As others have written, put as much as possible onto paper, and put this in a safe-deposit box at the same bank you have your standard accounts at. Best is if your wife is used to accessing it - perhaps she also has some things that she needs to store there? Alternative to the safe-deposit box is a safe or at least a secure lockbox somewhere in your house.
For stuff that is online, or in electronic form, ignore the folks who say that a lawyer will be able to arrange access. What an expensive PITA! Use a password safe - keep all of your important passwords in it. One of the pieces of paper in the safe-deposit box should (1) state what online things may be important, (2) explain where to find the password safe and (3) list the master password. Never, ever change the password without immediately updating this paper.
No one's vote counts at the federal level. With 300,000,000 people in the country, there is no possible way to have representative government. Federal elections are as meaningful as beauty contests, only more corrupt.
This is the single biggest argument for federalism, i.e., limiting federal power and keeping government as local as possible. In a local election, you can actually have an influence. Not only your vote, but your ability to contact and coordinate with some meaningful fraction of the electorate.
This argument can be applied recursively. What can be done at the township level, should be.
Ok, let's get the exceptions out of the way first: Manhattan Project. Apollo. Maybe a couple of others.
The government can, in rare circumstances, put together a creative team and get the hell out of the way. It works, briefly. However, in the end, the bureaucracy eats the soul of the scientist. Look at what happened to NASA: It is now many times the size it was in the 1960s, and is completely incapable of replicating its own successes of 40 years ago.
Imagine the government doing pharmaceutical research. Maybe it would start off well, but within a few years all you will have is yet another monstrous bureaucracy filled with mediocre scientists.
Maybe the profit motive looks ugly to you, but it's the best tool we have. If you will forgive me for borrowing from Winston Churchill: Capitalism is probably the worst way to run a society, except for all the others that have been tried.
For comparison, our computers have reset unexpectedly twice (iirc) in the past 12 years. I assume that both times it was due to a short power-blip. No other outages that I recall. I think occasionally about buying a UPS, but I'm not sure the UPS wouldn't actually decrease the reliability.
The difference is exactly what you expect: all power wires here are buried. Heck, our house was built in 1934, and the wires were buried. Why does the US still string them up on poles, almost a century later? Weird...
Here in Europe, the news reports a very simple reason: a totally dilapidated infrastructure. Most power wires still hanging off of poles, subject to lightning, wind and falling trees. Decades-old transformers and switching stations that fail catastrophically, and sometimes cause cascading failures.
I haven't lived on the East Coast for decades - any power engineers want to comment on the truth or falsity of these reports?
"all men are created equal and therefore should all have the same rights"
As usual, this quote is being completely abused; it refers to natural rights. Having closed-caption movies is not a natural right. The rights referred to are rather more fundamental than that: life and liberty being the primary two. A disabled person has a natural right to be secure in their life; they do not have a natural right to have a wheelchair ramp leading into every business in town.
Note that there may be a legal right to such a thing; this is what the ADA says. However, it is totally corked. Such laws ought to be tempered with common sense. How much relief does the law provide, as compared to the burden it creates? The ADA is not, at least not the way it is usually interpreted by the courts
Real example: A third-floor restaurant in a historic old building that only has stairs, and has no place for an elevator. The ADA forced it to close. Just who is served by that? How did disabled folks benefit?
In this case, Netflix may be required to stop distributing video content that does not have closed captions. The people who need closed captions will gain absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, the vast majority of people who do not need close captions will have lost something.
If someone is disabled, life is not the same for them as for non-disabled people. That is cold, hard reality. Reasonable accomodations can and should be made, but their disability will not be eliminated by taking things away from the non-disabled. The ADA is an albatross.
"Scalping miniscule price movements" thousands of times an hour, if not per minute. - this is essentially theft.
Let's take a drastically oversimplified example, just as a starting point: You want to sell a stock at $30 or more. I want to buy the same stock at $31 or less. In a fair market, our transactions meet and I buy your stock. Depending on how things are set up, the $1 difference in prices goes to one or the other of us, or maybe we split it. The basic goal of HFT and other such technologies is to insert themselves into the middle of other people's transactions. They buy your stock for $30 and sell it to me at $31. You get $30 for you stock, I pay $31, and they get $1 for free.
