The section of TFA that you quoted shows not the slightest hint of a mention of racism or extremism.
Actually the articles from 2009 did include some mentions of the BNP (a racist British political party that advocates throwing all non-whites out of the country), suggesting that BNP members were either involved in arranging the visit/courses or has signed up en masse. It wasn't clear. This time, I suspect the authorities might be concerned that he has (again) chosen to tour areas where racial tensions are high, and that he has some kind of links to the more violent extremist factions of the BNP. Since the authorities don't comment on why they reject someone, we will never know the real reason.
As distinct from what seems to be happening here: if you think he may be causing trouble, you are not allowed to know how to stop him with fatal force should it become necessary.
This man is advocating stopping people with fatal force when it is not necessary. He advocates that, when someone is in your face, you should take preemptive action and kill them. That's the difference.
Because we live in a democratic state, and most people agree that you can't arbitrarily kill someone just because they attack you. For example, a woman grabbing your ass in a nightclub is technically sexual assault, but this does not give you the right to kill her. A teenage "happy slapper" may be annoying, but you can't kill them.
should someone who is attacked be coerced to do nothing except get beaten?
The law allows you to use proportionate violence in self-defence. If you are attacked then you can defend yourself. Claiming that you have to allow youself to get beaten is an ignorant strawman argument.
But England is part of the UK. The Queen of the UK would also be the Queen of England.
No, "Queen of the UK" it is a distinct official title. Your argument is like saying that Obama is the "President of Texas", because Texas is part of the United States.
Self-defence courses are entirely legal in the UK. What this man is advocating is a form of self-defence that involves disproportionate, extreme violence. Under British law, defence has to be proportionate to the threat - you can kill a person who is attempting to kill you, but you don't have the right to kill a person who only slaps you. The British police have warned that these "self-defence" courses are teaching non-legal self-defence, and that the people who use these methods will be prosecuted and likely land up in jail.
Would the U.S. authorities actually allow a "celebrity" foreigner who advocates and teaches illegal violence to enter the country? It seems U.S. authorities routinely reject people for much lesser reasons, like a Twitter post,being friends with some bikers, minor drugs use etc. Heck, until Obama overturned it, even HIV sufferers couldn't enter the U.S.
population density is much reduced, I think when this happens a per capita death rate for the roads is expected to be less, as every day on the roads there are less opportunities for a crash per capita.
It's more complicated than that. You need to consider fatalities per vehicle instead of per capita (per capita might include many non-car travellers), and traffic density rather than population density.
For a death rate, you also need to consider the relation between traffic density and speed. Faster crashes are deadlier. Smeed's Law states that the accident rate per mile driven varies inversely with traffic density. That is, the denser the traffic the lower the accident rate per car. "increasing traffic volume leads to an increase in fatalities per capita, but a decrease in fatalities per vehicle." "regions of China with the lowest population density had the highest overall death rates per 100 000 motor vehicles"
If you check the statistics for fatalities per motor vehicle or per km driven, then UK and Norway are much closer.
Furthermore in 2010 Norway's per capita road deaths were higher than the UK
Probably England's per capita road deaths were higher than London's per capita road deaths; however, this says nothing about the increased fatalities of drink driving, and it certainly does not imply that drink driving in London is safe. You need to control the other factors in order to extract the relevant data.
if you find a way to make North Korea actually follow an international law, pleas let the world know ASAP.
International law does not prohibit a nation state from building nuclear weapons, missiles etc., nor does it regulate what form of government nation states should have. They may be guilty of crimes against humanity, but for their actions to fall into that class, it would have to be shown that the actions were the result of a systematic policy of murder, genocide, torture etc. rather than these being individual acts. Some lawyers have made the case that North Korea has a policy of genocide and infanticide, both of which would qualify. On the other hand, people have made similar allegations of forced abortion and infanticide against the government of China, and yet very few have argued that constitutes a crime against humanity.
the high school only guy reached retirement about $1 million better off than the college guy.
It is the other way around: the college guy will be about $1 million better off, and this increases significantly if he gets a Masters, PhD, or professional degree: Lifetime Earnings Soar with Education
How much is higher education worth in cold hard money? A college master's degree is worth $1.3 million more in lifetime earnings than a high school diploma, according to a recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The report titled "The Big Payoff: Educational Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings" (.pdf) reveals that over an adult's working life, high school graduates can expect, on average, to earn $1.2 million; those with a bachelor's degree, $2.1 million; and people with a master's degree, $2.5 million.
Persons with doctoral degrees earn an average of $3.4 million during their working life, while those with professional degrees do best at $4.4 million.
