Um, you might want to talk to your Unions. When a large body has a vested interest in NOT fixing things so that they can continue to get paid? Yeah, just like government, something is very wrong.
Not saying there aren't other problems, but this is a big one. Not saying the idea of unions is bad, just that they don't really serve their workers anymore and are just bloated and wasteful.
The idea is not taxes as much as it is to calm markets down to a more sustainable rate of madness. For those who want to trade a hundred times a second, they're going to have to slow down more.
It could eliminate a whole subset of jobs, though.
If the legal teams that IBM & Novell hired were any good (IANAL), why didn't they just look up the copyrights, see SCO had no grounds, and then tell the guys to go jump off a cliff?
As a Financial Advisor I can tell you that you've gotten lucky. Mainly it's the gold. The cash money market is doing you very little for you pragmatically, but I imagine it helps you feel safe after getting burned so badly in the dot com bust, and that's ok. Knowing your comfort level is good.
However, although it may feel like you've "gamed the market" (one of my specialties is behavioral finance), but you might consider diversifying some more. Talk to someone you trust or read a bunch of books, whatever, but for the sake of your future goals/retirement (coming from someone who really does do his best to defend other people's money and has done fairly well so far) consider a couple other points of view.
Quick story, my father worked with large pension funds back in the 70s-80s, and he had a client who had put a significant portion of the pension (this is thousands of retirements) into gold. Time went on, and my father explained repeatedly that the pension should diversify, as gold has no industrial use and is really just an emotional commodity with no rationale at all. The client didn't listen, thought he knew better. Then gold crashed.
The next day the client called up, the pension was terminated, the client lost his job at the company and probably had an enormous legal bill, while thousands of people were left with no retirement for the future. If you want security, diversify. It sounds like you've made a nice sum, but you've only PARTLY won. Getting in at the right time is %50 of luck, the other half of luck is not getting greedy like a pig and getting slaughtered, one must sell out at the right time. And that's just the luck part of the market. More pragmatically, look at some real diversification (not this BS they feed you about putting it in a balanced fund or something)
I don't just mean gold, I mean ANY investment... it's been a lucky run, but you are likely best served by some more information.
Best of luck, really glad to hear you came back so well over the last decade.
Ok, it's not good that this guy is putting up another roadblock to scientific debate, BUT...
Even if the christian's just want to hold onto their church power and stuff, what if we convince (and that's all this whole thing is, let's be honest, even science can't explain a LOT of stuff) most people that science is the way to go... what next?
Many people NEED to believe in something, even if it's a sky wizard. Life is too hard and short for a lot of people to not delude themselves. We all delude ourselves in lots of ways anyway, you dear reader are no exception so let's not thumb our nose at Christians for having a different set of delusions than you or I.
Fine, you convince people. We "prove" that nothing comes at death. What else comes after that except a bleak, terrifying knowledge that nothing we do except potentially advancing our species is worth ANYTHING, and even that is a dubious claim.
Fine, geeks, rain on humanity's parade. We are left with nothing. Anarchy after that? Mass depression? Total nihilism across the world?
What do you propose to replace so many of these beliefs with?
As someone who is in the financial sector I can tell you flat out that some of the major money managers out there are fielding LIVE conference calls where advisors/brokers are getting VERY worried at them about the current state of things.
When you ask about what's coming, they give a bullshit answer, when you press them (a couple have cracked a little bit on these calls) they are thinking the same things we are: This country is FUCKED economically for the next 5-10 years, and that's if we get our shit together last month, not in 2013.
These guys are trying desperately to find some way of safeguarding money in the market (i know, i know, taboo words), but this is for money that belongs to your grandma, your neighbor, you and I. This isn't some hedge fund crazy, this is everyday bucks from everyday people, and top to bottom people are VERY worried.
Something WILL give. I have no idea what, but even the big guys are starting to feel like shit could get quite real in the next couple years.
If you look at the revenue of some large companies today (let's take Abbott Labs), they are beginning to split off their R&D arms as separate companies as R&D is not producing adequate profit. Where's the growth? I'll tell you. These companies have found it easier to grow by funding "small business startups" that do the R&D instead, or buying them. So, if big companies are growing by buying small businesses (or funding them) that are doing the innovation, aren't they shooting themselves in the foot by locking out the little guys?
On one hand they'll just provide the seed money for the geniuses to get started, then reap most of the benefits since "I made you and I can destroy you too."