Do you know, the presidents of other nations walk around town with no bodyguards, much less a full SS detail like the President of the US has? Why are we supposed to worry so much about the Secretary of Commerce? He is just not that important. Neither is Obama.
Suppose someone did manage to blow up DC? The loss of life would be tragic; life would go on. Oh, and the loss of the politicians would also be sad, at least for their immediate families. Politicians are not that important, little though they may want to acknowledge the fact. Their replacements would be pontificating on the rubble and proposing Patriot Act II before the smoke cleared...
I give occasional help to a retailer (in Europe, if it matters). The hoops the credit-card companies make them jump through are pretty amazing. Example: they have a simple web-shop with a web-form that allows the customer to enter credit-card info. This info stays online in the MySQL database for a short period of time, until their little ERP system sees it, downloads it and deletes it. In more than 10 years using this system, they have never had a problem.
Nonetheless, the credit-card companies want them to pay for a quarterly "network penetration test" on their website, and to provide detailed technical information on the website set-up. Since their web-site is hosted by a big ISP, they have no access to the necessary technical info, and the ISP doesn't really want network penetration tests pounding on their infrastructure all the time. This is a mess.
Bottom line: Having a couple of strings of unchanging numbers should not enable *any* financial transaction. The security problems are on the side of the credit cards. Given how poorly the credit-card companies treat merchants, I don't understand why no other online payment services has been able to get a bigger foothold. Probably backroom collusion amongst the big banks, to strangle any other solution in the cradle.
Iran? Syria? Right, because the efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have gone *so* well. Instead of brutal dictatorships, the US intervention has led to three enlightened, civilized, peaceful countries.
What was Einstein's definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results?
Unfortunately, you are probably right. Whoever wins in November will have the US involved in another war within a few months...
The problem is the sue-happy state of affairs. If liability were genuinely limited to real, financial damage done by a failed launch, it would be possible to get private insurance. As long as courts are willing to award outrageous sums for stupid things, the liability is simply not calculable - and no private insurer will touch it. You know, things like "You launched, the smoke drifted thousands of miles over my city, I have lung cancer, it's your fault".
As a "small government" type, it pains me to say this, but until genuine tort-reform happens, there is little alternative to government involvement.
It sounds like you forgot to get a contract signed that details how delivery and support are supposed to work. If that is the case, three comments:
- First, for future work, get a standard contract worked out. There are plenty of examples on the internet. Pay for a couple of hours of an attorney's time to check whatever you come up with. Contracts are essential, even between people who get along well, simply because memories of what you agreed to may differ after several months. Prevent misunderstandings, always use a contract.
- Option 1 for your current client (the one with no clear support contract). If the client isn't hostile, treat it as a sales opportunity. Explain what is standard in the software world (support for a fee), come to some compromise that winds up with you selling a long-term support contract.
- Option 2 for your current client, if they are hostile. Depending on where you live, laws vary, but afaik all countries have warranty laws that can also apply to software. In the absence of a contract, you may be on the hook for support for the duration of the minimum guarantee period - but no longer than than. The customer may also have the right (if you software really sucks), to return the software for a full refund - in which case, of course, you have the right to verify that they are no longer using it. You would really need to check with a lawyer who knows your local laws.
Others have already replied in support of my other point: that many types of forest do, in fact, require periodic fires as part of their lifecycle. This is ought to be well-known - if you don't believe it, go do some research. One of the reasons forest fires get out of control, especially in "virgin forests" is precisely because they have not been allowed to burn periodically, and massive amounts of fuel have accumulated. One valid forest management policy is to initiate controlled burns; this helps keep forests healthy for the long-term, and prevents uncontrolled forest fires.
I object to a "tool" that does not acknowledge either of the above facts. The green extremists have convince most people that forests are disappearing. In fact, in first-world countries they are making a steady comeback. Further, the meme "all forest fires are evil" is simply wrong. Why does pointing this out qualify me as a "raving lunatic"?
Typical, alarmist titles. In the summary "forest is being cut down", in the tool "forest disturbance. In many places, forests are expanding, but this is not shown by the tool - it only marks "disturbances."
