The poor don't hold dollars. They hold negative dollars, in the form of debts exceeding their assets. Inflation still hurts them, since prices rise faster than wages and when you're living hand to mouth, you can't afford to have your wages lag price increases. But that's only a problem if inflation is really high, like it was back under Carter. A bit of inflation is a quite nice way to push the wealthy to invest without hurting the poor.
Oh please, if he had come out and immediately called it a terror attack, you'd accuse him of fearmongering in the run-up to an election.
He waited until all the facts were in. That's commendable.
But you know what? Keep banging that drum. Keep trying to get political benefit from the deaths of innocents. While you're at it, keep treating minorities like shit and keep calling rape-babies gifts from god and keep white-knighting for the super-rich. You're just making life easier for the rest of us.
It's fortunate because it's humorous. It's like that time that Biden asked the guy in the wheelchair to stand up and greet the crowd. Momentarily funny, ultimately meaningless.
It's not like anyone's feelings are getting hurt here. The IT guy who posted it goofed, but no one knows or cares who he is. The posting doesn't reflect on Romney at all, and even if it did, so what? His political career is over regardless, and all he's got left is his piles of money, good health, and loving family. Do you really think he cares if people poke fun at one of staffer's slip-ups?
Well that's a very dismissive attitude. You're not arguing with creationists here, so drop the condescension.
The fact is that there is a (relatively) sudden appearance of things we associate with modern thought (e.g. decoration, advanced tools, explosive population and migration) around 50 kya. I say relatively, because we're still talking about a span of tens of thousands of years. Humanity had been nearly exterminated around 70 kya, so it's entirely reasonable to think that those who survived made major evolutionary leaps -- or, put a better way, those who survived did so because of those leaps.
That humans were making tools even before then is not "news". For example, we're pretty sure that fire was first mastered not by Homo sapiens, but by Homo erectus, hundreds of thousands of years before anatomically modern humans even existed. Homo erectus lasted for longer than modern humans have, and at the rate we're going, they'll probably end up having lived for longer on Earth than our species. But they never developed a civilization like ours, despite their million years of existence. It seems evident from that that a species can have advanced toolmaking (e.g. fire) without reaching the level of modern human intelligence.
Why should I care what they wanted? They're dead. I'm alive.
We should respect the Constitution and the rule of law for our own sakes, not out of respect to some people who literally could not care less. And when the Constitution says something like "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed", we need to understand that the writers did not, and could not, imagine such things as nuclear bombs and weaponized anthrax. So yes, we infringe on the people's right to own such things. Would the founding fathers approve of us not following their exact instructions? Maybe, maybe not, but I don't see why we should even care.
Just like they did to McCain. I really wanted McCain as president back in 2000. But when he became the party nominee in '08, the GOP broke him, just like they've done with Mitt.
The GOP needs to ditch the extremists, but I don't see how they've be able to with the insurgent tea partiers dominating their primaries. The inmates are running the asylum.
Here in CA we also had a referendum to reform the three strikes law so that people with minor third offenses don't face life in prison. That has passed by a wide margin.
Obama is leading by 8 points in Nevada and 4 points in Colorado, both with ~75% reporting. Even if he loses Ohio, that's still enough electoral votes to win.
He's also (slightly) ahead in Florida, with almost all of the remaining ballots coming from the Miami-Dade county, where Obama leads by 25 points. So even if he somehow loses Ohio and Colorado, he'd still get enough electoral votes to win.
Even Romney were to win Ohio, there's simply no way for him to win the presidency. The math just doesn't work. I agree the news networks were too quick to call this one, but they got it right all the same.
I don't think an amendment to the Constitution would be necessary. All the Constitution says is that states choose Electors, and the Electors vote on the President. It's up to the states how they pick Electors. In practice, they all have a first-past-the-post popular vote, but an individual state could choose to employ IRV or any other system.
