Why is this modded funny? It's not, it's scary. Because it's true.
Don't be a troll. Moderators why is this insightful ? Instead of making snide unorigial political claims why don't you do some research. People who don't want to see this cut should tell their politicians that a paltry $4 million could be removed from the $121.264 million budget of the NEA.
The unemployment rate is 5.4%, The american dollar is losing value because of the weak economy, to the point that it's dangering the Canadian economy. America has been cutting its interest rates to spur growth, and avoid deflation. I have no vested interest in American politics, but America is in a recession- wake up.
I think you've been reading too many Paul Krugman articles. I'll address your points specifically:
the unemployment rate is 5.4% I am assuming you are making the assertion this is a doom and gloom number. However, historical facts eliminate this assertion. Notice how the peak is two years gone, and all of 2004 has been a downward slope since then.
The american dollar is losing value because of the weak economy,
I think you should provide evidence of this weak economy. I've written on slashdot several times about this before, but I'll say it again. Economics is not a zero sum game. People are currently calling the dollar "weak". This means that people trading with US companies get MORE goods for their money than they would with buying from other countries. This causes people to buy MORE American goods, infact European businesses were scared about the holiday shopping season because so many were buying American goods rather than European ones.
America has been cutting its interest rates to spur growth, and avoid deflation.
Growth like the productivity of American non-farm workers that is skyrocketting.
Growth like Real GDP(inflation adjusted) has been on the rise for 4 years and is currently it's highest since 1999.
but America is in a recession- wake up. ah yes, but I digress... we are in a recession. I'll just sweep the numbers under the table, those can't possibly mean anything. I know it's popular to be "down on/with America" these days. But the least you could do is actually take a position that has some facts to support it.
As a brief example: I has asked him about the broadcast flag issue, and he dodged the question with a "on one hand this, on the other hand that"... and never concluding anything.
If you are trying to paint him as an irrational corporate lap dog you did a bad job. Showing that somebody understands trade-offs in situations makes them appear very credible.
Huh? I didn't know Halliburton even cared about astroturfing on slashdot!
I fail to see how any of this has to do with Halliburton, nor how it effects the merit of my argument.
I never said oil supplies were going to run out within a decade. I merely said that that prices were going to rise enough to make small planes unprofitable.
If you will notice I said:
You sound like one of the "our current known oil supplies will run out in a decade" fear mongers.
Emphasis on "You sound like", as in similar to. But really arguing about semantics is pointless.
I am aware that as prices rise, more drilling sites will become profitable. But the fact that rising prices increase viable reserves does not change the fact that they did rise in the first place!
Oil prices rise and fall, they are determined by markets. Pointing your finger at a 1 year spike and saying 'LOOK! it will expensive now' is meaningless.
It only matters in the long run, much like the stock market. When zoomed in on weekly and even daily trades the stock market it is highly volitile, but spread out over a sufficiently long period of time period of time is a very predictable growth pattern. Oil prices have performed similarly, although in a downward(aka cheaper) trend.
And as for finite resources ? Yes there is a finite amount of crude oil on this planet. However, humans currnetly can only possibly inhabit 1/4 of the landmass. And we drill on a fraction of that. Do you really think that there is miniscule amounts of oil on the 3/4 left surveyed ?
but that once it gets rare enough, it will be so expensive that nobody will be using it anyway. So yes, economics will keep supplies at a sufficient level for centuries, but definitely NOT cheap.
You fail to understand basic economic theory. It will be plentiful and cheap even with higher demand than there currently is today.
This is the case because oil is still relatively cheap. Expect this to change in the future.
You sound like one of the "our current known oil supplies will run out in a decade" fear mongers. Every 15 years or so people tend to make statements like this, and every 15 years they are proven wrong.
Economics will keep our oil prices cheap and supplies plentiful for centuries. Sometimes people even point to the rise in oil prices during 2004(oil is %30 more epensive in jan 2005 than jan 2004).
Notice how it is all scaled to 2002 dollars. Everybody in the US was complaining and whinning about prices of gas. As this chart shows gas was cheaper than it has been for the last 30 years.
Everytime oil prices get 'too high' one of two things will happen. 1) it will become more ecnomically viable to invest millions of dollars in locaing new drilling sites for oil companies. 2) it will become more economically viable for people to invest in alternative energy resources.
Naturally those who are in control of the worlds oil supplies do not want this to happen. So they let out the worlds oil at such a rate so that it is cheaper to use oil than to invest in other drilling sites or different techhnology.
This is what happened this year when Americans began complaining about high oil prices. Both OPEC and non-OPEC suppliers increased their output to compensate for the uncertainty created by the iraqi oil market and the increased consumption by China. To see this in action just look at the crude oil futures market.
I do not think oil prices will change their current trend, save some large disaster.
For a good discussion of the games Murray and others have played with the numbers see "The Mismeasure of Man" by Stephen Jay Gould. The "facts" in Murray's books are about as solid as the "facts" in polictical shout shows.
I have not read Mr Gould and will put him on my list. However, if you had read the Bell Curve you would know that in the book Murray and Co. include a list of common attacks people would use on their book. They systematically go through and detail how even in the cases propsed their analysis is still correct.
