I'll give you that one, actually both -- whataboutism and not really germane to the topic of the original submission. I shouldn't have let myself be set off by a stupid AC comment in the first place, which is down to -1 now, I see.
History lessons for those not around to remember: After the mass pardons by G H Bush of all the Reagan Iran-Contra criminals in '92, Republicans have no grounds to criticize any pardons done by Democrats. And it was Republican Gerald Ford who pardoned his Republican predecessor in '74 even before charges were brought, "a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9,1974." The Republicans have been far more shameless in using the pardon to clear their cronies of crimes committed while in actual government positions. By the way, the Attorney General at the time who advised Bush on the Iran-Contra pardons was our current AG, William Barr, handpicked by Trump to take over the Justice Department now...
Your comment is insightful, as modded. However, I'd answer by saying that everything in the real world is on a spectrum and unless you want to exist all the way on the end of the spectrum (which is often an argument to absurdity) then you have to draw a line somewhere. The line is going to be somewhat arbitrary and will somewhat conform to "community standards". If you don't like it then don't live in that community or stay and try to push the standards your way (not being an a-hole there, just realistic). The way to not change community standards is to insist on 100% purity and extremes in everything. Instead, push for realistic changes and push the line a little at a time -- that's how many good social changes have occurred. And for those firebrands out there who say they should have whatever they want, whenever they want -- the "community" can push back a lot harder than you can if provoked enough.
Actually 1 is neither prime nor composite by some deep mathematical definitions which go beyond the integers -- they go into the structure of algebraic rings which are generalizations of the integers. If you allow 1 (a unit) to be prime then you break some properties and theorems which everyone generally accepts in the algebra of the integers. The most well known such property is that of unique factorization -- any natural number is factored uniquely into prime factors. If you let 1 be prime then the prime factorization of a composite number can have any number of factors of 1 in it.
The deeper definition of a prime (from my old abstract algebra book) is, "In the Euclidean ring R a nonunit p is said to be a prime element of R if whenever p = ab, where a, b are in R, then one of a or b is a unit in R."
And there is a king which gives the definitive definition -- it is the accepted body of mathematical definitions by the world's mathematical community. There are sometimes differing definitions of a term, but those differences are usually well spelled out in any discussions. You can choose not to accept the definitions as the professionals in the field use them but then don't claim your definition is as good or useful as that of the pros.
I hope you aren't being snarky back to the AC (who deserves it) so I don't subsequently look like a moron in what follows, but on the off chance you aren't... The exhaust from a piston engine consists of high pressure, very hot bursts of gas at the exhaust ports. Hot, high pressure, and bursty going into relatively cool outside air -- perfect combination to create a lot of sound. Exhaust manifolds and mufflers combine and smooth out the exhaust bursts to create a smoother flowing, more uniform in time exhaust flow resulting in less noise. There are all kinds of pressure and flow reflections in a good exhaust system to help scavenge the exhaust gases during the exhaust stroke and reduce noise. Even a smooth flow is loud if it is fast and hot enough -- as exemplified by jet engine exhaust, which (I think) makes its noise from turbulent mixing in itself and with the outside air.
Actually, the countries in Europe who have the most recent direct experience with Russia/USSR (and have borders with Russia) very much do want the Americans to stay and increase their local presence. Just last year Poland made a direct request for a US base on its territory. https://www.euractiv.com/secti... and https://www.npr.org/2018/11/22...
True until 1996. At that time Berkshire Hathaway issued Class B shares which subsequently split and currently trade for $199 per share. They trade like any other similarly priced shares and have voting rights in Berkshire Hathaway like the original Class A shares but at a smaller ratio (logically). https://www.investopedia.com/a...
"went back to having the state legislatures appoint the senators" No, unless they fix the gerrymandering in almost every state first. The nice thing about popular election of Senators is that the state legislature can't directly gerrymander the whole state. The state legislatures are NOT answerable to the state's voters, because of the gerrymandering. -- they are more answerable to the power brokers behind the state government, not even close to the same thing.