The NASA article: "The QUICC product identifies all land areas that have lost at least 40% of their green vegetation cover". It apparently does not show areas where cover as increased. Worse, it does not distinguish between permanent deforestation and forest fires. Fires are a natural part of the forest lifecycle, and what is burned today will be green again tomorrow - these areas should not be counted in any measure of deforestation.
"nobody seems to remember we have been down this road before"
Yes. When I talk to a new class, I often find it useful to draw a spiral showing the development of IT - emphasizing "we have been here before":
"Big iron" with dumb terminals (pre-1980, centralized computing)
The first PCs (1980s, decentralized computing)
Thin clients (1990s, centralized computing)
Modern PCs (2000s, decentralized computing)
Cloud services (ca. 2010, centralized computing)
Mobile computing (coming fast, decentralized computing)
Obviously, each iteration is slightly different than the one before, and there are big overlaps. Still, a spiral going around 3 times captures the spirit of computing history rather nicely. Note also - as so often, the cycle length of 20 years is pretty close to a human generation. Just like each generation thinks it invented sex, each generation thinks it has completely revolutionized computing.
No, we don't need to district the Senate. We need to eliminate districts for Representatives. There are two reasons:
First: Gerrymandering. It happens, despite whatever people may think. Every few years, districts are redrawn, and the politicians in power redraw the boundaries to their own advantage.
Second: By eliminating districts, you reduce the stranglehold of the two big parties. If State X has 10 seats in the House of Representatives, you distribute these according to the overall vote. A third party can can a seat with only 10% of the vote.
To address your real point, though, about low-population states having the same number of Senators as the high-population states: You have missed the point of the Senate. The House of Representatives is apportioned by population - that aspect is already dealt with. The Senate serves a different purpose. It is (supposed) to be compose of elder statesmen, selected by the sovereign states. They are elected for longer terms, and are (supposed) to provide a stabilizing counterbalance to the much more fluid House of Representatives. This bicameral idea exists in many countries, in different forms, for much the same reason.
This: "This then makes it harder for the competent people in the group, because now they have an extra layer of prejudice against them."
In the context of racial relations, affirmative action has done more to cause racism than anything else the government could have done.
On the IT front: One of the students in my doctoral program was damn proud of being in the program because she was a woman and a hispanic. She knew that she wasn't good enough to be in the program, and this didn't bother her at all. She was up-front that she intended to exploit her double minority status to push her career as far as she could, over the heads of better qualified people.
The other women in the program resented the hell out of her. The other women were bloody good, and they were worried that people would think they were also "token minorities".
Most good coders are not going to be hugely interested in whether they are a GS-12 or if they have a shot at moving to GS-13. They want decent pay, good working conditions and colleagues, and interesting projects.
There are good people (and great bosses) in the federal government. The problem is that there is also a huge amount of dead weight: petty people building their personal little empires and playing pathetic office politics. The "iron rule of bureaucracy" will not be denied - even if you are lucky enough to work in a super organization, don't worry: its soul will eventually be sucked out by bureaucrats interested only in extending the bureaucracy.
This is why government organizations should be kept to a minimum. In industry, when the deadwood has accumulated, either it gets cleared out or the company dies. In government, you just get a funding increase.
I suggest that he contact a couple of the better legal blogs (like Popehat). The lawyer-bloggers tend to take a dim view of lawyers who make ludicrous legal threats. He might well get a bit of much-needed support and useful advice.
Are you a gazillionaire? Because the US government doesn't seem to care at all that I have bank accounts in a foreign country
Serious question? If you have any account that it worth more than $10,000 at any point in the year, you are required to report this to the Treasury Department on Form 90-22.1. Unless you are a broke student, you surely have some account (perhaps your retirement savings?) that exceeds this amount. You didn't want to know that, because now you'd better file it. You're welcome...
If I were a gazillionaire, the banks might be willing to take a risk; it's precisely the normal folk that get nailed by this stuff. Maybe banks in South America haven't come under fire yet. If not, just wait, I'm sure the IRS will get around to you in a couple of years...
Regarding your assertion that other countries also tax their citizens abroad, look at the Wikipedia article on this topic. You will find a reference to a 1995 Congressional study that showed only the US, the Philippines and Eritrea do this. The Philippines stopped in 1997. Remember: I am referring here to taxing people who live and word abroad long-term. If you are just out of the country temporarily, you are not really a foreign resident.
