It acted as a subsidy for long-haul trucking, and completely screwed up rail transit, despite the fact that rail is much more energy efficient. (But who cares about that these days, eh?)
Long haul trucking accounts for a fraction of all freight shipped within the USA. Right now, freight is nearly 90% shipped by rail in the USA. It's a staggering amount of stuff that is shipped by train. Trucking is really only where railroads don't go. For long stuff, the big stuff, rail is the king and still is.
The thing is, passenger rail transit was already in trouble in the USA largely because it was never really profitable to do it, and the various railway acts made passenger traffic unpopular even with the railroads. Freight rail is popular and profitable. People rail is neither. Service even in the golden age of rail - immediately post war, was actually pretty horrible as there was not enough money to keep the rolling stock, well, rolling, and service degraded. To some extent, the shoddiness of the rail service actually lead people to drive cars.
In fact, you can even see this empirically. In 1982, Philadelphia's SEPTA regional rails supported a pretty good passenger base, but a large rail strike basically pushed people into alternative modes of transport, from which, SEPTA hasn't recovered from until -this year-. Similarly, while AMTRAK still has yet to turn a profit, (and probably never will), Conrail, AMTRAK's freight cousin, not only got off of the government dole in fairly short order in what was the then largest IPO in US history, but is now very profitable for all involved.
I should note, as well, that many American cities actually have laws on their books that essentially drove the railroad's out. NYC, for example, forced out all the big engines because of noise and air quality concerns, and most other northeastern cities followed suit. They thought they would force electrification, which, they did to a certain extent, but even more so, what they got was an end to rail service, and more cars.
It also inspired a fad for "moving to the country" (i.e. the creation of suburban sprawl), which cut the knees out from under the urban tax base, and created a generation of American's who are nearly incapable of any physical exercise, and have a very weak sense of community.
Cities suck. That's the thing. City governments are bloated and corrupt and cities themselves are crowded and smell. People are animals and they like space. No species in their right mind crowds itself.
I would argue that people supported the construction of highways, so that they -could- get to the suburbs more quickly, not the other way around.
No, I just want to go FORWARD to universal health care, more aid for impoverished nations, and all the other stuff we could be funding ahead of Joe Boomer's dreams of a Flash Gordon future.
Dude, that's ridiculous. There's always going to be poor, no matter what you do. Pandering to the losers in society is one thing, but dragging a whole nation down because of it is another. Poor people get enough. It's time that this nation build things for the advancement of those who actually have talent to inspire the same out of those in the next generation. You can't always be looking behind. You have to look ahead.
I'd cut welfare spending, and double NASA's budget.
The only comment i have is regarding your last line "The best way to help the Chinese become free, is to help them economically."
Free trade, has to have that "free" part in it to work, you know.
I totally agree... will not having the Olympics in China be a boon to their economy
That's pretty funny. For me, I thought Carter's withdrawal from the Olympics in 1980 was wrong. The Olympics are supposed to be a worldwide truce where people engage in sport. While I do not agree with what the Chinese government does, I also think it is wrong to use participation in the Olympics as a political point, and I think the torch protesters in Europe really made me feel ashamed to be a westerner. It's a truce, you know.
Yet because the propaganda of some CIA-backed fraudster happened to have been seized upon by Bush et al. to justify an illegal war, then all dissidents and all governments-in-exile are unworthy of recognition or credit?
standing back and doing nothing while japan raped and pillaged their country
Uh, standing back? Hardly. Even before World War II the USA was sending support to the Chinese Nationalist government. Have you ever heard of the Flying Tigers? Claire Chenault? The gunboat Panay?
There were a long set of instances of USA aiding the Chinese against Japan. These included not only the direct military aid that I mentioned, but also a number of economic tools placed against Japan. Ultimately, prior to World War II, the USA and her allies would cut off Japan from all steel and oil imports, which really cramped their style. In response, the Japanese assembled a fairly powerful navy, and attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor. The idea was to bloody America's nose enough to allow Japan a free hand in China. But, the USA instead built the world's largest navy, largest air force, beat the Japanese back to their little islands, firebombed them and nuked them - twice -, at a loss of hundreds of thousands of American casualties.
