The Democratic Party leader in the senate knew about the interrogation techniques used.
got rid of habeas corpus,
Democrats also voted for the PATRIOT act. Prominent democrats (such as Hilary Clinton) also supported the Iraq war.
Liberals haven't even made the slightest move to take away your guns,
Liberals are excellent at taking away property. Since the Democrats controlled congress (2006) there have been many bailouts costing the tax payer billions of dollars (e.g. Bank bailout, auto bailout, etcâ¦).
Since the poster is talking about Britain, the Liberals fucked up pretty bad there too. A good example is going into the war in Iraq.
Lexmark (formerly Mordor Printing Company) makes the shitest most crap products in the world. It is almost as if they want to screw up the environment and drive people to suicide with their crap inkjet printers.
HP btw makes fairly good inkjet printers - much better than the crap Lexmark pull.
if they absolutely must have a diaper to change or a college tuition to pay, do it for some poor parentless soul out there that truly needs it *now*.
Why should I be forced to raise another person's children when I breed responsibly? It is sad that a child doesn't have parents to raise them - but the person at fault is that child's parents.
One of the problems is protection. I donâ(TM)t think that AIDS has the level of research simply because some countries ignore patents. This is pretty fucked up â" developing new AIDS drugs (and doing clinical trials) is extremely expensive, and then some countries want generic manufacturers to just copy the drugs without paying any royalties. Q: What is the sane solution for pharma companies? A: Stop development of AIDS drugs.
This problem is not just confined the ARVs â" there is a huge need for newer TB medicines (because of the occurrence of MDR and XDR TB). Yet these companies do not have an incentive to develop because their patents are going to be ignored.
Another problem is the market â" people are willing to pay a hell of a lot of money to give them boners â" yet they expect everything else to be done for free.
As for academic research â" some countries do not do their share. One hospital in the USA (M.D. Anderson cancer center) spends more on cancer research than the whole of Canada.
There is also another fuckup â" the approval of medicines. Some critical medicines are approved by the USAâ(TM)s FDA (which have fairly strict requirements) and then in other countries (with high prevalence of the disease) the medicine control councils take 18 months+ to approve the medicines. This process unnecessarily delays the time a product can enter the market and the cost to pharma companies (which is passed on to the consumer).
I think we can point a lot of fingers in the Pharma industry â" but the biggest finger should not point at the default punching bag (Pharma companies) but at governments.
Patens do not really say something about the efficacy of it. So it in most probability does not work. The fact that it is from a second tier university also does not inspire confidence. There are also a lot of patents that are granted but will be removed on re-evaluation.
Too bad big pharma is pure evil.
I doubt that it is fair to say that âoebig pharma is evilâ. A lot of people work on it to improve peopleâ(TM)s lives. Of course there are people making money out of it â" but is it wrong? What is worse â" someone who makes money by healing people or a person who makes money out of computer games?
The problem is that we are overpaying our teachers.
That is the problem with unions. If there is only one employer (the state) strong unions can lobby parties to give them more money (if I recall correctly, unions donated quite a bit to the Obama campaign). Luckily the USA is not as bad as France.
A good model is to pay top performing teachers and teachers in scarce subject areas (math and science) more than other teachers. Teachers should also be evaluated (a good model is the school inspector). Unfortunately teachers resist all of the good measures in favour of more money.
(Say what you will about Castro, he dose not let anyone else mistreat Cubans.)
Dude, really? Castro rents Cuban doctors out to 3rd world countries and does not allow them to keep their salary (the Cuban government takes the biggest cut) - so het is basically a slave trader. He also keeps their family in Cuba to ensure that they do not defect to other countries.
Unlike what the left in the USA likes to believe, Castro is a dictatorial prick - and not a benevolent dictator.
It's why we have the worst cellular service outside of Nigeria and why banks and credit card companies still run Washington.
Uhm... Nigeria's cellular service sucks. Most of the towers have to be run with generators because there is no reliable electricity. There is a reason it is popular in Nigeria though: because there is no good fixed line network (the USA has one).
The USA is also at another disadvantage when it comes to cellular telephones. You built a cellphone network when cellphones were still bleeding edge. The GSM system that is used in the rest of the world only came later (after they learned from the errors of the USA).
Everything that is installed in Nigeria was tried and tested in first world countries for at least a couple of years.
and why banks and credit card companies still run Washington.
Banks are evil and corrupt in the rest of the world too. European banks fucked up just as bad as American banks... And lets not even compare anything with Nigerian banks...
The only free markets are also fair markets. And if you think what we have today is a fair market, you need to pass the bong. Government is the only entity that has the ability to groom a competitive marketplace.