It appears as though Gould tries to discredit IQ measurment in general. But from the breif it seems he has his own aspirations:
"engaging prose dissects the motivations behind those who would judge intelligence, and hence worth, by cranial size, convolutions, or score on extremely narrow test"
Attacking ones motivations still does not refute their position. Also, I would be interested in seeing how Gould proposes we explain the mental capacity difference between a retarded person and a small child.
o-author with the late Richard Herrnstein of the neo-racialist book The Bell Curve,
Like I said, people often attack the motivations of the authors or the book in an attempt to discredit it. However this still does not change the facts. And as another poster mentioned 'correlation does not mean causation'. However, if a correlation is shown, one then produces a theory. The theory provided by murray and Co. is not liked by many people... so I say to them "What other theory would you like to produce in order to explain this correlation ?"
You might also actually *read* the book yourself and decided what you think rather than relying on others to think for you.
Besides, even if one ignores the self-fulfilling nature of the data, it seems far more likely (advancements mostly coming from heretics, and all) that if there really is correlation, it would be the hatred of church dogma that spurned scientific advancements by and large.
Please come back with some meaning full data to support your assertions. Casual blanket statements with no supporting evidence do not help your case.
I saw a lot of posts here "you can't say this because somebody did that". And as other posts mentioned you cannot compare large scale 'skills' against an isolated incident(this one) to draw you conclusion.
However, lucky for you somebody has already done the research and his data suggest exactly what you conjecture. If you take all the discoveries and advances in human acheivement, and you tally them all up with the type of society that borne them. You see that the societies that produce the greatest quantity of human advances are catholic and prodestant societies.
A lot of people do not like this conclusion, so they attempt to attack the motivations for making the argument. However the data remains facts and one cannot change the facts. They also say things like "how can one value acheivement X over Y", Murray explains it all and even when the cards are stacked against him his data comes out on top.
Murray's other book addresses the issue of your test scores point. However, a lot of people do not like the conclusions brought by the data in this book either. Feel free to read, but don't talk about the stuff in polite conversation, people get reeeeeeaally angry.
Re:This is actually a great idea
on
Embedded Gentoo?
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· Score: 1
I am an embedded software engineer, so hopefully I know what I am talking about. I work with ARM chips, and every linux system that I have built has been compiled from scratch. Not because I want to, or because I am some kind of speed freak - but because in general there are not any up to date binary packages for ARM available. Or if there are you often find that they are not compiled quite right for your particular needs. Using a Gentoo like system to cross-compile apps with the options, etc that you need is an excellent idea. Some features that I would like to see in this project
I'm one of the gentoo developers for embedded and this is exactly what we want to do.
o Keep the code for a package unpacked, so that I can make code changes to that package, recompile it & the package management system will build my changes into the binary. Updating the package version could auto merge my changes.
o Auto generation of root directories, in the file format you want (ie, nfs, cramfs, initrd, etc)
o Able to maintain several different configurations at once, ie one Gentoo maintained set of packages for my iPaq, and one set of packages maintained for my custom device. And to completely rebuild them I could go "emerge -set-board iPaq; emerge -u world"
I am also an embedded developer, and love using getnoo, and I became involved in the project because building highly customized small systems seemed like a natural extenstion of highly cutsomized big systems;-)
Having different configurations for different embedded platforms and system profiles is exactly the goal of this project. I have been writing a lot of code for catalyst that allows you to specify a list of important information and have a fully functional, bootable, CF image come out the other side.
It does package compilation, copying specific files to the image, packaging the image into a filesystem and even running user specified customization(like creating a blank block device and creating partitions on it, mimicing a CF device perfectly). It's *very* cool stuff.
I use this for producing images for my companies product, and it works quite well as a product release tool. Our project devleopment is slow but steady, so keep checking the page and come hang out on irc.
The currency analysis is half right. While a low dollar might (should) help alleviate a trade deficit, the US is also running an historically large budget deficit. The US is financing itself with debt, largely purchased by entities outside of the US. So, if the dollar continues to fall, the US runs the risk of losing an awful lot of investors. To make US Govt debt attractive, you then get higher interest rates, which will in turn kill off investment and growth by the private sector.
This theory was dispelled in the 80's when Regan made his much criticized his supply side tax cuts. Krugman himself gave chicken little 'the sky is falling' predictions about these only to have the largest economic growth period since the end of world war 2. This is dictated from the Laffer Curve, the modern accepted theory of economic behavior. Part of the defined behavior is that the deficit increases(which always makes me wonder why people suddenly get upset when this happens after supply side tax cuts). However, tax receipts increase as well as household wealth. Some of you may remember Regan's quote about "rising water lifts all ships", this is exactly what he is talking about.
This relates very closely to the whole idea of the deficit. One can look in the media and see millions of documents talking about how evil deficits are and how they will ruin the U.S. economy. Some how people are failing to see the relationship to borrowing and paying back money and how it relates to the government.
For example, if one were to buy a house usually it requires a loan for a large amount of money from the bank. This loan requires you to pay back the total amount of the loan over time, but during that time the capital you have purchase with that loan acrues value on its own. By the time the loan has been paid off the capital can generate revenue either by its inherent properties(for example factory equipment at a comopany) or by selling it for a market price higher than what it was purchased for(and hopefully adjusted for inflation you make a profit!)