Here's the truth about Georgetown (I live nearby so caught the local news about it):
"City Manager David Morgan said the power cost adjustment increase is because they leaned on forecasts back in 2012 and 2013 that predicted a shortage of power and a significant rise in energy prices. "Ultimately, we selected wind and solar because we could lock in at competitive prices long-term,” Morgan said. Morgan said the cost increase has nothing to do with the renewable energy sources. "The reality is if we would have had those similar kinds of contracts, but they were with gas or coal. And we priced those out, we took bids from different types of energy sources. If we had those same types of contracts, we'd be in the same position today,” Morgan said."
Yeah, at a workplace I was in we used beam expanders just after the laser output optic which made the beam wider in the near field but tightened up the far field divergence of the beam for better performance at distance. And we used astigmatic lenses to circularize the elliptical beams from diode lasers. We used beam profilers to see how the beam was shaped at various distances -- once it got away from the near field it looked like a constant angular divergence to me. If people are interpreting "inverse square law" as isotropic spreading of radiation from a source (like a star or ideal light bulb) then a laser isn't that, but if "inverse square law" is interpreted to mean "twice the distance = one quarter the power density" then that's how the lasers I've worked with seem to behave, and as I read the theory that's pretty close to the mathematical description of a gaussian laser beam in the far field.
If you are trying to imply that lasers don't exhibit the inverse square law in the relation of area power density with distance you are wrong. Lasers do propagate power via the inverse square law once you get past near field effects (same as any antenna), that's why laser beamwidths are spec'ed in milliradians, the angular extent of the beam. Constant angular extent = inverse square law power density. The reason lasers get a reputation for tight power propagation is because they can be produced with very small beamwidths to begin with. That all applies to propagation in a vacuum or a medium which doesn't interact with the laser light, but once you get into mediums which actually interact with the light (to attempt some sort of self-focusing) you start to deal with scattering and losses to heating the medium, too; one reason why the megawatt laser weapons envisioned in the past haven't been fielded.
You've got it. I've worked in the subject field and I've been to Thwaites Glacier. I don't even get into these discussions any more. If asked my opinion, I just say, "I wouldn't buy any land in Florida that I'd intend to pass down to my grandkids."
"spam in a can" (Apollo-Saturn) put the Skylab space station into orbit with its attached Apollo Telescope Mount in 1973, 17 years (and many billions of development dollars) before the Space Shuttle launched Hubble. There is no reason why Apollo Saturn technology couldn't have produced a Hubble-like observatory, at overall considerably less systems cost.
I didn't say that Texas is anti-clean energy, I said that those Texas wind farms wouldn't have been built without lucrative encouragement from the Feds. Without getting into a further discussion of the issues, I'll say that my credentials to comment on Texas are pretty strong -- born here, raised here, two university degrees obtained here, 40+ years of living here, family tree which goes back to the Texas revolution; I've seen Texas and live it every day. Its got pockets of enlightenment, sure, and those pockets are getting larger, but as long as guys like Gov Greg Abbott and Lt Gov Dan Patrick keep getting elected statewide you can't say that TX isn't backwards on almost all social issues.
Those wind farms in Texas aren't there due to some rugged, individualistic, pull yourself up by your bootstraps get'er done Texan ethos. They are there because some Texas businessmen found a stream of money in the Federal budget. So perhaps they weren't exactly told how to generate power, but were sure encouraged by Federal dollars.
Without looking up some details, here are a couple of answers. The "P" means it is a periodic comet - one of the relatively few which have had an orbit determined. Comets originate way out on the edge of the solar system and many of them discovered have never been seen before and when they return to way out there, never will be again. The periodic comets have had their orbit perturbed by a planet at some time in the past and are in much smaller orbits with periods measured in tens of years (maybe hundreds) instead of tens of thousands. This comet 46P/Wirtanen has a relatively short orbital period of 5.4 years. The "46" means it is the 46th comet to have been assigned by the astronomical community as periodic. Discovered in 1948 and it is only the 46th determined periodic comet -- shows there are not many of them. The first assigned periodic comet is Halley's comet, now designated, 1P/Halley.
Not exactly by McCarthy directly but people with the same outlook and tactics (and access to the FBI) hounded Robert Oppenheimer out of government service during that time for "disloyalty". No reasonable person would say Oppenheimer wasn't innocent.
Other factors you didn't list (at least for the USA):
1) The rise of 2 earner households provided the means for a bidding war for some goods -- real estate and housing for example, which disadvantages 1 earner households so much that the mere rise of the 2 earner households made the necessity of a 2 earner household almost self-fulfilling.