The "Fair market" thing usually refers to the condition that labourers in 3rd world countries producing things for the USA gets paid the minimum salary than Americans get paid. This is just a smart form of protectionist.
What we have today is what happens when government stops doing that job for 10 years.
Don't you think that the governments did a little too much (starting war wise and interest rate wise)?
Inefficient government programs are the truism, not necessarily the reality.
It is always almost a reality.
But the fact you ignore is that without government, without a referee to control the game,
Should the government be a referee in the market or a player in the market? Or should it be a referee and a player in the market?
Should the game be played without an outcome (i.e. everyone wins no matter what you do)?
But, mixed markets do at least approach the ideals of the vast majority of people.
Hmm... This has to do with the concept of justice. If two wolves and a sheep form a government and the 2 wolves wants to eat the sheep, doesn't that government satisfy the ideals of the vast majority of people?
On a different note though. Have you noticed that most âoemixed economiesâ have a GDP per capita that is $100,000 less than that of the USA? Would any who wants that put up $10,000 a year to get that?
Hmm... You cannot say that Somalia has no government. It has very strong âoelocal governmentâ (i.e. warlordism). Half the place is under Sharia law and the other half is under warlords. You cannot say that in a place where Sharia law is strictly enforced âoethere is no governmentâ.
In undeveloped countries it often happens that local dictators gain more power than national dictators. This does not mean that a warlord is not a dictator though.
So this whole comparison is one giant strawman. I can say the same to you: if you want a big government and free healthcare, you can move to Cuba or North Korea.
If someone in the company did something criminal then those persons involved are criminally persecuted. The same with directors: if they did something criminal they are criminally prosecuted.
A good (but extreme) example is the directors of Sanlu. The company added melamine to baby milk formula to âoeincreaseâ the protein content. The director of Sanlu (Tian Wenhua) and three executives was sentenced to life imprisonment. Two other people were sentenced to death.
The USA works on the exact same principles (only with less harsh penalties).
The HIV anti-viral bottles say nothing about preventing or not preventing infection.
If ARVs are given within 72 to hours (the sooner the better) from exposure to HIV can successfully prevent an HIV infection. This is known as post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-exposure_prophylaxis).
This is usually given in cases of rape or a needle prick or blood spatter to the eye (the last is very dangerous).
and nursing
For interest sake, the South African government provides free milk formula to any HIV positive mother (to prevent this).
You are talking about a continent where fuck twads A.K.A. Anit-vaccines and woo crowd, have the governments convinced
That is not really the case. The biggest problem is opposition to ARVs and the support of controversial AIDS drugs. A few examples are [virodene](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virodene) (basically an industrial solvent) or [garlic and beetroot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manto_Tshabalala-Msimang). Some people (e.g. Thabo Mbeki) even questions the link between HIV and AIDS.
Hell some places spread the lies that condoms are a western evil.
This is true. This and the belief that having sex with a virgin/baby will cure you of AIDS.
Many Islam areas in Africa claims it's all the woman's fault. Of course, they also won't let the women do anything about it, like use a condom.
In many Islamic countries the number of people with AIDS actually decrease. This is probably due to the enforced strict morality. The biggest problem is the patriarchal society â" a woman cannot refuse a husband sex and the completely loose moral standards (multiple partners, no fidelity).
One of my family members recently started teaching at a government school. The discipline at that school is completely broken â" it is basically a completely dysfunctional school. The country in which I live is experiencing a complete meltdown in its secondary schooling system. Just to keep the current (1:40) teacher ratio at the same level, 40 000 additional teachers should be trained more per year (this is not happening). The discipline is shocking (you would not believe the stories) but the few teachers that want to improve it are powerless to do anything.
Now I'm lucky to have wonderful students (one of the top universities in the world),
I never had a problem teaching at a university. Most people are there to study and classes are voluntary. The amount of school fees that they pay also tend to be an important incentive for them to pass. So there is not really discipline problems.
I've seen an excellent comedy sketch by a black South African comparing punishments. He said that the usual middle class punishments would not work. If your mom said: "go to your room" you just tell her that you are in your room (shacks are often only one room).
I doubt that sending a kid to his room (with TV and a PC as many Americans apparently have) will be a really effective punishment.
Nope, it is not that. Most people are not "trapped" by their teacher at all.
This parental relationship thing shows in the workplace too. An employee from a poor background (i.e. grew up without a father) will form a paternal relationship with his employer.
