According to Wikipedia, the US has an active manpower of almost 1.5 million people. When mobilised, It is safe to assume they with training and equipment they can kill at least 5 a day, meaning the epidemic is over in less than a fortnight.
Unfortunately most of those kills per day would be living humans rather than dead zombies.
A lot of people seem to think that the zombie genre is about the zombies. That's the material for the low pulp material like comic books and B-grade gore movies that buy blood in bulk. Oh look at how horrific zombies are! Shock, awe, puke... No, zombies represent man's inhumanity to man. The good stories are about how people react to a crisis. In this case the crisis is zombies. The real monsters are people.
So in a hypothetical zombie apocalypse, the real threat isn't the undead rising up and nibbling on everyone. It's all the other bloody fucking idiots out there who will flip their shit and do something crazy. From looting, to hoarding, to general panic in the streets, to something as simple as not going to work. Which is important when you take care of the nukey-plant or refine the oil which keeps those 1.5 million people with guns moving and active. Think about how stupid/foolish/unreasonable the average person is. Half the population is worse than that. Now give him a gun, make him scared, and you have to trust him enough to go ask him for food. Or worse, you have food and he doesn't. How's that go down?
Some people are rational and calm under stressful scenarios and don't do stupid things. The definition of "stupid" gets turned 180 degrees depending on how bad it all gets. But all those men and guns will be occupied with a desperate attempt at keeping shit from falling apart. And little things like "you are ordered to cull that city" tend to put stress on concept of the chain of command. There's no training that prepares you for that.
I understand how people can live in an echo chamber and suffer from monoculture. And targeted ads and recommended searches and all that jazz can contribute.
But, seriously? Just log out of google. Run your search. If they don't know who you are, you get an unfiltered search.
So we have chimps that are now legally people, but of course we can't just free them as they wouldn't obey any of the laws. (Whoa, I imagine that a lot of white slave owners said something similar... creepy feeling. But no, the chimps actually wouldn't know of or obey any laws and couldn't be taught.) We have to keep them contained, cared for, etc.
They'd be legal people that don't have basic rights, as someone else holds their power of attorney or whateverthefuck it's called. Their caregivers would be the ones to give consent to medical tests, use them in entertainment settings, and control transfer of care (buying and selling the animal). The only difference would be that judges could now smack them down if there is abuse and things aren't done in their best interest. As it's done now for invalids and retards. Oh, and animals as you can't abuse animals. We have laws against that.
But now we have a subset of people that are officially second class citizens. I mean, we always have had this subset of people who can't care for themselves, but now it's far more common and the court system probably won't want to deal with these matters once they're so common. You've managed to lower retards and crazy grandma's to the level of chimps. Congratulations.
And oh so slowly you've started to degrade the rights of humans on the bottom rung.
No, this isn't as simple as it seems on the surface, and I don't think you've looked at it anywhere NEAR deep enough. Look at all the players involved and how they've dealt with similar changes in the past.
I absolutely agree that geek mentality is formed way before kids hit college. And plenty of people are smart enough to pick up coding in their 30's even if they've never touched a compiler.
And yeah, fuck that gender stereotyping. Even that stuff like Goldieblocks, which is an honest effort to fix this sort of problem, falls into the role of assuming girls enjoy playing with pink ribbon.
Come on, Legos is gender neutral. COMPLETELY GENDER NEUTRAL. They are square blocks. As long as you don't fuck up the marketing, or do something balls to the walls crazy like releasing a minifig that looks like Barbie, it's a cakewalk for breaking that gender stereotyping pitfall.
But get this: understanding the problem with what toys and how they're marketed to children affects the cultural diversity of the various industries is LEAPS AND BOUNDS different then trying to "fix it". Seriously, now that we collectively know what the problem is, what do we do?
Make engineering toys that girls can play with? Good. Done. We do that. There is nothing stopping girls from playing with Legos and trebuchets. Market engineering toys to girls? Good. Done. We do that. As long as you don't market exclusively to boys, anything marketed to children fits the bill. Make and market engineering toys which are exclusive to girls? Uhhhhh.... That's a little weird, but yeah, there's a bit of that. I guess it pushes back against those gender sterotypes. Like scholarships for women. It's sexist affirmative action, but it's for the underdog so it's ok. Encourage parents to buy toys which break gender stereotypes? hmmmm... That's a bit like trying to steer culture. Some people try to do this. Force parents to buy engineering toys for their girls? Whoa there. That sounds evil. Fine schools that don't have a 50/50 gender split in their coding class? Evil. You're attacking a segment of society that isn't even at fault here*. Rip the doll from the crying girls hands and flog her until she solves soduku puzzles? Nope, stop, you've gone way overboard into evil-ville.
*You know, probably. Hey, there could be that weird CS professor that kicks girls out of his class. Fire that guy. But that doesn't appear to be the problem here.
There's a nature vs nurture debate about which girls will go into engineering and which won't, and if there is anything we can do about that. I dunno the answer. Encouraging the potential engineers to be engineers is a good thing because we need engineers. But once you start telling parents how they ought to raise their children it gets a little wonky. And once you hit the point where you try to raise the children against the wishes of the parent, or start forcing the parents to raise their children a certain way, the end-state better be on DAMN solid ground. I mean, we force parents to raise their kids not to be murderous thieving cretins. Anyone who does do so is held liable for said cretins. Forcing girls to be raised like they're geeks, when they are not, is probably a bad idea.