Ideally, one would want a lot of states to get together and agree to all implement IRV together. Already, several states have signed pacts to all assign their electors to the winner of the national popular vote (see here). There's no reason we couldn't use the same approach to pass IRV. It's much easier to pass voting reform this way than it is through a Constitutional amendment.
Of course, the two major parties don't want it, so even with the lower bar it's unlikely to happen.
His plans, according to his own site, are to peg military spending to 4% of GDP (a $200B/yr increase), and slash taxes in a number of ways that add up to $500B/yr. He promises that he will pay for this $700B/yr deficit by closing loopholes, but steadfastly refuses to say which loopholes. He has offered one idea: capping deductions, which isn't a bad plan, but it won't come close to making up that $700B/yr gap.
That's what people are talking about when they complain he won't share the details of the plan. He's happy to give out the good details: cut taxes here, spend money there. But he refuses to talk about how any of that will be paid for. That's worrisome.
Long-term thinking like that doesn't work. If you give up a few presidential cycles working for your twenty year goal, then you'll find that the Overton window has shifted against you, the Supreme Court is stacked with idealogues who'll rule your every move unconstitutional, and the districts are gerrymandered to make taking over Congress impossible.
Like I said before, if you're not in a swing state, then 3rd parties are the way to go, if only to get them federal funding. But if you are in a position where your vote could set the course of the nation for years to come, you'd be a fool to throw that away for some long-term plan that may never come to pass.
It is nothing like asking "Apple or Microsoft?" You, as an individual, can choose Linux, but it's not like you're gonna get to have Johnson or Stein as your own personal president.
Our election system sucks. It's just about the worst way to choose elected officials. It forces all elections to come down to a binary choice. But wishing and dreaming won't fix it. The rules are the rules, and you have to pick the best strategy within them. Insisting on only moving your pawns one square at a time will lead to disaster, no matter how much you may disagree with the double-move rule.
Now, that said, if you're among the 85% of Americans who don't live in a swing state, then your presidential vote doesn't matter so much anyway, so you might as well try to get some extra funding for your third party of choice for the next cycle.
1. Bribe (sorry, contribute to the campaigns of) legislators. 2. Have them pass laws giving you big tax loopholes at the expense of schools and healthcare and whatnot. 3. Save enough money on you tax bills that it exceeds the cost of the brib...er, campaign contributions. 4. Profit!
If you're going to make a claim like that, you might want to spare thirty seconds to check out the actual web sites.
US Site: No picture scaling UK Site: Picture scales to hide the bottom of the page. I had to turn my monitor on its side, making it 1920 pixels tall, in order to get the notice to appear.
I really don't understand how some people think they can get away with such obvious lies on the internet. Do they really think that not a single person will bother to check?
... I have experienced offensive pushing of personal beliefs from atheists much more often than from religious colleagues.
That makes sense because you already share the same beliefs as your "religious colleagues". So why would the "personal beliefs" be "offensive" to you?
I'm not the guy you responded to, but do you really think that there's only one religion in the world? Or that people even entirely agree with whatever religion they self-identify as? I'm (mostly) Catholic, and I've been told by Protestants that I'll go to hell if I don't convert. I'm also offended by the bullshit that flows from the upper echelons of the church whenever they get involved in American politics.
And I have plenty of religious colleagues that never try to push religion on me. They're the Hindus and the Buddhists, and it's quite enjoyable to talk religion with them, because they're always polite about it.
No, the worst are the atheists who insist I must be a moron, while regurgitating philosophic arguments that have been debunked for centuries (which they would know if they ever picked up a book by someone other than Dawkins). And the atheists who insist on tearing down roadside memorials because apparently the mere sight of a cross offends them. And the atheists that rewrite history to blame the Dark Ages and the Holocaust on Christianity. I suppose when you already know everything, there's no need to pick up a history book.
If an atheist is claiming, as they often do, that religious people are all a bunch of idiots, then pointing to a famed religious scientist is absolutely a valid counterpoint.
Whatever you may think of Apple, the fact is that Microsoft's notion of innovation now seems to be "Do what Apple does."