The government borrowing money from 'itself' with the supply side cuts to stimulate the economy is a Good Thing(tm) and as we are already seeing the US economy is chugging right along after the Bush cuts in 2003.
You then can get into a vicious circle of high rates and a collapsing economy (as opposed to the virtuous circle experienced when our budget was under control under Clinton).
Unfortunatly my economic history is vauge under Clinton so I cannot comment on this statement. I do know that he raised taxes several times in the late 90's, but I don't have the raw numbers handy to analize it.
You shouldn't critcize someone like Krugman unless you actually understand the whole picture.
Krugman has absolutly no credibility. Like I described before when the world of economics moved on passed Keynesian theory and onto Laffer theory Krugman never got the memo. Not to mention his own political adjenda that is quite bias. As a matter of fact he has an entire column dedicated to correcting his half-truths called The Krugman Truth Squad.
Don't believe me? OK, just keep an eye on the US dollar vs Euro. The invisible hand is voting...
*sigh* more people that think economics is a zero sum game.
Currencies fluxuating with 'up' and 'down' are not a zero sum game. If the dollar is 'weak' that means foreign currency can buy more goods with the same amount of money as before. This makes american goods and services more affordable and attractive to buyers. Conversely if the dollar is 'strong' it means other currencies are 'weak' thus making foreign goods cheaper and more attractive, this then allows the economy to more efficiently allocat the money that would have been spent on those goods somewhere else. This is basic economic theory and not difficult to understand.
So please, tout that the dollar being weak is a 'bad thing'. Meanwhile I'll be reaping the benefits of more US exports to europe.
This garbage about 'my currency' is better then 'your currency' is rediculous. You sound like Paul Krugman.
No, actually I wasn't including that. I was referring to the fact that Iraq was absolutely no threat to any of it's neighbours (as opposed to, say, Germany) and as such, it is in no way similar to Germany. But, thanks for, yet again, demonstrating how to efficiently create a strawman argument.
No Iraq was not a threat to its neighbors like germany was in the 30's. That I will submit. However saying that they are no threat is clearly untrue if one merely reads the 9/11 commission report. One can find it online downloadable in pdf format, I suggest you do so.
Moreover, if you really want to use that argument, one could ask why the US hasn't stepped into a host of other countries who are committing as bad, if not worse atrocities (you've heard of the Rwandan genocide, right?), and have done so more recently than the 80's.
Other nations had not been asked 10 years ago to disarm and blatanly ignored UN warnings as well as turning away UN weapons inspectors. Pile on top of that various governments around the world saying that Iraq was in posession of weapons of mass destruction, including our own and there is no reason to believe otherwise.
Now, whether or not there actually were WMD's there is another story all together. But the intelligence was there, the UN was sitting on their asses not enforcing their own policies on weapons inspections, and meanwhile the entire culture from that area of the world was being used as a sesspool of american assassin training camps.
If you've seen team america Hans Blix's character says what happens when you don't do what the U.N. says "We send you a nasty letter saying how angry we are at you"
So, no, as much as you'd like to believe it, the war in Iraq had nothing to do with such noble aspirations as freeing the Iraqi people. It was a great way to post-justify the invasion, though.
Maybe you don't understand how democray works. If a free and open society prevails in Iraq it sets a precidence for the whole region. The freedom of the people is a nice benefit and side effect of that whole region being able to police themselves. Installing democratic values defeats the terrorist mindset and allows the people to destroy those forces without our help. That way we don't have to go hang out there anymore. Sure it isn't a fast process, but it has to start somewhere.
And I'm agast that people don't understand the difference between being anti-war and anti-soldier. Why is it that protesting a war, which is a result of the actions of a government, is equivalent to protesting soldiers, which are merely instruments of said government
Yeah I agree it's rediculous. One can clearly be anti-war and still support our troops. If we don't support our troops then when we really need them they might not have confidence that they are doing what we really want to be done.
And I think you're confusing the term "depositing" with "deposing", which would involve the US removing democratically elected representatives
wow nice attack on someone's speaking ability. I guess it would be too much to actually come up with a real argument against the capabilites or the decisions one makes. Much easier to throw around meaningless attacks.
*YAWN* come back when you actually have an argument.
Iraq, which involved attacking, unilaterally, a country which posed absolutely no threat to anyone!
Do you know what totalitarianism is ? I assume then that no threat to anyone included the population of the country that was slowly being starved to death with lack of food an resources. Lest us also not forget the gas'ing of the kurds in the 80's during the wars with Iran.
A few weeks ago I ran into an Iraqi exchange student at a party. She had come to the U.S. as part of a preliminary exchange program, and having lived he whole life under Saddam she was agast at the anti-soldier sentiment here.
She told me of how a student a her college wrote a disparaging article about Saddam in the school paper. And so the following week Saddam sent troops in to behead the entire staff of the paper in public. Other random students were grabbed on the grounds of the school and had their eyes put out, ears cut off, hands cut off. She also mentioned that is was not a rare occurance and quite par for the course.
Threat to no one indeed.