No it's really not. We're disagreeing about the definition of sexism and discrimination.
If someone. sabotages your career, denies you a job, or pushes you away from a field of study, because of your sex, that's discrimination. If they tell little jane that she shouldn't code and should play with dolls instead, that's sexism. Bad stuff. But you're doing more than fighting sexism. You're overshooting. You want more than just a level playing field. Or maybe you just didn't read my post and think that I actually stated that fighting sexism is fascism.
Culture is not the sort of thing you should be trying to control. Those social expectations, and cultural norms. That sort of old tradition that's ingrained into our culture even though we rationally know perfectly well that women are for more than making babies. Trying to control people on a cultural level, yes, that's got an evil edge to it. Trying to control people on a legal level is typically called enforcing the law. And fighting to get those laws in place is a good thing. And it was mighty hard because of the culture of sexism. Anti-discrimination laws? Good. Trying to make the old white slave-owners love the freed slaves? That simply isn't going to happen. And the more you try, the deeper ingrained that sentiment gets. It's like the fight over evolution. Darwin has a great idea here. Trying to "fix" the other side through force or argument isn't going to get you anywhere. Simply be better. Be correct. And their arguments will fade. Culture has a shit-ton of inertial. Steering it is a slow process. Give it time. Be a quality female software engineer and prove those fuckers wrong. And in the mean time, don't get your panties in a twist.
And this isn't really directed at you, but to everyone else that gave me grief for being attracted to geek girls; I married a materials engineer. I got her involved in roguelikes and D&D while she got me into anime. Now she games more than I do and beat me to the orb of Zot and I'm pissed that nothing is ever explained about Titans. I have no idea why being attracted to smart women is considered as contributing to sexism. If you think you have ANY hope of keeping people from being attracted to certain subsets of humanity, your goals are laughably impossible.
But... Are there any social inequalities when it comes to female software engineers? Is the man somehow keeping chicks out of coding classes? Is the ol' boys club not allowing cooties to spoil their source?
You're looking at the end result and and claiming that there must be social inequality that lead to it. I understand this line of reasoning when it comes to the military, corporate CEO positions, and professional sports. They have a history of barring or diminishing women.
But engineering? Software engineering? Dude, during my time in academia I saw them bend over BACKWARDS to get girls into their program. Between the scholarships, special clubs, awareness programs, and general reports like this that stated more women needed to go be geeks. Even culturally, we geeks LOVE geek girls. It's a thing.
Now, it might be some sort of culturally imbued sexism. The sort that diverts men from being grade-school teachers and women from being truckers. There are plenty of counter-examples, but they're a minority. But it's not so much social inequality, so much as latent social norms and expectations. Breaking them doesn't get you burnt at the stake, but it might raise some eyebrows.
If you want to stop the NFL from being assholes to women, or to break that glass ceiling when it comes to corporate CEO positions, I'm all for that and you have my full support. But if you want to shape culture so that there's no stigma with being a male nurse or a female software engineer, that's getting a little close to the sort of fascism that demands we think a certain way. Your way. Sorry, but you just can't steer culture like that.
But hey, we need more female software engineers, because we need more software engineers. So I'm down with this sort of effort. But the lack of chicks around here has very little to do with social inequality. So don't get your panties in a twist.
The culture clash of progressives vs religious fundamentalists is already here dude. And they're christian. See the post about texans fighting evolution in the classroom. (Although, hey, maybe you're European)
Now then. "Our" progressive social democracy isn't reproducing at the replacement rate. Our survival relies indoctrinating others.
"Your" survival is doomed. You're going to grow old and die and the next generation won't like your music and won't do things like you want them to. You'll call them whippersnappers and you'll yell at them to get off your lawn.
Correspondingly, the forces of acid-face burning and honor killings are reproducing rapidly.
And the witch-burning, commie-hunting forces are angry about that. Tough shit. (Really dude, this is bordering on racism, just stop. There's no way that 3rd-world culture is going to come and dominate our 1st-world culture. Relax)
Some of the best and brightest of our social democracy (affluent technocratic geeks) are giving up on our social democracy. Call this mutiny near the top of the stack.
I'm in that crowd of "best and brightest", I'm an affluent technocratic geek. I'm not giving up on out society. I believe in democracy. Call it being rational. Also, a few pseudo-intellectuals making cheap claims that alternate forms of government would work a lot better than what we have now isn't anywhere near a new predicament. And wanting to exert control over how you're governed isn't anything new. That goes for the rich and wealthy to the working man to the down & out poor.
Really, this is all just routine stuff. You're fear-mongering over nothing.
Well, actually no, you're missing the part where E-Coli DOESN'T have the innate ability to eat citrus (er, citrate, not citrus). The strains in the lab evolved that ability. We have observed major evolution in action.
But really, you're on Slashdot making bad arguments against evolution. You're either woefully delusional, or you're simply trolling the pro-evolution crowd to get a cheap laugh.
Oh hey, so you're a burnt-out cynical asshat. That's great. Hey, at least you're not longer backing the GOP. Anarchist though? wow. Anarchy last as long as it takes someone to stand up and "ok, so here's what we're going to do". Some people will follow and BAM you've got government. It's a void, a vacume, that attracts anything and everything to fill it's place. It's unsustainable.