On the other hand, if there are fewer and fewer innovations from small companies... what happens then?
Ok... one step further than that: What if small companies are simply going out of style? Just like a lot of programming out there must be done by a well-funded team these days, not the lone cowboy, are small companies which research and develop ideas starting to fade too?
Signed a couple days ago. ALso, we still need ~15K more signatures.
Come on, slashdot! Sure it's meaningless and they won't do anything about it, but we can make ourselves heard for half a second!
Riddle me this, Batman: For all the whining and discontent I see on this site, given that things like OWS are going on right now and we have at least a snowball's chance in hell of making a dent because other people are beginning to realize what we have for the last 7-8 years, why aren't we all writing our congressmen (paper/pen!), signing petitions, and getting up off our cushy CIO/worn out code monkey/smarter-than-thou asses to DO something for a change? Even if it's just a stupid online petition?
15K should be no problem, and I applaud the creator of this for at least trying and not giving up even if it's just Arguing on the Internet.
Fair enough, but how about the big stuff that matters? Telcos are still free to sell your privacy away/ignore wiretapping laws. The TSA is expanding like crazy. Unlimited campaign donations are now allowed from corporations. Patent reform is now slanted completely in favor of large corporations with first to file.
I don't think he's done all that much. I know he can't make change by himself, but there's a lot he hasn't stood up for. If he'd come out and openly discussed some of these things perhaps I'd be more forgiving.
In the moment I think it's easy to stereotype cops, they do have a tough job, but I'm not sure it's thuggery that is the problem.
The problem might be the over-reaching nature of their powers, and that instead of calmy explaining to the populace that they don't need a S.W.A.T. vehicle for a town of 10,000 people, they keep getting bigger and bigger arsenals, and scaring the shit out of more and more people, making those people potentially more hostile/scared/human when they encounter cops. It's a sort of terrible feedback loop, one could argue, but I'm open to another point of view.
Wait... wait... did you just say what I think you said? I want to be sure you meant that, but "There's no reason not to KILL (my emphasis) a fleeing robber if he has no hostages"
Um, maybe you're trolling, but your comment strikes me as exactly what is wrong with some scary mentality that's springing up around our nation: Guilty until proven innocent! And by the way, slashdotters, this is human behavior at work, so let's not villify too much, let's be pragmatic: People hold their own ideas and perception in higher regard than is typically warranted by facts. This is why courts are in place, to ensure that no one person makes a decision of life and death.
On another note, the idea that killing someone because they robbed a place/person seems abominable IMHO. You'd take their most precious gift just because they took someone's money and/or assaulted them? Granted, they deserve punishment, but you are WAY beyond the pale here, buddy.
I sure hope you're not a cop, if you were I'd report you to the higher-ups I know to do my part in ensuring you either a) get help or b) don't work in a police force anywhere I can help it.
What's the big deal about needing media? Give it a break for a year or two, let them take over completely to see their revenue shrivel to nothing. Let them die whining and crying about not having anyone to buy or advertise their products.
I'll go back to my books (I have a bunch that I haven't read), I have so much music that I could easily spend the next few years exploring it. What we're addicted to is new stuff.
Let's take a break for a while and let these overpumped dickweeds have their kingdom of dust. Because at the end of the day that's all they have: Our obssession for media. We kick our habit (like tobacco) and they lose their empire.
This could (could!) effectively hamper, or even shut down, people's ability to talk about/self-advertise media content to each other on the internet.
The **AA seem hell bent on stopping anyone from viewing their content, they're being completely self-destructive. Let's LET this through!
Why are we fighting this!? Are we SO worried about TV shows that we will spend millions/billions of dollars on this stuff? Let them win, see their revenue shrivel to nothing.
Giving someone exactly what they want is the surest way to their destruction.
Oh, and those numbers are for the United States. Sorry.
Also... vaccines only last 5-10 years. It's not for a lifetime from what I get from a med student. So.... we're exposed to HPV all the time, many of us have one form or another of it and can get it at any point in our lives. The whole recommendation from the CDC just feels... weird.
Here is some info from a recently put up. That the CDC is recommending Gardasil for such an incredibly low risk virus is... troubling. It smacks more of profits for big pharma than actually protecting the populace. THE SUMMARY ON THE ARTICLE! ARGH! It reads like all the other HPV articles coming out over the last year (which makes it doubly suspicious) "Hundreds of thousands!" It's all scare tactics...... Here's some real information gleaned from a top ar/nose/throat doctor.