Unless, of course, you're the US, in which case you can stomp around the world installing dictators and deposing democratically elected leaders all you like.
I think you have confused the terms "deposting" and "democratically elected". Depositing would imply that the United States imposes the rule of one individual. And democratically elected would imply that the people elect the rule of an individual. Much like what took place in Afghanistan last week.
The Electoral College is the most misunderstood feature of American polity. It should not be abolished--to the complete contrary, it should be strengthened; which is to say, it should be restored to how it was originally intended. The problem with the EC in most states is that each state is a "winner takes all" race: win the heavily-populated parts of California, and you can ignore the rest of the state. Win Houston and Dallas, and you can ignore the rest of Texas. Win New York City, and don't waste your time on upstate.
The framers of our country had a name for that behavior, specifically this one:
win the heavily-populated parts of California, and you can ignore the rest of the state.
It's called tyranny of the majority, and it is exactly why the electoral college is in place. The population in the cities would then rule the electoral vote and the rural areas would have no say in the election.
Currently Colorado has a bill to do just this on the ballot today. Unfortunatly if it passes Colorado will become irrelevant to the election and receive no attention from any major party.
If the proposal passes, as polls currently predict it will, the Centennial State will decrease in value and be worth exactly one electoral vote, making it the most unimportant electoral state in the union below even Wyoming and Washington D.C. It will be worth only one vote because in almost every election the Republican and Democrat will finish in a fairly tight race with one getting five electoral votes and the other party receiving four. Never again will Colorado be a battleground for presidential candidates.
For a more in depth explanation, see Gary Greggs article
It frustrates me greatly when someone says "oh, we shouldn't talk about politics...". For those of us in the US, why the hell shouldn't we talk politics?
Another thing that is problematic is that people often cannot seperate their arguments from how they feel.
People take attacks or discrediting of their argument as a personal attack and (understandably) get offended. I often become unpopular at parties because I can easily destroy arguments that a person displays with a few simple rules of debate. However when people destroy my points I really don't think much about it, I don't take it as a personal attack. This of course enrages the opposite side even more because I am not upset.
Add alcohol to the mix and you have all the ingredients for a fight!
actually it has been known for many years, and the government is very public about this, that ones free speech rights end with just 7 words: "I am going to kill the president"
the same way one's free speech rights ends if one were to yell 'fire' in a movie theater. Sometimes the interest of the public comes before free speech, that's just the way things work.
At the end of the day, almost nobody is actually directly paying for their healthcare in the US anyway.
That's because everyone is foolish. 50 years ago everybody *did* pay for their own healthcare plans. But during WW2 employers were not allowed to increase wages of their employees. To compensate the employees(instead of raises) they paid for health care and other benefits. Eventually everyone got used to it, and now you have our modern healthcare and benefits packages.
However, these days since everyone changes jobs every couple of years they get screwed. Transfering between employer health care plans when you have downtime, 'applying for health care', and getting screwed by 'pre existing conditions'. All these problems go away if you just pay for it yourself.
Unfortunatly people feel they aren't getting 'all that they can' out of their employer if they do this. However that means they get screwed when they change employers. I pay for my own health care because I'm a contractor, and all I hear are insane stories about people who switch jobs and get screwed.
This is going to change hopefully, President Bush established a HSA(Health Savings Account) plan which encourages people to manage their health care themselves. This not only encourages investment but makes health care costs cheaper. I've opened one and I know I'll have reasonable health care costs.
heh that's funny. My sister's boyfriend is the CEO of that company. She was yelling at me last night for having an ipod and not a squeeze box. I told her: "Whatever product meets one's needs for the right price is clearly the way to go." I suspect apple will eat this whole market up and away from squeezebox. especially since it is $60 cheaper.
If this is anything like the california 'settlement' it's a fucking sham. The state of california filed the lawsuit on 'behaf of its constituents'... and here is what happened.
The lawsuit result was for a couple billion dollars that microsoft had to 'give back' to its customers in california. So, much like the vouchers system in this one.. if you sent microsoft your license keys, they would give you a 'voucher' certificate. You could then purchase other hardware/software and mail in the receipt+voucher to get cash. Now here is where the scam is....
All the money that isn't redeemed goes to seperate places. 2/3 of it goes to the state of california to 'help fund schools' and the last 1/3 goes back to microsoft. Now we all know if they get money from microsoft that can only be used for schools that means they will offset funds for schools later... So this is essentially payola for the state of california, fucking swine.
who is going to go through the effort to get back, oh $50 on their microsoft licenses so that they can just purchase more equipment. Not joe blow.
Compare this to the lawsuit filed by apple's customers about the G3's not being supported by macosX. The settlement says 'send in your copy of OSX and we will give you $129'... that's $129 of COLD HARD CASH
Slashdot Mirror
To say nothing of the fact that almost all malls are private property.
Incorrect sir. Via a famous Supreme Court case from Campbell, California involving the Pruneyard Mall a whole new type of property was created.
One can read about it on wikipedia here.
Why is this modded funny? It's not, it's scary. Because it's true.
Don't be a troll. Moderators why is this insightful ?
Instead of making snide unorigial political claims why don't you do some research. People who don't want to see this cut should tell their politicians that a paltry $4 million could be removed from the $121.264 million budget of the NEA.
