Too late they already have. The consumer protection bill from a few years ago that banned lead in children's toys ended up causing all sorts of problems for the youth ATV and dirt bike producers because of the lead acid batteries in them. There was a story in the local paper about this when it went into effect as Minnesota is home to Arctic Cat, and Polaris which made vehicles that were caught by this ban.
Beat me to it. Rope skills are still useful but it seems many have no idea what one would do with rope other than tie things together. I have friends who have had the sliders break on the end of the rope on their tent and not know what to do. The funniest rope story I have was when I went to the hardware store to purchase some rope pulleys and hooks so I could construct a block and tackle to pull an engine and transmission out of a vehicle. I went and asked the high school clerk where the stuff for a block and tackle was and I got a perplexed look. I then asked where the rope and pulleys were and he showed me to the isle. I then got what I needed and was asked by the clerk what I was going to be doing with all of that and when I told him he didn't believe me that it was possible that one would be able to rig up something using a few pulleys, rope, and hooks that would allow someone to lift an engine and transmission out of a car with one arm.
Times change, technology changes, and skills change.
My ten-year-old nephew can't tell time on an analog clock, either.
So my 3 year old can tell time on an analog clock, sounds like your nephew might be a bit slow.
I don't know how to use a slide rule.
These were ancient when I was in school but I was curious and managed to figure it out without much difficulty on my own. Also I am proficient with the old style vernier calipers
My father doesn't know how to make an obsidian hand-axe.
Again I know how to do this. I actually learned it in boy scouts as part of some merit badge (it was one of the few Native American themed ones) and flint-knapping was part of the requirements to get it.
And that is the problem most places don't give a shit unless it costs them money. Even the banks don't and then when there is a problem they don't do anything about it. Add to the mix that law enforcement doesn't seem to care about these "small" crimes and the system will never fix its self. Personally I don't see why more people aren't brought up on interstate wire fraud charges as that seems to be the best place and way to charge these people.
A few months ago probably some stupid kid went and used my wife's credit card number to purchase some xbox live or PSN stuff (don't remember which one) even though she hadn't used this card yet (it was a new one) so it was probably someone who just guessed a valid number. The bank didn't want to reverse the transactions at first and eventually we got them to. Being the vindictive ass hole I am I decided that I would try and exact some legal revenge by trying to get the individual brought up on interstate wire fraud charges (it was a couple thousand dollars of charges over about 2 weeks) and provided all of the evidence we had to the FBI and never heard back.
I don't think that was what was implied but police auctions are a great way for departments to raise money. If you know what you are looking at you can find some good deals, much like pawn shops.
It sells the illusion of "success" - work hard, and you too can be rich! Except that's a fucking lie too...unless you are lucky, or brilliant, or a right-place-right-time scenario, you will languish in the working class for the rest of your life
I would hardly call my self lucky or brilliant and when it comes to being in the right place at the right time I don't seem to be able to do either. I know maybe my parents were rich, no wait that wasn't it my family was dirt poor as a child. Maybe I had good parents, no I don't think it was that given my dad is an alcoholic and my mother worked swing shift at a hardware store and they got divorced when I was young. Yet despite this I am doing fairly well in this regulated capitalist society, I put my self through school, worked hard to get good grades, worked my ass off to get a job, and now have a good job where I am in the top 10% of wage earners, will have my house paid off in the next 10 years, and save a good portion of my money.
Now granted I won't ever be rich like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, but I do plan to retire a multimillionaire preferably in my early 50s when I still have time to enjoy life. There really isn't anything special I did, maybe the only thing I really had going for me is I didn't want to live like either of my parents which was either beyond their means(my mom and step dad) or like a hillbilly redneck (my dad and step mom). I was the first person in my family to go to college (I was the oldest by a lot) and now most in my generation have. The little secrete no one has told you is that you don't have to have everything now, I don't drive a new car. The newest vehicle I have ever owned was 8 years old at the time of purchase and only had 79,000 miles on it. I paid cash for it and it ran great until it got hit 4 and a half years ago. Except for my house I have paid cash for everything (actually just ran it all through the credit card and paid it off at the end of the month) as I can build good credit and get the "rewards" for using the card.
Tell me, seriously, which system would you prefer? One where everyone wins, or one where 1% of the population wins?
