I still think it's rare to the point where the exeptions are likely to prove the rule. I've read interviews with these people, and there's almost universally conflict when the second wife arrives, even if the first wife thought she'd be okay with it. Polyamory can often be different because you can have multiple couples who keep their relationships seperate (ie, you stay with girl 1 during the week and go out with girl 2 on Saturday night or whatever. In fact, women especially seem to have a tendancy to regard one man as her partner, and other men more like affairs or flings. Not all living together can help jealousy tremendously).
There are other arguments against legal recognition of polygamy as well, such as divorce. If wife 2 and wife 3 decide they can't stand each other, who has to get divorced? Is if fair that some of the family assets are taken away from wife 1? Does it matter if one or more of these women has children? It's a road that can never lead to justice, and I think the fairest route is simply to priviledge only the first marriage with legal recognition. If more people want to live in the same house and have sex with each other, that's fine, but divorce proceedings for communal marriage are an unreasonable burden on society.
Steroids are about more than simply adding bulk. Steroids increase the levels of anabolic hormones such as testosterone. This can provide strength, bulk, and faster muscle recovery times. Here's a simple litmus test for whether steroids would improve performance: do men perform better than women? In virtually all sports, the answer is yes, and the reason is testosterone.
Heh, well that's good, I feel better, we can each make mistakes. Yours was not quite as agregious as mine, but that's alright:)
Of course my girlfriend, being more or less the stereotypical diva sorprano in training, has her eye on the Queen of the Night, but that's going to have to wait for a bit of voice maturation (she's a sophmore at the Oberlin Conservatory). Me, I've got a tin ear and a complete inability to learn foreign language, but even to someone as tone deaf and uncultured as myself, Mozart still wrote some catchy tunes. I've got little exposure to Verdi, but I'll make an effort to see more (though as an aside, I did see an excellent Iago in a performance of Shakespeare's Othello in Ashland, OR a couple years back).
Anyway, nice talking with you, best of luck with your singing.
You're mistaking marginal and fixed costs. Drug companies sell to places like Canada at a high enough price to recoup marginal costs (the cost of actually manufacturing the drug) but not high enough to recoup fixed costs (the cost of researching and brining the drug to market). Think of it like an airplane: the marginal cost of adding one extra person is very low, you've got a bit of extra weight, and the price of the meal. Most of the cost of the flight would be the same even if the plane was flying empty.
If fixed costs can no longer be recouped in the USA, then either they'll start getting tougher in negotiations with Canada, Europe, etc., or else they'll simply accept that it's no longer worth their effort to bring new drugs to market.
They thought about doing that in NYC as well, but it's too much trouble to reassign everyone area codes, simpler to just let everyone keep their numbers and assign new people the new area codes. Most major cities are dealing with the same debate (SF opted to make the penninsula into its own area code: 650)
Wow, that's actually really interesting, I've never heard that radio ad (don't listen to much radio). Brown University used to own that number, I read an article 4 years ago in the student paper about some freshmen girls who were being harrassed at all hours by prank calls. Moreover, ALL Brown student numbers are of the form 401-867-xxxx (faculty numbers are 401-863-xxxx), as far as I know we own the prefix. I can only assume what must have happened is that Brown took the number out of service because of the harrassing calls, and either gave it back to the phone company or sold it to the plumbers.
Also note that most drug companies make the vast majority of their profits in the US. If the US moved to a Canadian or European style system, one of two things would happen. Either drug companies would raise prices worldwide (killing the centralized health care systems), or else they would dramatically cut investment in R&D.
(and actually, I'd argue with your statement that Mexican immigrants are freeloaders. Studies consitently show that they pay more in taxes than they recieve, it's merely a problem of distribution. So they might pay large SS taxes that go to Joe Shmoe in North Dakota, but they don't pay enough in state and locan taxes for the hospitals.)
Shit, I apologize for the La Traviata/Verdi bit, I was thinking of Carmen, got some fuses crossed in the brain. Boy are my cheeks red. That'll show me for not double checking what I think I remeber on Google (my girlfriend is the singer, I just absorb bits through osmosis).
