People refuse to pay extra for non polluting production methods because of the free-rider problem. You waste time complaining about the concern of businessmen for their "bottom line" when you should be talking about the U.S. consumers who actually buy the products. The problem is there is no incentive for a US consumer to buy environmentally friendly products because their purchase, averaged over the entire atmosphere, has only a very, very small net effect. 300 million people make the same decision, and here we are.
The solution, somewhat ironically, is to do what we are doing right now, namely complain about the problem until we get together to enforce regulations that benefit everyone. Unfortunately, people like you seem to prefer the status quo because you are upset by the lack of altruism exhibited by your peers. Less moralizing, more problem solving, please.
Non-proliferation was still a very valid goal back even before we worried about the religious inclinations of the regimes involved. Perhaps we shouldn't worry about the Iranians because they are Muslims, but that hardly means we shouldn't worry about them.
However you feel about Israel having nukes, it should be obvious that giving them to Iran too makes the situation worse. Bizarre "fairness" arguments to the contrary need to stop.
I accidentally modded you offtopic so I'm replying so it will let me undo my mod.
And to add a little content, if you ask people in Kosovo what they think of us bombing the Serbs, they are very happy. The Serbs obviously not so much.
But I don't think the Japanese loved our bombing in world war two either; that doesn't mean it was the wrong thing to do.
Investing that money in the stock market. Key differences between investing in stocks and solar panels:
You get to keep your original money with stocks.
Your stock portfolio won't "wear out" over time.
I don't understand why people think that getting back to financial baseline on their solar panel investment is some great achievement. Unless you were planning on hiding your money in your back yard for those intervening years, had you not put panels on your roof, you are still deep, deep in the red. Opportunity costs are Econ 101, and need to be included in any discussion of the economics of solar panel installation.
Do you really think oil production destroys more wealth than it creates? Then why don't we stop producing today? Because, (duh) the benefits of oil production vastly outweigh the costs.
And also a few corrections for you. Go look at pictures of ANWR: no trees. It's a tundra. The OCS regions we're talking about are not in the Gulf of Mexico. And carbon offsets are not expensive, nor is the environmental damage from oil spills. At least not when you compare them to the price of 10's of billions of barrels of oil. That money goes to pay workers too you know... not just executives. And then those workers can buy other things, support their families, pay taxes, and so on...
Every time some moron says "but the oil companies already have millions of acres of leased land!" I say, "Gee, I wonder why they didn't think of that." Glad to see you were modded up.
I'm amazed that people can suggest that there is "no benefit" to increasing U.S. drilling because it will have a small impact on the price of oil. Do you know how large the world oil market is? Here's a hint: 21 billion barrels of oil * (conservatively) 100$ per barrel = 2.1 trillion dollars. It is your opinion that we should just leave that money in the ground?
Or somebody intelligent enough to realize money is more useful paying people to do things then sitting under your mattress. A tiny bit of inflation can be a good thing, because it encourages just that type of behavior.
Beware drawing conclusions that at first glance seem obvious. Were those women identical in every way to their competitors except for publication quantity? Were those publications of identical quality? Were the publications of identical profile level?
There's a reason we don't draw conclusions based on experiments with more than one changed variable. I suspect you're victim of a study conducted by someone with an axe to grind, who wasn't interested in doing a rigorous job, only in supporting what they already believed. Scientists could en large be systematic bigots, but I would first check to make sure your own statistics are not misleading you.
Not if you count years of experience, which women tend to have fewer of because they tend to leave the workforce to... raise kids! The whole "women are underpaid" line is to my understanding a total lark. If they really were systematically underpaid, some enterprising woman would start up a company filled with all those women, and kick the crap out of everyone else because she would have a cost advantage. One of the great virtues of competitive markets is that they don't treat gender/racial/any bias kindly.
For further reading I suggest the Jackie Robinson years for the Dodgers. Notice how well the Dodgers played when they stopped being a bunch of racists? QED
If you'd prefer to stand by a window, can I have all your things after you're dead and I'm not because I don't learn survival skills from comedy routines (and realize not everywhere is right under the bomb)?
Because political dispositions are not evenly distributed along the spectrum, and not everyone has to vote. Rerun your mental scenario with large clusters of people at both ends, and a maximum walking distance, and you will notice a very different outcome emerge...