There's a strain of people, lets call them "technocrats", who are probably very smart, and believe that if only they were in charge, they could make things better.
Well that goes to show that they're not that smart now doesn't it? Also "strain" makes it sound like a disease or something you pass on to your kids. It's really not. But everyone likes to play armchair quarterbacking, back-seat driving, and pretends they'd make the trains run on time if they were king for a day.
Some percentage of the voting public is clearly dumber than I am, and clearly unable to manage their own affairs and well-being appropriately. So a rude question emerges: Should people who cannot manage their own lives get any role in managing mine? (e.g., a "vote")?
"Dumber" is a difficult metric. "unable to manage their own affairs and well-being" applies to anyone with any problem whatsoever while "unable to manage their own affairs and well-being appropriately" is the sort of subjective weasel-word that lets fascists decree what books you should and shouldn't read.
But hey, I get the sentiment. If you were to suggest something along the lines of "those who sign up for welfare/foodstamps/disability should lose the right to vote" then you might have a case you could argue for. I mean, if enough people start living on the dole, and they get to vote about how much the dole hands out, things will fall apart pretty quickly, now won't it?
That's a difficult discussion, but it's not one you're really making. You're just stating the nebulous, "people stupider than me shouldn't vote". And that's the elitist sort of asshatery that would make the proles rise up against you and why the young up-and-coming bold business types with a lot of moxie can't all leave society to form their own better society under the ocean. Once you do that, half the population is once against below average. Bell curves are a bitch.
It's worth pointing out that the fastest growing socio-cultural group is socially conservative Islam.
It's really not worth point out. I mean, I guess it's helpful for letting us know that you're a racist/religious asshat on top of your other flavors of crazy, but it really wasn't part of the discussion.
No, democracy works pretty well for keeping things from getting too out of control. In the US, I'd say we need to be more democratic, with less of this two-party nonsense leading everyone by the nose.
Long story short: We've reproduced meaningful evolution changes. Suck it, "contrarians".
See also: Panda's thumb, whales with vestigial hip-bones, and equines splitting into horses and donkies. If the addition and lost of appendages isn't enough for you, then specification really should be. (That's where one species splits into two different ones that can no longer inter-breed) .
(p.s. you just made up "contrarian" didn't you? I like it.)
You think that "republic" means a system of representatives. Yeah, I had that social studies teacher too. But it doesn't. It just means any government system that doesn't have a king. You know how a lot of political conflicts develop two sides, and you're either pro-skub or anti-skub? Well back in the day one of those issues was whether or not to have a king. And the term "republic" was made.
The big-name founders were, one and all, pro-democracy, and pro-republic. And they made a democratic republic.
If you want to say "Well that's not enough", I've got to point out that it will NEVER be enough for a portion of humanity. Because, you know, we kill and eat these animals. These people will continue to complain until we simply do not have food animals. And that's just not a likely scenario.
. . . Wut? The cattle get sick from eating corn in feedlots. There's nothing wrong with cows eating corn. And where it's convenient, ranchers let their cattle peruse the post-harvest fields to get any cobs that were missed.
No, it's the feedlots. Where they pack a whole hell of a lot of cows into a pretty cramped area so they don't move around as much. It makes the calories they are fed (via corn) turn into fat rather than burning away. Plus corn has a lot more calories than grass. They put on weight and we get more meat out of them. Tasty delicious meat.
But putting that many animals that close to each other is where diseases thrive. Hence, the use of antibiotics.
Switching to grass (or more specifically, hay) wouldn't help if they're still in a feedlot.
But the solution that you're parroting from wiser and better informed people is GRAZING the cows until they're ready for slaughter. "Free-range". As in, let them wander over fields until they're old enough for slaughter. And skipping the feedlot that puts on the weight. This results in meat that tastes a little different, doesn't get at much meat out of the cow, and takes more land. If everyone did this, yes, meat prices would rise and crop prices would fall. Ranch land would become more valuable, but probably not enough to replace crops for cows.
Yeah, btw, "ranch-land" is any area that isn't desert or mountain, but isn't valuable enough to warrant growing crops. It's not rolling green fields of grass you're imagining.
An alternative is to simply fatten up the cows on the ranch with corn. Which essentially breaks up the feedlots into smaller batches and puts that portion of the work back on the ranchers birthing and raising the cows. That's more labor and probably some other costs I'm missing cause I'm a city-slicker and not actually a farmer or rancher. But I live in Iowa and you just sorta pick this stuff up.
*FREAKS THE FUCK OUT* OHJESUSCHRISTWHATTHEFUckman are you trying to give me a heart attack?
Awwww crap, I had 7 threads from 3 tickets, the spec, the SRD, and the SDD weaving in my head into something something that was going to go into production code. Can't remember what it was now... Whelp, that's about 2 hours lost and 2 hours I'll have to spend diving into this clusfterfuck again.