2) Related to your last item, but not exactly the same - Many items which were luxuries or non-existent 50 years ago are considered necessities now -- examples, air conditioning in houses and cars, travel by air, and of course personal computers, Internet. However this is somewhat lessened because many of these (air travel) are fantastically cheap compared to the past. Gasoline at $2+ per gallon is about the same after inflation. Average houses are considerably larger than they used to be.
3) Health care -- much more expensive than it used to be, but also much more effective, and to some extent the populace is driving the costs up through their own obesity "epidemic" related to cheap sugar and meat available now, which both were relatively more expensive 50 years ago. And related to #2, many ailments we just lived with in the past (crooked or missing teeth, for example) are considered necessities to fix nowadays.
4) Longer lives (related to #3 above) are driving up retirement costs. And older people are much more expensive to keep healthy (or just alive, from watching my relatives) so a positive feedback to #3.
Government regulation has likely been a net reduction in costs or neutral at least. Government used to regulate air travel, rail transport, and trucking much more than they do now. The government break up of AT&T led to an immediate increase in competition in communications services and hardware. Back in the AT&T days residential customers had to lease their phones from the company.
I'd like to see what it would cost to live now what a middle class lifestyle was in the 60's, but the differences are large enough that it would be difficult to calculate.
Not pure EVs but I've got two 12 year old hybrid vehicles (2006 Toyota Highlander Hybrid and 2006 Lexus RX400H) and their batteries are still going strong. And these are practically first generation electric hybrids so you'd think the batteries have gotten better since then.
I too have been working on ICE vehicles most of my life, starting with a string of 60's musclecars in the 70's. I enjoyed the simple brute power of nicely tuned big block V8s blocks then, and I appreciate the technical elegance (and drivability) of the computer controlled ICE engines of today. I have pulled the engine in my front wheel drive car to replace the transmission input shaft seal so I can do that. But as I am pondering whether it is worth it to do a computer upgrade tune, including new MAP sensors, to my fun little turbo 4 banger to get another 50 horsepower (that I really don't need) I see a Tesla Model 3 pass me on the road and know that there is nothing practical I can do to my ICE engine which will match that.
I'd like to explore your statement that "money represents value". True generally, but the relationship is very non-linear and in an economy like that of the US with the monopolists, rent-seekers, regulatory capture, and other distortions of the real relationship between money and value it is hard to say that taking some money from some who have amassed a lot of it is really creating a deficit on the side of the value creators. An old example but a good one -- HP could have found someone who would run the value of the company into the ground for a lot less than they paid Carly Fiorina -- what value did she add? Same goes for a lot of the financial shenanigans going on in the oligarchies which the big corporations have created around the world. In many cases money is paid for no or negative value, especially if you measure "value" by some sort of, admittedly poorly defined, positive outcome for society as a whole. So, like dealing with many externalities, the economy as we currently have is not necessarily doing a good job of rewarding value with money and may need some influence to improve that, such as the government creating a UBI paid for with taxes on the high money earners.
Though I'm good with your general sentiment, " really just wish both would fuck right off," I think the use of the term "peculiar.." may be more nuanced in this case. I can see two related nuances: 1) Bringing in a scholarly term from another field adds a bit of education and interest to an essay (though from the response on/. it backfired for this audience). 2) If you get down to it, the people who get all upset about using the terms "master" and "slave" in software descriptions (or "male" and "female" for electrical connectors) are generally the people who are only concerned about the history of slavery in the US and give a pass to all the other historical slaving cultures. So in this case the reference only to slavery in the US is accurate. I don't know that you would have to be immersed in thinking about slavery to recognize this term. It is a little obscure but not way beyond the Shakespeare or biblical allusions that all educated persons in this country should aspire to know of. All those folks above eagerly trying to educate us about how other cultures had slaves, too, should be familiar enough with the subject to recognize this term before providing their own lectures on the world history of slavery.