"At most ages, more education equates with higher earnings, and the payoff is most notable at the highest educational levels," said Jennifer Cheeseman Day, co-author of the report.
The figures are based on 1999 earnings projected over a typical work life, defined as the period from ages 25 through 64.
The only way to bring tuition prices down is to reduce the amount of money that can be spent on education. It's not like the universities are not going to fill seats. They have class rooms and teachers that cost them money regardless of how many students they have...
That's a nice idea, but the UK (except Scotland) has recently conducted this experiment for real, and what actually happens when you cut government funding is that tuition fees rise, fewer young people go to university, youth unemployment rises, and the universities end up laying off qualified staff and replacing them with students:
UK university applications down as fees rise - "With fees rising to up to £9,000 per year, the impact has been biggest for England's universities - down by 9.9%. In Scotland, where Scottish students do not pay fees, there was a fall of 1.5%."
Youth unemployment soars, and it's not just a phase - "But it's not just the shocking tally of more than a million unemployed 18 to 24-year-olds that should worry us... there has been a very sharp rise in the number of young people who have been claiming unemployment benefit for more than a year. There were just 6,000 in 2008, but that has increased by more than eight times to just short of 50,000."
The huge numbers of students are only going to the colleges to get worthless sociology and literature degrees, or go into law, etc.
If that is the issue, then the solution is to not fund those particular subjects, rather than not fund all subjects. Withholding education funding for subjects that add real value to the economy is not wise. Increased education for science and maths would generate significant economic growth:
Assuming past economic patterns continue, the country could enjoy a remarkable increment in its annual GDP growth per capita by enhancing the math proficiency of U.S. students. Increasing the percentage of proficient students to the levels attained in Canada and Korea would increase the annual U.S. growth rate by 0.9 percentage points and 1.3 percentage points, respectively. Since current average annual growth rates hover between 2 and 3 percentage points, that increment would lift growth rates by between 30 and 50 percent.
When translated into dollar terms, these magnitudes become staggering. If one calculates these percentage increases as national income projections over an 80-year period (providing for a 20-year delay before any school reform is completed and the newly proficient students begin their working careers), a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests gains of nothing less than $75 trillion over the period. That averages out to around a trillion dollars a year. Even if you tweak these numbers a bit in one direction or another to account for various uncertainties, you reach the same bottom line: Those who say that student math performance does not matter are clearly wrong. - Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?
"... You can get better education, free or nearly free, in most of Europe..." Really? Because the last time I looked, in any listing of the best universities and colleges in the world, the US beat every other country hands down.
Your global ranking comparison is flawed because it is by nation, and nations have differently sized populations. You are comparing a single Western nation of 311 million people to other Western nations with much smaller populations. For example, the UK has a population of 62 million, Finland has a population of 5 million, etc. Finland is not going to have as many top universities in the "top 10" as a nation that is over 60 times bigger.
Some other thoughts:
The top U.S. universities are well respected internationally, but what about the rest? Most Americans don't get to go to a top 10 university.
The top U.S. universities attract international talent, and the faculties are packed with foreign tutors, postgrads and researchers. I'm not sure this is a ringing endorsement of the U.S. educational system.
The metric by which the "top" is measured often relies on fuzzy factors like "reputation".
"Number of research papers published" might indicate a productive research department, but it is not necessarily a good indicator of teaching proficiency.
If you were forced to pay for your neighbor's kid's education at gunpoint, would you still think it was free?
Give it up... even kids in China get a free education now. The choice is simple, either you want a nation of educated people, or you don't. In the knowledge led economy we now live in, people without an education have far less value. Multiply that by millions of people, and an adult working lifetime of 50+ years, and the investment will pay off.
And I have seen a lot of Europeans with "free" degrees employed in America or in American-owned companies because they can actually make good salaries.
So, those free degrees enabled people to become productive and wealthy individuals, who pay higher tax and help fund education for the next generation? Sounds great.
I have to pay to subsidize benefits for younger people that I didn't get.
If you provide free or subsidized education, then more young people will be educated. Better educated people generally go on to be more productive members of society, and over their lives will pay more taxes, thus funding education for the next generation. That is how the system works.
Alternatively, you could charge young people vast sums of money for their education. This will deter many from seeking a higher education level. You will therefore end up with a larger proportion of young people having lower education levels, which tend to lead to menial jobs, more unemployment, and a reliance on benefits.
There are plenty of countries that are willing to fund the education of their young people. In today's knowledge based global economy, it seems like a good investment. If education becomes prohibitively expensive in the U.S., then it is the U.S. economy that will suffer in the long term, and people will wonder why it is that better educated young people in places like Finland can still find jobs, when young Americans can't.