The flavor of anarchist you're describing sounds like a prepper. These are usually individuals. Often part of a family. Sometimes they get their families into it. Rarely do they get together and form a community of like-minded survivalists. But when they do that, it's invariably a compound out in the middle of nowhere. Because they're not bloody stupid: in a dire situation where you have supplies and no one else does, other people become a liability. But hey, maybe I'm just falling for the stereotype. Go ahead, educate me. Cite some communities of anarchists/preppers/whatever that live in a city (or suburb, or whatever). Also, how exactly do you raise livestock in a city? Or are these "minimally dependent" sort of city-living anarchists vegan?
1) Americans living overseas should be taxed only if they receive benefits from america. ie, if they're still US citizens, can still vote, can still run to the US embasy, and are still under that nebulous cloud of US protection while abroad. Because we will come with the guns and the dogs and the guns that shoot dogs if there's an international incident with our citizens. So to that extent, yes Americans abroad should be, and are, taxed. Federally.
2) Corporations ARE NOT PEOPLE. They consist of people, and people can group together and do whatever the fuck they feel like. But if a corporation decides to kill a man, THE PEOPLE WITHIN the corporation are responsible. There is no concept of where a corporation is born. It's a meaningless detail on a scrap of paper. And they can get a new scrap of paper with a new detail at the drop of a hat.
3) Large international corporations have enough power, cash, and political weight to be considered opponents to the nation. They have risen above the "low justice" that the serfs are held to, and now face "high justice" that the nobles, wealthy, and internationally sovereign players face. Ideally, any business they do abroad is simply none of our business, and any business they do within our borders should taxed. But treating them as what amounts to an agressive foreign power, we should definitely bring out the hammer and play hardball with anyone who tries to dodge out of US taxes.
But all in all, YES, Corporations should pay income tax. And yes, it'd be nice if corporations paid income tax on profit made abroad. In effect, they pay taxes on profit realized abroad and then brought home somehow, but there are a lot of ways around that and accountants earn their wages in corporations.
But no, your idea is shit because it runs with bad assumptions, naieve and arbitrary values, and has a weird fairness clause that doesn't really make sense. Corporations currently don't pay income tax, even when they're all local That's kind of the basis of my original post.
So if a corporation actually loses money in a year, they shouldn't pay any tax?
Why not tax-to-revenue?
I have to have a place to live, stuff to eat, transportation, and all sorts of other little stuff. Cost of living. Yet I'm taxed on my income. All of it.
Corporations have buildings, employee wages, recurring costs. It's all just cost of doing business. And as a business expense, they aren't taxed on it.
If a corporation has a major breakthrough and makes a billion bucks, they can finally sell off some of that crap investment stock (which was really a sweetheart deal to a friend) and report zero profit. Meanwhile, if I work hard and get a bonus, or a second job, or win the lotto, it's taxed at the top rate, and if I make extra payments on the house, or credit card debt, or pay off some medical bills, that's all out of my wallet.
It's not that these are tax cheats, it's that the game has all of it's rules written for, and by, the big corporations. And since they're international, they avoid as much of the game as possible by moving profits overseas.
No, it's not cancelled. We actually just got that newsletter, they aren't raising their rates this year. (But some copay go from 10-15)
It was working well for "the majority"? Well no shit, the majority is HEALTHY. Health insurance doesn't do jack fucking shit for the healthy. It's those unlucky few that have serious medical bills. It's a thankfully rare event. You buy INSURANCE against RARE and COSTLY events.
Want to start your own business? Work freelance? Have to work part-time? Going to college? YOU CAN'T AFFORD HEALTH INSURANCE! If you get sick or hurt, YOU'RE FUCKED!
And the health insurance industry was entirely devoid of the free market. Individuals don't shop around for healthcare, they get what's available through their job. Companies shop around for healthcare, but don't actually give a shit about it other than as a bullet point for hiring people. You can't shop around for emergency healthcare, and the hospitals thankfully can't turn you away. They also can't force you to pay medical bills, so the actual cost gets shuffled off onto those that can pay/have insurance to charge to. And hospitals/doctors/patients are all spending "other people's money", so they don't give a shit about how much things cost. Insurance companies are not in the business of selling insurance, they're in the business of saying "no". Remember "pre-existing conditions"?
Shit is so bad that even middle-class families are getting crushed by medical bills they have no hope of paying. (Those are the upstanding citizens that actually try and pay their bills).
When you compare our system of how we handle this to nearly any other first world nation, it's a laughable clusterfuck. It's been such an obvious major problem that they were making jokes about it on SNL, TWENTY YEARS AGO, and it's gotten progressively worse each year since.
But hey, yeah, it's a fantastic system, if you're healthy or wealthy.
Right, and they have added a tax/duty/impost/excise/fine if you don't buy health insurance, for the general welfare of the united states.
They could also use those taxes to buy all the bloody hospitals and provide healthcare for the general welfare of the united states, but they're not doing that.
Slashdot Mirror
According to Wikipedia, the US has an active manpower of almost 1.5 million people. When mobilised, It is safe to assume they with training and equipment they can kill at least 5 a day, meaning the epidemic is over in less than a fortnight.
Unfortunately most of those kills per day would be living humans rather than dead zombies.
A lot of people seem to think that the zombie genre is about the zombies. That's the material for the low pulp material like comic books and B-grade gore movies that buy blood in bulk. Oh look at how horrific zombies are! Shock, awe, puke... No, zombies represent man's inhumanity to man. The good stories are about how people react to a crisis. In this case the crisis is zombies. The real monsters are people.