This probably violates some written or unwritten/. rule, but I'm going to repeat a reply I made to someone else since your point is the same as theirs. You aren't interpreting "America's peculiar institution" as the historians who use it professionally do. The reference to slavery as America's "Peculiar Institution" is a term which goes back deep into the 19th century and isn't meant to imply that slavery is peculiar (as in "unique") to America but that slavery in the US was peculiar in the "different from other institutions" sense. It seems to have been coined by by the Southern pro-slavery politician John C Calhoun in 1837. A quick reference: "PECULIAR INSTITUTION was a euphemistic term that white southerners used for slavery. John C. Calhoun defended the "peculiar labor" of the South in 1828 and the "peculiar domestick institution" in 1830. The term came into general use in the 1830s when the abolitionist followers of William Lloyd Garrison began to attack slavery. Its implicit message was that slavery in the U.S. South was different from the very harsh slave systems existing in other countries and that southern slavery had no impact on those living in northern states." -- from https://www.encyclopedia.com/h... [encyclopedia.com]. The term is seen fairly commonly in scholarly works, including this book from 1956, "The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South" by Kenneth M. Stampp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peculiar_Institution).
I'm not a historian but... The reference to slavery as America's "Peculiar Institution" is a term which goes back deep into the 19th century and isn't meant to imply that slavery is peculiar (as in "unique") to America but that slavery in the US was peculiar in the "different from other institutions" sense. It seems to have been coined by by the Southern pro-slavery politician John C Calhoun in 1837. A quick reference: "PECULIAR INSTITUTION was a euphemistic term that white southerners used for slavery. John C. Calhoun defended the "peculiar labor" of the South in 1828 and the "peculiar domestick institution" in 1830. The term came into general use in the 1830s when the abolitionist followers of William Lloyd Garrison began to attack slavery. Its implicit message was that slavery in the U.S. South was different from the very harsh slave systems existing in other countries and that southern slavery had no impact on those living in northern states." -- from https://www.encyclopedia.com/h.... The term is seen fairly commonly in scholarly works, including this book from 1956, "The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South" by Kenneth M. Stampp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peculiar_Institution).
Slashdot Mirror
I'll give you that one, actually both -- whataboutism and not really germane to the topic of the original submission. I shouldn't have let myself be set off by a stupid AC comment in the first place, which is down to -1 now, I see.
History lessons for those not around to remember:
After the mass pardons by G H Bush of all the Reagan Iran-Contra criminals in '92, Republicans have no grounds to criticize any pardons done by Democrats.
And it was Republican Gerald Ford who pardoned his Republican predecessor in '74 even before charges were brought, "a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9,1974."
The Republicans have been far more shameless in using the pardon to clear their cronies of crimes committed while in actual government positions.
By the way, the Attorney General at the time who advised Bush on the Iran-Contra pardons was our current AG, William Barr, handpicked by Trump to take over the Justice Department now...
Your comment is insightful, as modded. However, I'd answer by saying that everything in the real world is on a spectrum and unless you want to exist all the way on the end of the spectrum (which is often an argument to absurdity) then you have to draw a line somewhere. The line is going to be somewhat arbitrary and will somewhat conform to "community standards". If you don't like it then don't live in that community or stay and try to push the standards your way (not being an a-hole there, just realistic). The way to not change community standards is to insist on 100% purity and extremes in everything. Instead, push for realistic changes and push the line a little at a time -- that's how many good social changes have occurred. And for those firebrands out there who say they should have whatever they want, whenever they want -- the "community" can push back a lot harder than you can if provoked enough.
Actually 1 is neither prime nor composite by some deep mathematical definitions which go beyond the integers -- they go into the structure of algebraic rings which are generalizations of the integers. If you allow 1 (a unit) to be prime then you break some properties and theorems which everyone generally accepts in the algebra of the integers. The most well known such property is that of unique factorization -- any natural number is factored uniquely into prime factors. If you let 1 be prime then the prime factorization of a composite number can have any number of factors of 1 in it.
The deeper definition of a prime (from my old abstract algebra book) is, "In the Euclidean ring R a nonunit p is said to be a prime element of R if whenever p = ab, where a, b are in R, then one of a or b is a unit in R."
And there is a king which gives the definitive definition -- it is the accepted body of mathematical definitions by the world's mathematical community. There are sometimes differing definitions of a term, but those differences are usually well spelled out in any discussions. You can choose not to accept the definitions as the professionals in the field use them but then don't claim your definition is as good or useful as that of the pros.