If that's not helping China, then I do not know what is.
he thing that sucks about it is that with their system they will totally kill us in the world marketplace, what is better than having a bunch of workers that don't get paid much and don't ask for anything?
Won't happen. People have a knack for wanting to speak their mind when they are economically empowered. If you've got someone who is completely dependent, then they will do anything to eat. But if that person is eating, then he or she will not long tolerate not having his or her opinions matter. Political change will come in China, but it is something only the Chinese people can bring about. The best way to help the Chinese become free, is to help them economically.
I am merely stating that we have no right to mess with Tibet. It's not our country, there's no genocide, there's only standard Chinese political oppression. If we were to turn on China, we would have to start making things again in the United States. Nobody wants that!
The fact of the matter is that most of the grief about Tibet is coming from dissidents who have formed a government in exile, haven't been in the country in decades, and have been successful at rallying world opinion to their cause because they say the right things to western ears that want to hear them.
Honestly, after Iraq, I'm done with dissidents and governments in exile. We heard enough about freedom and democracy from the likes of Allawi and Chalabi, and we believed them so much, wanted to believe them so much, that we ignored our own allies (and our own) intelligence estimates, and found out, AFTER we invaded, that the government in exile that we had hoped to install had absolutely no popular support whereas the government we displaced actually did. We find out that instead of supporting our sanctions against Saddam, the Iraqi people were actually pretty pissed off at us for them. Instead of roses, we got IEDs to greet us. Instead of changing the regime in Iraq, we would up becoming the regime in Iraq and, whether we stay there or not, we're going to be paying for that for quite some time.
But, eventually, corporate pandering will lead to greater economic freedom for the Chinese, and then, ultimately, greater political freedom.
I don't mean to sound elitist, but most Chinese people in the USA that I have talked to have basically said that yes, while more human rights and freedom of speech would be nice, the problem is that the Chinese peasant class is so uneducated and so poor that there is a huge risk of total social chaos if China adopts the Glasnost route. They want to avoid a Soviet - collapse style meltdown.
Is this really a valid comparison? I mean, yes, Hubble is up in space and talks to earth, and that's complicated. But, Hubble is only one target, talking to relatively small handful of earth based stations. On the other hand, a cell phone network consists of traffic management for millions of subscribers, and with thousands of ground based stations that must be maintained.
The average temperature in April 2008 was 51.0 F. This was -1.0 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 29th coolest April in 114 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.
2.39 inches of precipitation fell in April. This was -0.04 inches less than the 1901-2000 average, the 54th driest such month on record. The precipitation trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.01 inches per decade.
It is better for the inuit to have to move, the polar bears to drown and go extinct, then it would be for the world to give up cheap energy. By every conceivable scale, a few bears is not worth screwing billions of people for.
Oh really, that would surprise those scientists who have said the ice covering the Arctic Sea ice coverage has shrunken for the fifth year.
Your article is dated. Check the SAME web site again. Ice has been higher this winter (2007), than before. Even April had 500k km more surface area than last year.
Now here's the deal. AGW people claim (after the fact), that this temperature drop / flattening is due to LaNina. Now, here's the deal. I've got my sunspot guys that tell me because we have weak solar lower activity and we're in an ice age cycle, in fact that, we're heading for global cooling. Assuming the sun cooperates, we might actually be cool and stay cooler throughout the year.
So at best, you are starving billions of people to death to save a couple of eskimos and their polar bears. At worst, you are wasting billions of dollars to do something that won't even matter at all.
And the Inuit in the Arctic Circle [guardian.co.uk] are paying for it, with their lives. Southeast Asia will pay for it when ocean level rise. People in Appalachia [washingtonpost.com] are paying for it. Try again.
And again, what's the cost of all of that? The costs are overstated, and, really all you have is some anecdotal evidence and you aren't considering the benefits side of the equation at all.
1. Artic ice is actually thicker and wider this year, so the inuit are fine for now.
2. Sea levels have risen 200 meters over the last thousand years and have been rising since the ice age. The IPCC says that AGW should accelerate sea level rise but this has actually NOT taken place. So, for now, we don't have to worry about SE Asia under water. On the flip side, if you lower global temperatures, growing seasons shorten, you starve a billion people, and, at the same time, they also die of thirst because all the fresh water gets locked up in our homemade ice age ice.