You need to define wins. I see an awful lot of people who are in their current situation because they made some really poor choices and with the recent collapse they found themselves in a really bad situation of their own creating. For example I know someone who use to work at the Ford plant up in St. Paul that made the Rangers. They got laid off as they are winding down that plant and will close it shortly. There has been talk for years of closing that plant and this person lived high on the hog while employed but never bothered to seek out additional training, or develop new skills even when it became clear the plant was closing. Now they are screwed and can't find a job as there aren't any auto industry manufacturing jobs in the twin cities any more. Another example would be my step father, he was the last US COBOL programmer at his company until they got rid of his position 4 years ago. He never bothered to develop new skill or even stay current with the industry. Between him and my mom they made well over 100k (this was in the late 90s when I was trying to get financial aid for college and didn't get it) a year and spent probably 20% more than that each year. My mom quit working in the early 90s and now they have cars they can't afford, and a giant ass house they can't afford. But thing were great when my step dad was working, new car every 5 years, professional lawn service, a time share and so on. Or if that isn't enough how about my sister who though it would be a good idea 4 years ago to get a house with an interest only loan at some stupid low rate that is coming due next year. Her and her husband only make 40k combined, but again they have newer vehicles than I do, and a bigger house. So tell me why should everyone win when there seems to be an awfully large portion of people who make really poor choices and then want me to pay for their piss poor choices.
Then where are the other 4. I have read it a number of time, along with a large swath of Marx and Engles' other writings. After I finished reading those I realized that current western Europe was much closer to Marx's ideal than China or the old USSR ever was. Apart from the "From each according to their ability to each according to their need" that is so often misused and misapplied the other main point is the need for individual ownership of the means of production which we don't have.
I believe what you are looking for is called rampant incompetence. With this new hire Sony will be able to show what true ineptness looks like while making all the fraud and corruption in D.C. look like child's play.
The best deer avoidance system I have been able to come up with is a valid hunting license and a rifle or shotgun. During deer season you won't see them, but once the season closes they are thick as thieves. On a more serious note I have seen some semi trucks with what appears to be deer catchers on the front attached to the bumpers.
Those would be overkill. Besides I wouldn't want to lug one of those around when something that shoots some 7.62x39 or 7.62x54r is much lighter and much lower cost. At the ranges to receive a lethal dosage either of these rounds would be just as effective as a.50 BMG and cost a lot less. Granted you lose the ability to shoot through the engine block, but I doubt the x ray machine is any where near as solid, and the occupants sure aren't.
Working off that idea it seems that they could do even better. Using real numbers, currently Dominos is offering 2 medium 2 toppings pizzas for $5.99 each. So for 21 billion dollars they could provide (at retail price) about 3,500,000,000 pizzas. No according to the US National Debt Clock people there are an estimated 13,823,423*people currently officially unemployed, so for each officially unemployed person could receive about 253 medium pizzas. If we use the real number of unemployed people which is listed as an estimated 24,553,586* then each person would receive about 142 pizzas. Going one step further if we used the total estimated US population of 312,116,629* each person would receive about 11 pizzas.
* These values are the estimated values provided by www.usdebtclock.org at the time of this writing.
So your one of those who think Big Oil is just sitting on a carburetor that would let a land yacht like an early 70s Cadillac Fleetwood with the 500 c.i.d. engine get 100 mpg (or 2 to 5x that much). Or are you one of those people who believe in the water powered car?
Either way you are wrong (a link to my blog where I cover the magic carburetor you seem to believe in). Truth is energy companies don't care what you use as your source of energy so long as you buy stuff from them.
My only concern would then be with rationing, since this now would become like the water system, and there are some cities where water usage is rationed even though surrounding cities don't. For example Rosemount has even/odd day watering bans, but right next door in Apple Valley they don't. Both cities pump their water out of the ground probably from the same aquifer but yet one city will let you water your lawn ever day if you wanted to while the other won't.
I would be all for usage taxes, I would love to see things like state parks be funded only with the revenue they bring in, I would love to see conservation officers and hunting and fishing areas supported through license fees. I would even like to see roads paid for with a gas tax (or a mileage tax that doesn't involve sticking a GPS in your car) that covers all of the road repair and building paid for by all and not exempt certain vehicles owned by various individuals (buses). I would even argue that with modern GIS technology people should pay different property tax rates based off the number of incidents (fires, police calls, etc) in a given area since they are using more of these government services than others. There are probably other areas as well that this could be applied to but those are the ones I think would probably be the most workable.
The 70s people have been repeating that story since the 40s. Also don't forget it isn't just 100 mpg but 100 mpg in something like a Cadillac Fleetwood with the 8.2 liter engine (500 c.i.) or some other land yacht while doing 100 MPH on the freeway from LA to Vegas.