None. The "Tech Love Boat" exists solely as a tax and immigration dodge, and its founders are proud of it. May real pirates raid this libertarian haven
Under international maritime law, all nations have a duty to combat piracy. "Piracy is of note in international law as it is commonly held to represent the earliest invocation of the concept of universal jurisdiction. The crime of piracy is considered a breach of jus cogens, a conventional peremptory international norm that states must uphold. Those committing thefts on the high seas, inhibiting trade, and endangering maritime communication are considered by sovereign states to be hostis humani generis (enemies of humanity)" Wikipedia
The bottom line is that it isn't in the interests of the United States to have pirates operating off the U.S. coast, even if they only target vessels of other nations.
When a crime occurs on the "Love Boat", who will settle that crime?
It is exactly the same legal situation as a crime on a cruise ship. The passengers are subject to the legal sysem of their flag nation, and of others that exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction. The U.S. Constitution gives the federal courts jurisdiction over maritime matters, so it is up to the courts to rule on which particular crimes are worthy of extraterritorial jurisdiction. See In international waters, are you beyond the reach of the law?
What I find sad is that if you try explaining this concept to people, they think you are an idiot. Many times, friends have told me that they will be living a life of borderline affordability when they finally buy their new house. I suggest they carry on renting. Their usual line is "but if you rent you're throwing money away!". Oh really? And how is this different to your mortgage interest payments? "But at least you're on the ladder!". Right, so you are going to pay substantially more than you would to rent, just so you can be a "home owner". I know people who are paying 40% more per year in mortage interest compared to their previous rent, with flat house prices predicted for the next decade, and they are convinced they're doing the right thing, because society has convinced them that it is so. And then they complain that they have no money, despite having a combined income that is double the median for their area. If you're taking home double the median pay, and the numbers still don't add up, then you're doing something wrong.
I think it's funny that people complain about this while still happily submitting their clear-text passwords to Google.
You mean that people are submitting a password to authenticate themselves to a web site? The horror! Google should obviously do whatever it is that Microsoft and Apple are doing to authenticate their web users...
The reason is that many nations like China will take advantage of this to build up their own economy
Worse, EU and liberals here fall for the trap of emissions PER CAPITA. It is the WORST IDEA EVER. China has not had a changing population, yet, their emissions went up nearly 10 fold over something like a 20 year period
If emissions went up, and population was constant, then per capita emissions also went up. Why are you implying that per capita is therefore not a useful measure? It should also be noted that China's emissions have gone up because it is now manufacturing the majority of the world's stuff. If you want to control emissions based on manufacturing and economic output, then China is going to be given a huge share.
Anyway, the belief that everyone should have an equal share (per capita) is an ethical and moral issue. Some people believe that everyone should be entitled to an equal share. Some people believe that people of their own nationality or ethnicity should have a greater share of pollution rights than people who don't share a nationality or ethnicity. Climate change without the hot air - great book for people interested in the actual numbers - has this insight:
assuming that “something needs to be done” to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions, who has a special responsibility to do something? As I
said, that’s an ethical question. But I find it hard to imagine any system
of ethics that denies that the responsibility falls especially on the countries... whose emissions are
two, three, or four times the world average. Countries that are most able
to pay. Countries like Britain and the USA, for example.
It's a good point. It is not easy to construct a moral argument as to why people of one nationality or ethnicity should be allowed to pollute more than others. And since you can trade credits, the argument that it should be about GDP is invalid, because the high GDP nations can easily buy more credits from the low GDP nations.
If we assume that the climate has been damaged by human activity, and
that someone needs to x it, who should pay? Some people say “the
polluter should pay.” The preceding pictures showed who’s doing the
polluting today. But it isn’t the rate of CO2 pollution that matters, it’s
the cumulative total emissions; much of the emitted carbon dioxide (about
one third of it) will hang around in the atmosphere for at least 50 or 100
years. If we accept the ethical idea that “the polluter should pay” then
we should ask how big is each country’s historical footprint.
So, in terms of CO2 in the air right now, the USA, Western Europe and Russia are responsible for the vast majority of historic emissions because we have been digging up, drilling, and burning fossil fuels for longer.
Consider this thought experiment: residents of your city got into the habit of dumping rubbish in the city. The wealthy people dumped far more than the poor. Over time all this rubbish has accumulated and now someone needs to pay to have it cleaned up. Who should pay? Should all residents pay an equal amount, regardless of who actually dumped the rubbish? Should the poor pay? The rich? Should the people who actually dumped the rubbish be the ones that pay to clean it up? What about the people who are still dumping huge amounts of rubbish? Should they be paying more than the ones who dump very little?