The unemployment rate is 5.4%, The american dollar is losing value because of the weak economy, to the point that it's dangering the Canadian economy. America has been cutting its interest rates to spur growth, and avoid deflation. I have no vested interest in American politics, but America is in a recession- wake up.
I think you've been reading too many Paul Krugman articles. I'll address your points specifically:
the unemployment rate is 5.4%
I am assuming you are making the assertion this is a doom and gloom number. However, historical facts eliminate this assertion.
Notice how the peak is two years gone, and all of 2004 has been a downward slope since then.
The american dollar is losing value because of the weak economy,
I think you should provide evidence of this weak economy. I've written on slashdot several times about this before, but I'll say it again. Economics is not a zero sum game. People are currently calling the dollar "weak". This means that people trading with US companies get MORE goods for their money than they would with buying from other countries. This causes people to buy MORE American goods, infact European businesses were scared about the holiday shopping season because so many were buying American goods rather than European ones.
America has been cutting its interest rates to spur growth, and avoid deflation.
Growth like the productivity of American non-farm workers that is skyrocketting.
Growth like Real GDP(inflation adjusted) has been on the rise for 4 years and is currently it's highest since 1999.
but America is in a recession- wake up.
ah yes, but I digress... we are in a recession. I'll just sweep the numbers under the table, those can't possibly mean anything.
I know it's popular to be "down on/with America" these days. But the least you could do is actually take a position that has some facts to support it.
As a brief example: I has asked him about the broadcast flag issue, and he dodged the question with a "on one hand this, on the other hand that"... and never concluding anything.
If you are trying to paint him as an irrational corporate lap dog you did a bad job. Showing that somebody understands trade-offs in situations makes them appear very credible.
Huh? I didn't know Halliburton even cared about astroturfing on slashdot!
I fail to see how any of this has to do with Halliburton, nor how it effects the merit of my argument.
I never said oil supplies were going to run out within a decade. I merely said that that prices were going to rise enough to make small planes unprofitable.
If you will notice I said:
You sound like one of the "our current known oil supplies will run out in a decade" fear mongers.
Emphasis on "You sound like", as in similar to. But really arguing about semantics is pointless.
I am aware that as prices rise, more drilling sites will become profitable. But the fact that rising prices increase viable reserves does not change the fact that they did rise in the first place!
Oil prices rise and fall, they are determined by markets. Pointing your finger at a 1 year spike and saying 'LOOK! it will expensive now' is meaningless.
It only matters in the long run, much like the stock market. When zoomed in on weekly and even daily trades the stock market it is highly volitile, but spread out over a sufficiently long period of time period of time is a very predictable growth pattern. Oil prices have performed similarly, although in a downward(aka cheaper) trend.
And as for finite resources ? Yes there is a finite amount of crude oil on this planet. However, humans currnetly can only possibly inhabit 1/4 of the landmass. And we drill on a fraction of that.
Do you really think that there is miniscule amounts of oil on the 3/4 left surveyed ?
but that once it gets rare enough, it will be so expensive that nobody will be using it anyway. So yes, economics will keep supplies at a sufficient level for centuries, but definitely NOT cheap.
You fail to understand basic economic theory. It will be plentiful and cheap even with higher demand than there currently is today.
This is the case because oil is still relatively cheap. Expect this to change in the future.
You sound like one of the "our current known oil supplies will run out in a decade" fear mongers. Every 15 years or so people tend to make statements like this, and every 15 years they are proven wrong.
Economics will keep our oil prices cheap and supplies plentiful for centuries. Sometimes people even point to the rise in oil prices during 2004(oil is %30 more epensive in jan 2005 than jan 2004).
Here is some historic crude oil price data
Notice how it is all scaled to 2002 dollars. Everybody in the US was complaining and whinning about prices of gas. As this chart shows gas was cheaper than it has been for the last 30 years.
Everytime oil prices get 'too high' one of two things will happen. 1) it will become more ecnomically viable to invest millions of dollars in locaing new drilling sites for oil companies. 2) it will become more economically viable for people to invest in alternative energy resources.
Naturally those who are in control of the worlds oil supplies do not want this to happen. So they let out the worlds oil at such a rate so that it is cheaper to use oil than to invest in other drilling sites or different techhnology.
This is what happened this year when Americans began complaining about high oil prices. Both OPEC and non-OPEC suppliers increased their output to compensate for the uncertainty created by the iraqi oil market and the increased consumption by China. To see this in action just look at the crude oil futures market.
I do not think oil prices will change their current trend, save some large disaster.
You can read Murray's responses to the issues Gould raises here
For a good discussion of the games Murray and others have played with the numbers see "The Mismeasure of Man" by Stephen Jay Gould. The "facts" in Murray's books are about as solid as the "facts" in polictical shout shows.
I have not read Mr Gould and will put him on my list. However, if you had read the Bell Curve you would know that in the book Murray and Co. include a list of common attacks people would use on their book. They systematically go through and detail how even in the cases propsed their analysis is still correct.