What is the relative risk for mouth cancers in reference to HPV? 30-40K (thousand) people per year are predicted to get head & neck cancer. Throat/tongue AND passageway are included there. Let's be conservative on the top end and say 40K new cases per year right now.
Roughly 20% of that number are throat/tongue/passageway (hereafter TTP) where HPV can develop. He told me that 40-50% of those are NOT from smoking. Let's call it 50%, the percentage of cases we will concern ourselves with.
So, 50% of all head/neck cancer is 20,000. About 20% of that is correlated TTP, about 4,000 people.
Next, The majority (detailed below) in TTP cancer category is actually tongue cancer. As for HPV, there has never been a case of HPV-related cancer on the front of the tongue, so that eliminates a significant percentage (no numbers were available from him). Majority = ~50% conservatively, half the tongue is excluded from HPV, so let's be prudent and eliminate a little less than half of that 50%, call it 20% is excluded from HPV cancer.
So, 80% of 4,000, and each year ~3,200 cases of TTP cancer CAN BE BUT ARE NOT NECESSARILY HPV related.
So,if Head/Neck cancer represents ~ 12% of ALL new cancers in the U.S. each year.... about 290K new cases of cancer (my projection from 12%) arise each year and so we conclude that about 1.1% of that COULD be HPV related.
Population of the U.S. is about 300 Million, so....096 (repeating of course) Percent (yes my decimals are right) of the CURRENT POPULATION (we would need to do some advanced math to get statistical chances, and even then the risk would only apply as a Large Numbers Theory kind of thing, so actually wouldn't apply to YOU individually, message me if you want to talk about why this is the case) are likely to get some type cancer that MIGHT be HPV related.
For the geeks, roll dice with a LOT of sides, and crit on that bitch. Them's the numbers.
OKAY....
Is there a test? Not if you don't already have tissue which has HPV. The HPV must "express itself" in men or women in order to test for it. Since HPV doesn't express itself in men unless they at least have paplomas or warts, there is NO WAY to know if men have it. IF SOMEONE TELLS YOU THEY HAVE A TEST (the doc told me), and there are medical facilities who have claimed they have an oral/brush test, it has not been tested and is likely to be an expensive waste of money, proven medical advances notwithstanding of course.
They're working on tests, but nothing definite has come to light.
As for women the only test is the FDA-approved cervix one. Ouch.
Is there a vaccine? Sort of...There is NO CDC recommendation (though this has clearly begun to change) on Gardasil. They're partly guessing when it comes down to it, but one hopes more data comes to light. The longer HPV remains dormant, the less likely it is to ever express itself This could be one reason they tell people to get a vaccine at a younger age. If HPV hasn't expressed itself by the time you're mid-20s then perhaps it's not likely to ever express itself, is the hope. Also, you've probably already got it, so one can't be vaccinated against something already contracted, even if the vaccine actually works.
====== ok slashdot, I know your forte isn't sex, but sometimes science gets its hands a little dirty. I hope this post informs and help you make a decision for your kids. Personally? I feel like it's a cash grab, but let's discuss.
Their best interest to build roads and power lines?
Buddy, that's the Unions, and they do a shitty job for WAAAAAAY too much money (at least here in Chicago). It's why the roads are always under construction, because they're always falling apart from inappropriate construction. Gives them guaranteed work in the future.
Also, it's NOT in the government's interest to have a well-educated populace. It's in OUR own best interest, WE just give the government the power to distribute our taxes to get it done. Now, whether we should take that power back....
Have we ever stopped to look around and wonder how educated "we the people" actually are? Smart enough to see through the blatant media/political BS and try to change ti, or just smart enough get home and hope there's a college football game on TV?
Sometimes, I think that it's the ILLUSION of being educated that we want, more than actual education.
Slashdot Mirror
It's what the British government started a little over a decade ago:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5376212150896990926
"The Trap: What happened to our freedom? " sort of talks about how the government tried to set up metrics for everything, and it failed miserably.
We need a culture, not metrics.
Um, you might want to talk to your Unions. When a large body has a vested interest in NOT fixing things so that they can continue to get paid? Yeah, just like government, something is very wrong.
Not saying there aren't other problems, but this is a big one.
Not saying the idea of unions is bad, just that they don't really serve their workers anymore and are just bloated and wasteful.
The idea is not taxes as much as it is to calm markets down to a more sustainable rate of madness. For those who want to trade a hundred times a second, they're going to have to slow down more.