3. People in Appalachia, too, would benefit from the cheaper food made possible by a longer growing season on a warmer planet. They wouldn't have heating costs associated with a bitter winter that you will create by lowering planetary temperatures. And, best of all, if you get rid of coal mining, you throw them all out of work. So, other than starving them, freezing them, and throwing them out of work, being good about the climate does the appalachia people a lot of good.
If coal had to carry it's own weight alternative and renewable sources of energy could hold their own.
There's no such thing as an external cost for coal. There is no carbon sequestration system in place that takes up coal from the air, so, really, there's no -cost- that coal is somehow not paying. IF you make up some artificial value for "the effects of the use of coal", I could easily make an artificial value for "the effects of the use of alternative energy." I mean, the lost opportunity cost for not having reliable electricity - which is what you get when you remove baseload coal, is immense.
And yet, a natural carbon dioxide is the least of our worries - its mostly unpredicatble. However, human emissions are predictable - and forecast to grow at exponential rates
There's so many problems here I don't even know where to begin.
China now exceeds the USA in CO2 emissions. Part of this is economic growth, but a surprising share is because of a massive coal seam fire that is expected to burn for at least another 50 years. The coal fire alone already produces more emissions than all US cars combined. The Chinese are exempt from Kyoto...
SO, US EMISSIONS CUTS CANNOT POSSIBLY WORK BECAUSE THE CHINESE ALREADY PRODUCE MORE CO2 THAN THE USA. Even if we go to ZERO emissions, the net CO2 balance in the atmosphere will continue to grow. Given that China has more people than the USA and EU combined, it stands to reason that China will reach a point in CO2 emissions where complete and total sequestration by all of NATO will not be sufficient to halt an increase in greenhouse gases.
Now if you think China is going to suddenly see the light and change its act, think again. China is spending billions of buckazoids a year to commission ever more coal plants. She's also making Coal to Liquids plants and is investing heavily in oil exploration off of her own shores, off Africa, and is working to build ties to the middle east.
'Managing' atmospheric gases does not mean hiding them like a corpse or feces and hoping no-one notices. It means reducing consumption, primarily, as this reduces overall emissions. Increasing emissions while relying on unproven technology to be your saviour is extremely juvenile and short-sighted.
No. Managing atmospheric must include sequestration. Please see above, and while you are at it, also add carbon emissions for the developing third world... what happens when Africa decides to get air conditioning?
We have to be able to take CO2 out of the air, and put it somewhere. Sorry, that's just the case. Anything that doesn't include sequestration is just a fantasy.
The idea virtually is a scam, it's the coal industry asking for grants and subsidies all across the world to support a dying business instead of looking the facts in the face and realising that renewables are the way of the future. No amount of exaggeration (Moonbeams?) on your part will change tha
The fact of the matter is that right now there is no alternative energy technology that competes with coal. If there were, people would be using that. But it doesn't exist. You can say that coal has a future, but until you produce a few trillion watts of 24x7 reliable power from windmills on a calm day and solar panels on a cloudy day, then, alternative energy doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Even already in Texas, which mandated alternative energy, customers in ERCOT are looking either at blackouts when the windmills don't go, or, they import their energy from some place, that well, uses coal.
Without sequestration, then, mankind has no defense against a natural carbon dioxide increase. The simple fact of the matter is that while man might dump 8 gigatons of carbon into the environment, the biosphere is churning through nearly one hundred times the amount. Balancing human emissions won't guarantee a stable system - that's a mathematical impossibility, and the geologic record shows it.
If you are going to manage atmospheric gases, then manage them. Otherwise, quit moaning the about the threat of GW. Just because man may choose not to do it does not mean that nature will agree.
That would be a lot for you. Don't strain yourself. It's the least this friendly christian could advise you.
See how well it worked on you?
Oh, I thought that it was more like, if you look at which side is most likely to win, I would think that you'd have to with the culture that wins, hands down. Christians win. That's the thing. You couple a nuclear family with lots of kids, a largely peaceful stance coupled with the occasional holy war, and the next thing you know, you have a -dominant- cultural force that not only influences human culture but human evolution just by sheer weight of numbers.