So in a hypothetical zombie apocalypse, the real threat isn't the undead rising up and nibbling on everyone. It's all the other bloody fucking idiots out there who will flip their shit and do something crazy. From looting, to hoarding, to general panic in the streets, to something as simple as not going to work. Which is important when you take care of the nukey-plant or refine the oil which keeps those 1.5 million people with guns moving and active. Think about how stupid/foolish/unreasonable the average person is. Half the population is worse than that. Now give him a gun, make him scared, and you have to trust him enough to go ask him for food. Or worse, you have food and he doesn't. How's that go down?
Some people are rational and calm under stressful scenarios and don't do stupid things. The definition of "stupid" gets turned 180 degrees depending on how bad it all gets. But all those men and guns will be occupied with a desperate attempt at keeping shit from falling apart. And little things like "you are ordered to cull that city" tend to put stress on concept of the chain of command. There's no training that prepares you for that.
Seriously, what the hell?
I understand how people can live in an echo chamber and suffer from monoculture. And targeted ads and recommended searches and all that jazz can contribute.
But, seriously? Just log out of google. Run your search. If they don't know who you are, you get an unfiltered search.
Is that so hard?
Nobody else pointed this out? Come on guys.
This is AGILE.
This is what most of us get from pointy-haired bosses in corporations that just heard of this "agile" thing.
Alright, I'll bite.
So we have chimps that are now legally people, but of course we can't just free them as they wouldn't obey any of the laws. (Whoa, I imagine that a lot of white slave owners said something similar... creepy feeling. But no, the chimps actually wouldn't know of or obey any laws and couldn't be taught.) We have to keep them contained, cared for, etc.
They'd be legal people that don't have basic rights, as someone else holds their power of attorney or whateverthefuck it's called. Their caregivers would be the ones to give consent to medical tests, use them in entertainment settings, and control transfer of care (buying and selling the animal). The only difference would be that judges could now smack them down if there is abuse and things aren't done in their best interest. As it's done now for invalids and retards. Oh, and animals as you can't abuse animals. We have laws against that.
But now we have a subset of people that are officially second class citizens. I mean, we always have had this subset of people who can't care for themselves, but now it's far more common and the court system probably won't want to deal with these matters once they're so common. You've managed to lower retards and crazy grandma's to the level of chimps. Congratulations.
And oh so slowly you've started to degrade the rights of humans on the bottom rung.
No, this isn't as simple as it seems on the surface, and I don't think you've looked at it anywhere NEAR deep enough. Look at all the players involved and how they've dealt with similar changes in the past.
That's an SMBC comic. Number 1883 I believe.
I absolutely agree that geek mentality is formed way before kids hit college. And plenty of people are smart enough to pick up coding in their 30's even if they've never touched a compiler.
And yeah, fuck that gender stereotyping. Even that stuff like Goldieblocks, which is an honest effort to fix this sort of problem, falls into the role of assuming girls enjoy playing with pink ribbon.
Come on, Legos is gender neutral. COMPLETELY GENDER NEUTRAL. They are square blocks. As long as you don't fuck up the marketing, or do something balls to the walls crazy like releasing a minifig that looks like Barbie, it's a cakewalk for breaking that gender stereotyping pitfall.
But get this: understanding the problem with what toys and how they're marketed to children affects the cultural diversity of the various industries is LEAPS AND BOUNDS different then trying to "fix it". Seriously, now that we collectively know what the problem is, what do we do?
Make engineering toys that girls can play with? Good. Done. We do that. There is nothing stopping girls from playing with Legos and trebuchets.
Market engineering toys to girls? Good. Done. We do that. As long as you don't market exclusively to boys, anything marketed to children fits the bill.
Make and market engineering toys which are exclusive to girls? Uhhhhh.... That's a little weird, but yeah, there's a bit of that. I guess it pushes back against those gender sterotypes. Like scholarships for women. It's sexist affirmative action, but it's for the underdog so it's ok.
Encourage parents to buy toys which break gender stereotypes? hmmmm... That's a bit like trying to steer culture. Some people try to do this.
Force parents to buy engineering toys for their girls? Whoa there. That sounds evil.
Fine schools that don't have a 50/50 gender split in their coding class? Evil. You're attacking a segment of society that isn't even at fault here*.
Rip the doll from the crying girls hands and flog her until she solves soduku puzzles? Nope, stop, you've gone way overboard into evil-ville.
*You know, probably. Hey, there could be that weird CS professor that kicks girls out of his class. Fire that guy. But that doesn't appear to be the problem here.
There's a nature vs nurture debate about which girls will go into engineering and which won't, and if there is anything we can do about that. I dunno the answer. Encouraging the potential engineers to be engineers is a good thing because we need engineers. But once you start telling parents how they ought to raise their children it gets a little wonky. And once you hit the point where you try to raise the children against the wishes of the parent, or start forcing the parents to raise their children a certain way, the end-state better be on DAMN solid ground. I mean, we force parents to raise their kids not to be murderous thieving cretins. Anyone who does do so is held liable for said cretins. Forcing girls to be raised like they're geeks, when they are not, is probably a bad idea.
This is how. [goldieblox.com]
You encourage, not demand, or force.
WISDOM.
But ugh, jesus fucking christ... Did they really have to do this with pink ribbons?