All materials sublimate. The liquid phase doesn't exist beneath a substance's triple point, so at pressures beneath that level temperature increases cause the material to go directly from solid to gaseous (sublimate). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Phase-diag2.svga has a good picture of what we're thinking about.
I've got to cast another vote for fox not being all that bad. People get all excited about "Fox news bias" because someone cites a montage of the worst 5 minutes of fox coverage that aired over a period of weeks or even months. Fox airs more than Bill O'reilly, and showing.001% of their footage and claiming that it's representative of ALL their footage is dishonest. Fox news airs plenty of biased talk, but if you'll actually watch it you'll realize it's hardly worse on average than anything else out there.
IF the rocket blows up you have a class 5 clusterfuck on your hands. Launching dangerous things into space is really a terrible, not to mention extremely expensive, all around bad idea. Works in comic books, not suitable for RL.
Do you know what kiloton stands for? You are way, way off on many of your statements. Kiloton stands for thousand ton. Like a thousand times 2000 pounds. You aren't building that with supplies from your Home Depot and I'm fairly certain 200,000 lbs of TNT beats the Oklahoma City bombing/sarcasm. YOU appear to be the ignorant one, and while a fraction of a kt wouldn't take out the greater New York Metropolitan Area, it would be major, major bad news if it went off in Manhattan.
housing prices and food prices are also rising faster than salaries
Really, they are? REALLY?
I want to complain about the state of public school teaching in America as much as anybody, but can we please keep our complaints to the things that aren't abhorrently and obviously inaccurate? We're in the middle of a freaking housing crisis, and the price of homes are collapsing. They went down by over 14% in the last three months alone. Rising housing prices, of all things, are not the current problem for teachers, or the greater middle class (thankfully).
Slashdot Mirror
People refuse to pay extra for non polluting production methods because of the free-rider problem. You waste time complaining about the concern of businessmen for their "bottom line" when you should be talking about the U.S. consumers who actually buy the products. The problem is there is no incentive for a US consumer to buy environmentally friendly products because their purchase, averaged over the entire atmosphere, has only a very, very small net effect. 300 million people make the same decision, and here we are.
The solution, somewhat ironically, is to do what we are doing right now, namely complain about the problem until we get together to enforce regulations that benefit everyone. Unfortunately, people like you seem to prefer the status quo because you are upset by the lack of altruism exhibited by your peers. Less moralizing, more problem solving, please.
Non-proliferation was still a very valid goal back even before we worried about the religious inclinations of the regimes involved. Perhaps we shouldn't worry about the Iranians because they are Muslims, but that hardly means we shouldn't worry about them.
However you feel about Israel having nukes, it should be obvious that giving them to Iran too makes the situation worse. Bizarre "fairness" arguments to the contrary need to stop.
I accidentally modded you offtopic so I'm replying so it will let me undo my mod.
And to add a little content, if you ask people in Kosovo what they think of us bombing the Serbs, they are very happy. The Serbs obviously not so much.
But I don't think the Japanese loved our bombing in world war two either; that doesn't mean it was the wrong thing to do.
Investing that money in the stock market. Key differences between investing in stocks and solar panels:
You get to keep your original money with stocks.
Your stock portfolio won't "wear out" over time.
I don't understand why people think that getting back to financial baseline on their solar panel investment is some great achievement. Unless you were planning on hiding your money in your back yard for those intervening years, had you not put panels on your roof, you are still deep, deep in the red. Opportunity costs are Econ 101, and need to be included in any discussion of the economics of solar panel installation.
Or read his energy plan. I like Obama, but sheesh, can you say Command and Control?
Taxes paid by it and it's workers?
Or:
What's the benefit to you to people that work at Starbucks if you don't shop there? Should we shut Starbucks down?
Do you really think oil production destroys more wealth than it creates? Then why don't we stop producing today? Because, (duh) the benefits of oil production vastly outweigh the costs.
And also a few corrections for you. Go look at pictures of ANWR: no trees. It's a tundra. The OCS regions we're talking about are not in the Gulf of Mexico. And carbon offsets are not expensive, nor is the environmental damage from oil spills. At least not when you compare them to the price of 10's of billions of barrels of oil. That money goes to pay workers too you know... not just executives. And then those workers can buy other things, support their families, pay taxes, and so on...
Oil production is your friend.