By contrast, what does your godless liberal atheism offer? A chance to be in a minority that can't even breed enough to sustain itself? An offer to be on the side that choose pigs over people? Atheism doesn't exist, pagan religions all failed, because they were not as successful as the mix that is Christianity.
There's not even a threat to Christianity from atheism.... the numbers are so different. There's what, 2 billion christians of some kind, versus an ever miniscule number of atheists? I mean, come on liberalism is screwed up from the get go because you lower your birth rate by supporting abortion... and that's really funny in a tragic way because here you people prattle on about Darwin, yet, you ignore everything he teaches about how to make a successful culture and a dominant species.
And now, having done that, you propose to top it all off with a sort of environmental foolishness that diminishes the wealth of people. What's that going to do? You go ahead and tell people that they have to be poorer to save mother earth for your view. We'll tell people that God loves them and forgives them, and that they should do with the earth what they will, and then the heavens beyond it, when we can reach them. You tell the people that all they have is dust on death, and we'll tell the people the truth about an afterlife if we triumph in God's name. You can insult it, degrade it, and call it what you will, but you cannot deny that when it comes the fundamental values of Christian civilization, not only is God on our side, but Darwin is too.
Unlike the christians, I choose to err on the side of reality.
Oh, now that's a laugh. There's no reality to what you believe in at all.
Slavery was around long before the Romans. The primary differences between Roman slaves and christian slaves is that the Roman slaves could not only earn their freedom, but were typically not beaten or subjected to extremely hard labor. Read a history book sometimes.
I have, and you haven't. Obviously. The life of a Roman slave sucked. The whole notion of a Roman slave "earning his freedom" was as much of a technicality of a slave earning his freedom in the antebellum south. It just didn't happen.
Yes, and they also spoke their native tongues.
Ah, so now you change your story. You indicted christians, I gave you positive examples, and yet, you got nothing. You still haven't answered the question, what have atheists accomplished. My answer stands : nothing. You and your kind are a bunch of stinking losers.
And yet, the estimates by those in the know put the amount of oil at much lower than that.
No, its not, not at all. If not, the amount of recoverable oil is increasing because of the advent of horizontal drilling.
If I thought for half a second it would make a difference, I'd be all for opening up those zones, but there isn't enough oil out there and it's only a stop-gap anyway.
It's trillions of dollars of stop gap. That's the thing. It's trillions of dollars. The country needs the money.
Forgetting the fact that if we opened it up today, it would be 2020 before it would be fully geared up and ready to go,
It doesn't matter. You could do what Gov Corzine proposes to do with the NJ turnpikes, which is, you build a financial security against the assett, so the gov't could get its money now. So basically the Feds create a national oil company and say, ahah, we're drilling ANWR and off the coast of california and a bunch of other places. We have proved reserves of about 10 trillion dollars. So, they IPO the thing, in the form of shares, and investors in that instrument would be entitled to a share of the oil sales profits as the assets are pumped in the future. Since we both know the price of oil is going to rise, the security would have value. You take that money, and buy a bunch of nuclear power plants.
that it's the "evil" liberals who are more interested in making sure YOUR kid has health care than your ability to drive alone to and from work in your Hummer
I, like most Christians, feel health care is important enough to make sure my kid has health care by educating myself, keeping up in tech skills, and staying employable at a high rate.
I also take the train to work.
why wouldn't they believe MORE drilling will "fix" all of their problems? All the while, they continue to rake in record profits and laugh at you all the way to the church where they pretend they believe what you do.
It's probably because you've lost your sense of economic fairness. Clearly, if you are so concerned about profits and racketeering and inequalities in christian institutions, perhaps we should look in liberal institutions as well. After all liberals have a monopoly on the national educational system. What do we find?
Rising tuitions!
Unlike gasoline, tuitions have been rising continually for decades, all so greedy liberals can keep screwing America's children with a shoddy education on the taxpayer's dime.