It appears as though Gould tries to discredit IQ measurment in general. But from the breif it seems he has his own aspirations:
"engaging prose dissects the motivations behind those who would judge intelligence, and hence worth, by cranial size, convolutions, or score on extremely narrow test"
Attacking ones motivations still does not refute their position. Also, I would be interested in seeing how Gould proposes we explain the mental capacity difference between a retarded person and a small child.
o-author with the late Richard Herrnstein of the neo-racialist book The Bell Curve,
Like I said, people often attack the motivations of the authors or the book in an attempt to discredit it. However this still does not change the facts. And as another poster mentioned 'correlation does not mean causation'. However, if a correlation is shown, one then produces a theory. The theory provided by murray and Co. is not liked by many people... so I say to them "What other theory would you like to produce in order to explain this correlation ?"
You might also actually *read* the book yourself and decided what you think rather than relying on others to think for you.
Besides, even if one ignores the self-fulfilling nature of the data, it seems far more likely (advancements mostly coming from heretics, and all) that if there really is correlation, it would be the hatred of church dogma that spurned scientific advancements by and large.
Please come back with some meaning full data to support your assertions. Casual blanket statements with no supporting evidence do not help your case.
I saw a lot of posts here "you can't say this because somebody did that". And as other posts mentioned you cannot compare large scale 'skills' against an isolated incident(this one) to draw you conclusion.
However, lucky for you somebody has already done the research and his data suggest exactly what you conjecture. If you take all the discoveries and advances in human acheivement, and you tally them all up with the type of society that borne them. You see that the societies that produce the greatest quantity of human advances are catholic and prodestant societies.
A lot of people do not like this conclusion, so they attempt to attack the motivations for making the argument. However the data remains facts and one cannot change the facts. They also say things like "how can one value acheivement X over Y", Murray explains it all and even when the cards are stacked against him his data comes out on top.
Murray's other book addresses the issue of your test scores point. However, a lot of people do not like the conclusions brought by the data in this book either. Feel free to read, but don't talk about the stuff in polite conversation, people get reeeeeeaally angry.
I am an embedded software engineer, so hopefully I know what I am talking about. I work with ARM chips, and every linux system that I have built has been compiled from scratch. Not because I want to, or because I am some kind of speed freak - but because in general there are not any up to date binary packages for ARM available. Or if there are you often find that they are not compiled quite right for your particular needs.
;-)
Using a Gentoo like system to cross-compile apps with the options, etc that you need is an excellent idea. Some features that I would like to see in this project
I'm one of the gentoo developers for embedded and this is exactly what we want to do.
o Keep the code for a package unpacked, so that I can make code changes to that package, recompile it & the package management system will build my changes into the binary. Updating the package version could auto merge my changes.
o Auto generation of root directories, in the file format you want (ie, nfs, cramfs, initrd, etc)
o Able to maintain several different configurations at once, ie one Gentoo maintained set of packages for my iPaq, and one set of packages maintained for my custom device. And to completely rebuild them I could go "emerge -set-board iPaq; emerge -u world"
I am also an embedded developer, and love using getnoo, and I became involved in the project because building highly customized small systems seemed like a natural extenstion of highly cutsomized big systems
Having different configurations for different embedded platforms and system profiles is exactly the goal of this project. I have been writing a lot of code for catalyst that allows you to specify a list of important information and have a fully functional, bootable, CF image come out the other side.
It does package compilation, copying specific files to the image, packaging the image into a filesystem and even running user specified customization(like creating a blank block device and creating partitions on it, mimicing a CF device perfectly). It's *very* cool stuff.
I use this for producing images for my companies product, and it works quite well as a product release tool. Our project devleopment is slow but steady, so keep checking the page and come hang out on irc.
China, with an economy half the size of the US's (and gaining fast), spends ~10 billion dollars.
it's even more pitiful than that. China's economy is around 1/8 the size of the U.S. the last time I looked into it(around a year ago).
The currency analysis is half right. While a low dollar might (should) help alleviate a trade deficit, the US is also running an historically large budget deficit. The US is financing itself with debt, largely purchased by entities outside of the US. So, if the dollar continues to fall, the US runs the risk of losing an awful lot of investors. To make US Govt debt attractive, you then get higher interest rates, which will in turn kill off investment and growth by the private sector.
This theory was dispelled in the 80's when Regan made his much criticized his supply side tax cuts. Krugman himself gave chicken little 'the sky is falling' predictions about these only to have the largest economic growth period since the end of world war 2.
This is dictated from the Laffer Curve, the modern accepted theory of economic behavior. Part of the defined behavior is that the deficit increases(which always makes me wonder why people suddenly get upset when this happens after supply side tax cuts). However, tax receipts increase as well as household wealth. Some of you may remember Regan's quote about "rising water lifts all ships", this is exactly what he is talking about.
This relates very closely to the whole idea of the deficit. One can look in the media and see millions of documents talking about how evil deficits are and how they will ruin the U.S. economy. Some how people are failing to see the relationship to borrowing and paying back money and how it relates to the government.
For example, if one were to buy a house usually it requires a loan for a large amount of money from the bank. This loan requires you to pay back the total amount of the loan over time, but during that time the capital you have purchase with that loan acrues value on its own. By the time the loan has been paid off the capital can generate revenue either by its inherent properties(for example factory equipment at a comopany) or by selling it for a market price higher than what it was purchased for(and hopefully adjusted for inflation you make a profit!)