Yes, The Magic Flute did evolve from singspiel (and as I mentioned, the Abduction WAS singspiel), but it is a proper German opera. At least until Wagner, most German operas that followed were similar in terms of both themes (the supernatural) and style (occasional spoken dialog; German was considered generally unsuitable for recitativo). So while there's some room to argue that the spoken portions make it not opera, doing so also invalidates a large body of work.
I'm afraid you are wrong about Dido and Anaeus being the first opera. It was the first English opera, but opera had already been well established, by Monteverdi among others, well before Dido and Anaeus was written (a quick Google search to confirm shows that Monteverdi's breakout work Orfeo dates to 1607, while Purcell wasn't even born until 1659). That's why we call it opera, because the Italians invented it.
Yes, of course Handell's works have survived as well, which is why I said "one of the few," rather than "the only." One could spend all day looking at opera company repertoirs and picking out more opera seria that has been performed recently, but I think my point still stands. For a genre that existed as long as it did, very little is remembered aside from the occasional works of a master.
I would be curious if you actually have a basis for considereing Dido the first opera, or if you were just misremembering? If you don't consider The Magic Flute an opera, then clearly you have a stricter definition than I.
Okay, I could have SWORN there used to be a link for authors and publishers to submit information that would appear in the "Editorial Reviews" section, immediately above "Customer Reviews." I just went to Amazon.com though, and I can't find such a link, so maybe I'm misremembering, or maybe they took it out. Either way, I guess maybe you're right.
Yes, I agree when a review is factually INACCURATE (or obsolete, in the case of missing 32 pages) then the author is justified in having it removed. The person I was replying to conceeded that the reviewer spoke the truth, but felt that the reviewer had inappropriate expectations for the book. As far as I'm concerned, that's all the more reason to leave the review up, so that no one else will buy it with similarly inaccurate expectations. Whenever I buy from Amazon, I always sort lowest ranking first, specifically so that I can understand what people were disappointed about, and decide if those are things that are important to me.
I appreciate your honesty, but I don't buy your argument. You're not denying the charges leveled in the review (that your book doesn't explain how to run the databases), just that such criticisms are relevant. The reasonable response, in my opinoin, is to add a review of your own (I believe Amazon will priviledge reviews by the author by automatically sticking them on the front page) and explain why your book doesn't deal with the subject. That way, no more people will mistakenly buy your book believing that it deals with a subject that it does not address. Instead, only the true target audience, those who want to learn about GoLive, will actually purchse it.
You are correct of course, I should have used the gender-specific word "polygyny," rather than the gender-neutral "polygamy." However, since the only society on record that I know of that has ever practiced polyandry is Tibet, and even then it's only when the two men are brothers (and the younger brother is expected to look for a new wife ASAP), in human societies polygamy is defacto polygyny.
Again, I would argue against your statement that there is nothing wrong with polygamy. Most forms of polygamy set up situations where one person in the preexisting marriage (almost certainly the woman) is pressured to go along with a situation she detests. If one wanted to set up polygamy laws such that once a marriage has been formed, it cannot be ammended (so you've got to marry all your wives at once, or not at all), then that might be arguable.
Actually, I was reading something the other day about how despots in ages past would have dozens, hundreds, even thousands of wives. Today, the President of the United States can't even get away with two! What could be responsible for such a dramatic shift? The explanation given was democracy (the argument against the women's rights theory was that monogamy was pretty entrenched in word and in deed by the Victorian era, when women still had no power). The lower status males will simply use their power to destroy a sexual rival. Essentially we've achieved sexual communism, where no one is allowed to rise higher than a single wife.
All that being said, there are perfectly legitimate women's rights reasons why polygamy is wrong. No woman wants her husband to take a second wife, and even among the "mormons" (in quotes because the recognized church would say they're not mormons) in Utah who do have multiple wives only achieve that status by bullying, threatening, or simply psychologically dominating their first wives.
Please tell me you're joking. Yes, Italy has a long and distinguished operatic history. But there are plenty of operas, famous ones even, that are not in Italian. Mozart's The Magic Flute is widely regarded as the first true German opera (the "German opera" you see early on in Amadeus is really more like a musical), and of course all of Wagner's work was German. La Traviata is French (the French also have a long operatic tradition, but most of them are frankly not very good, Verdi is one of the rare exeptions). English is an uncommon language for opera, but it does crop up occasionally, I saw an opera by Stravinsky in English called "The Rake's Progress," inspired by the series of paintings of the same name by William Hogarth.