I say we tax all excess college tuition over $5,000 a year per student. If University of Delaware can get by on 5k a year per pupil, then so can MIT and Harvard and Yale. While we are at it, why don't we lift copyright protection and patents on all research papers and technologies financed in part with US taxpayer dollars.
Oh, and look at Liberals in the arts. Look at all that money... Let's legalize copying of movies and music. Why does Bruce Springsteen deserve millions of dollars
Which is funny since being gay is like being black; it's how you're born, you can't change it. So, the christians hate a whole class of people who are "just as god made 'em". How nice of them.
There's no proof of that, whatsover. A man can choose to engage in various behaviors, but he can't choose the color of his skin.
Sure I can, it's in the "good book" that it's ok, and in some cases even required, to own slaves. That's how the overwhelming majority of christians worked so hard to keep hold of slavery.
The majority of christians worked to own slavery. The historical facts are thus: slavery was common, particularly with Romans, and slavery fell out of favor as christianity took hold. By the time it died in the USA, only a minority of people were in favor of it, and ultimately, they lost the civil war.
But, to answer your question: no, I'm not in favor of the death penalty for child molestors. These people are sick and need help, not incarceration or execution.
They need to die. There's no proven therapy that rehabilitates them. Let's see how you feel after your wife gets raped.
Would that be the Hitler Youth pope? Hitler, after all, was a christian.
So was Newton, Kant, Watt, Maxwell, Clerk, DaVinci... even Galileo was a Christian, and then you have Wilson, both Roosevelts, Kennedy, Reagan, Martin Luther King Jr, even Barrack Obama says he is a Christian. Fancy that.
The people of the US are struggling to get to work and feed their families because your christian president is so hell-bent on bombing freedom into those non-christians that he's exhausting us financially. With the money we've spent on his holy war in the last year alone we could've easily come up with efficient alternative energys that would've alleviated their suffering (and not cause a food shortage like ethanol), but instead we just send wave after wave of them to die needlessly, all in the name of the jesus
Oh brother. The price of fuel is high because liberals like you have prevented drilling and refining in the USA. There's 2 trillion dollars worth of oil in Alaska alone, and trillions more sitting off the coasts, and that money could have been used to fund even your stupid socialist objectives. But oh no, you would RATHER choose to save a couple of Polar Bears and fish to feel good about yourselves then you would save your own countrymen.
Hey, Christianity has its faults, but at least we value humans more than animals. Every time you insist on enslaving people to the high price of imported energy and goods because you've outlawed all industry to save a few bears and a few frogs, you show where your true colors are. I won't even get into discussing how many millions have people have died at the hands of your atheist liberal policies because you banned all pesticides effective against the malaria mosquito. Send them nets. What a joke. You want all of those people to die too.
At the end of the day, no amount of finger pointing against a few bad christians will excuse you from your obvious and violent assault on humanity. Every time someone pays $3.50 a gallon in gasoline, or more, you've proved just how evil you really are.
That's how the overwhelming majority of christians worked so hard to keep hold of slavery.
Um,that's certainly not factually accurate. The British Empire banned the slave trade, and then, the Northern Army ended it in the USA. The South lost, you see, partially because the North had more people.
But of course, prior to Christianity, slavery was common practice. Your beloved Roman Empire, for example, existed on the backs of slaves.
It is? Really? How do you figure?
Pretty simple. A religion is merely a common group of people with a polarizing belief code of some sort. Atheists fall into that category for sure. Look at you now. You condemn with an assortment of falsehoods and pseudo-facts that are largely born of your own lifetime spent gobbling down your own barfy propaganda.
That's just your training taking over that makes you see hate everywhere because, well, you're responsible for so much of it.
No, it's common sense. You have a lot of violent opinions against christians. You condemn the whole group. You are like, the NAZI that says, "well, I don't hate black people, but I just want them to go away".
Which is funny since being gay is like being black; it's how you're born, you can't change it.
There's not a single shred of scientific evidence for that, though, that's the problem. In fact, the whole problem with your belief system is that you have no way of legitimately arguing that people are innately equal. By what yardstick do you do that? Past historical accomplishment - there's inequality there. Current economic or political accomplishment - there's inequality there. Really, without some sort of viewing humanity in terms of some faith, there's no legitimate way to ascribe the very equality that you feel is violated. How do you say that different cultures are "equal", and worthy of "equal" respect, when scientifically speaking, they are not.