I suspect that this happens with strict teachers mostly because they show an interest in the child's life. In most of these people's lives they do not have a father and their parents are also apathetic to their existence. A lot of people gets passed on to their grand parents to raise them and alcoholism is the norm. As soon as a teacher shows discipline and an interest in whether they fail or succeed they will form a strong bond with them.
On a different note: One of my friend's father was a teacher at an extreme rural school. He was extremely disciplined in his classroom (homework not done: spanking, failed a test: spanking). He got an 80% distinction rate for Biology in a rural âoefarmâ school which is completely unheard of. That distinction would probably be the biggest accomplishment in most those kids' life and may at least help some of them to get ahead in life. That is way better than 99.99% of the apathetic teachers out there.
Some of his students even come and ask him for career advice 8-10 years after they finished studying and he is very popular among his ex-students.
Not only did she practice collective punishment for the actions of a single student,
Collective punishment is a bad thing. But in a large way teachers are forced to do this because they are backed into a corner. There is simply no way to punish a problem child â" the best thing you can do is to phone their parents. But the sad fact is that the parents did not raise the child with discipline and that is why it is the teachers' problem.
Some teachers try to do the collective punishment so that the other kids resent the guilty kid. This is extremely bad and it can completely alienate an already problemed child.
In my experience children usually form strong relationships with a strict but fair teacher. They quickly see a strict teacher as a father figure. Maybe this is just in my country where most people often grow up without a father figure.
I wonder what kinds of things I might have accomplished later in life if I hadn't had the joy of studying drained out of me at that age.
The right way is to have negative reinforcement at the very bottom and positive reinforcement above that. It is sad when I see people who screwed up their life and limited their opportunities just because they couldn't be bothered to do their homework.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that Barrack H. Obama doesn't sound good. George W. Bush sounded good.
tortured
The Democratic Party leader in the senate knew about the interrogation techniques used.
got rid of habeas corpus,
Democrats also voted for the PATRIOT act. Prominent democrats (such as Hilary Clinton) also supported the Iraq war.
Liberals haven't even made the slightest move to take away your guns,
Liberals are excellent at taking away property. Since the Democrats controlled congress (2006) there have been many bailouts costing the tax payer billions of dollars (e.g. Bank bailout, auto bailout, etcâ¦).
Since the poster is talking about Britain, the Liberals fucked up pretty bad there too. A good example is going into the war in Iraq.
Lexmark (formerly Mordor Printing Company) makes the shitest most crap products in the world. It is almost as if they want to screw up the environment and drive people to suicide with their crap inkjet printers.
HP btw makes fairly good inkjet printers - much better than the crap Lexmark pull.
if they absolutely must have a diaper to change or a college tuition to pay, do it for some poor parentless soul out there that truly needs it *now*.
Why should I be forced to raise another person's children when I breed responsibly? It is sad that a child doesn't have parents to raise them - but the person at fault is that child's parents.
One of the problems is protection. I donâ(TM)t think that AIDS has the level of research simply because some countries ignore patents. This is pretty fucked up â" developing new AIDS drugs (and doing clinical trials) is extremely expensive, and then some countries want generic manufacturers to just copy the drugs without paying any royalties. Q: What is the sane solution for pharma companies? A: Stop development of AIDS drugs.
/offtopic rant
This problem is not just confined the ARVs â" there is a huge need for newer TB medicines (because of the occurrence of MDR and XDR TB). Yet these companies do not have an incentive to develop because their patents are going to be ignored.
Another problem is the market â" people are willing to pay a hell of a lot of money to give them boners â" yet they expect everything else to be done for free.
As for academic research â" some countries do not do their share. One hospital in the USA (M.D. Anderson cancer center) spends more on cancer research than the whole of Canada.
There is also another fuckup â" the approval of medicines. Some critical medicines are approved by the USAâ(TM)s FDA (which have fairly strict requirements) and then in other countries (with high prevalence of the disease) the medicine control councils take 18 months+ to approve the medicines. This process unnecessarily delays the time a product can enter the market and the cost to pharma companies (which is passed on to the consumer).
I think we can point a lot of fingers in the Pharma industry â" but the biggest finger should not point at the default punching bag (Pharma companies) but at governments.
Hmmm...
Patens do not really say something about the efficacy of it. So it in most probability does not work. The fact that it is from a second tier university also does not inspire confidence. There are also a lot of patents that are granted but will be removed on re-evaluation.
Too bad big pharma is pure evil.
I doubt that it is fair to say that âoebig pharma is evilâ. A lot of people work on it to improve peopleâ(TM)s lives. Of course there are people making money out of it â" but is it wrong? What is worse â" someone who makes money by healing people or a person who makes money out of computer games?