That's not really true at any meaningful level. Sure, they followed Apple into the phone/tablet market, but they're not at all a copy-cat. Apple came up with a field of icons. Android copied that, and added widgets and a status bar. Apple copied those back. Microsoft came along and made something completely unique. Not necessarily better -- I haven't used it -- but definitely unique.
Microsoft also makes a video game console with a unique motion sensor, instead of copying Nintendo the way Sony did. Note that the Kinect isn't necessarily better than the Wiimote, but it's certainly different.
And Microsoft innovated with Bing, adding lots of features that Google has since mimicked: helicopter view in maps, infinite scrolling image search, preview panes on the side, flight searches, etc. Bing isn't better than Google, not by a long shot, but it's certainly not some me-too! copy.
Really, Microsoft comes up with some innovative stuff. I'm not sure why they're floundering. Maybe it's just bad marketing? But it's certainly not for lack of talented people.
if you're opposed to this guy, you must also oppose surveillance cameras.
That doesn't follow. I'm opposed to random strangers pulling me over while I'm driving, but I recognize that cops sometimes need to. I'm opposed to random strangers going through my bags, but it's okay if the TSA scans them for bombs. I'm opposed to creepy fuckers* filming me on the streets, but I have no problem with ATM's having built-in cameras.
*(though not this particular one, since he's just making a political statement)
Intent matters. If you're doing something for the public good, and you show restraint, then that's very different from someone with unknown or unseemly motives. The restraint is important. Going back to my earlier examples, cops pulling people over on fishing expeditions is bad. So is the TSA groping people for... I don't even know what their reasoning is. So is mounting cameras at every street corner.
Things aren't as black and white as you'd like them to be.
We also advise that before ceasing play, users always select "Save and Quit" from within the pause menu while their character is alive. If after the death of their character players find themselves at the main menu of Borderlands 2 instead of respawning in-game, be sure to immediately select "Continue" to resume playing as that character.
The bug only affects the Xbox version, not PS3 or PC.
The developers didn't intentionally leave in that code as a perk to console modders. Why would they reward console modders by letting them force permadeath on other people?
It's a bug, and it's one that can ruin people's fun, so they should be made aware of it. That's it.
Not "everyone above me", and I'm not at all "downtrodden", so please don't put words in my mouth. But if you had any experience dealing with C*O-level employees, and their interwoven boards of directors, you would recognize that they really aren't like normal people. They'll be all smiles and handshakes to a person's face, right up until the "resign or you're fired" conversation comes. Behind the scenes they'll be talking to their allies, trading favors, and getting votes to force out a longtime "friend". Not all of them are like this: some are yes-men, some are Peter-principle beneficiaries trying to cover their asses long enough to build a nest egg, and occasionally you even get a really good manager. It's more like a reality show than any normal human interaction.
Is it possible that Mr. Forstall simply fucked up and needed to be fired? Sure. But I doubt it. The Maps "debacle" was just a funny little meme for a couple weeks, no different from people laughing about autocorrect. Slashdot talked about it a lot, because wars between Apple fanboys and Apple haters are good for the site's revenue. I don't know a single person in the real world who even seemed to care.
Remember that the dehumanized sociopaths running companies are competing against other sociopaths. If a new CEO shows any weakness, the other sociopaths will conspire to oust them. Just as Kim Jong-Un had to purge a bunch of his father's old advisers in order to solidify his grip on North Korea, so too must new CEOs purge a board member or two in order to prove they're the boss.
It's not about what's best for the company. People who genuinely have the company's interests at heart won't be able to compete in that world. When you realize what sort of people these are, and what sort of world they live in, it's utterly unsurprising that their actions make no sense to us. They're practically a different species.
Don't be so quick to dismiss it. I don't know about "morally bankrupt", but if you've ever smelled the air around northern San Jose or Milpitas, you'd readily believe it was toxic.