I hope you aren't being snarky back to the AC (who deserves it) so I don't subsequently look like a moron in what follows, but on the off chance you aren't... The exhaust from a piston engine consists of high pressure, very hot bursts of gas at the exhaust ports. Hot, high pressure, and bursty going into relatively cool outside air -- perfect combination to create a lot of sound. Exhaust manifolds and mufflers combine and smooth out the exhaust bursts to create a smoother flowing, more uniform in time exhaust flow resulting in less noise. There are all kinds of pressure and flow reflections in a good exhaust system to help scavenge the exhaust gases during the exhaust stroke and reduce noise. Even a smooth flow is loud if it is fast and hot enough -- as exemplified by jet engine exhaust, which (I think) makes its noise from turbulent mixing in itself and with the outside air.
Actually, the countries in Europe who have the most recent direct experience with Russia/USSR (and have borders with Russia) very much do want the Americans to stay and increase their local presence. Just last year Poland made a direct request for a US base on its territory.
https://www.euractiv.com/secti...
and
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/22...
True until 1996. At that time Berkshire Hathaway issued Class B shares which subsequently split and currently trade for $199 per share. They trade like any other similarly priced shares and have voting rights in Berkshire Hathaway like the original Class A shares but at a smaller ratio (logically).
https://www.investopedia.com/a...
"went back to having the state legislatures appoint the senators" No, unless they fix the gerrymandering in almost every state first. The nice thing about popular election of Senators is that the state legislature can't directly gerrymander the whole state. The state legislatures are NOT answerable to the state's voters, because of the gerrymandering. -- they are more answerable to the power brokers behind the state government, not even close to the same thing.
Here's the truth about Georgetown (I live nearby so caught the local news about it):
"City Manager David Morgan said the power cost adjustment increase is because they leaned on forecasts back in 2012 and 2013 that predicted a shortage of power and a significant rise in energy prices.
"Ultimately, we selected wind and solar because we could lock in at competitive prices long-term,” Morgan said.
Morgan said the cost increase has nothing to do with the renewable energy sources.
"The reality is if we would have had those similar kinds of contracts, but they were with gas or coal. And we priced those out, we took bids from different types of energy sources. If we had those same types of contracts, we'd be in the same position today,” Morgan said."
https://www.kvue.com/article/m...
Yeah, at a workplace I was in we used beam expanders just after the laser output optic which made the beam wider in the near field but tightened up the far field divergence of the beam for better performance at distance. And we used astigmatic lenses to circularize the elliptical beams from diode lasers. We used beam profilers to see how the beam was shaped at various distances -- once it got away from the near field it looked like a constant angular divergence to me. If people are interpreting "inverse square law" as isotropic spreading of radiation from a source (like a star or ideal light bulb) then a laser isn't that, but if "inverse square law" is interpreted to mean "twice the distance = one quarter the power density" then that's how the lasers I've worked with seem to behave, and as I read the theory that's pretty close to the mathematical description of a gaussian laser beam in the far field.
P.S. If you weren't trying to imply that lasers don't exhibit the inverse square law then I apologize for pedantically pointing it out.
If you are trying to imply that lasers don't exhibit the inverse square law in the relation of area power density with distance you are wrong. Lasers do propagate power via the inverse square law once you get past near field effects (same as any antenna), that's why laser beamwidths are spec'ed in milliradians, the angular extent of the beam. Constant angular extent = inverse square law power density. The reason lasers get a reputation for tight power propagation is because they can be produced with very small beamwidths to begin with. That all applies to propagation in a vacuum or a medium which doesn't interact with the laser light, but once you get into mediums which actually interact with the light (to attempt some sort of self-focusing) you start to deal with scattering and losses to heating the medium, too; one reason why the megawatt laser weapons envisioned in the past haven't been fielded.
You've got it. I've worked in the subject field and I've been to Thwaites Glacier. I don't even get into these discussions any more. If asked my opinion, I just say, "I wouldn't buy any land in Florida that I'd intend to pass down to my grandkids."
"spam in a can" (Apollo-Saturn) put the Skylab space station into orbit with its attached Apollo Telescope Mount in 1973, 17 years (and many billions of development dollars) before the Space Shuttle launched Hubble. There is no reason why Apollo Saturn technology couldn't have produced a Hubble-like observatory, at overall considerably less systems cost.