"Eastern Europe") focus on mathematics and hard science, it's just that, from what I see, athletes/etc. are put on a smaller pedestal
Dude, I would happily put up Eastern European gymnasts on a pedestal.
The problem is that we are overpaying our teachers.
That is the problem with unions. If there is only one employer (the state) strong unions can lobby parties to give them more money (if I recall correctly, unions donated quite a bit to the Obama campaign). Luckily the USA is not as bad as France.
A good model is to pay top performing teachers and teachers in scarce subject areas (math and science) more than other teachers. Teachers should also be evaluated (a good model is the school inspector). Unfortunately teachers resist all of the good measures in favour of more money.
I completely agree with you. Learning to build billion dollar fire-y death traps like the space station is invaluable to the modern market economy.
Well, on the other hand.... 'merican pilots land planes on rivers. So they are clearly more awesome than European pilots.
(Say what you will about Castro, he dose not let anyone else mistreat Cubans.)
Dude, really? Castro rents Cuban doctors out to 3rd world countries and does not allow them to keep their salary (the Cuban government takes the biggest cut) - so het is basically a slave trader. He also keeps their family in Cuba to ensure that they do not defect to other countries.
Unlike what the left in the USA likes to believe, Castro is a dictatorial prick - and not a benevolent dictator.
It's why we have the worst cellular service outside of Nigeria and why banks and credit card companies still run Washington.
Uhm... Nigeria's cellular service sucks. Most of the towers have to be run with generators because there is no reliable electricity. There is a reason it is popular in Nigeria though: because there is no good fixed line network (the USA has one).
The USA is also at another disadvantage when it comes to cellular telephones. You built a cellphone network when cellphones were still bleeding edge. The GSM system that is used in the rest of the world only came later (after they learned from the errors of the USA).
Everything that is installed in Nigeria was tried and tested in first world countries for at least a couple of years.
and why banks and credit card companies still run Washington.
Banks are evil and corrupt in the rest of the world too. European banks fucked up just as bad as American banks... And lets not even compare anything with Nigerian banks...
The only free markets are also fair markets. And if you think what we have today is a fair market, you need to pass the bong. Government is the only entity that has the ability to groom a competitive marketplace.
The "Fair market" thing usually refers to the condition that labourers in 3rd world countries producing things for the USA gets paid the minimum salary than Americans get paid. This is just a smart form of protectionist.
What we have today is what happens when government stops doing that job for 10 years.
Don't you think that the governments did a little too much (starting war wise and interest rate wise)?
Inefficient government programs are the truism, not necessarily the reality.
It is always almost a reality.
But the fact you ignore is that without government, without a referee to control the game,
Should the government be a referee in the market or a player in the market? Or should it be a referee and a player in the market?
Should the game be played without an outcome (i.e. everyone wins no matter what you do)?
But, mixed markets do at least approach the ideals of the vast majority of people.
Hmm... This has to do with the concept of justice. If two wolves and a sheep form a government and the 2 wolves wants to eat the sheep, doesn't that government satisfy the ideals of the vast majority of people?
On a different note though. Have you noticed that most âoemixed economiesâ have a GDP per capita that is $100,000 less than that of the USA? Would any who wants that put up $10,000 a year to get that?
Hmm... You cannot say that Somalia has no government. It has very strong âoelocal governmentâ (i.e. warlordism). Half the place is under Sharia law and the other half is under warlords. You cannot say that in a place where Sharia law is strictly enforced âoethere is no governmentâ.
In undeveloped countries it often happens that local dictators gain more power than national dictators. This does not mean that a warlord is not a dictator though.
So this whole comparison is one giant strawman. I can say the same to you: if you want a big government and free healthcare, you can move to Cuba or North Korea.
If someone in the company did something criminal then those persons involved are criminally persecuted. The same with directors: if they did something criminal they are criminally prosecuted.
A good (but extreme) example is the directors of Sanlu. The company added melamine to baby milk formula to âoeincreaseâ the protein content. The director of Sanlu (Tian Wenhua) and three executives was sentenced to life imprisonment. Two other people were sentenced to death.
The USA works on the exact same principles (only with less harsh penalties).
A mere 400 years is not enough time for significant evolutionary changes.
You will be surprised how fast evolution happens. A good example is fishermen who threw back small fish and kept larger fish.
Most fishing records will never be repeated â" because fish has become genetically smaller. This can happen in a few years. One fish shrinkage article from many - http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/41407/title/Fish_shrinkage_reversible,_but_better_hurry
But if you are driving to a hospital (or to the aid of a loved one) I can bet that you will speed in any case.
It makes sense to temporarily cause higher risk when someone's life is in danger in any way.