Slashdot Mirror
The poor don't hold dollars. They hold negative dollars, in the form of debts exceeding their assets. Inflation still hurts them, since prices rise faster than wages and when you're living hand to mouth, you can't afford to have your wages lag price increases. But that's only a problem if inflation is really high, like it was back under Carter. A bit of inflation is a quite nice way to push the wealthy to invest without hurting the poor.
Oh please, if he had come out and immediately called it a terror attack, you'd accuse him of fearmongering in the run-up to an election.
He waited until all the facts were in. That's commendable.
But you know what? Keep banging that drum. Keep trying to get political benefit from the deaths of innocents. While you're at it, keep treating minorities like shit and keep calling rape-babies gifts from god and keep white-knighting for the super-rich. You're just making life easier for the rest of us.
It's fortunate because it's humorous. It's like that time that Biden asked the guy in the wheelchair to stand up and greet the crowd. Momentarily funny, ultimately meaningless.
It's not like anyone's feelings are getting hurt here. The IT guy who posted it goofed, but no one knows or cares who he is. The posting doesn't reflect on Romney at all, and even if it did, so what? His political career is over regardless, and all he's got left is his piles of money, good health, and loving family. Do you really think he cares if people poke fun at one of staffer's slip-ups?
Well that's a very dismissive attitude. You're not arguing with creationists here, so drop the condescension.
The fact is that there is a (relatively) sudden appearance of things we associate with modern thought (e.g. decoration, advanced tools, explosive population and migration) around 50 kya. I say relatively, because we're still talking about a span of tens of thousands of years. Humanity had been nearly exterminated around 70 kya, so it's entirely reasonable to think that those who survived made major evolutionary leaps -- or, put a better way, those who survived did so because of those leaps.
That humans were making tools even before then is not "news". For example, we're pretty sure that fire was first mastered not by Homo sapiens, but by Homo erectus, hundreds of thousands of years before anatomically modern humans even existed. Homo erectus lasted for longer than modern humans have, and at the rate we're going, they'll probably end up having lived for longer on Earth than our species. But they never developed a civilization like ours, despite their million years of existence. It seems evident from that that a species can have advanced toolmaking (e.g. fire) without reaching the level of modern human intelligence.
Why should I care what they wanted? They're dead. I'm alive.
We should respect the Constitution and the rule of law for our own sakes, not out of respect to some people who literally could not care less. And when the Constitution says something like "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed", we need to understand that the writers did not, and could not, imagine such things as nuclear bombs and weaponized anthrax. So yes, we infringe on the people's right to own such things. Would the founding fathers approve of us not following their exact instructions? Maybe, maybe not, but I don't see why we should even care.
Just like they did to McCain. I really wanted McCain as president back in 2000. But when he became the party nominee in '08, the GOP broke him, just like they've done with Mitt.
The GOP needs to ditch the extremists, but I don't see how they've be able to with the insurgent tea partiers dominating their primaries. The inmates are running the asylum.
Here in CA we also had a referendum to reform the three strikes law so that people with minor third offenses don't face life in prison. That has passed by a wide margin.
Obama is leading by 8 points in Nevada and 4 points in Colorado, both with ~75% reporting. Even if he loses Ohio, that's still enough electoral votes to win.
He's also (slightly) ahead in Florida, with almost all of the remaining ballots coming from the Miami-Dade county, where Obama leads by 25 points. So even if he somehow loses Ohio and Colorado, he'd still get enough electoral votes to win.
Even Romney were to win Ohio, there's simply no way for him to win the presidency. The math just doesn't work. I agree the news networks were too quick to call this one, but they got it right all the same.
I don't think an amendment to the Constitution would be necessary. All the Constitution says is that states choose Electors, and the Electors vote on the President. It's up to the states how they pick Electors. In practice, they all have a first-past-the-post popular vote, but an individual state could choose to employ IRV or any other system.
Ideally, one would want a lot of states to get together and agree to all implement IRV together. Already, several states have signed pacts to all assign their electors to the winner of the national popular vote (see here). There's no reason we couldn't use the same approach to pass IRV. It's much easier to pass voting reform this way than it is through a Constitutional amendment.