Bringing this discussion back to the topic at hand, there was a period in the history of opera where the singers were exaulted while the orchestra was ignored. Pyrotechnics and elaborate sets also ruled the day. Operas from this period were generally about mythological characters, the genere was known as "opera seria." Like French grand opera, there was little of musical value during this period. Opera seria was spectacle without substance, and one of the only opera serias to be performed regularly today is Mozart's Idomeneo, and that's only because Mozart is just that good. I feel musicals are heading down a similar path to opera seria, and 200 years from now, none of them will be remembered or performed.
No, it would not be cost effective. Even if the moon were made of solid gold, and all you had to do was pick it up off the ground, you still could not go there, pick it up, and bring it back for less than market price ($3-400/oz).
Death row felons have had due process, a fair hearing, and have been condemned by twelve of their peers.
You can hardly say the same for an embryo.... (emphasis mine)
Heh, it'd be pretty funny having a jury of 12 embryos deciding if a woman could have an abortion. Would they divide their cells just a little faster to indicate guilty?
Let's not get into a killing-an-embryo-is-killing-humans discussion.
I agree.
A 7-day old human embryo is indistinguishable from most other embryos at that percentage through fetal developemnt (~1/39th). At 1/39th development, it is identical to all mamals and almost identical to all vertebrates. Mathematically and biologically, this is no different than doing it with sheep or fish.
I thought you just said you didn't want to get into it? Anyway, the grandparent didn't say it was killing humans, he said it was killing embryos, which it is. You don't think a 7 day old embryo is a person, which I agree with, but that doesn't invalidate the original phrasing. You're the first one here who mentioned killing humans.
South Park is just as funny, if not funnier, today than it was when the movie came out.
I second that. If you haven't seen The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers, it is truly one of the most carefully done parodies I've ever seen, right down to Cartman's mimicing of Gandalf's sigh at the council in Rivendel. More recently, All About the Mormons is one of their all time best, I think.
Simpsons I rarely watch anymore. Even if the writing hadn't deteriorated, it's like they talked about in the Itchy and Scratchy episode, the characters are just starting to get kind of boring. How many times can you really watch Homer say "d'oh!"
It might also just be that keeping a show on the air for a long time is inherently difficult. Around the time a movie gets rolling, the show has slid into decline. Look at, say, Friends. It was actually a pretty funny show for the first couple seasons. If, around season 4 or 5 they'd made a movie, people might say that the movie was responsible for the decline. In actuality, the show got stale and unfunny all on its own.
I think this goes doubly for cartoons, because of the aging audience. By the time you get a movie out, your audience is 3 years older, and is likely starting to outgrow your cartoon (only very occasionally does it seem that a cartoon can capture the next younger set of kids; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles seemed to make occasional revivals, but it was never as big as it was when I was about 10). Of course occasionally there are exceptions, such as Transformers where they just spent too much money on the movie, and then had to farm out the animation for the third season to a cut rate animation studio. In that case it could be argued that the movie killed the TV show.
The article, as far as I can see, just says that they've "signed" to do the movies. That doesn't necessarily mean they've been contracted to actually do the movies. More likely, I'd imagine they've signed a contract saying "if these movies happen, we'll do them for thus and such amount of money, but if they don't happen, then we won't," which is known as an option, because it gives the studio the option to do or not do the movies at their discretion. Sometimes in the case of book rights, they'll pay a certain amount for the option (kind of like a signing bonus), and then an additional amount if the movie actually gets made.
Because we don't like it. Adults in America refuse to be forced to switch (road signs that listed both metric and imperial speed limits were used as target practice in some areas), and so long as the adults use the imperial system, children will grow up accustomed to it.