So no, the chances of Word ever replacing TeX, as far as mathematicians and engineers are concerned, is pretty much zero.
You will be surprised. The IEEE (which is arguably the biggest publisher in the engineering field) provides both latex and Word templates.
I know of quite a few people who published papers using Word.
Word is not perfect - but with a few improvements it can be extremely popular. Latex has some few incredibly irritating aspects.
The HIV anti-viral bottles say nothing about preventing or not preventing infection.
If ARVs are given within 72 to hours (the sooner the better) from exposure to HIV can successfully prevent an HIV infection. This is known as post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-exposure_prophylaxis).
This is usually given in cases of rape or a needle prick or blood spatter to the eye (the last is very dangerous).
and nursing
For interest sake, the South African government provides free milk formula to any HIV positive mother (to prevent this).
You are talking about a continent where fuck twads A.K.A. Anit-vaccines and woo crowd, have the governments convinced
That is not really the case. The biggest problem is opposition to ARVs and the support of controversial AIDS drugs. A few examples are [virodene](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virodene) (basically an industrial solvent) or [garlic and beetroot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manto_Tshabalala-Msimang). Some people (e.g. Thabo Mbeki) even questions the link between HIV and AIDS.
Hell some places spread the lies that condoms are a western evil.
This is true. This and the belief that having sex with a virgin/baby will cure you of AIDS.
Many Islam areas in Africa claims it's all the woman's fault. Of course, they also won't let the women do anything about it, like use a condom.
In many Islamic countries the number of people with AIDS actually decrease. This is probably due to the enforced strict morality. The biggest problem is the patriarchal society â" a woman cannot refuse a husband sex and the completely loose moral standards (multiple partners, no fidelity).
One of my family members recently started teaching at a government school. The discipline at that school is completely broken â" it is basically a completely dysfunctional school. The country in which I live is experiencing a complete meltdown in its secondary schooling system. Just to keep the current (1:40) teacher ratio at the same level, 40 000 additional teachers should be trained more per year (this is not happening). The discipline is shocking (you would not believe the stories) but the few teachers that want to improve it are powerless to do anything.
Now I'm lucky to have wonderful students (one of the top universities in the world),
I never had a problem teaching at a university. Most people are there to study and classes are voluntary. The amount of school fees that they pay also tend to be an important incentive for them to pass. So there is not really discipline problems.
Completely unrelated:
I've seen an excellent comedy sketch by a black South African comparing punishments. He said that the usual middle class punishments would not work. If your mom said: "go to your room" you just tell her that you are in your room (shacks are often only one room).
I doubt that sending a kid to his room (with TV and a PC as many Americans apparently have) will be a really effective punishment.
Nope, it is not that. Most people are not "trapped" by their teacher at all.
This parental relationship thing shows in the workplace too. An employee from a poor background (i.e. grew up without a father) will form a paternal relationship with his employer.
I suspect that this happens with strict teachers mostly because they show an interest in the child's life. In most of these people's lives they do not have a father and their parents are also apathetic to their existence. A lot of people gets passed on to their grand parents to raise them and alcoholism is the norm. As soon as a teacher shows discipline and an interest in whether they fail or succeed they will form a strong bond with them.
On a different note: One of my friend's father was a teacher at an extreme rural school. He was extremely disciplined in his classroom (homework not done: spanking, failed a test: spanking). He got an 80% distinction rate for Biology in a rural âoefarmâ school which is completely unheard of. That distinction would probably be the biggest accomplishment in most those kids' life and may at least help some of them to get ahead in life. That is way better than 99.99% of the apathetic teachers out there.
Some of his students even come and ask him for career advice 8-10 years after they finished studying and he is very popular among his ex-students.
RMS is an idiot.
Not only did she practice collective punishment for the actions of a single student,
Collective punishment is a bad thing. But in a large way teachers are forced to do this because they are backed into a corner. There is simply no way to punish a problem child â" the best thing you can do is to phone their parents. But the sad fact is that the parents did not raise the child with discipline and that is why it is the teachers' problem.
Some teachers try to do the collective punishment so that the other kids resent the guilty kid. This is extremely bad and it can completely alienate an already problemed child.
In my experience children usually form strong relationships with a strict but fair teacher. They quickly see a strict teacher as a father figure. Maybe this is just in my country where most people often grow up without a father figure.
I wonder what kinds of things I might have accomplished later in life if I hadn't had the joy of studying drained out of me at that age.
The right way is to have negative reinforcement at the very bottom and positive reinforcement above that. It is sad when I see people who screwed up their life and limited their opportunities just because they couldn't be bothered to do their homework.