The US, far from fixing the situation for Americans living abroad, has doubled down. In 2008, Congress passed a law that taxes people when they renounce their citizenship. The goal of this law is "to extract from the expatriate taxes that would have been paid had he remained a citizen" (quote taken from the Wikipedia article referenced above).
You conclusion is right, if a bit cold-blooded: if someone has no intention of returning, why remain a citizen? The thing is: citizenship is tied up with lots of emotions. You grow up somewhere, have family there, etc, etc... More: who knows what the future may bring? In the end, I feel like I am being driven away by idiotic politicians practicing idiotic policies.
I've lived abroad for more that 20 years, and I am very tired of filing an ever-increasing number of forms with the US authorities. It's not only the IRS, you also have to file separate forms with a separate agency detailing your foreign bank accounts - which, frankly, is none of their business.
The US does allow a deduction against foreign income, but this is worth less and less as the value of the dollar continues to crash. Depends what currency your country uses, of course, but the US doesn't care or make any allowance for that. In my case, the dollar has lost fully half of its value in the last few years. Turn that around: from the IRS point of view my salary has doubled (even though it actually hasn't). Great.
Add to that the pressure the US is applying to foreign banks, in an attempt to rake in money. I won't go into details here, but the US behavior here is closer to blackmail than to any sort of legal proceeding. The result is that foreign banks now ask you up front "are you subject to US taxes?" If you answer "yes", many simply refuse to do business with you. The US government is making it difficult for normal Americans to get on with their lives.
I have also had enough. I will be renouncing my citizenship before the year is out.
Typical, and typically stupid. Anyone who thought Facebook was fairly valued at something like 100x earnings was an idiot. Expecting the stock to go up from there? Really?
Speed limits, with the possible exceptions of highways, are supposed to be set to reflect the road conditions. Traffic lights are supposed to improve traffic flow. Etc, etc. Of course, there are plenty of cities and towns that have forgotten this, and turned traffic laws into revenue generators.
You literally cannot enumerate all the possible things that might distract a driver. What about eating a hamburger? hat about the animated billboards along the road? What about having your girlfriend flirt with you? Women putting on their makeup? Guys shaving? Trying to make a law to cover each and every possibility is just stupid. Moreover, what is distracting to one person or in one situation may be perfectly fine in another. Looking at your mobile phone while driving is dangerous? What if you are stopped at a traffic light?
What's more, TFA can't even justify the anti-texting law. Only 1/6 of the accidents of the drivers most vulnerable to distraction (the under 20s) were due to distraction. TFA doesn't even attempt to figure out how many of those 1/6 were due to texting - it simply assumes that texting must play a big enough role to deserve its own, special law. The study - at least, the freely available excerpts - is no better, leaping from 5000 traffic deaths per year (total due to distraction) to the assumption that outlawing one specific behavior is somehow useful.
Reality: this is another "feel-good" law that legislators will pass, so that they can be seen to be "doing something". Meanwhile, they continue to deliberately ignore the real, important issues they ought to deal with.
What should be illegal is being impaired while driving. Outlawing individual distractions is an endless task, and opens the door to wrongful prosecution.
Sure, texting while driving is stupid. On the one hand: Just how is a cop going to prove that is what you were doing? Maybe you were looking at a map. On the other hand, by outlawing it, cops can accuse you of texting any time they see you with a phone in your hand, or see you looking down rather that at the road.
Here's another example: why should it be illegal to have an alcoholic beverage open in a car? If you are not intoxicated, what difference does it make if you choose to drink your after-work beer on the way home? Why is this more dangerous that drinking it in a bar and then driving home?
The law ought to be: if you are driving safely, fine. If you are not, you can be pulled over. If you are in an accident, and were provably distracted (by anything), this may play a role in the assignment of fault.
Solyndra was never competitive. While the government through money at it, notice that the private capital markets knew better. The government only invests in businesses that are so poorly run that no one else will touch them. Oh, and businesses that make large political donations.
This is just sour grapes. Solyndra couldn't compete, even receiving subsidies on both ends of every sale. The Obamanoids are embarrassed, so they impose tariffs on a country that is making it work.