No it's really not. We're disagreeing about the definition of sexism and discrimination.
If someone. sabotages your career, denies you a job, or pushes you away from a field of study, because of your sex, that's discrimination. If they tell little jane that she shouldn't code and should play with dolls instead, that's sexism. Bad stuff. But you're doing more than fighting sexism. You're overshooting. You want more than just a level playing field. Or maybe you just didn't read my post and think that I actually stated that fighting sexism is fascism.
Culture is not the sort of thing you should be trying to control. Those social expectations, and cultural norms. That sort of old tradition that's ingrained into our culture even though we rationally know perfectly well that women are for more than making babies. Trying to control people on a cultural level, yes, that's got an evil edge to it. Trying to control people on a legal level is typically called enforcing the law. And fighting to get those laws in place is a good thing. And it was mighty hard because of the culture of sexism. Anti-discrimination laws? Good. Trying to make the old white slave-owners love the freed slaves? That simply isn't going to happen. And the more you try, the deeper ingrained that sentiment gets. It's like the fight over evolution. Darwin has a great idea here. Trying to "fix" the other side through force or argument isn't going to get you anywhere. Simply be better. Be correct. And their arguments will fade. Culture has a shit-ton of inertial. Steering it is a slow process. Give it time. Be a quality female software engineer and prove those fuckers wrong. And in the mean time, don't get your panties in a twist.
And this isn't really directed at you, but to everyone else that gave me grief for being attracted to geek girls; I married a materials engineer. I got her involved in roguelikes and D&D while she got me into anime. Now she games more than I do and beat me to the orb of Zot and I'm pissed that nothing is ever explained about Titans. I have no idea why being attracted to smart women is considered as contributing to sexism. If you think you have ANY hope of keeping people from being attracted to certain subsets of humanity, your goals are laughably impossible.
But... Are there any social inequalities when it comes to female software engineers? Is the man somehow keeping chicks out of coding classes? Is the ol' boys club not allowing cooties to spoil their source?
You're looking at the end result and and claiming that there must be social inequality that lead to it. I understand this line of reasoning when it comes to the military, corporate CEO positions, and professional sports. They have a history of barring or diminishing women.
But engineering? Software engineering? Dude, during my time in academia I saw them bend over BACKWARDS to get girls into their program. Between the scholarships, special clubs, awareness programs, and general reports like this that stated more women needed to go be geeks. Even culturally, we geeks LOVE geek girls. It's a thing.
Now, it might be some sort of culturally imbued sexism. The sort that diverts men from being grade-school teachers and women from being truckers. There are plenty of counter-examples, but they're a minority. But it's not so much social inequality, so much as latent social norms and expectations. Breaking them doesn't get you burnt at the stake, but it might raise some eyebrows.
If you want to stop the NFL from being assholes to women, or to break that glass ceiling when it comes to corporate CEO positions, I'm all for that and you have my full support. But if you want to shape culture so that there's no stigma with being a male nurse or a female software engineer, that's getting a little close to the sort of fascism that demands we think a certain way. Your way. Sorry, but you just can't steer culture like that.
But hey, we need more female software engineers, because we need more software engineers. So I'm down with this sort of effort. But the lack of chicks around here has very little to do with social inequality. So don't get your panties in a twist.
Alright Jane, I'm willing to give you a shot.
Explain how the thermodynamics of the greenhouse model are wrong.
The culture clash of progressives vs religious fundamentalists is already here dude. And they're christian. See the post about texans fighting evolution in the classroom. (Although, hey, maybe you're European)
Now then. "Our" progressive social democracy isn't reproducing at the replacement rate. Our survival relies indoctrinating others.
"Your" survival is doomed. You're going to grow old and die and the next generation won't like your music and won't do things like you want them to. You'll call them whippersnappers and you'll yell at them to get off your lawn.
Correspondingly, the forces of acid-face burning and honor killings are reproducing rapidly.
And the witch-burning, commie-hunting forces are angry about that. Tough shit.
(Really dude, this is bordering on racism, just stop. There's no way that 3rd-world culture is going to come and dominate our 1st-world culture. Relax)
Some of the best and brightest of our social democracy (affluent technocratic geeks) are giving up on our social democracy. Call this mutiny near the top of the stack.
I'm in that crowd of "best and brightest", I'm an affluent technocratic geek. I'm not giving up on out society. I believe in democracy. Call it being rational.
Also, a few pseudo-intellectuals making cheap claims that alternate forms of government would work a lot better than what we have now isn't anywhere near a new predicament. And wanting to exert control over how you're governed isn't anything new. That goes for the rich and wealthy to the working man to the down & out poor.
Really, this is all just routine stuff. You're fear-mongering over nothing.
Well, actually no, you're missing the part where E-Coli DOESN'T have the innate ability to eat citrus (er, citrate, not citrus). The strains in the lab evolved that ability. We have observed major evolution in action.
But really, you're on Slashdot making bad arguments against evolution. You're either woefully delusional, or you're simply trolling the pro-evolution crowd to get a cheap laugh.
Come on dude
. . . uh yes. Correct.
Whoops...
Really? +4 insightful with no responses?