It could eliminate a whole subset of jobs, though.
If the legal teams that IBM & Novell hired were any good (IANAL), why didn't they just look up the copyrights, see SCO had no grounds, and then tell the guys to go jump off a cliff?
LET THE FUD BEGIN!
Oh wait... I see these kinds of articles knocking android all the time... except they're not actually about android.
I love these articles shilling for MS and Apple, glorious.
As a Financial Advisor I can tell you that you've gotten lucky. Mainly it's the gold. The cash money market is doing you very little for you pragmatically, but I imagine it helps you feel safe after getting burned so badly in the dot com bust, and that's ok. Knowing your comfort level is good.
However, although it may feel like you've "gamed the market" (one of my specialties is behavioral finance), but you might consider diversifying some more. Talk to someone you trust or read a bunch of books, whatever, but for the sake of your future goals/retirement (coming from someone who really does do his best to defend other people's money and has done fairly well so far) consider a couple other points of view.
Quick story, my father worked with large pension funds back in the 70s-80s, and he had a client who had put a significant portion of the pension (this is thousands of retirements) into gold. Time went on, and my father explained repeatedly that the pension should diversify, as gold has no industrial use and is really just an emotional commodity with no rationale at all. The client didn't listen, thought he knew better. Then gold crashed.
The next day the client called up, the pension was terminated, the client lost his job at the company and probably had an enormous legal bill, while thousands of people were left with no retirement for the future. If you want security, diversify. It sounds like you've made a nice sum, but you've only PARTLY won. Getting in at the right time is %50 of luck, the other half of luck is not getting greedy like a pig and getting slaughtered, one must sell out at the right time. And that's just the luck part of the market.
More pragmatically, look at some real diversification (not this BS they feed you about putting it in a balanced fund or something)
I don't just mean gold, I mean ANY investment... it's been a lucky run, but you are likely best served by some more information.
Best of luck, really glad to hear you came back so well over the last decade.
Ok, it's not good that this guy is putting up another roadblock to scientific debate, BUT...
Even if the christian's just want to hold onto their church power and stuff, what if we convince (and that's all this whole thing is, let's be honest, even science can't explain a LOT of stuff) most people that science is the way to go... what next?
Many people NEED to believe in something, even if it's a sky wizard. Life is too hard and short for a lot of people to not delude themselves. We all delude ourselves in lots of ways anyway, you dear reader are no exception so let's not thumb our nose at Christians for having a different set of delusions than you or I.
Fine, you convince people. We "prove" that nothing comes at death. What else comes after that except a bleak, terrifying knowledge that nothing we do except potentially advancing our species is worth ANYTHING, and even that is a dubious claim.
Fine, geeks, rain on humanity's parade. We are left with nothing. Anarchy after that? Mass depression? Total nihilism across the world?
What do you propose to replace so many of these beliefs with?
As someone who is in the financial sector I can tell you flat out that some of the major money managers out there are fielding LIVE conference calls where advisors/brokers are getting VERY worried at them about the current state of things.
When you ask about what's coming, they give a bullshit answer, when you press them (a couple have cracked a little bit on these calls) they are thinking the same things we are: This country is FUCKED economically for the next 5-10 years, and that's if we get our shit together last month, not in 2013.
These guys are trying desperately to find some way of safeguarding money in the market (i know, i know, taboo words), but this is for money that belongs to your grandma, your neighbor, you and I. This isn't some hedge fund crazy, this is everyday bucks from everyday people, and top to bottom people are VERY worried.
Something WILL give. I have no idea what, but even the big guys are starting to feel like shit could get quite real in the next couple years.
No, the rich don't create jobs. Opportunities through having a healthy middle class, which requires velocity of capital, creates jobs.
Huh, so I guess you really studied up on your economics textbook FROM 1985?
Trickle-down trickle-down ho hum. It really worked well, all things considered, right?
You know what I find hilarious?
If you look at the revenue of some large companies today (let's take Abbott Labs), they are beginning to split off their R&D arms as separate companies as R&D is not producing adequate profit.
Where's the growth? I'll tell you.
These companies have found it easier to grow by funding "small business startups" that do the R&D instead, or buying them.
So, if big companies are growing by buying small businesses (or funding them) that are doing the innovation, aren't they shooting themselves in the foot by locking out the little guys?
On one hand they'll just provide the seed money for the geniuses to get started, then reap most of the benefits since "I made you and I can destroy you too."