Slashdot Mirror
As others have written, put as much as possible onto paper, and put this in a safe-deposit box at the same bank you have your standard accounts at. Best is if your wife is used to accessing it - perhaps she also has some things that she needs to store there? Alternative to the safe-deposit box is a safe or at least a secure lockbox somewhere in your house.
For stuff that is online, or in electronic form, ignore the folks who say that a lawyer will be able to arrange access. What an expensive PITA! Use a password safe - keep all of your important passwords in it. One of the pieces of paper in the safe-deposit box should (1) state what online things may be important, (2) explain where to find the password safe and (3) list the master password. Never, ever change the password without immediately updating this paper.
No one's vote counts at the federal level. With 300,000,000 people in the country, there is no possible way to have representative government. Federal elections are as meaningful as beauty contests, only more corrupt.
This is the single biggest argument for federalism, i.e., limiting federal power and keeping government as local as possible.
In a local election, you can actually have an influence. Not only your vote, but your ability to contact and coordinate with some meaningful fraction of the electorate.
This argument can be applied recursively. What can be done at the township level, should be.
Ok, let's get the exceptions out of the way first: Manhattan Project. Apollo. Maybe a couple of others.
The government can, in rare circumstances, put together a creative team and get the hell out of the way. It works, briefly. However, in the end, the bureaucracy eats the soul of the scientist. Look at what happened to NASA: It is now many times the size it was in the 1960s, and is completely incapable of replicating its own successes of 40 years ago.
Imagine the government doing pharmaceutical research. Maybe it would start off well, but within a few years all you will have is yet another monstrous bureaucracy filled with mediocre scientists.
Maybe the profit motive looks ugly to you, but it's the best tool we have. If you will forgive me for borrowing from Winston Churchill: Capitalism is probably the worst way to run a society, except for all the others that have been tried.
For comparison, our computers have reset unexpectedly twice (iirc) in the past 12 years. I assume that both times it was due to a short power-blip. No other outages that I recall. I think occasionally about buying a UPS, but I'm not sure the UPS wouldn't actually decrease the reliability.
The difference is exactly what you expect: all power wires here are buried. Heck, our house was built in 1934, and the wires were buried. Why does the US still string them up on poles, almost a century later? Weird...
Here in Europe, the news reports a very simple reason: a totally dilapidated infrastructure. Most power wires still hanging off of poles, subject to lightning, wind and falling trees. Decades-old transformers and switching stations that fail catastrophically, and sometimes cause cascading failures.
I haven't lived on the East Coast for decades - any power engineers want to comment on the truth or falsity of these reports?
"all men are created equal and therefore should all have the same rights"
As usual, this quote is being completely abused; it refers to natural rights. Having closed-caption movies is not a natural right. The rights referred to are rather more fundamental than that: life and liberty being the primary two. A disabled person has a natural right to be secure in their life; they do not have a natural right to have a wheelchair ramp leading into every business in town.
Note that there may be a legal right to such a thing; this is what the ADA says. However, it is totally corked. Such laws ought to be tempered with common sense. How much relief does the law provide, as compared to the burden it creates? The ADA is not, at least not the way it is usually interpreted by the courts
Real example: A third-floor restaurant in a historic old building that only has stairs, and has no place for an elevator. The ADA forced it to close. Just who is served by that? How did disabled folks benefit?
In this case, Netflix may be required to stop distributing video content that does not have closed captions. The people who need closed captions will gain absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, the vast majority of people who do not need close captions will have lost something.
If someone is disabled, life is not the same for them as for non-disabled people. That is cold, hard reality. Reasonable accomodations can and should be made, but their disability will not be eliminated by taking things away from the non-disabled. The ADA is an albatross.
"Scalping miniscule price movements" thousands of times an hour, if not per minute. - this is essentially theft.
Let's take a drastically oversimplified example, just as a starting point: You want to sell a stock at $30 or more. I want to buy the same stock at $31 or less. In a fair market, our transactions meet and I buy your stock. Depending on how things are set up, the $1 difference in prices goes to one or the other of us, or maybe we split it. The basic goal of HFT and other such technologies is to insert themselves into the middle of other people's transactions. They buy your stock for $30 and sell it to me at $31. You get $30 for you stock, I pay $31, and they get $1 for free.