The government borrowing money from 'itself' with the supply side cuts to stimulate the economy is a Good Thing(tm) and as we are already seeing the US economy is chugging right along after the Bush cuts in 2003.
You then can get into a vicious circle of high rates and a collapsing economy (as opposed to the virtuous circle experienced when our budget was under control under Clinton).
Unfortunatly my economic history is vauge under Clinton so I cannot comment on this statement. I do know that he raised taxes several times in the late 90's, but I don't have the raw numbers handy to analize it.
You shouldn't critcize someone like Krugman unless you actually understand the whole picture.
Krugman has absolutly no credibility. Like I described before when the world of economics moved on passed Keynesian theory and onto Laffer theory Krugman never got the memo. Not to mention his own political adjenda that is quite bias. As a matter of fact he has an entire column dedicated to correcting his half-truths called The Krugman Truth Squad.
You mean this Sam Cassel ?
If that isn't evidence of UFO's I don't know what is.
Here's an extract from an excellent new book by Guardian journalist Jon Ronson.
Nobody takes the guardian seriously anymore. Especially after they tried to influence the election and called for the assassination of the president.
Don't believe me? OK, just keep an eye on the US dollar vs Euro. The invisible hand is voting...
*sigh* more people that think economics is a zero sum game.
Currencies fluxuating with 'up' and 'down' are not a zero sum game. If the dollar is 'weak' that means foreign currency can buy more goods with the same amount of money as before. This makes american goods and services more affordable and attractive to buyers. Conversely if the dollar is 'strong' it means other currencies are 'weak' thus making foreign goods cheaper and more attractive, this then allows the economy to more efficiently allocat the money that would have been spent on those goods somewhere else. This is basic economic theory and not difficult to understand.
So please, tout that the dollar being weak is a 'bad thing'. Meanwhile I'll be reaping the benefits of more US exports to europe.
This garbage about 'my currency' is better then 'your currency' is rediculous. You sound like Paul Krugman.
No, actually I wasn't including that. I was referring to the fact that Iraq was absolutely no threat to any of it's neighbours (as opposed to, say, Germany) and as such, it is in no way similar to Germany. But, thanks for, yet again, demonstrating how to efficiently create a strawman argument.
No Iraq was not a threat to its neighbors like germany was in the 30's. That I will submit. However saying that they are no threat is clearly untrue if one merely reads the 9/11 commission report. One can find it online downloadable in pdf format, I suggest you do so.
Moreover, if you really want to use that argument, one could ask why the US hasn't stepped into a host of other countries who are committing as bad, if not worse atrocities (you've heard of the Rwandan genocide, right?), and have done so more recently than the 80's.
Other nations had not been asked 10 years ago to disarm and blatanly ignored UN warnings as well as turning away UN weapons inspectors.
Pile on top of that various governments around the world saying that Iraq was in posession of weapons of mass destruction, including our own and there is no reason to believe otherwise.
Now, whether or not there actually were WMD's there is another story all together. But the intelligence was there, the UN was sitting on their asses not enforcing their own policies on weapons inspections, and meanwhile the entire culture from that area of the world was being used as a sesspool of american assassin training camps.
If you've seen team america Hans Blix's character says what happens when you don't do what the U.N. says "We send you a nasty letter saying how angry we are at you"
So, no, as much as you'd like to believe it, the war in Iraq had nothing to do with such noble aspirations as freeing the Iraqi people. It was a great way to post-justify the invasion, though.
Maybe you don't understand how democray works. If a free and open society prevails in Iraq it sets a precidence for the whole region. The freedom of the people is a nice benefit and side effect of that whole region being able to police themselves. Installing democratic values defeats the terrorist mindset and allows the people to destroy those forces without our help. That way we don't have to go hang out there anymore. Sure it isn't a fast process, but it has to start somewhere.
And I'm agast that people don't understand the difference between being anti-war and anti-soldier. Why is it that protesting a war, which is a result of the actions of a government, is equivalent to protesting soldiers, which are merely instruments of said government
Yeah I agree it's rediculous. One can clearly be anti-war and still support our troops. If we don't support our troops then when we really need them they might not have confidence that they are doing what we really want to be done.
And I think you're confusing the term "depositing" with "deposing", which would involve the US removing democratically elected representatives
ah my misinterpretation then.
wow nice attack on someone's speaking ability. I guess it would be too much to actually come up with a real argument against the capabilites or the decisions one makes. Much easier to throw around meaningless attacks.
*YAWN*
come back when you actually have an argument.
Iraq, which involved attacking, unilaterally, a country which posed absolutely no threat to anyone!
Do you know what totalitarianism is ? I assume then that no threat to anyone included the population of the country that was slowly being starved to death with lack of food an resources. Lest us also not forget the gas'ing of the kurds in the 80's during the wars with Iran.
A few weeks ago I ran into an Iraqi exchange student at a party. She had come to the U.S. as part of a preliminary exchange program, and having lived he whole life under Saddam she was agast at the anti-soldier sentiment here.