On the other hand, if there are fewer and fewer innovations from small companies... what happens then?
Ok... one step further than that: What if small companies are simply going out of style? Just like a lot of programming out there must be done by a well-funded team these days, not the lone cowboy, are small companies which research and develop ideas starting to fade too?
Why not just start telling people that you're not voting for the Republicats?
"I'm not voting Republicrat, I'm voting for the other party"
If it's all about framing the discussion....
Signed a couple days ago. ALso, we still need ~15K more signatures.
Come on, slashdot! Sure it's meaningless and they won't do anything about it, but we can make ourselves heard for half a second!
Riddle me this, Batman:
For all the whining and discontent I see on this site, given that things like OWS are going on right now and we have at least a snowball's chance in hell of making a dent because other people are beginning to realize what we have for the last 7-8 years, why aren't we all writing our congressmen (paper/pen!), signing petitions, and getting up off our cushy CIO/worn out code monkey/smarter-than-thou asses to DO something for a change? Even if it's just a stupid online petition?
15K should be no problem, and I applaud the creator of this for at least trying and not giving up even if it's just Arguing on the Internet.
Before you know it we'll have to send in Tron to stop the Microsoft Control Program
(showing my age here)
Fair enough, but how about the big stuff that matters?
Telcos are still free to sell your privacy away/ignore wiretapping laws.
The TSA is expanding like crazy.
Unlimited campaign donations are now allowed from corporations.
Patent reform is now slanted completely in favor of large corporations with first to file.
I don't think he's done all that much. I know he can't make change by himself, but there's a lot he hasn't stood up for. If he'd come out and openly discussed some of these things perhaps I'd be more forgiving.
In the moment I think it's easy to stereotype cops, they do have a tough job, but I'm not sure it's thuggery that is the problem.
The problem might be the over-reaching nature of their powers, and that instead of calmy explaining to the populace that they don't need a S.W.A.T. vehicle for a town of 10,000 people, they keep getting bigger and bigger arsenals, and scaring the shit out of more and more people, making those people potentially more hostile/scared/human when they encounter cops. It's a sort of terrible feedback loop, one could argue, but I'm open to another point of view.
I can't WAIT for the Cops episodes where they add in the "doing!" sound effects when that happens.
Comedy. Gold.
Wait... wait...
did you just say what I think you said? I want to be sure you meant that, but "There's no reason not to KILL (my emphasis) a fleeing robber if he has no hostages"
Um, maybe you're trolling, but your comment strikes me as exactly what is wrong with some scary mentality that's springing up around our nation: Guilty until proven innocent!
And by the way, slashdotters, this is human behavior at work, so let's not villify too much, let's be pragmatic: People hold their own ideas and perception in higher regard than is typically warranted by facts. This is why courts are in place, to ensure that no one person makes a decision of life and death.
On another note, the idea that killing someone because they robbed a place/person seems abominable IMHO. You'd take their most precious gift just because they took someone's money and/or assaulted them? Granted, they deserve punishment, but you are WAY beyond the pale here, buddy.
I sure hope you're not a cop, if you were I'd report you to the higher-ups I know to do my part in ensuring you either a) get help or b) don't work in a police force anywhere I can help it.
Why don't we just stop fighting?
What's the big deal about needing media? Give it a break for a year or two, let them take over completely to see their revenue shrivel to nothing. Let them die whining and crying about not having anyone to buy or advertise their products.
I'll go back to my books (I have a bunch that I haven't read), I have so much music that I could easily spend the next few years exploring it. What we're addicted to is new stuff.
Let's take a break for a while and let these overpumped dickweeds have their kingdom of dust. Because at the end of the day that's all they have: Our obssession for media. We kick our habit (like tobacco) and they lose their empire.
Good point. Why don't we think a little bigger?
This could (could!) effectively hamper, or even shut down, people's ability to talk about/self-advertise media content to each other on the internet.
The **AA seem hell bent on stopping anyone from viewing their content, they're being completely self-destructive. Let's LET this through!
Why are we fighting this!? Are we SO worried about TV shows that we will spend millions/billions of dollars on this stuff? Let them win, see their revenue shrivel to nothing.
Giving someone exactly what they want is the surest way to their destruction.
That's one worn out Nurse...
Oh, and those numbers are for the United States. Sorry.