You have never been to Minneapolis I take it. We get lots of sun but it is usually bitterly cold or hot and muggy. November and April are the only moths that we don't get lots of sun
Personally I have always thought we should just skip the find some magic bacteria step and do something like the Fischer-Tropsch process or a Thermal Depolymerization process. This way we don't even need to go through the steps of making simple sugars and then making ethanol out of those. But hey I guess bio gasoline isn't sexy like alcohol or other exotic fuels. For the thermal depolymerization we could even use pandas as feed stock
Well you could detect most weapons with something like a metal detector but my confidence in the TSA's ability to do anything is limited. I have sent a coat through the x-ray machine and they have missed rifle rounds and shotgun shell numerous times. Granted I had forgotten that they were in there, but I thought these people were suppose to be trained professionals. And it wasn't I forgot one in there but lots of ammo, one time I threw away almost an entire box (18 or 19 rounds) of 7.62x54r since I forgot the box in the inner coat pocket, on another occasion I threw away 10 or so shotgun shells that made it through security.
If they actually thought about their procedures then they would have to come to one of 2 conslusions:
1. Any security they put in place will be ineffective and let through threads there for should be limited to truly dangerous things like knives, and guns (easy to pick out with a metal detector)
2. Any security they put in place will be ineffective and let through threats there for to be secure we shouldn't allow people to fly.
Personally if I wanted to bring down an airplane I would have a "laptop" but instead have it made out of compressed thermite (you can probably get some binders that wouldn't affect the burn rate that much) with an ignitor built in. Then when at altitude just let er burn. If I wanted to kill a bunch of people I would just go and fill a rolling carry-on suitcase with high explosives and ball bearings and then go get in line at an airport and detonate it when I was standing in the long ass security line on a heavy travel day.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow I flubbed that one and missed a closing tag
But I thought sending or receiving a SMS message was more expensive per MB than getting data from the Hubble Space Telescope. I suppose it is a workable solution if you really need data access but can't get it otherwise but I wonder about this since I also see stories about how excessive SMS messages going out over the control channels could overwhelm the cell network.
Too late they already have. The consumer protection bill from a few years ago that banned lead in children's toys ended up causing all sorts of problems for the youth ATV and dirt bike producers because of the lead acid batteries in them. There was a story in the local paper about this when it went into effect as Minnesota is home to Arctic Cat, and Polaris which made vehicles that were caught by this ban.
You could just double lace them. Besides is learning how to tie a proper square knot that difficult. I do it two times every day.
They weren't trying to feed 1.21GW to the rear tires, 1.21GW was needed to power the flux capacitor.
Beat me to it. Rope skills are still useful but it seems many have no idea what one would do with rope other than tie things together. I have friends who have had the sliders break on the end of the rope on their tent and not know what to do. The funniest rope story I have was when I went to the hardware store to purchase some rope pulleys and hooks so I could construct a block and tackle to pull an engine and transmission out of a vehicle. I went and asked the high school clerk where the stuff for a block and tackle was and I got a perplexed look. I then asked where the rope and pulleys were and he showed me to the isle. I then got what I needed and was asked by the clerk what I was going to be doing with all of that and when I told him he didn't believe me that it was possible that one would be able to rig up something using a few pulleys, rope, and hooks that would allow someone to lift an engine and transmission out of a car with one arm.
Why?
Times change, technology changes, and skills change.
My ten-year-old nephew can't tell time on an analog clock, either.
So my 3 year old can tell time on an analog clock, sounds like your nephew might be a bit slow.
I don't know how to use a slide rule.
These were ancient when I was in school but I was curious and managed to figure it out without much difficulty on my own. Also I am proficient with the old style vernier calipers
My father doesn't know how to make an obsidian hand-axe.
Again I know how to do this. I actually learned it in boy scouts as part of some merit badge (it was one of the few Native American themed ones) and flint-knapping was part of the requirements to get it.
And that is the problem most places don't give a shit unless it costs them money. Even the banks don't and then when there is a problem they don't do anything about it. Add to the mix that law enforcement doesn't seem to care about these "small" crimes and the system will never fix its self. Personally I don't see why more people aren't brought up on interstate wire fraud charges as that seems to be the best place and way to charge these people.