I personally would argue that for many human applications, the imperial system is better anyway. For example, temperatures in populated areas generally range from 0 (New England winter) to 100 (Los Angeles summer), with anything above or below being truly extreme, and even dangerous. Human heights generally range from 5 to 6 feet, although with today's nutrition, a man is more likely to be above 6' than a woman is likely to be below 5'. A cup is a reasonable approximation of how much liquid you would put in a medium sized cup. Teaspoons and tablespoons are similarly appropriate. Healthy human weights generally range from 100 to 200 lbs.
*shrug* All this may just be my brain's way of rationalizing the system I grew up with. For me though, the metric system does not offer enough of an advantage over the imperial system to cause me to want to switch. Think of it like Dvorak vs. QWERTY, the former might be better, but it's not enough better to justify the effort. I'm sure engineers would be better off if they were raised on metric, but what percentage of the US population is made up of engineers?
Well, it was WWE's own fault. They agreed to a legal settlement back in the day where they got the rights to use WWF in the USA only. Once they made a website (wwf.com), the wildlife people sued saying that the Internet is an international forum, and hence in violation of the agreement. Kind of like Apple Computer's ongoing fights with Apple Music, there wouldn't have been a problem if the original settlements hadn't been so shortsighted.
There was an article about Tower in Forbes, oh, 3-4 years back. The owners (Tower Records is privately held) were asked about the threat of online music distribution and they totally brushed it off. Even at the time it was obvious that they were short sighted morons.
People had vast game libraries after owning their Playstations for so long. Buying a Playstation 2 meant they could continue playing their entire game library while still adding onto it.
This is an argument I've never understood. Did a Sony rep come into their house with a baseball bat and bash apart their old Playstations when they bought at PS2? My family owned the NES, SNES, N64, Playstation, and Gameboy. None of them were compatible with one another, yet we could still play all the games we owned for each system. If you already own a Playstation, what possible benefit is there (aside from a marginal space savings) to having the PS2 be backwards compatible?
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New Hampshire also does not receive federal highway funds. However, their drinking age is still 21.
There are other arguments against legal recognition of polygamy as well, such as divorce. If wife 2 and wife 3 decide they can't stand each other, who has to get divorced? Is if fair that some of the family assets are taken away from wife 1? Does it matter if one or more of these women has children? It's a road that can never lead to justice, and I think the fairest route is simply to priviledge only the first marriage with legal recognition. If more people want to live in the same house and have sex with each other, that's fine, but divorce proceedings for communal marriage are an unreasonable burden on society.
Steroids are about more than simply adding bulk. Steroids increase the levels of anabolic hormones such as testosterone. This can provide strength, bulk, and faster muscle recovery times. Here's a simple litmus test for whether steroids would improve performance: do men perform better than women? In virtually all sports, the answer is yes, and the reason is testosterone.
Heh, well that's good, I feel better, we can each make mistakes. Yours was not quite as agregious as mine, but that's alright :)
Of course my girlfriend, being more or less the stereotypical diva sorprano in training, has her eye on the Queen of the Night, but that's going to have to wait for a bit of voice maturation (she's a sophmore at the Oberlin Conservatory). Me, I've got a tin ear and a complete inability to learn foreign language, but even to someone as tone deaf and uncultured as myself, Mozart still wrote some catchy tunes. I've got little exposure to Verdi, but I'll make an effort to see more (though as an aside, I did see an excellent Iago in a performance of Shakespeare's Othello in Ashland, OR a couple years back).
Anyway, nice talking with you, best of luck with your singing.
If fixed costs can no longer be recouped in the USA, then either they'll start getting tougher in negotiations with Canada, Europe, etc., or else they'll simply accept that it's no longer worth their effort to bring new drugs to market.
They thought about doing that in NYC as well, but it's too much trouble to reassign everyone area codes, simpler to just let everyone keep their numbers and assign new people the new area codes. Most major cities are dealing with the same debate (SF opted to make the penninsula into its own area code: 650)
Wow, that's actually really interesting, I've never heard that radio ad (don't listen to much radio). Brown University used to own that number, I read an article 4 years ago in the student paper about some freshmen girls who were being harrassed at all hours by prank calls. Moreover, ALL Brown student numbers are of the form 401-867-xxxx (faculty numbers are 401-863-xxxx), as far as I know we own the prefix. I can only assume what must have happened is that Brown took the number out of service because of the harrassing calls, and either gave it back to the phone company or sold it to the plumbers.