I didn't say that Texas is anti-clean energy, I said that those Texas wind farms wouldn't have been built without lucrative encouragement from the Feds. Without getting into a further discussion of the issues, I'll say that my credentials to comment on Texas are pretty strong -- born here, raised here, two university degrees obtained here, 40+ years of living here, family tree which goes back to the Texas revolution; I've seen Texas and live it every day. Its got pockets of enlightenment, sure, and those pockets are getting larger, but as long as guys like Gov Greg Abbott and Lt Gov Dan Patrick keep getting elected statewide you can't say that TX isn't backwards on almost all social issues.
Those wind farms in Texas aren't there due to some rugged, individualistic, pull yourself up by your bootstraps get'er done Texan ethos. They are there because some Texas businessmen found a stream of money in the Federal budget. So perhaps they weren't exactly told how to generate power, but were sure encouraged by Federal dollars.
"Federal Alternative Energy Subsidies’ Expiration Date Causes ‘Wind Rush’ in Texas", https://www.texasstandard.org/...
and from 2013, so a little dated:
"Texas Ranks #1 for Federal Wind Subsidies", https://www.texaspolicy.com/te...
Without looking up some details, here are a couple of answers. The "P" means it is a periodic comet - one of the relatively few which have had an orbit determined. Comets originate way out on the edge of the solar system and many of them discovered have never been seen before and when they return to way out there, never will be again. The periodic comets have had their orbit perturbed by a planet at some time in the past and are in much smaller orbits with periods measured in tens of years (maybe hundreds) instead of tens of thousands. This comet 46P/Wirtanen has a relatively short orbital period of 5.4 years. The "46" means it is the 46th comet to have been assigned by the astronomical community as periodic. Discovered in 1948 and it is only the 46th determined periodic comet -- shows there are not many of them. The first assigned periodic comet is Halley's comet, now designated, 1P/Halley.
Not exactly by McCarthy directly but people with the same outlook and tactics (and access to the FBI) hounded Robert Oppenheimer out of government service during that time for "disloyalty". No reasonable person would say Oppenheimer wasn't innocent.
Other factors you didn't list (at least for the USA):
1) The rise of 2 earner households provided the means for a bidding war for some goods -- real estate and housing for example, which disadvantages 1 earner households so much that the mere rise of the 2 earner households made the necessity of a 2 earner household almost self-fulfilling.
2) Related to your last item, but not exactly the same - Many items which were luxuries or non-existent 50 years ago are considered necessities now -- examples, air conditioning in houses and cars, travel by air, and of course personal computers, Internet. However this is somewhat lessened because many of these (air travel) are fantastically cheap compared to the past. Gasoline at $2+ per gallon is about the same after inflation. Average houses are considerably larger than they used to be.
3) Health care -- much more expensive than it used to be, but also much more effective, and to some extent the populace is driving the costs up through their own obesity "epidemic" related to cheap sugar and meat available now, which both were relatively more expensive 50 years ago. And related to #2, many ailments we just lived with in the past (crooked or missing teeth, for example) are considered necessities to fix nowadays.
4) Longer lives (related to #3 above) are driving up retirement costs. And older people are much more expensive to keep healthy (or just alive, from watching my relatives) so a positive feedback to #3.
Government regulation has likely been a net reduction in costs or neutral at least. Government used to regulate air travel, rail transport, and trucking much more than they do now. The government break up of AT&T led to an immediate increase in competition in communications services and hardware. Back in the AT&T days residential customers had to lease their phones from the company.
I'd like to see what it would cost to live now what a middle class lifestyle was in the 60's, but the differences are large enough that it would be difficult to calculate.
Not pure EVs but I've got two 12 year old hybrid vehicles (2006 Toyota Highlander Hybrid and 2006 Lexus RX400H) and their batteries are still going strong. And these are practically first generation electric hybrids so you'd think the batteries have gotten better since then.