How is this not theft?
Do you know, the presidents of other nations walk around town with no bodyguards, much less a full SS detail like the President of the US has? Why are we supposed to worry so much about the Secretary of Commerce? He is just not that important. Neither is Obama.
Suppose someone did manage to blow up DC? The loss of life would be tragic; life would go on. Oh, and the loss of the politicians would also be sad, at least for their immediate families. Politicians are not that important, little though they may want to acknowledge the fact. Their replacements would be pontificating on the rubble and proposing Patriot Act II before the smoke cleared...
I give occasional help to a retailer (in Europe, if it matters). The hoops the credit-card companies make them jump through are pretty amazing. Example: they have a simple web-shop with a web-form that allows the customer to enter credit-card info. This info stays online in the MySQL database for a short period of time, until their little ERP system sees it, downloads it and deletes it. In more than 10 years using this system, they have never had a problem.
Nonetheless, the credit-card companies want them to pay for a quarterly "network penetration test" on their website, and to provide detailed technical information on the website set-up. Since their web-site is hosted by a big ISP, they have no access to the necessary technical info, and the ISP doesn't really want network penetration tests pounding on their infrastructure all the time. This is a mess.
Bottom line: Having a couple of strings of unchanging numbers should not enable *any* financial transaction. The security problems are on the side of the credit cards. Given how poorly the credit-card companies treat merchants, I don't understand why no other online payment services has been able to get a bigger foothold. Probably backroom collusion amongst the big banks, to strangle any other solution in the cradle.
Iran? Syria? Right, because the efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have gone *so* well. Instead of brutal dictatorships, the US intervention has led to three enlightened, civilized, peaceful countries.
What was Einstein's definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results?
Unfortunately, you are probably right. Whoever wins in November will have the US involved in another war within a few months...
The problem is the sue-happy state of affairs. If liability were genuinely limited to real, financial damage done by a failed launch, it would be possible to get private insurance. As long as courts are willing to award outrageous sums for stupid things, the liability is simply not calculable - and no private insurer will touch it. You know, things like "You launched, the smoke drifted thousands of miles over my city, I have lung cancer, it's your fault".
As a "small government" type, it pains me to say this, but until genuine tort-reform happens, there is little alternative to government involvement.
It sounds like you forgot to get a contract signed that details how delivery and support are supposed to work. If that is the case, three comments:
- First, for future work, get a standard contract worked out. There are plenty of examples on the internet. Pay for a couple of hours of an attorney's time to check whatever you come up with. Contracts are essential, even between people who get along well, simply because memories of what you agreed to may differ after several months. Prevent misunderstandings, always use a contract.
- Option 1 for your current client (the one with no clear support contract). If the client isn't hostile, treat it as a sales opportunity. Explain what is standard in the software world (support for a fee), come to some compromise that winds up with you selling a long-term support contract.
- Option 2 for your current client, if they are hostile. Depending on where you live, laws vary, but afaik all countries have warranty laws that can also apply to software. In the absence of a contract, you may be on the hook for support for the duration of the minimum guarantee period - but no longer than than. The customer may also have the right (if you software really sucks), to return the software for a full refund - in which case, of course, you have the right to verify that they are no longer using it. You would really need to check with a lawyer who knows your local laws.
"...do you really believe that the rate of reforestation is significant compared to deforestation"
In many places, yes. Example: "Forests cover 44 percent of Europe’s land area and they continue to expand." Example: "North American forest stock...have risen by 3% from 1992 to 2006".
Others have already replied in support of my other point: that many types of forest do, in fact, require periodic fires as part of their lifecycle. This is ought to be well-known - if you don't believe it, go do some research. One of the reasons forest fires get out of control, especially in "virgin forests" is precisely because they have not been allowed to burn periodically, and massive amounts of fuel have accumulated. One valid forest management policy is to initiate controlled burns; this helps keep forests healthy for the long-term, and prevents uncontrolled forest fires.
I object to a "tool" that does not acknowledge either of the above facts. The green extremists have convince most people that forests are disappearing. In fact, in first-world countries they are making a steady comeback. Further, the meme "all forest fires are evil" is simply wrong. Why does pointing this out qualify me as a "raving lunatic"?