Oh hey, so you're a burnt-out cynical asshat. That's great. Hey, at least you're not longer backing the GOP. Anarchist though? wow. Anarchy last as long as it takes someone to stand up and "ok, so here's what we're going to do". Some people will follow and BAM you've got government. It's a void, a vacume, that attracts anything and everything to fill it's place. It's unsustainable.
There's a strain of people, lets call them "technocrats", who are probably very smart, and believe that if only they were in charge, they could make things better.
Well that goes to show that they're not that smart now doesn't it? Also "strain" makes it sound like a disease or something you pass on to your kids. It's really not. But everyone likes to play armchair quarterbacking, back-seat driving, and pretends they'd make the trains run on time if they were king for a day.
Some percentage of the voting public is clearly dumber than I am, and clearly unable to manage their own affairs and well-being appropriately.
So a rude question emerges: Should people who cannot manage their own lives get any role in managing mine? (e.g., a "vote")?
"Dumber" is a difficult metric. "unable to manage their own affairs and well-being" applies to anyone with any problem whatsoever while "unable to manage their own affairs and well-being appropriately" is the sort of subjective weasel-word that lets fascists decree what books you should and shouldn't read.
But hey, I get the sentiment. If you were to suggest something along the lines of "those who sign up for welfare/foodstamps/disability should lose the right to vote" then you might have a case you could argue for. I mean, if enough people start living on the dole, and they get to vote about how much the dole hands out, things will fall apart pretty quickly, now won't it?
That's a difficult discussion, but it's not one you're really making. You're just stating the nebulous, "people stupider than me shouldn't vote". And that's the elitist sort of asshatery that would make the proles rise up against you and why the young up-and-coming bold business types with a lot of moxie can't all leave society to form their own better society under the ocean. Once you do that, half the population is once against below average. Bell curves are a bitch.
It's worth pointing out that the fastest growing socio-cultural group is socially conservative Islam.
It's really not worth point out. I mean, I guess it's helpful for letting us know that you're a racist/religious asshat on top of your other flavors of crazy, but it really wasn't part of the discussion.
No, democracy works pretty well for keeping things from getting too out of control. In the US, I'd say we need to be more democratic, with less of this two-party nonsense leading everyone by the nose.
Check it: A long-term study on evolution which observed E-Coli develop the ability to eat Citrus.
Long story short: We've reproduced meaningful evolution changes. Suck it, "contrarians".
See also: Panda's thumb, whales with vestigial hip-bones, and equines splitting into horses and donkies. If the addition and lost of appendages isn't enough for you, then specification really should be. (That's where one species splits into two different ones that can no longer inter-breed) .
(p.s. you just made up "contrarian" didn't you? I like it.)
You think that "republic" means a system of representatives. Yeah, I had that social studies teacher too. But it doesn't. It just means any government system that doesn't have a king. You know how a lot of political conflicts develop two sides, and you're either pro-skub or anti-skub? Well back in the day one of those issues was whether or not to have a king. And the term "republic" was made.
The big-name founders were, one and all, pro-democracy, and pro-republic. And they made a democratic republic.
I often wonder how our economy and society would change if we legislated the humane treatment of food animals.
Well, look around you, because we do that.
If you want to say "Well that's not enough", I've got to point out that it will NEVER be enough for a portion of humanity. Because, you know, we kill and eat these animals. These people will continue to complain until we simply do not have food animals. And that's just not a likely scenario.
. . . Wut? The cattle get sick from eating corn in feedlots. There's nothing wrong with cows eating corn. And where it's convenient, ranchers let their cattle peruse the post-harvest fields to get any cobs that were missed.
No, it's the feedlots. Where they pack a whole hell of a lot of cows into a pretty cramped area so they don't move around as much. It makes the calories they are fed (via corn) turn into fat rather than burning away. Plus corn has a lot more calories than grass. They put on weight and we get more meat out of them. Tasty delicious meat.
But putting that many animals that close to each other is where diseases thrive. Hence, the use of antibiotics.
Switching to grass (or more specifically, hay) wouldn't help if they're still in a feedlot.
But the solution that you're parroting from wiser and better informed people is GRAZING the cows until they're ready for slaughter. "Free-range". As in, let them wander over fields until they're old enough for slaughter. And skipping the feedlot that puts on the weight. This results in meat that tastes a little different, doesn't get at much meat out of the cow, and takes more land. If everyone did this, yes, meat prices would rise and crop prices would fall. Ranch land would become more valuable, but probably not enough to replace crops for cows.
Yeah, btw, "ranch-land" is any area that isn't desert or mountain, but isn't valuable enough to warrant growing crops. It's not rolling green fields of grass you're imagining.
An alternative is to simply fatten up the cows on the ranch with corn. Which essentially breaks up the feedlots into smaller batches and puts that portion of the work back on the ranchers birthing and raising the cows. That's more labor and probably some other costs I'm missing cause I'm a city-slicker and not actually a farmer or rancher. But I live in Iowa and you just sorta pick this stuff up.
HA! Like an MBA would make that sort of rookie mistake.
No, no, no. The only profit centers in a business are management and possibly sales. At least, according to management and sales.
Define "efficiency".
If the word "cost" comes out of your head, you've been taking classes about cutting costs for temporary (and hopefully long-term) increases in profit.
*FREAKS THE FUCK OUT* OHJESUSCHRISTWHATTHEFUckman are you trying to give me a heart attack?