A few months ago probably some stupid kid went and used my wife's credit card number to purchase some xbox live or PSN stuff (don't remember which one) even though she hadn't used this card yet (it was a new one) so it was probably someone who just guessed a valid number. The bank didn't want to reverse the transactions at first and eventually we got them to. Being the vindictive ass hole I am I decided that I would try and exact some legal revenge by trying to get the individual brought up on interstate wire fraud charges (it was a couple thousand dollars of charges over about 2 weeks) and provided all of the evidence we had to the FBI and never heard back.
I don't think that was what was implied but police auctions are a great way for departments to raise money. If you know what you are looking at you can find some good deals, much like pawn shops.
Just wait until those same numbnuts find out about diamond tip industrial cutting tools, or diamond abrasives.
It sells the illusion of "success" - work hard, and you too can be rich! Except that's a fucking lie too...unless you are lucky, or brilliant, or a right-place-right-time scenario, you will languish in the working class for the rest of your life
I would hardly call my self lucky or brilliant and when it comes to being in the right place at the right time I don't seem to be able to do either. I know maybe my parents were rich, no wait that wasn't it my family was dirt poor as a child. Maybe I had good parents, no I don't think it was that given my dad is an alcoholic and my mother worked swing shift at a hardware store and they got divorced when I was young. Yet despite this I am doing fairly well in this regulated capitalist society, I put my self through school, worked hard to get good grades, worked my ass off to get a job, and now have a good job where I am in the top 10% of wage earners, will have my house paid off in the next 10 years, and save a good portion of my money.
Now granted I won't ever be rich like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, but I do plan to retire a multimillionaire preferably in my early 50s when I still have time to enjoy life. There really isn't anything special I did, maybe the only thing I really had going for me is I didn't want to live like either of my parents which was either beyond their means(my mom and step dad) or like a hillbilly redneck (my dad and step mom). I was the first person in my family to go to college (I was the oldest by a lot) and now most in my generation have. The little secrete no one has told you is that you don't have to have everything now, I don't drive a new car. The newest vehicle I have ever owned was 8 years old at the time of purchase and only had 79,000 miles on it. I paid cash for it and it ran great until it got hit 4 and a half years ago. Except for my house I have paid cash for everything (actually just ran it all through the credit card and paid it off at the end of the month) as I can build good credit and get the "rewards" for using the card.
Tell me, seriously, which system would you prefer? One where everyone wins, or one where 1% of the population wins?
You need to define wins. I see an awful lot of people who are in their current situation because they made some really poor choices and with the recent collapse they found themselves in a really bad situation of their own creating. For example I know someone who use to work at the Ford plant up in St. Paul that made the Rangers. They got laid off as they are winding down that plant and will close it shortly. There has been talk for years of closing that plant and this person lived high on the hog while employed but never bothered to seek out additional training, or develop new skills even when it became clear the plant was closing. Now they are screwed and can't find a job as there aren't any auto industry manufacturing jobs in the twin cities any more. Another example would be my step father, he was the last US COBOL programmer at his company until they got rid of his position 4 years ago. He never bothered to develop new skill or even stay current with the industry. Between him and my mom they made well over 100k (this was in the late 90s when I was trying to get financial aid for college and didn't get it) a year and spent probably 20% more than that each year. My mom quit working in the early 90s and now they have cars they can't afford, and a giant ass house they can't afford. But thing were great when my step dad was working, new car every 5 years, professional lawn service, a time share and so on. Or if that isn't enough how about my sister who though it would be a good idea 4 years ago to get a house with an interest only loan at some stupid low rate that is coming due next year. Her and her husband only make 40k combined, but again they have newer vehicles than I do, and a bigger house. So tell me why should everyone win when there seems to be an awfully large portion of people who make really poor choices and then want me to pay for their piss poor choices.
Then where are the other 4. I have read it a number of time, along with a large swath of Marx and Engles' other writings. After I finished reading those I realized that current western Europe was much closer to Marx's ideal than China or the old USSR ever was. Apart from the "From each according to their ability to each according to their need" that is so often misused and misapplied the other main point is the need for individual ownership of the means of production which we don't have.
This was even discussed in the "Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith which was published in 1776.
I believe what you are looking for is called rampant incompetence. With this new hire Sony will be able to show what true ineptness looks like while making all the fraud and corruption in D.C. look like child's play.
The best deer avoidance system I have been able to come up with is a valid hunting license and a rifle or shotgun. During deer season you won't see them, but once the season closes they are thick as thieves. On a more serious note I have seen some semi trucks with what appears to be deer catchers on the front attached to the bumpers.