Of course, the two major parties don't want it, so even with the lower bar it's unlikely to happen.
His plans, according to his own site, are to peg military spending to 4% of GDP (a $200B/yr increase), and slash taxes in a number of ways that add up to $500B/yr. He promises that he will pay for this $700B/yr deficit by closing loopholes, but steadfastly refuses to say which loopholes. He has offered one idea: capping deductions, which isn't a bad plan, but it won't come close to making up that $700B/yr gap.
That's what people are talking about when they complain he won't share the details of the plan. He's happy to give out the good details: cut taxes here, spend money there. But he refuses to talk about how any of that will be paid for. That's worrisome.
Long-term thinking like that doesn't work. If you give up a few presidential cycles working for your twenty year goal, then you'll find that the Overton window has shifted against you, the Supreme Court is stacked with idealogues who'll rule your every move unconstitutional, and the districts are gerrymandered to make taking over Congress impossible.
Like I said before, if you're not in a swing state, then 3rd parties are the way to go, if only to get them federal funding. But if you are in a position where your vote could set the course of the nation for years to come, you'd be a fool to throw that away for some long-term plan that may never come to pass.
It is nothing like asking "Apple or Microsoft?" You, as an individual, can choose Linux, but it's not like you're gonna get to have Johnson or Stein as your own personal president.
Our election system sucks. It's just about the worst way to choose elected officials. It forces all elections to come down to a binary choice. But wishing and dreaming won't fix it. The rules are the rules, and you have to pick the best strategy within them. Insisting on only moving your pawns one square at a time will lead to disaster, no matter how much you may disagree with the double-move rule.
Now, that said, if you're among the 85% of Americans who don't live in a swing state, then your presidential vote doesn't matter so much anyway, so you might as well try to get some extra funding for your third party of choice for the next cycle.
But for those people, the election won't end until Wednesday!
It's legal because they pay for it to be.
1. Bribe (sorry, contribute to the campaigns of) legislators.
2. Have them pass laws giving you big tax loopholes at the expense of schools and healthcare and whatnot.
3. Save enough money on you tax bills that it exceeds the cost of the brib...er, campaign contributions.
4. Profit!
No missing step necessary.
If you're going to make a claim like that, you might want to spare thirty seconds to check out the actual web sites.
US Site: No picture scaling
UK Site: Picture scales to hide the bottom of the page. I had to turn my monitor on its side, making it 1920 pixels tall, in order to get the notice to appear.
I really don't understand how some people think they can get away with such obvious lies on the internet. Do they really think that not a single person will bother to check?
I absolutely agree, but unfortunately not all atheists feel as you do.
That makes sense because you already share the same beliefs as your "religious colleagues". So why would the "personal beliefs" be "offensive" to you?
I'm not the guy you responded to, but do you really think that there's only one religion in the world? Or that people even entirely agree with whatever religion they self-identify as? I'm (mostly) Catholic, and I've been told by Protestants that I'll go to hell if I don't convert. I'm also offended by the bullshit that flows from the upper echelons of the church whenever they get involved in American politics.
And I have plenty of religious colleagues that never try to push religion on me. They're the Hindus and the Buddhists, and it's quite enjoyable to talk religion with them, because they're always polite about it.
No, the worst are the atheists who insist I must be a moron, while regurgitating philosophic arguments that have been debunked for centuries (which they would know if they ever picked up a book by someone other than Dawkins). And the atheists who insist on tearing down roadside memorials because apparently the mere sight of a cross offends them. And the atheists that rewrite history to blame the Dark Ages and the Holocaust on Christianity. I suppose when you already know everything, there's no need to pick up a history book.
If an atheist is claiming, as they often do, that religious people are all a bunch of idiots, then pointing to a famed religious scientist is absolutely a valid counterpoint.
Whatever you may think of Apple, the fact is that Microsoft's notion of innovation now seems to be "Do what Apple does."