(and actually, I'd argue with your statement that Mexican immigrants are freeloaders. Studies consitently show that they pay more in taxes than they recieve, it's merely a problem of distribution. So they might pay large SS taxes that go to Joe Shmoe in North Dakota, but they don't pay enough in state and locan taxes for the hospitals.)
Yes, The Magic Flute did evolve from singspiel (and as I mentioned, the Abduction WAS singspiel), but it is a proper German opera. At least until Wagner, most German operas that followed were similar in terms of both themes (the supernatural) and style (occasional spoken dialog; German was considered generally unsuitable for recitativo). So while there's some room to argue that the spoken portions make it not opera, doing so also invalidates a large body of work.
I'm afraid you are wrong about Dido and Anaeus being the first opera. It was the first English opera, but opera had already been well established, by Monteverdi among others, well before Dido and Anaeus was written (a quick Google search to confirm shows that Monteverdi's breakout work Orfeo dates to 1607, while Purcell wasn't even born until 1659). That's why we call it opera, because the Italians invented it.
Yes, of course Handell's works have survived as well, which is why I said "one of the few," rather than "the only." One could spend all day looking at opera company repertoirs and picking out more opera seria that has been performed recently, but I think my point still stands. For a genre that existed as long as it did, very little is remembered aside from the occasional works of a master.
I would be curious if you actually have a basis for considereing Dido the first opera, or if you were just misremembering? If you don't consider The Magic Flute an opera, then clearly you have a stricter definition than I.
Yes, I agree when a review is factually INACCURATE (or obsolete, in the case of missing 32 pages) then the author is justified in having it removed. The person I was replying to conceeded that the reviewer spoke the truth, but felt that the reviewer had inappropriate expectations for the book. As far as I'm concerned, that's all the more reason to leave the review up, so that no one else will buy it with similarly inaccurate expectations. Whenever I buy from Amazon, I always sort lowest ranking first, specifically so that I can understand what people were disappointed about, and decide if those are things that are important to me.
I appreciate your honesty, but I don't buy your argument. You're not denying the charges leveled in the review (that your book doesn't explain how to run the databases), just that such criticisms are relevant. The reasonable response, in my opinoin, is to add a review of your own (I believe Amazon will priviledge reviews by the author by automatically sticking them on the front page) and explain why your book doesn't deal with the subject. That way, no more people will mistakenly buy your book believing that it deals with a subject that it does not address. Instead, only the true target audience, those who want to learn about GoLive, will actually purchse it.
Again, I would argue against your statement that there is nothing wrong with polygamy. Most forms of polygamy set up situations where one person in the preexisting marriage (almost certainly the woman) is pressured to go along with a situation she detests. If one wanted to set up polygamy laws such that once a marriage has been formed, it cannot be ammended (so you've got to marry all your wives at once, or not at all), then that might be arguable.
All that being said, there are perfectly legitimate women's rights reasons why polygamy is wrong. No woman wants her husband to take a second wife, and even among the "mormons" (in quotes because the recognized church would say they're not mormons) in Utah who do have multiple wives only achieve that status by bullying, threatening, or simply psychologically dominating their first wives.
Bringing this discussion back to the topic at hand, there was a period in the history of opera where the singers were exaulted while the orchestra was ignored. Pyrotechnics and elaborate sets also ruled the day. Operas from this period were generally about mythological characters, the genere was known as "opera seria." Like French grand opera, there was little of musical value during this period. Opera seria was spectacle without substance, and one of the only opera serias to be performed regularly today is Mozart's Idomeneo, and that's only because Mozart is just that good. I feel musicals are heading down a similar path to opera seria, and 200 years from now, none of them will be remembered or performed.
No, it would not be cost effective. Even if the moon were made of solid gold, and all you had to do was pick it up off the ground, you still could not go there, pick it up, and bring it back for less than market price ($3-400/oz).
You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to Hell!
Death row felons have had due process, a fair hearing, and have been condemned by twelve of their peers.
You can hardly say the same for an embryo....