Would that be the Hitler Youth pope? Hitler, after all, was a christian.
So was Isaac Newton, Queen Elizabeth, Francis Bacon, James Watt, Gregor Mendel, Maxwell, Clerk, Edison, Bell, Ford, Rockefeller, Hollerith, Gates, DeForest, Roosevelt, Lincoln, King... seems like Christians have done an aweful lot. What have atheists done? Not much. I guess that makes you all a bunch of stinking losers.
never said I hated christians, I said they were delusional. I pity them, just as I pity anyone else who suffers from mental illness
Dude, you couldn't pity your own mother, if she died in front of you.
Online gaming sacrificed for greater good
on
Who Owns Software?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Basically, if Blizzard loses, then, they can't effectively stop cheating on their systems. That pretty much hoses their business. On the other hand, if Blizzard wins, then, software companies essentially get the right to decide who inter operates with them, and that's just a worldwide disaster.
So, unfortunately, online gamers, but, gaming has to the needs of humanity for a free market. So, there's always going to be cheaters and you'll never really have an honest online game experience with strangers. About the best that Blizzard could do would be to try and have a secure link of some sort to dissuade developers from writing cheat-bots.
Actually, no. That's a reasonable guess because being gay is really the only thing that gets you frowned in on many christian sects.
You can't say that christians are racist, when in fact, there are christian churches of white, black, hispanic and even asian persuasion. You can't say that christians are all slavers, when, in fact, it was devoted christians that worked to end slavery. You can't say that christians are all socialists, or all capitalists, when christians are in both camps, and you can't say that christians are warmongers, when you have the current pope and many religious leaders routinely calling for an end to all wars. So, the only reason you could really justify hating about two billion people on the planet, would be if in fact, you were gay, in which case, many christians probably would view your acts as something of a moral choice.
So, if you aren't gay, then, there's really no reason to be so hateful, and given that, is it really so intelligent to waste so much energy hating? Were you molested, or, was something you made up to explain why you might be a molester yourself. Do you use your hatred of christianity to absolve yourself of your own crimes? Like, when you cheat on your partners, do you tell yourself, Christians are worse, so therefor, you are ok? How many times have you hit your children or beat your wife? I'll bet they are black and blue. At least you save money at Christmas. You don't have to get kids anything. You just say, "well, I'm not participating in this crazy religious holiday". That's good for you! For sure!
No, I'm not gay, I'm just educated and intelligent.
Yeah, but you are still a bigot, and, you aren't even intelligent enough to see that atheism is another religion too. Woopy.
I also don't believe in Zeus, Thor, Saturn (the god, not the planet), Freya, Mithra, etc...does that make me gay, too?
Actually, well, probably.
Are you one of the ones who molest female children or male children?
No. Actually, I'm the kind that favors the death penalty for all child molestors and rapists. Are you the kind of educated man that wants to set them free, or convinces me that I should pay taxes to keep these people alive? Or are you the kind of educated man that argues that poor Tookie Williams was misunderstood, the kind of reasonable man that pretends that drug dealers are just another sort of business men, the sort of reasonable, educated man that wants to save a few elk in the frozen wastelands of Alaska while meanwhile millions of people in the USA struggle to eat and get to work so that your fraudulent conscience may be appeased.
Has anyone else wondered how Ray Ozzie worked himself up so far in the MS food chain? I mean, he had a semi-interesting web site that he used to hype himself as the expert of the internet in MS circles. Yet, everything they've done since he came on board has been floundering crap.
Slashdot Mirror
It acted as a subsidy for long-haul trucking, and completely screwed up rail transit, despite the fact that rail is much more energy efficient. (But who cares about that these days, eh?)
Long haul trucking accounts for a fraction of all freight shipped within the USA. Right now, freight is nearly 90% shipped by rail in the USA. It's a staggering amount of stuff that is shipped by train. Trucking is really only where railroads don't go. For long stuff, the big stuff, rail is the king and still is.