Typical, alarmist titles. In the summary "forest is being cut down", in the tool "forest disturbance. In many places, forests are expanding, but this is not shown by the tool - it only marks "disturbances."
The NASA article: "The QUICC product identifies all land areas that have lost at least 40% of their green vegetation cover". It apparently does not show areas where cover as increased. Worse, it does not distinguish between permanent deforestation and forest fires. Fires are a natural part of the forest lifecycle, and what is burned today will be green again tomorrow - these areas should not be counted in any measure of deforestation.
"nobody seems to remember we have been down this road before"
Yes. When I talk to a new class, I often find it useful to draw a spiral showing the development of IT - emphasizing "we have been here before":
Obviously, each iteration is slightly different than the one before, and there are big overlaps. Still, a spiral going around 3 times captures the spirit of computing history rather nicely. Note also - as so often, the cycle length of 20 years is pretty close to a human generation. Just like each generation thinks it invented sex, each generation thinks it has completely revolutionized computing.
No, we don't need to district the Senate. We need to eliminate districts for Representatives. There are two reasons:
First: Gerrymandering. It happens, despite whatever people may think. Every few years, districts are redrawn, and the politicians in power redraw the boundaries to their own advantage.
Second: By eliminating districts, you reduce the stranglehold of the two big parties. If State X has 10 seats in the House of Representatives, you distribute these according to the overall vote. A third party can can a seat with only 10% of the vote.
To address your real point, though, about low-population states having the same number of Senators as the high-population states: You have missed the point of the Senate. The House of Representatives is apportioned by population - that aspect is already dealt with. The Senate serves a different purpose. It is (supposed) to be compose of elder statesmen, selected by the sovereign states. They are elected for longer terms, and are (supposed) to provide a stabilizing counterbalance to the much more fluid House of Representatives. This bicameral idea exists in many countries, in different forms, for much the same reason.
This: "This then makes it harder for the competent people in the group, because now they have an extra layer of prejudice against them."
In the context of racial relations, affirmative action has done more to cause racism than anything else the government could have done.
On the IT front: One of the students in my doctoral program was damn proud of being in the program because she was a woman and a hispanic. She knew that she wasn't good enough to be in the program, and this didn't bother her at all. She was up-front that she intended to exploit her double minority status to push her career as far as she could, over the heads of better qualified people.
The other women in the program resented the hell out of her. The other women were bloody good, and they were worried that people would think they were also "token minorities".
Most good coders are not going to be hugely interested in whether they are a GS-12 or if they have a shot at moving to GS-13. They want decent pay, good working conditions and colleagues, and interesting projects.
There are good people (and great bosses) in the federal government. The problem is that there is also a huge amount of dead weight: petty people building their personal little empires and playing pathetic office politics. The "iron rule of bureaucracy" will not be denied - even if you are lucky enough to work in a super organization, don't worry: its soul will eventually be sucked out by bureaucrats interested only in extending the bureaucracy.
This is why government organizations should be kept to a minimum. In industry, when the deadwood has accumulated, either it gets cleared out or the company dies. In government, you just get a funding increase.
I suggest that he contact a couple of the better legal blogs (like Popehat). The lawyer-bloggers tend to take a dim view of lawyers who make ludicrous legal threats. He might well get a bit of much-needed support and useful advice.
Are you a gazillionaire? Because the US government doesn't seem to care at all that I have bank accounts in a foreign country
Serious question? If you have any account that it worth more than $10,000 at any point in the year, you are required to report this to the Treasury Department on Form 90-22.1. Unless you are a broke student, you surely have some account (perhaps your retirement savings?) that exceeds this amount. You didn't want to know that, because now you'd better file it. You're welcome...
If I were a gazillionaire, the banks might be willing to take a risk; it's precisely the normal folk that get nailed by this stuff. Maybe banks in South America haven't come under fire yet. If not, just wait, I'm sure the IRS will get around to you in a couple of years...
Regarding your assertion that other countries also tax their citizens abroad, look at the Wikipedia article on this topic. You will find a reference to a 1995 Congressional study that showed only the US, the Philippines and Eritrea do this. The Philippines stopped in 1997. Remember: I am referring here to taxing people who live and word abroad long-term. If you are just out of the country temporarily, you are not really a foreign resident.
