective about it.

The paper is considered "politically incorrect" because it implies that one ethnic group may be inherently different from another. These days, you can get slapped with a racism or sexism suit for just about anything -- I know someone who was told they weren't allowed to comment on the fact that blacks (sorry, "Persons of African Descent") are less likely to suffer sunburn.

It's the same as not being allowed to state that most women have less upper body strength than average men, or that men aren't very good at breast-feeding kids. Anything that implies an inherent difference between groups of people is taboo in the US.

Go read some articles by Fred Reed -- he has some interesting, though sometimes biased, articles about race and sex.

I believe in evolution, but I don't see how anyone can say they've been shown proof (or anything like it) that random mutation and natural selection are the key components.

Oops, that second link should have been divorce

still looking for a wife

You really should read about marriage and divorce before you go and do something really stupid.

still looking for a wife

You really should read about marriage and divorce before you go and do something really stupid.

Democracy is a fraud. It doesn't exist.

For the second time in as many minutes I will acquiesce to a far more eloquent writer.

Take it away Fred!

John Howard is an utter prick. There can be no doubt of that. His Suck-up-to-the-US-at-any-cost policy stinks to high heaven.

The problem is that Mark Latham and Labor, while being better on the US-sucking-up-to front, carry immense amounts of baggage in other areas, baggage that, to many people, will lead to worse things happening than the occasional bad juju on the copyright front.

Any thinking adult that remembers what Whitlam did to the country would have grave doubts about electing a man whose primary source of inspiration is, in fact, Whitlam.

Howard offers a lot crap, but at least I won't be forced into paying single mothers to whelp ever increasing numbers of illegitimate offspring in their never ending pursuit of more welfare handouts and as an added bonus I have far less chance of paying 17% interest on my home mortgage to boot.

Having said all that, I didn't vote for any of the bastards, and I wont be voting for them in the future, either.

In this regard (and despite being an Aussie and not an American), I'm with Fred.

Australia and America, they are not that much different really, and this was becoming increasingly obvious way before Howard ever became PM.

Someone named Fred said it much better than I could:

Note how obedient the Iraqis are. Think about this. One man doesn't give another a blow job for the amusement of Twiggy unless he is terrified of the consequences if he refuses. Is it only psychological torture? In the pictures, yes. Somebody is behind them with whips and pliers. Those men are scared shitless, and they have a reason.

That's an excerpt from here.

Someone named Fred said it much better than I could:

Note how obedient the Iraqis are. Think about this. One man doesn't give another a blow job for the amusement of Twiggy unless he is terrified of the consequences if he refuses. Is it only psychological torture? In the pictures, yes. Somebody is behind them with whips and pliers. Those men are scared shitless, and they have a reason.

That's an excerpt from here.

is here. read it. makes sense.

here. read it.

Great. Another use of that ludicrous invention of Hollywood: The Ass-Kicking Chick. Screenshot Notice how the lady obviously does not have the upper body strength required to even hold up the weapon. These aren't women, they are nothing like women, and it's only sexy if you have never held a conversation with a real woman. Of course, I suppose that the Chip makes American women unattractive enough as is. Maybe some guys find these girls to be an improvement. Anyway, the silliest aspect of the whole mess is that it makes our culture inclined towards idiocy like women in combat.

Great. Another use of that ludicrous invention of Hollywood: The Ass-Kicking Chick. Screenshot Notice how the lady obviously does not have the upper body strength required to even hold up the weapon. These aren't women, they are nothing like women, and it's only sexy if you have never held a conversation with a real woman. Of course, I suppose that the Chip makes American women unattractive enough as is. Maybe some guys find these girls to be an improvement. Anyway, the silliest aspect of the whole mess is that it makes our culture inclined towards idiocy like women in combat.

Here is an example of an influential small website.

If you don't already try fred you will like him.

While it will be sad to see Salon shut down, there is another source of intelligent, insightful commentary for the new millennium.

Thing is, any fool can tell what the Fathers meant by looking at what they did.

Like the Second Amendment, that says, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." They hadn't really figured out commas back then. Everybody argues like crazy about what "militia" meant, and did the Fathers really mean that everybody ought to be able to have guns, and it sounds all solemn and serious.

It ain't.

Back then, everyone and his Aunt Polly had guns, and all their pigs and chickens, and some tadpoles. The Foundling Fathers knew it. So did the Supreme Court. Nobody ever got upset about it. It never occurred to anyone that it was unconstitutional.

If the Fathers had intended something different, they'd have done something different.

Some thoughts on this day of "rememberance" ca be found here and here. Another interesting thing is that all the major networks have decided to not show advertisements out of "respect". The truth is that they can't sell the time so they put a nice spin on it.