The thing is, passenger rail transit was already in trouble in the USA largely because it was never really profitable to do it, and the various railway acts made passenger traffic unpopular even with the railroads. Freight rail is popular and profitable. People rail is neither. Service even in the golden age of rail - immediately post war, was actually pretty horrible as there was not enough money to keep the rolling stock, well, rolling, and service degraded. To some extent, the shoddiness of the rail service actually lead people to drive cars.
In fact, you can even see this empirically. In 1982, Philadelphia's SEPTA regional rails supported a pretty good passenger base, but a large rail strike basically pushed people into alternative modes of transport, from which, SEPTA hasn't recovered from until -this year-. Similarly, while AMTRAK still has yet to turn a profit, (and probably never will), Conrail, AMTRAK's freight cousin, not only got off of the government dole in fairly short order in what was the then largest IPO in US history, but is now very profitable for all involved.
I should note, as well, that many American cities actually have laws on their books that essentially drove the railroad's out. NYC, for example, forced out all the big engines because of noise and air quality concerns, and most other northeastern cities followed suit. They thought they would force electrification, which, they did to a certain extent, but even more so, what they got was an end to rail service, and more cars.
It also inspired a fad for "moving to the country" (i.e. the creation of suburban sprawl), which cut the knees out from under the urban tax base, and created a generation of American's who are nearly incapable of any physical exercise, and have a very weak sense of community.
Cities suck. That's the thing. City governments are bloated and corrupt and cities themselves are crowded and smell. People are animals and they like space. No species in their right mind crowds itself.
I would argue that people supported the construction of highways, so that they -could- get to the suburbs more quickly, not the other way around.
No, I just want to go FORWARD to universal health care, more aid for impoverished nations, and all the other stuff we could be funding ahead of Joe Boomer's dreams of a Flash Gordon future.
Dude, that's ridiculous. There's always going to be poor, no matter what you do. Pandering to the losers in society is one thing, but dragging a whole nation down because of it is another. Poor people get enough. It's time that this nation build things for the advancement of those who actually have talent to inspire the same out of those in the next generation. You can't always be looking behind. You have to look ahead.
I'd cut welfare spending, and double NASA's budget.
Screw the poor, and the third world.
The only comment i have is regarding your last line "The best way to help the Chinese become free, is to help them economically."
Free trade, has to have that "free" part in it to work, you know.
I totally agree... will not having the Olympics in China be a boon to their economy
That's pretty funny. For me, I thought Carter's withdrawal from the Olympics in 1980 was wrong. The Olympics are supposed to be a worldwide truce where people engage in sport. While I do not agree with what the Chinese government does, I also think it is wrong to use participation in the Olympics as a political point, and I think the torch protesters in Europe really made me feel ashamed to be a westerner. It's a truce, you know.
Yet because the propaganda of some CIA-backed fraudster happened to have been seized upon by Bush et al. to justify an illegal war, then all dissidents and all governments-in-exile are unworthy of recognition or credit?
Yes.
standing back and doing nothing while japan raped and pillaged their country
Uh, standing back? Hardly. Even before World War II the USA was sending support to the Chinese Nationalist government. Have you ever heard of the Flying Tigers? Claire Chenault? The gunboat Panay?
There were a long set of instances of USA aiding the Chinese against Japan. These included not only the direct military aid that I mentioned, but also a number of economic tools placed against Japan. Ultimately, prior to World War II, the USA and her allies would cut off Japan from all steel and oil imports, which really cramped their style. In response, the Japanese assembled a fairly powerful navy, and attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor. The idea was to bloody America's nose enough to allow Japan a free hand in China. But, the USA instead built the world's largest navy, largest air force, beat the Japanese back to their little islands, firebombed them and nuked them - twice -, at a loss of hundreds of thousands of American casualties.
If that's not helping China, then I do not know what is.
he thing that sucks about it is that with their system they will totally kill us in the world marketplace, what is better than having a bunch of workers that don't get paid much and don't ask for anything?
Won't happen. People have a knack for wanting to speak their mind when they are economically empowered. If you've got someone who is completely dependent, then they will do anything to eat. But if that person is eating, then he or she will not long tolerate not having his or her opinions matter. Political change will come in China, but it is something only the Chinese people can bring about. The best way to help the Chinese become free, is to help them economically.