Interesting, but this does nothing to change the stereotype of a backwards people who are stuck in the past. It tends to reinforce.
Well, that is the problem with religious people. Modern secular legal systems are obviously preferable to ones based on religious law. Though many Muslim countries do have higher ages of consent/marriage e.g. in Pakistan it's 16 years for both.
The biggest problem in Europe is the absolute uniformity of it's financial policy to secure Germany's economy no matter what the price is for any other nation in the Europe.
What are you talking about? The German economy is one of the strongest in the world, without it the Euro would be in a much worse condition.
The Euro is going down against the Pound, not vice versa.
EUR vs GBP 1992-2012. Whether it is up or down depends on the dates you measure from and to. Nobody knows what will happen in the future.
There is less justification for this price hike than there has been at pretty much any time since late 2008.
For the last few years the pounds has been down on the euro in contrast to the preceding decade. Most large corporations don't regularly change end-user prices to track currency variations, unless they are in the currency or oil/gas business. It is entirely possible that Microsoft was willing to absorb a lower profit margin in the UK relative to other countries for a few years, but now predict that the weaker pound is a long term trend for the next decade, and are resetting prices accordingly. It is also possible that the Microsoft accountants believe that the UK market is more willing to bear higher profit margins.
Microsoft's role is somewhat overblown. The 150 million from MS was to settle a lawsuit and represented 7.5% of Apple's cash reserves at the time.
And what about Office? Could Apple really have continued to have a viable desktop OS without Office?
"Bill Gates was threatening with the cancellation of Office for the Mac. [2] [3] In August 1997, Apple and Microsoft announced a settlement deal. Apple would drop all current lawsuits, including all lingering issues from the "Look & Feel" lawsuit and the "QuickTime source code" lawsuit, and agree to make Internet Explorer the default browser on the Macintosh unless the user explicitly chose the bundled Netscape browser. In return, Microsoft agreed to continue developing Office, Internet Explorer, and various developer tools and software for the Mac for the next 5 years, and purchase $150 million of non-voting Apple stock."
Nothing unusual in that, historically Christian churches allowed girls to be married as young as 7:
In canon law, puberty normally determines marriageable age, although the minimum age for marriage is seven years, "the age of reason", when a child is deemed capable of consent. The lawyer Estienne Pasquier notes that the Digest compiled by Justinian specifies fourteen years for men, twelve for women, but, he adds, if one is capable of carnal cohabitation before this age, marriage is permitted.
Sexual intercourse below the age of discretion (seven) was not a crime, but merely “invalid,” and thus, inconsequential, as under Jewish law.
“It is no uncommon case, especially in France, for a girl of scarce ten years to be married and a mother next year. . . . It seems portentous, and yet we sometimes see it, especially in Britain and Italy, that a tender child is married to a septuagenarian [i.e. a man in his seventies]. . . . Yet Church laws do not rescind such nuptials” - Erasmus
In later centuries, some Christian commentators would denounce sexual relations with young girls as being equivalent to rape. In the sixteenth century, canonist Egidio Bossi argued for this interpretation on the grounds that a child could hardly be considered as being in a position to give consent. However, he recommended that the age of consent be fixed at only six or seven years of age.
We didn't support the theocracies of Taliban or Iran, yet there they are/were, providing funding and personnel to help kill us.
Taliban didn't do 9/11 - that was Saudis, who hated their U.S. client state dictatorship. It is unlikely that the Afghan Taliban knew anything about bin Laden's plans for 9/11. And now, after invading and overthrowing them, they have plenty of non-religious reasons to dislike the U.S. government. They did let bin Laden operate in Afghanistan when they were in power, but then again, plenty of revolutionaries/terrorists have operated out of the U.S. without being closed by the authorities (Cubans, IRA, etc.).
As for Iran, there are plenty of non-religious reasons for them to dislike the U.S. government: the U.S. backed Saddam over them and sold him biochemical WMDs which were used against Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war. And the U.S. overthrew the Iranian government. And shot down a civilian airliner. I'm sure you can imagine how outraged people would be if any government had done only one of those things to Americans.
Slashdot Mirror
The section of TFA that you quoted shows not the slightest hint of a mention of racism or extremism.
Actually the articles from 2009 did include some mentions of the BNP (a racist British political party that advocates throwing all non-whites out of the country), suggesting that BNP members were either involved in arranging the visit/courses or has signed up en masse. It wasn't clear. This time, I suspect the authorities might be concerned that he has (again) chosen to tour areas where racial tensions are high, and that he has some kind of links to the more violent extremist factions of the BNP. Since the authorities don't comment on why they reject someone, we will never know the real reason.