I too have been working on ICE vehicles most of my life, starting with a string of 60's musclecars in the 70's. I enjoyed the simple brute power of nicely tuned big block V8s blocks then, and I appreciate the technical elegance (and drivability) of the computer controlled ICE engines of today. I have pulled the engine in my front wheel drive car to replace the transmission input shaft seal so I can do that. But as I am pondering whether it is worth it to do a computer upgrade tune, including new MAP sensors, to my fun little turbo 4 banger to get another 50 horsepower (that I really don't need) I see a Tesla Model 3 pass me on the road and know that there is nothing practical I can do to my ICE engine which will match that.
I'd like to explore your statement that "money represents value". True generally, but the relationship is very non-linear and in an economy like that of the US with the monopolists, rent-seekers, regulatory capture, and other distortions of the real relationship between money and value it is hard to say that taking some money from some who have amassed a lot of it is really creating a deficit on the side of the value creators. An old example but a good one -- HP could have found someone who would run the value of the company into the ground for a lot less than they paid Carly Fiorina -- what value did she add? Same goes for a lot of the financial shenanigans going on in the oligarchies which the big corporations have created around the world. In many cases money is paid for no or negative value, especially if you measure "value" by some sort of, admittedly poorly defined, positive outcome for society as a whole. So, like dealing with many externalities, the economy as we currently have is not necessarily doing a good job of rewarding value with money and may need some influence to improve that, such as the government creating a UBI paid for with taxes on the high money earners.
Though I'm good with your general sentiment, " really just wish both would fuck right off," I think the use of the term "peculiar.." may be more nuanced in this case. I can see two related nuances: /. it backfired for this audience).
1) Bringing in a scholarly term from another field adds a bit of education and interest to an essay (though from the response on
2) If you get down to it, the people who get all upset about using the terms "master" and "slave" in software descriptions (or "male" and "female" for electrical connectors) are generally the people who are only concerned about the history of slavery in the US and give a pass to all the other historical slaving cultures. So in this case the reference only to slavery in the US is accurate.
I don't know that you would have to be immersed in thinking about slavery to recognize this term. It is a little obscure but not way beyond the Shakespeare or biblical allusions that all educated persons in this country should aspire to know of. All those folks above eagerly trying to educate us about how other cultures had slaves, too, should be familiar enough with the subject to recognize this term before providing their own lectures on the world history of slavery.
This probably violates some written or unwritten /. rule, but I'm going to repeat a reply I made to someone else since your point is the same as theirs. You aren't interpreting "America's peculiar institution" as the historians who use it professionally do.
The reference to slavery as America's "Peculiar Institution" is a term which goes back deep into the 19th century and isn't meant to imply that slavery is peculiar (as in "unique") to America but that slavery in the US was peculiar in the "different from other institutions" sense. It seems to have been coined by by the Southern pro-slavery politician John C Calhoun in 1837. A quick reference:
"PECULIAR INSTITUTION was a euphemistic term that white southerners used for slavery. John C. Calhoun defended the "peculiar labor" of the South in 1828 and the "peculiar domestick institution" in 1830. The term came into general use in the 1830s when the abolitionist followers of William Lloyd Garrison began to attack slavery. Its implicit message was that slavery in the U.S. South was different from the very harsh slave systems existing in other countries and that southern slavery had no impact on those living in northern states." -- from https://www.encyclopedia.com/h... [encyclopedia.com].
The term is seen fairly commonly in scholarly works, including this book from 1956, "The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South" by Kenneth M. Stampp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peculiar_Institution).
I'm not a historian but ... The reference to slavery as America's "Peculiar Institution" is a term which goes back deep into the 19th century and isn't meant to imply that slavery is peculiar (as in "unique") to America but that slavery in the US was peculiar in the "different from other institutions" sense. It seems to have been coined by by the Southern pro-slavery politician John C Calhoun in 1837. A quick reference:
"PECULIAR INSTITUTION was a euphemistic term that white southerners used for slavery. John C. Calhoun defended the "peculiar labor" of the South in 1828 and the "peculiar domestick institution" in 1830. The term came into general use in the 1830s when the abolitionist followers of William Lloyd Garrison began to attack slavery. Its implicit message was that slavery in the U.S. South was different from the very harsh slave systems existing in other countries and that southern slavery had no impact on those living in northern states." -- from https://www.encyclopedia.com/h....
The term is seen fairly commonly in scholarly works, including this book from 1956, "The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South" by Kenneth M. Stampp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peculiar_Institution).