She told me of how a student a her college wrote a disparaging article about Saddam in the school paper. And so the following week Saddam sent troops in to behead the entire staff of the paper in public. Other random students were grabbed on the grounds of the school and had their eyes put out, ears cut off, hands cut off. She also mentioned that is was not a rare occurance and quite par for the course.
Threat to no one indeed.
Unless, of course, you're the US, in which case you can stomp around the world installing dictators and deposing democratically elected leaders all you like.
I think you have confused the terms "deposting" and "democratically elected". Depositing would imply that the United States imposes the rule of one individual. And democratically elected would imply that the people elect the rule of an individual. Much like what took place in Afghanistan last week.
The Electoral College is the most misunderstood feature of American polity. It should not be abolished--to the complete contrary, it should be strengthened; which is to say, it should be restored to how it was originally intended. The problem with the EC in most states is that each state is a "winner takes all" race: win the heavily-populated parts of California, and you can ignore the rest of the state. Win Houston and Dallas, and you can ignore the rest of Texas. Win New York City, and don't waste your time on upstate.
The framers of our country had a name for that behavior, specifically this one:
win the heavily-populated parts of California, and you can ignore the rest of the state.
It's called tyranny of the majority, and it is exactly why the electoral college is in place. The population in the cities would then rule the electoral vote and the rural areas would have no say in the election.
Currently Colorado has a bill to do just this on the ballot today. Unfortunatly if it passes Colorado will become irrelevant to the election and receive no attention from any major party.
If the proposal passes, as polls currently predict it will, the Centennial State will decrease in value and be worth exactly one electoral vote, making it the most unimportant electoral state in the union below even Wyoming and Washington D.C. It will be worth only one vote because in almost every election the Republican and Democrat will finish in a fairly tight race with one getting five electoral votes and the other party receiving four. Never again will Colorado be a battleground for presidential candidates.
For a more in depth explanation, see Gary Greggs article
It frustrates me greatly when someone says "oh, we shouldn't talk about politics...". For those of us in the US, why the hell shouldn't we talk politics?
Another thing that is problematic is that people often cannot seperate their arguments from how they feel.
People take attacks or discrediting of their argument as a personal attack and (understandably) get offended.
I often become unpopular at parties because I can easily destroy arguments that a person displays with a few simple rules of debate. However when people destroy my points I really don't think much about it, I don't take it as a personal attack.
This of course enrages the opposite side even more because I am not upset.
Add alcohol to the mix and you have all the ingredients for a fight!
actually it has been known for many years, and the government is very public about this, that ones free speech rights end with just 7 words:
"I am going to kill the president"
the same way one's free speech rights ends if one were to yell 'fire' in a movie theater. Sometimes the interest of the public comes before free speech, that's just the way things work.
At the end of the day, almost nobody is actually directly paying for their healthcare in the US anyway.
That's because everyone is foolish. 50 years ago everybody *did* pay for their own healthcare plans. But during WW2 employers were not allowed to increase wages of their employees. To compensate the employees(instead of raises) they paid for health care and other benefits. Eventually everyone got used to it, and now you have our modern healthcare and benefits packages.
However, these days since everyone changes jobs every couple of years they get screwed. Transfering between employer health care plans when you have downtime, 'applying for health care', and getting screwed by 'pre existing conditions'. All these problems go away if you just pay for it yourself.
Unfortunatly people feel they aren't getting 'all that they can' out of their employer if they do this. However that means they get screwed when they change employers. I pay for my own health care because I'm a contractor, and all I hear are insane stories about people who switch jobs and get screwed.
This is going to change hopefully, President Bush established a HSA(Health Savings Account) plan which encourages people to manage their health care themselves. This not only encourages investment but makes health care costs cheaper. I've opened one and I know I'll have reasonable health care costs.
wow, you've managed to bring in a completely unrelated claim and back it up with a total of no evidence!
congradulations, go troll somewhere else
heh that's funny. My sister's boyfriend is the CEO of that company. She was yelling at me last night for having an ipod and not a squeeze box. I told her: "Whatever product meets one's needs for the right price is clearly the way to go." I suspect apple will eat this whole market up and away from squeezebox.
especially since it is $60 cheaper.
If this is anything like the california 'settlement' it's a fucking sham. The state of california filed the lawsuit on 'behaf of its constituents'... and here is what happened.
... that's $129 of COLD HARD CASH
The lawsuit result was for a couple billion dollars that microsoft had to 'give back' to its customers in california. So, much like the vouchers system in this one.. if you sent microsoft your license keys, they would give you a 'voucher' certificate. You could then purchase other hardware/software and mail in the receipt+voucher to get cash. Now here is where the scam is....
All the money that isn't redeemed goes to seperate places. 2/3 of it goes to the state of california to 'help fund schools' and the last 1/3 goes back to microsoft. Now we all know if they get money from microsoft that can only be used for schools that means they will offset funds for schools later...
So this is essentially payola for the state of california, fucking swine.
who is going to go through the effort to get back, oh $50 on their microsoft licenses so that they can just purchase more equipment. Not joe blow.
Compare this to the lawsuit filed by apple's customers about the G3's not being supported by macosX. The settlement says 'send in your copy of OSX and we will give you $129'
goverment for the people indeed.