As distinct from what seems to be happening here: if you think he may be causing trouble, you are not allowed to know how to stop him with fatal force should it become necessary.
This man is advocating stopping people with fatal force when it is not necessary. He advocates that, when someone is in your face, you should take preemptive action and kill them. That's the difference.
Why shouldn't an attacker be destroyed?
Because we live in a democratic state, and most people agree that you can't arbitrarily kill someone just because they attack you. For example, a woman grabbing your ass in a nightclub is technically sexual assault, but this does not give you the right to kill her. A teenage "happy slapper" may be annoying, but you can't kill them.
should someone who is attacked be coerced to do nothing except get beaten?
The law allows you to use proportionate violence in self-defence. If you are attacked then you can defend yourself. Claiming that you have to allow youself to get beaten is an ignorant strawman argument.
But England is part of the UK. The Queen of the UK would also be the Queen of England.
No, "Queen of the UK" it is a distinct official title. Your argument is like saying that Obama is the "President of Texas", because Texas is part of the United States.
Self-defence courses are entirely legal in the UK. What this man is advocating is a form of self-defence that involves disproportionate, extreme violence. Under British law, defence has to be proportionate to the threat - you can kill a person who is attempting to kill you, but you don't have the right to kill a person who only slaps you. The British police have warned that these "self-defence" courses are teaching non-legal self-defence, and that the people who use these methods will be prosecuted and likely land up in jail.
Would the U.S. authorities actually allow a "celebrity" foreigner who advocates and teaches illegal violence to enter the country? It seems U.S. authorities routinely reject people for much lesser reasons, like a Twitter post, being friends with some bikers, minor drugs use etc. Heck, until Obama overturned it, even HIV sufferers couldn't enter the U.S.
population density is much reduced, I think when this happens a per capita death rate for the roads is expected to be less, as every day on the roads there are less opportunities for a crash per capita.
It's more complicated than that. You need to consider fatalities per vehicle instead of per capita (per capita might include many non-car travellers), and traffic density rather than population density.
For a death rate, you also need to consider the relation between traffic density and speed. Faster crashes are deadlier. Smeed's Law states that the accident rate per mile driven varies inversely with traffic density. That is, the denser the traffic the lower the accident rate per car. "increasing traffic volume leads to an increase in fatalities per capita, but a decrease in fatalities per vehicle." "regions of China with the lowest population density had the highest overall death rates per 100 000 motor vehicles"
If you check the statistics for fatalities per motor vehicle or per km driven, then UK and Norway are much closer.
Furthermore in 2010 Norway's per capita road deaths were higher than the UK
Probably England's per capita road deaths were higher than London's per capita road deaths; however, this says nothing about the increased fatalities of drink driving, and it certainly does not imply that drink driving in London is safe. You need to control the other factors in order to extract the relevant data.
if you find a way to make North Korea actually follow an international law, pleas let the world know ASAP.
International law does not prohibit a nation state from building nuclear weapons, missiles etc., nor does it regulate what form of government nation states should have. They may be guilty of crimes against humanity, but for their actions to fall into that class, it would have to be shown that the actions were the result of a systematic policy of murder, genocide, torture etc. rather than these being individual acts. Some lawyers have made the case that North Korea has a policy of genocide and infanticide, both of which would qualify. On the other hand, people have made similar allegations of forced abortion and infanticide against the government of China, and yet very few have argued that constitutes a crime against humanity.
the high school only guy reached retirement about $1 million better off than the college guy.
It is the other way around: the college guy will be about $1 million better off, and this increases significantly if he gets a Masters, PhD, or professional degree: Lifetime Earnings Soar with Education
How much is higher education worth in cold hard money? A college master's degree is worth $1.3 million more in lifetime earnings than a high school diploma, according to a recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The report titled "The Big Payoff: Educational Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings" (.pdf) reveals that over an adult's working life, high school graduates can expect, on average, to earn $1.2 million; those with a bachelor's degree, $2.1 million; and people with a master's degree, $2.5 million.
Persons with doctoral degrees earn an average of $3.4 million during their working life, while those with professional degrees do best at $4.4 million.
"At most ages, more education equates with higher earnings, and the payoff is most notable at the highest educational levels," said Jennifer Cheeseman Day, co-author of the report.
The figures are based on 1999 earnings projected over a typical work life, defined as the period from ages 25 through 64.
The only way to bring tuition prices down is to reduce the amount of money that can be spent on education. It's not like the universities are not going to fill seats. They have class rooms and teachers that cost them money regardless of how many students they have...