That's not really true at any meaningful level. Sure, they followed Apple into the phone/tablet market, but they're not at all a copy-cat. Apple came up with a field of icons. Android copied that, and added widgets and a status bar. Apple copied those back. Microsoft came along and made something completely unique. Not necessarily better -- I haven't used it -- but definitely unique.
Microsoft also makes a video game console with a unique motion sensor, instead of copying Nintendo the way Sony did. Note that the Kinect isn't necessarily better than the Wiimote, but it's certainly different.
And Microsoft innovated with Bing, adding lots of features that Google has since mimicked: helicopter view in maps, infinite scrolling image search, preview panes on the side, flight searches, etc. Bing isn't better than Google, not by a long shot, but it's certainly not some me-too! copy.
Really, Microsoft comes up with some innovative stuff. I'm not sure why they're floundering. Maybe it's just bad marketing? But it's certainly not for lack of talented people.
if you're opposed to this guy, you must also oppose surveillance cameras.
That doesn't follow. I'm opposed to random strangers pulling me over while I'm driving, but I recognize that cops sometimes need to. I'm opposed to random strangers going through my bags, but it's okay if the TSA scans them for bombs. I'm opposed to creepy fuckers* filming me on the streets, but I have no problem with ATM's having built-in cameras.
*(though not this particular one, since he's just making a political statement)
Intent matters. If you're doing something for the public good, and you show restraint, then that's very different from someone with unknown or unseemly motives. The restraint is important. Going back to my earlier examples, cops pulling people over on fishing expeditions is bad. So is the TSA groping people for ... I don't even know what their reasoning is. So is mounting cameras at every street corner.
Things aren't as black and white as you'd like them to be.
How to avoid the bug, from the Gearbox forums:
We also advise that before ceasing play, users always select "Save and Quit" from within the pause menu while their character is alive. If after the death of their character players find themselves at the main menu of Borderlands 2 instead of respawning in-game, be sure to immediately select "Continue" to resume playing as that character.
The bug only affects the Xbox version, not PS3 or PC.
...what? Are you serious?
The developers didn't intentionally leave in that code as a perk to console modders. Why would they reward console modders by letting them force permadeath on other people?
It's a bug, and it's one that can ruin people's fun, so they should be made aware of it. That's it.
Not "everyone above me", and I'm not at all "downtrodden", so please don't put words in my mouth. But if you had any experience dealing with C*O-level employees, and their interwoven boards of directors, you would recognize that they really aren't like normal people. They'll be all smiles and handshakes to a person's face, right up until the "resign or you're fired" conversation comes. Behind the scenes they'll be talking to their allies, trading favors, and getting votes to force out a longtime "friend". Not all of them are like this: some are yes-men, some are Peter-principle beneficiaries trying to cover their asses long enough to build a nest egg, and occasionally you even get a really good manager. It's more like a reality show than any normal human interaction.
Is it possible that Mr. Forstall simply fucked up and needed to be fired? Sure. But I doubt it. The Maps "debacle" was just a funny little meme for a couple weeks, no different from people laughing about autocorrect. Slashdot talked about it a lot, because wars between Apple fanboys and Apple haters are good for the site's revenue. I don't know a single person in the real world who even seemed to care.
Remember that the dehumanized sociopaths running companies are competing against other sociopaths. If a new CEO shows any weakness, the other sociopaths will conspire to oust them. Just as Kim Jong-Un had to purge a bunch of his father's old advisers in order to solidify his grip on North Korea, so too must new CEOs purge a board member or two in order to prove they're the boss.
It's not about what's best for the company. People who genuinely have the company's interests at heart won't be able to compete in that world. When you realize what sort of people these are, and what sort of world they live in, it's utterly unsurprising that their actions make no sense to us. They're practically a different species.
Don't be so quick to dismiss it. I don't know about "morally bankrupt", but if you've ever smelled the air around northern San Jose or Milpitas, you'd readily believe it was toxic.