Every time some moron says "but the oil companies already have millions of acres of leased land!" I say, "Gee, I wonder why they didn't think of that." Glad to see you were modded up.
I'm amazed that people can suggest that there is "no benefit" to increasing U.S. drilling because it will have a small impact on the price of oil. Do you know how large the world oil market is? Here's a hint: 21 billion barrels of oil * (conservatively) 100$ per barrel = 2.1 trillion dollars. It is your opinion that we should just leave that money in the ground?
Or somebody intelligent enough to realize money is more useful paying people to do things then sitting under your mattress. A tiny bit of inflation can be a good thing, because it encourages just that type of behavior.
Wouldn't you have to decelerate then? Sounds like a deal breaker to me.
Beware drawing conclusions that at first glance seem obvious. Were those women identical in every way to their competitors except for publication quantity? Were those publications of identical quality? Were the publications of identical profile level?
There's a reason we don't draw conclusions based on experiments with more than one changed variable. I suspect you're victim of a study conducted by someone with an axe to grind, who wasn't interested in doing a rigorous job, only in supporting what they already believed. Scientists could en large be systematic bigots, but I would first check to make sure your own statistics are not misleading you.
Would any Slashdotters care to actually see that data before modding up to +5? Or are claims the data exists somewhere now sufficient?
Not if you count years of experience, which women tend to have fewer of because they tend to leave the workforce to... raise kids! The whole "women are underpaid" line is to my understanding a total lark. If they really were systematically underpaid, some enterprising woman would start up a company filled with all those women, and kick the crap out of everyone else because she would have a cost advantage. One of the great virtues of competitive markets is that they don't treat gender/racial/any bias kindly.
For further reading I suggest the Jackie Robinson years for the Dodgers. Notice how well the Dodgers played when they stopped being a bunch of racists? QED
If you'd prefer to stand by a window, can I have all your things after you're dead and I'm not because I don't learn survival skills from comedy routines (and realize not everywhere is right under the bomb)?
Because political dispositions are not evenly distributed along the spectrum, and not everyone has to vote. Rerun your mental scenario with large clusters of people at both ends, and a maximum walking distance, and you will notice a very different outcome emerge...
All materials sublimate. The liquid phase doesn't exist beneath a substance's triple point, so at pressures beneath that level temperature increases cause the material to go directly from solid to gaseous (sublimate). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Phase-diag2.svga has a good picture of what we're thinking about.
I've got to cast another vote for fox not being all that bad. People get all excited about "Fox news bias" because someone cites a montage of the worst 5 minutes of fox coverage that aired over a period of weeks or even months. Fox airs more than Bill O'reilly, and showing .001% of their footage and claiming that it's representative of ALL their footage is dishonest. Fox news airs plenty of biased talk, but if you'll actually watch it you'll realize it's hardly worse on average than anything else out there.
IF the rocket blows up you have a class 5 clusterfuck on your hands. Launching dangerous things into space is really a terrible, not to mention extremely expensive, all around bad idea. Works in comic books, not suitable for RL.
People take it for granted until they don't have any. Per usual, the public won't bother to deal with this issue until we're already suffocating.
Pelosi and Reid have much more control over votes than Barack does. He can try and bring publicity to issues, but that's his only real power.
Do you know what kiloton stands for? You are way, way off on many of your statements. Kiloton stands for thousand ton. Like a thousand times 2000 pounds. You aren't building that with supplies from your Home Depot and I'm fairly certain 200,000 lbs of TNT beats the Oklahoma City bombing /sarcasm. YOU appear to be the ignorant one, and while a fraction of a kt wouldn't take out the greater New York Metropolitan Area, it would be major, major bad news if it went off in Manhattan.
housing prices and food prices are also rising faster than salaries
Really, they are? REALLY?
I want to complain about the state of public school teaching in America as much as anybody, but can we please keep our complaints to the things that aren't abhorrently and obviously inaccurate? We're in the middle of a freaking housing crisis, and the price of homes are collapsing. They went down by over 14% in the last three months alone. Rising housing prices, of all things, are not the current problem for teachers, or the greater middle class (thankfully).
MediaDefender isn't filled with the kind of people that fear negative public opinion.
I'm sorry, but the only way to take these bastards down is with the law. Phone calls and letters don't have the kind of traction you're looking for.