That's a nice idea, but the UK (except Scotland) has recently conducted this experiment for real, and what actually happens when you cut government funding is that tuition fees rise, fewer young people go to university, youth unemployment rises, and the universities end up laying off qualified staff and replacing them with students:
UK university applications down as fees rise - "With fees rising to up to £9,000 per year, the impact has been biggest for England's universities - down by 9.9%. In Scotland, where Scottish students do not pay fees, there was a fall of 1.5%."
UK university applications in 'steepest fall for 30 years' - "The proportion of UK students applying to start degrees in the autumn will drop by 10% this year, a university leader has predicted – the steepest fall for 30 years."
Youth unemployment soars, and it's not just a phase - "But it's not just the shocking tally of more than a million unemployed 18 to 24-year-olds that should worry us... there has been a very sharp rise in the number of young people who have been claiming unemployment benefit for more than a year. There were just 6,000 in 2008, but that has increased by more than eight times to just short of 50,000."
The University of Cambridge has offered all academic and non-academic staff the chance to take voluntary redundancy (can you imagine - one of the world's top universities - offering *all* employees cash to volutarily leave employment?)
Thousands to lose jobs as universities prepare to cope with cuts : Post-graduates to replace professors
The huge numbers of students are only going to the colleges to get worthless sociology and literature degrees, or go into law, etc.
If that is the issue, then the solution is to not fund those particular subjects, rather than not fund all subjects. Withholding education funding for subjects that add real value to the economy is not wise. Increased education for science and maths would generate significant economic growth:
Assuming past economic patterns continue, the country could enjoy a remarkable increment in its annual GDP growth per capita by enhancing the math proficiency of U.S. students. Increasing the percentage of proficient students to the levels attained in Canada and Korea would increase the annual U.S. growth rate by 0.9 percentage points and 1.3 percentage points, respectively. Since current average annual growth rates hover between 2 and 3 percentage points, that increment would lift growth rates by between 30 and 50 percent.
When translated into dollar terms, these magnitudes become staggering. If one calculates these percentage increases as national income projections over an 80-year period (providing for a 20-year delay before any school reform is completed and the newly proficient students begin their working careers), a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests gains of nothing less than $75 trillion over the period. That averages out to around a trillion dollars a year. Even if you tweak these numbers a bit in one direction or another to account for various uncertainties, you reach the same bottom line: Those who say that student math performance does not matter are clearly wrong. - Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?
"... You can get better education, free or nearly free, in most of Europe ..." Really? Because the last time I looked, in any listing of the best universities and colleges in the world, the US beat every other country hands down.
Your global ranking comparison is flawed because it is by nation, and nations have differently sized populations. You are comparing a single Western nation of 311 million people to other Western nations with much smaller populations. For example, the UK has a population of 62 million, Finland has a population of 5 million, etc. Finland is not going to have as many top universities in the "top 10" as a nation that is over 60 times bigger.
Some other thoughts:
The top U.S. universities are well respected internationally, but what about the rest? Most Americans don't get to go to a top 10 university.
The top U.S. universities attract international talent, and the faculties are packed with foreign tutors, postgrads and researchers. I'm not sure this is a ringing endorsement of the U.S. educational system.
The metric by which the "top" is measured often relies on fuzzy factors like "reputation".
"Number of research papers published" might indicate a productive research department, but it is not necessarily a good indicator of teaching proficiency.
If you were forced to pay for your neighbor's kid's education at gunpoint, would you still think it was free?
Give it up... even kids in China get a free education now. The choice is simple, either you want a nation of educated people, or you don't. In the knowledge led economy we now live in, people without an education have far less value. Multiply that by millions of people, and an adult working lifetime of 50+ years, and the investment will pay off.
And I have seen a lot of Europeans with "free" degrees employed in America or in American-owned companies because they can actually make good salaries.
So, those free degrees enabled people to become productive and wealthy individuals, who pay higher tax and help fund education for the next generation? Sounds great.
I have to pay to subsidize benefits for younger people that I didn't get.
If you provide free or subsidized education, then more young people will be educated. Better educated people generally go on to be more productive members of society, and over their lives will pay more taxes, thus funding education for the next generation. That is how the system works.
Alternatively, you could charge young people vast sums of money for their education. This will deter many from seeking a higher education level. You will therefore end up with a larger proportion of young people having lower education levels, which tend to lead to menial jobs, more unemployment, and a reliance on benefits.