Also... vaccines only last 5-10 years. It's not for a lifetime from what I get from a med student. So.... we're exposed to HPV all the time, many of us have one form or another of it and can get it at any point in our lives. The whole recommendation from the CDC just feels... weird.
Here is some info from a recently put up. That the CDC is recommending Gardasil for such an incredibly low risk virus is... troubling. It smacks more of profits for big pharma than actually protecting the populace. THE SUMMARY ON THE ARTICLE! ARGH! It reads like all the other HPV articles coming out over the last year (which makes it doubly suspicious) "Hundreds of thousands!" It's all scare tactics......
Here's some real information gleaned from a top ar/nose/throat doctor.
What is the relative risk for mouth cancers in reference to HPV?
30-40K (thousand) people per year are predicted to get head & neck cancer.
Throat/tongue AND passageway are included there.
Let's be conservative on the top end and say 40K new cases per year right now.
Roughly 20% of that number are throat/tongue/passageway (hereafter TTP) where HPV can develop. He told me that 40-50% of those are NOT from smoking. Let's call it 50%, the percentage of cases we will concern ourselves with.
So, 50% of all head/neck cancer is 20,000. About 20% of that is correlated TTP, about 4,000 people.
Next,
The majority (detailed below) in TTP cancer category is actually tongue cancer. As for HPV, there has never been a case of HPV-related cancer on the front of the tongue, so that eliminates a significant percentage (no numbers were available from him).
Majority = ~50% conservatively, half the tongue is excluded from HPV, so let's be prudent and eliminate a little less than half of that 50%, call it 20% is excluded from HPV cancer.
So, 80% of 4,000, and each year ~3,200 cases of TTP cancer CAN BE BUT ARE NOT NECESSARILY HPV related.
So,if Head/Neck cancer represents ~ 12% of ALL new cancers in the U.S. each year.... about 290K new cases of cancer (my projection from 12%) arise each year and so we conclude that about 1.1% of that COULD be HPV related.
Population of the U.S. is about 300 Million, so... .096 (repeating of course) Percent (yes my decimals are right) of the CURRENT POPULATION (we would need to do some advanced math to get statistical chances, and even then the risk would only apply as a Large Numbers Theory kind of thing, so actually wouldn't apply to YOU individually, message me if you want to talk about why this is the case) are likely to get some type cancer that MIGHT be HPV related.
For the geeks, roll dice with a LOT of sides, and crit on that bitch. Them's the numbers.
OKAY....
Is there a test? Not if you don't already have tissue which has HPV. The HPV must "express itself" in men or women in order to test for it.
Since HPV doesn't express itself in men unless they at least have paplomas or warts, there is NO WAY to know if men have it. IF SOMEONE TELLS YOU THEY HAVE A TEST (the doc told me), and there are medical facilities who have claimed they have an oral/brush test, it has not been tested and is likely to be an expensive waste of money, proven medical advances notwithstanding of course.
They're working on tests, but nothing definite has come to light.
As for women the only test is the FDA-approved cervix one. Ouch.
Is there a vaccine? Sort of...There is NO CDC recommendation (though this has clearly begun to change) on Gardasil. They're partly guessing when it comes down to it, but one hopes more data comes to light.
The longer HPV remains dormant, the less likely it is to ever express itself
This could be one reason they tell people to get a vaccine at a younger age. If HPV hasn't expressed itself by the time you're mid-20s then perhaps it's not likely to ever express itself, is the hope. Also, you've probably already got it, so one can't be vaccinated against something already contracted, even if the vaccine actually works.
======
ok slashdot, I know your forte isn't sex, but sometimes science gets its hands a little dirty. I hope this post informs and help you make a decision for your kids. Personally? I feel like it's a cash grab, but let's discuss.
Does that mean there's a problem with the system, or that we're much better educated as a society, or some combination of the two?
Their best interest to build roads and power lines?
Buddy, that's the Unions, and they do a shitty job for WAAAAAAY too much money (at least here in Chicago). It's why the roads are always under construction, because they're always falling apart from inappropriate construction. Gives them guaranteed work in the future.
Also, it's NOT in the government's interest to have a well-educated populace. It's in OUR own best interest, WE just give the government the power to distribute our taxes to get it done. Now, whether we should take that power back....
Have we ever stopped to look around and wonder how educated "we the people" actually are?
Smart enough to see through the blatant media/political BS and try to change ti, or just smart enough get home and hope there's a college football game on TV?
Sometimes, I think that it's the ILLUSION of being educated that we want, more than actual education.