The US, far from fixing the situation for Americans living abroad, has doubled down. In 2008, Congress passed a law that taxes people when they renounce their citizenship. The goal of this law is "to extract from the expatriate taxes that would have been paid had he remained a citizen" (quote taken from the Wikipedia article referenced above).
You conclusion is right, if a bit cold-blooded: if someone has no intention of returning, why remain a citizen? The thing is: citizenship is tied up with lots of emotions. You grow up somewhere, have family there, etc, etc... More: who knows what the future may bring? In the end, I feel like I am being driven away by idiotic politicians practicing idiotic policies.
Here's a reference. Only the US and Eritrea are this dumb.
I've lived abroad for more that 20 years, and I am very tired of filing an ever-increasing number of forms with the US authorities. It's not only the IRS, you also have to file separate forms with a separate agency detailing your foreign bank accounts - which, frankly, is none of their business.
The US does allow a deduction against foreign income, but this is worth less and less as the value of the dollar continues to crash. Depends what currency your country uses, of course, but the US doesn't care or make any allowance for that. In my case, the dollar has lost fully half of its value in the last few years. Turn that around: from the IRS point of view my salary has doubled (even though it actually hasn't). Great.
Add to that the pressure the US is applying to foreign banks, in an attempt to rake in money. I won't go into details here, but the US behavior here is closer to blackmail than to any sort of legal proceeding. The result is that foreign banks now ask you up front "are you subject to US taxes?" If you answer "yes", many simply refuse to do business with you. The US government is making it difficult for normal Americans to get on with their lives.
I have also had enough. I will be renouncing my citizenship before the year is out.
Typical, and typically stupid. Anyone who thought Facebook was fairly valued at something like 100x earnings was an idiot. Expecting the stock to go up from there? Really?
Speed limits, with the possible exceptions of highways, are supposed to be set to reflect the road conditions. Traffic lights are supposed to improve traffic flow. Etc, etc. Of course, there are plenty of cities and towns that have forgotten this, and turned traffic laws into revenue generators.
You literally cannot enumerate all the possible things that might distract a driver. What about eating a hamburger? hat about the animated billboards along the road? What about having your girlfriend flirt with you? Women putting on their makeup? Guys shaving? Trying to make a law to cover each and every possibility is just stupid. Moreover, what is distracting to one person or in one situation may be perfectly fine in another. Looking at your mobile phone while driving is dangerous? What if you are stopped at a traffic light?
What's more, TFA can't even justify the anti-texting law. Only 1/6 of the accidents of the drivers most vulnerable to distraction (the under 20s) were due to distraction. TFA doesn't even attempt to figure out how many of those 1/6 were due to texting - it simply assumes that texting must play a big enough role to deserve its own, special law. The study - at least, the freely available excerpts - is no better, leaping from 5000 traffic deaths per year (total due to distraction) to the assumption that outlawing one specific behavior is somehow useful.
Reality: this is another "feel-good" law that legislators will pass, so that they can be seen to be "doing something". Meanwhile, they continue to deliberately ignore the real, important issues they ought to deal with.
What should be illegal is being impaired while driving. Outlawing individual distractions is an endless task, and opens the door to wrongful prosecution.
Sure, texting while driving is stupid. On the one hand: Just how is a cop going to prove that is what you were doing? Maybe you were looking at a map. On the other hand, by outlawing it, cops can accuse you of texting any time they see you with a phone in your hand, or see you looking down rather that at the road.
Here's another example: why should it be illegal to have an alcoholic beverage open in a car? If you are not intoxicated, what difference does it make if you choose to drink your after-work beer on the way home? Why is this more dangerous that drinking it in a bar and then driving home?
The law ought to be: if you are driving safely, fine. If you are not, you can be pulled over. If you are in an accident, and were provably distracted (by anything), this may play a role in the assignment of fault.
Solyndra was never competitive. While the government through money at it, notice that the private capital markets knew better. The government only invests in businesses that are so poorly run that no one else will touch them. Oh, and businesses that make large political donations.
This is just sour grapes. Solyndra couldn't compete, even receiving subsidies on both ends of every sale. The Obamanoids are embarrassed, so they impose tariffs on a country that is making it work.