There are plenty of countries that are willing to fund the education of their young people. In today's knowledge based global economy, it seems like a good investment. If education becomes prohibitively expensive in the U.S., then it is the U.S. economy that will suffer in the long term, and people will wonder why it is that better educated young people in places like Finland can still find jobs, when young Americans can't.
None. The "Tech Love Boat" exists solely as a tax and immigration dodge, and its founders are proud of it. May real pirates raid this libertarian haven
Under international maritime law, all nations have a duty to combat piracy. "Piracy is of note in international law as it is commonly held to represent the earliest invocation of the concept of universal jurisdiction. The crime of piracy is considered a breach of jus cogens, a conventional peremptory international norm that states must uphold. Those committing thefts on the high seas, inhibiting trade, and endangering maritime communication are considered by sovereign states to be hostis humani generis (enemies of humanity)" Wikipedia
The bottom line is that it isn't in the interests of the United States to have pirates operating off the U.S. coast, even if they only target vessels of other nations.
When a crime occurs on the "Love Boat", who will settle that crime?
It is exactly the same legal situation as a crime on a cruise ship. The passengers are subject to the legal sysem of their flag nation, and of others that exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction. The U.S. Constitution gives the federal courts jurisdiction over maritime matters, so it is up to the courts to rule on which particular crimes are worthy of extraterritorial jurisdiction. See In international waters, are you beyond the reach of the law?
What I find sad is that if you try explaining this concept to people, they think you are an idiot. Many times, friends have told me that they will be living a life of borderline affordability when they finally buy their new house. I suggest they carry on renting. Their usual line is "but if you rent you're throwing money away!". Oh really? And how is this different to your mortgage interest payments? "But at least you're on the ladder!". Right, so you are going to pay substantially more than you would to rent, just so you can be a "home owner". I know people who are paying 40% more per year in mortage interest compared to their previous rent, with flat house prices predicted for the next decade, and they are convinced they're doing the right thing, because society has convinced them that it is so. And then they complain that they have no money, despite having a combined income that is double the median for their area. If you're taking home double the median pay, and the numbers still don't add up, then you're doing something wrong.
I think it's funny that people complain about this while still happily submitting their clear-text passwords to Google.
You mean that people are submitting a password to authenticate themselves to a web site? The horror! Google should obviously do whatever it is that Microsoft and Apple are doing to authenticate their web users...
The reason is that many nations like China will take advantage of this to build up their own economy
Worse, EU and liberals here fall for the trap of emissions PER CAPITA. It is the WORST IDEA EVER. China has not had a changing population, yet, their emissions went up nearly 10 fold over something like a 20 year period
If emissions went up, and population was constant, then per capita emissions also went up. Why are you implying that per capita is therefore not a useful measure? It should also be noted that China's emissions have gone up because it is now manufacturing the majority of the world's stuff. If you want to control emissions based on manufacturing and economic output, then China is going to be given a huge share.
Anyway, the belief that everyone should have an equal share (per capita) is an ethical and moral issue. Some people believe that everyone should be entitled to an equal share. Some people believe that people of their own nationality or ethnicity should have a greater share of pollution rights than people who don't share a nationality or ethnicity. Climate change without the hot air - great book for people interested in the actual numbers - has this insight:
assuming that “something needs to be done” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, who has a special responsibility to do something? As I said, that’s an ethical question. But I find it hard to imagine any system of ethics that denies that the responsibility falls especially on the countries ... whose emissions are
two, three, or four times the world average. Countries that are most able
to pay. Countries like Britain and the USA, for example.
It's a good point. It is not easy to construct a moral argument as to why people of one nationality or ethnicity should be allowed to pollute more than others. And since you can trade credits, the argument that it should be about GDP is invalid, because the high GDP nations can easily buy more credits from the low GDP nations.
Also, see this diagram of cumulative emissions.
If we assume that the climate has been damaged by human activity, and that someone needs to x it, who should pay? Some people say “the polluter should pay.” The preceding pictures showed who’s doing the polluting today. But it isn’t the rate of CO2 pollution that matters, it’s the cumulative total emissions; much of the emitted carbon dioxide (about one third of it) will hang around in the atmosphere for at least 50 or 100 years. If we accept the ethical idea that “the polluter should pay” then we should ask how big is each country’s historical footprint.
So, in terms of CO2 in the air right now, the USA, Western Europe and Russia are responsible for the vast majority of historic emissions because we have been digging up, drilling, and burning fossil fuels for longer.
Consider this thought experiment: residents of your city got into the habit of dumping rubbish in the city. The wealthy people dumped far more than the poor. Over time all this rubbish has accumulated and now someone needs to pay to have it cleaned up. Who should pay? Should all residents pay an equal amount, regardless of who actually dumped the rubbish? Should the poor pay? The rich? Should the people who actually dumped the rubbish be the ones that pay to clean it up? What about the people who are still dumping huge amounts of rubbish? Should they be paying more than the ones who dump very little?