Those would be overkill. Besides I wouldn't want to lug one of those around when something that shoots some 7.62x39 or 7.62x54r is much lighter and much lower cost. At the ranges to receive a lethal dosage either of these rounds would be just as effective as a .50 BMG and cost a lot less. Granted you lose the ability to shoot through the engine block, but I doubt the x ray machine is any where near as solid, and the occupants sure aren't.
Working off that idea it seems that they could do even better. Using real numbers, currently Dominos is offering 2 medium 2 toppings pizzas for $5.99 each. So for 21 billion dollars they could provide (at retail price) about 3,500,000,000 pizzas. No according to the US National Debt Clock people there are an estimated 13,823,423*people currently officially unemployed, so for each officially unemployed person could receive about 253 medium pizzas. If we use the real number of unemployed people which is listed as an estimated 24,553,586* then each person would receive about 142 pizzas. Going one step further if we used the total estimated US population of 312,116,629* each person would receive about 11 pizzas.
* These values are the estimated values provided by www.usdebtclock.org at the time of this writing.
Even green, moldy, stale cheese would be more appetizing than the offal they are pushing.
I thought that was just ground up melted plastic milk jugs on top of some cardboard.
So your one of those who think Big Oil is just sitting on a carburetor that would let a land yacht like an early 70s Cadillac Fleetwood with the 500 c.i.d. engine get 100 mpg (or 2 to 5x that much). Or are you one of those people who believe in the water powered car?
Either way you are wrong (a link to my blog where I cover the magic carburetor you seem to believe in). Truth is energy companies don't care what you use as your source of energy so long as you buy stuff from them.
My only concern would then be with rationing, since this now would become like the water system, and there are some cities where water usage is rationed even though surrounding cities don't. For example Rosemount has even/odd day watering bans, but right next door in Apple Valley they don't. Both cities pump their water out of the ground probably from the same aquifer but yet one city will let you water your lawn ever day if you wanted to while the other won't.
I would be all for usage taxes, I would love to see things like state parks be funded only with the revenue they bring in, I would love to see conservation officers and hunting and fishing areas supported through license fees. I would even like to see roads paid for with a gas tax (or a mileage tax that doesn't involve sticking a GPS in your car) that covers all of the road repair and building paid for by all and not exempt certain vehicles owned by various individuals (buses). I would even argue that with modern GIS technology people should pay different property tax rates based off the number of incidents (fires, police calls, etc) in a given area since they are using more of these government services than others. There are probably other areas as well that this could be applied to but those are the ones I think would probably be the most workable.
The 70s people have been repeating that story since the 40s. Also don't forget it isn't just 100 mpg but 100 mpg in something like a Cadillac Fleetwood with the 8.2 liter engine (500 c.i.) or some other land yacht while doing 100 MPH on the freeway from LA to Vegas.
You have never been to Minneapolis I take it. We get lots of sun but it is usually bitterly cold or hot and muggy. November and April are the only moths that we don't get lots of sun
Personally I have always thought we should just skip the find some magic bacteria step and do something like the Fischer-Tropsch process or a Thermal Depolymerization process. This way we don't even need to go through the steps of making simple sugars and then making ethanol out of those. But hey I guess bio gasoline isn't sexy like alcohol or other exotic fuels. For the thermal depolymerization we could even use pandas as feed stock
Well you could detect most weapons with something like a metal detector but my confidence in the TSA's ability to do anything is limited. I have sent a coat through the x-ray machine and they have missed rifle rounds and shotgun shell numerous times. Granted I had forgotten that they were in there, but I thought these people were suppose to be trained professionals. And it wasn't I forgot one in there but lots of ammo, one time I threw away almost an entire box (18 or 19 rounds) of 7.62x54r since I forgot the box in the inner coat pocket, on another occasion I threw away 10 or so shotgun shells that made it through security.
If they actually thought about their procedures then they would have to come to one of 2 conslusions:
1. Any security they put in place will be ineffective and let through threads there for should be limited to truly dangerous things like knives, and guns (easy to pick out with a metal detector)
2. Any security they put in place will be ineffective and let through threats there for to be secure we shouldn't allow people to fly.
Personally if I wanted to bring down an airplane I would have a "laptop" but instead have it made out of compressed thermite (you can probably get some binders that wouldn't affect the burn rate that much) with an ignitor built in. Then when at altitude just let er burn. If I wanted to kill a bunch of people I would just go and fill a rolling carry-on suitcase with high explosives and ball bearings and then go get in line at an airport and detonate it when I was standing in the long ass security line on a heavy travel day.