(emphasis mine)
Heh, it'd be pretty funny having a jury of 12 embryos deciding if a woman could have an abortion. Would they divide their cells just a little faster to indicate guilty?
I agree.
A 7-day old human embryo is indistinguishable from most other embryos at that percentage through fetal developemnt (~1/39th). At 1/39th development, it is identical to all mamals and almost identical to all vertebrates. Mathematically and biologically, this is no different than doing it with sheep or fish.
I thought you just said you didn't want to get into it? Anyway, the grandparent didn't say it was killing humans, he said it was killing embryos, which it is. You don't think a 7 day old embryo is a person, which I agree with, but that doesn't invalidate the original phrasing. You're the first one here who mentioned killing humans.
I second that. If you haven't seen The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers, it is truly one of the most carefully done parodies I've ever seen, right down to Cartman's mimicing of Gandalf's sigh at the council in Rivendel. More recently, All About the Mormons is one of their all time best, I think.
Simpsons I rarely watch anymore. Even if the writing hadn't deteriorated, it's like they talked about in the Itchy and Scratchy episode, the characters are just starting to get kind of boring. How many times can you really watch Homer say "d'oh!"
I think this goes doubly for cartoons, because of the aging audience. By the time you get a movie out, your audience is 3 years older, and is likely starting to outgrow your cartoon (only very occasionally does it seem that a cartoon can capture the next younger set of kids; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles seemed to make occasional revivals, but it was never as big as it was when I was about 10). Of course occasionally there are exceptions, such as Transformers where they just spent too much money on the movie, and then had to farm out the animation for the third season to a cut rate animation studio. In that case it could be argued that the movie killed the TV show.
The article, as far as I can see, just says that they've "signed" to do the movies. That doesn't necessarily mean they've been contracted to actually do the movies. More likely, I'd imagine they've signed a contract saying "if these movies happen, we'll do them for thus and such amount of money, but if they don't happen, then we won't," which is known as an option, because it gives the studio the option to do or not do the movies at their discretion. Sometimes in the case of book rights, they'll pay a certain amount for the option (kind of like a signing bonus), and then an additional amount if the movie actually gets made.
Because we don't like it. Adults in America refuse to be forced to switch (road signs that listed both metric and imperial speed limits were used as target practice in some areas), and so long as the adults use the imperial system, children will grow up accustomed to it.
I personally would argue that for many human applications, the imperial system is better anyway. For example, temperatures in populated areas generally range from 0 (New England winter) to 100 (Los Angeles summer), with anything above or below being truly extreme, and even dangerous. Human heights generally range from 5 to 6 feet, although with today's nutrition, a man is more likely to be above 6' than a woman is likely to be below 5'. A cup is a reasonable approximation of how much liquid you would put in a medium sized cup. Teaspoons and tablespoons are similarly appropriate. Healthy human weights generally range from 100 to 200 lbs.
*shrug* All this may just be my brain's way of rationalizing the system I grew up with. For me though, the metric system does not offer enough of an advantage over the imperial system to cause me to want to switch. Think of it like Dvorak vs. QWERTY, the former might be better, but it's not enough better to justify the effort. I'm sure engineers would be better off if they were raised on metric, but what percentage of the US population is made up of engineers?
Well, it was WWE's own fault. They agreed to a legal settlement back in the day where they got the rights to use WWF in the USA only. Once they made a website (wwf.com), the wildlife people sued saying that the Internet is an international forum, and hence in violation of the agreement. Kind of like Apple Computer's ongoing fights with Apple Music, there wouldn't have been a problem if the original settlements hadn't been so shortsighted.
There was an article about Tower in Forbes, oh, 3-4 years back. The owners (Tower Records is privately held) were asked about the threat of online music distribution and they totally brushed it off. Even at the time it was obvious that they were short sighted morons.
This is an argument I've never understood. Did a Sony rep come into their house with a baseball bat and bash apart their old Playstations when they bought at PS2? My family owned the NES, SNES, N64, Playstation, and Gameboy. None of them were compatible with one another, yet we could still play all the games we owned for each system. If you already own a Playstation, what possible benefit is there (aside from a marginal space savings) to having the PS2 be backwards compatible?