Awwww crap, I had 7 threads from 3 tickets, the spec, the SRD, and the SDD weaving in my head into something something that was going to go into production code. Can't remember what it was now... Whelp, that's about 2 hours lost and 2 hours I'll have to spend diving into this clusfterfuck again.
So what did you want?
The flavor of anarchist you're describing sounds like a prepper.
These are usually individuals. Often part of a family. Sometimes they get their families into it. Rarely do they get together and form a community of like-minded survivalists. But when they do that, it's invariably a compound out in the middle of nowhere. Because they're not bloody stupid: in a dire situation where you have supplies and no one else does, other people become a liability.
But hey, maybe I'm just falling for the stereotype. Go ahead, educate me. Cite some communities of anarchists/preppers/whatever that live in a city (or suburb, or whatever).
Also, how exactly do you raise livestock in a city? Or are these "minimally dependent" sort of city-living anarchists vegan?
1) Americans living overseas should be taxed only if they receive benefits from america. ie, if they're still US citizens, can still vote, can still run to the US embasy, and are still under that nebulous cloud of US protection while abroad. Because we will come with the guns and the dogs and the guns that shoot dogs if there's an international incident with our citizens. So to that extent, yes Americans abroad should be, and are, taxed. Federally.
2) Corporations ARE NOT PEOPLE. They consist of people, and people can group together and do whatever the fuck they feel like. But if a corporation decides to kill a man, THE PEOPLE WITHIN the corporation are responsible. There is no concept of where a corporation is born. It's a meaningless detail on a scrap of paper. And they can get a new scrap of paper with a new detail at the drop of a hat.
3) Large international corporations have enough power, cash, and political weight to be considered opponents to the nation. They have risen above the "low justice" that the serfs are held to, and now face "high justice" that the nobles, wealthy, and internationally sovereign players face. Ideally, any business they do abroad is simply none of our business, and any business they do within our borders should taxed. But treating them as what amounts to an agressive foreign power, we should definitely bring out the hammer and play hardball with anyone who tries to dodge out of US taxes.
But all in all, YES, Corporations should pay income tax. And yes, it'd be nice if corporations paid income tax on profit made abroad. In effect, they pay taxes on profit realized abroad and then brought home somehow, but there are a lot of ways around that and accountants earn their wages in corporations.
But no, your idea is shit because it runs with bad assumptions, naieve and arbitrary values, and has a weird fairness clause that doesn't really make sense. Corporations currently don't pay income tax, even when they're all local That's kind of the basis of my original post.
"Tax-to-profit"?
So if a corporation actually loses money in a year, they shouldn't pay any tax?
Why not tax-to-revenue?
I have to have a place to live, stuff to eat, transportation, and all sorts of other little stuff. Cost of living. Yet I'm taxed on my income. All of it.
Corporations have buildings, employee wages, recurring costs. It's all just cost of doing business. And as a business expense, they aren't taxed on it.
If a corporation has a major breakthrough and makes a billion bucks, they can finally sell off some of that crap investment stock (which was really a sweetheart deal to a friend) and report zero profit. Meanwhile, if I work hard and get a bonus, or a second job, or win the lotto, it's taxed at the top rate, and if I make extra payments on the house, or credit card debt, or pay off some medical bills, that's all out of my wallet.
It's not that these are tax cheats, it's that the game has all of it's rules written for, and by, the big corporations. And since they're international, they avoid as much of the game as possible by moving profits overseas.
No, it's not cancelled. We actually just got that newsletter, they aren't raising their rates this year. (But some copay go from 10-15)
It was working well for "the majority"? Well no shit, the majority is HEALTHY. Health insurance doesn't do jack fucking shit for the healthy. It's those unlucky few that have serious medical bills. It's a thankfully rare event. You buy INSURANCE against RARE and COSTLY events.
Want to start your own business? Work freelance? Have to work part-time? Going to college? YOU CAN'T AFFORD HEALTH INSURANCE! If you get sick or hurt, YOU'RE FUCKED!
And the health insurance industry was entirely devoid of the free market. Individuals don't shop around for healthcare, they get what's available through their job. Companies shop around for healthcare, but don't actually give a shit about it other than as a bullet point for hiring people. You can't shop around for emergency healthcare, and the hospitals thankfully can't turn you away. They also can't force you to pay medical bills, so the actual cost gets shuffled off onto those that can pay/have insurance to charge to. And hospitals/doctors/patients are all spending "other people's money", so they don't give a shit about how much things cost. Insurance companies are not in the business of selling insurance, they're in the business of saying "no". Remember "pre-existing conditions"?
Shit is so bad that even middle-class families are getting crushed by medical bills they have no hope of paying. (Those are the upstanding citizens that actually try and pay their bills).
When you compare our system of how we handle this to nearly any other first world nation, it's a laughable clusterfuck. It's been such an obvious major problem that they were making jokes about it on SNL, TWENTY YEARS AGO, and it's gotten progressively worse each year since.
But hey, yeah, it's a fantastic system, if you're healthy or wealthy.
Right, and they have added a tax/duty/impost/excise/fine if you don't buy health insurance, for the general welfare of the united states.
They could also use those taxes to buy all the bloody hospitals and provide healthcare for the general welfare of the united states, but they're not doing that.