Interesting, but this does nothing to change the stereotype of a backwards people who are stuck in the past. It tends to reinforce.
Well, that is the problem with religious people. Modern secular legal systems are obviously preferable to ones based on religious law. Though many Muslim countries do have higher ages of consent/marriage e.g. in Pakistan it's 16 years for both.
Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich
That is only reason why Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle etc. all have their international headquarters in Dublin.
Will it continue? Who knows...
The biggest problem in Europe is the absolute uniformity of it's financial policy to secure Germany's economy no matter what the price is for any other nation in the Europe.
What are you talking about? The German economy is one of the strongest in the world, without it the Euro would be in a much worse condition.
The Euro is going down against the Pound, not vice versa.
EUR vs GBP 1992-2012. Whether it is up or down depends on the dates you measure from and to. Nobody knows what will happen in the future.
There is less justification for this price hike than there has been at pretty much any time since late 2008.
For the last few years the pounds has been down on the euro in contrast to the preceding decade. Most large corporations don't regularly change end-user prices to track currency variations, unless they are in the currency or oil/gas business. It is entirely possible that Microsoft was willing to absorb a lower profit margin in the UK relative to other countries for a few years, but now predict that the weaker pound is a long term trend for the next decade, and are resetting prices accordingly. It is also possible that the Microsoft accountants believe that the UK market is more willing to bear higher profit margins.
Microsoft's role is somewhat overblown. The 150 million from MS was to settle a lawsuit and represented 7.5% of Apple's cash reserves at the time.
And what about Office? Could Apple really have continued to have a viable desktop OS without Office?
"Bill Gates was threatening with the cancellation of Office for the Mac. [2] [3] In August 1997, Apple and Microsoft announced a settlement deal. Apple would drop all current lawsuits, including all lingering issues from the "Look & Feel" lawsuit and the "QuickTime source code" lawsuit, and agree to make Internet Explorer the default browser on the Macintosh unless the user explicitly chose the bundled Netscape browser. In return, Microsoft agreed to continue developing Office, Internet Explorer, and various developer tools and software for the Mac for the next 5 years, and purchase $150 million of non-voting Apple stock."
Woz actually visited the Googleplex to pick up his Android phone, posed with the dev team, and thinks Android is great: Woz: I Wish My iPhone Did All The Things My Android Does
have sex with nine year olds
Nothing unusual in that, historically Christian churches allowed girls to be married as young as 7:
In canon law, puberty normally determines marriageable age, although the minimum age for marriage is seven years, "the age of reason", when a child is deemed capable of consent. The lawyer Estienne Pasquier notes that the Digest compiled by Justinian specifies fourteen years for men, twelve for women, but, he adds, if one is capable of carnal cohabitation before this age, marriage is permitted.
Sexual intercourse below the age of discretion (seven) was not a crime, but merely “invalid,” and thus, inconsequential, as under Jewish law.
“It is no uncommon case, especially in France, for a girl of scarce ten years to be married and a mother next year. . . . It seems portentous, and yet we sometimes see it, especially in Britain and Italy, that a tender child is married to a septuagenarian [i.e. a man in his seventies]. . . . Yet Church laws do not rescind such nuptials” - Erasmus
In later centuries, some Christian commentators would denounce sexual relations with young girls as being equivalent to rape. In the sixteenth century, canonist Egidio Bossi argued for this interpretation on the grounds that a child could hardly be considered as being in a position to give consent. However, he recommended that the age of consent be fixed at only six or seven years of age.
We didn't support the theocracies of Taliban or Iran, yet there they are/were, providing funding and personnel to help kill us.
Taliban didn't do 9/11 - that was Saudis, who hated their U.S. client state dictatorship. It is unlikely that the Afghan Taliban knew anything about bin Laden's plans for 9/11. And now, after invading and overthrowing them, they have plenty of non-religious reasons to dislike the U.S. government. They did let bin Laden operate in Afghanistan when they were in power, but then again, plenty of revolutionaries/terrorists have operated out of the U.S. without being closed by the authorities (Cubans, IRA, etc.).
As for Iran, there are plenty of non-religious reasons for them to dislike the U.S. government: the U.S. backed Saddam over them and sold him biochemical WMDs which were used against Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war. And the U.S. overthrew the Iranian government. And shot down a civilian airliner. I'm sure you can imagine how outraged people would be if any government had done only one of those things to Americans.