I am merely stating that we have no right to mess with Tibet. It's not our country, there's no genocide, there's only standard Chinese political oppression. If we were to turn on China, we would have to start making things again in the United States. Nobody wants that!
The fact of the matter is that most of the grief about Tibet is coming from dissidents who have formed a government in exile, haven't been in the country in decades, and have been successful at rallying world opinion to their cause because they say the right things to western ears that want to hear them.
Honestly, after Iraq, I'm done with dissidents and governments in exile. We heard enough about freedom and democracy from the likes of Allawi and Chalabi, and we believed them so much, wanted to believe them so much, that we ignored our own allies (and our own) intelligence estimates, and found out, AFTER we invaded, that the government in exile that we had hoped to install had absolutely no popular support whereas the government we displaced actually did. We find out that instead of supporting our sanctions against Saddam, the Iraqi people were actually pretty pissed off at us for them. Instead of roses, we got IEDs to greet us. Instead of changing the regime in Iraq, we would up becoming the regime in Iraq and, whether we stay there or not, we're going to be paying for that for quite some time.
But, eventually, corporate pandering will lead to greater economic freedom for the Chinese, and then, ultimately, greater political freedom.
I don't mean to sound elitist, but most Chinese people in the USA that I have talked to have basically said that yes, while more human rights and freedom of speech would be nice, the problem is that the Chinese peasant class is so uneducated and so poor that there is a huge risk of total social chaos if China adopts the Glasnost route. They want to avoid a Soviet - collapse style meltdown.
Is this really a valid comparison? I mean, yes, Hubble is up in space and talks to earth, and that's complicated. But, Hubble is only one target, talking to relatively small handful of earth based stations. On the other hand, a cell phone network consists of traffic management for millions of subscribers, and with thousands of ground based stations that must be maintained.
NOAA:
The average temperature in April 2008 was 51.0 F. This was -1.0 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 29th coolest April in 114 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.
2.39 inches of precipitation fell in April. This was -0.04 inches less than the 1901-2000 average, the 54th driest such month on record. The precipitation trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.01 inches per decade.
I can't go on anymore with such nonsense.
It is better for the inuit to have to move, the polar bears to drown and go extinct, then it would be for the world to give up cheap energy. By every conceivable scale, a few bears is not worth screwing billions of people for.
Oh really, that would surprise those scientists who have said the ice covering the Arctic Sea ice coverage has shrunken for the fifth year.
Your article is dated. Check the SAME web site again. Ice has been higher this winter (2007), than before. Even April had 500k km more surface area than last year.
can't go on anymore with such nonsense
Neither can I!
Global Satellite Temperature anomaly
Notice how they aren't going up.
Now here's the deal. AGW people claim (after the fact), that this temperature drop / flattening is due to LaNina. Now, here's the deal. I've got my sunspot guys that tell me because we have weak solar lower activity and we're in an ice age cycle, in fact that, we're heading for global cooling. Assuming the sun cooperates, we might actually be cool and stay cooler throughout the year.
So at best, you are starving billions of people to death to save a couple of eskimos and their polar bears. At worst, you are wasting billions of dollars to do something that won't even matter at all.
And the Inuit in the Arctic Circle [guardian.co.uk] are paying for it, with their lives. Southeast Asia will pay for it when ocean level rise. People in Appalachia [washingtonpost.com] are paying for it. Try again.
And again, what's the cost of all of that? The costs are overstated, and, really all you have is some anecdotal evidence and you aren't considering the benefits side of the equation at all.
1. Artic ice is actually thicker and wider this year, so the inuit are fine for now.
2. Sea levels have risen 200 meters over the last thousand years and have been rising since the ice age. The IPCC says that AGW should accelerate sea level rise but this has actually NOT taken place. So, for now, we don't have to worry about SE Asia under water. On the flip side, if you lower global temperatures, growing seasons shorten, you starve a billion people, and, at the same time, they also die of thirst because all the fresh water gets locked up in our homemade ice age ice.
3. People in Appalachia, too, would benefit from the cheaper food made possible by a longer growing season on a warmer planet. They wouldn't have heating costs associated with a bitter winter that you will create by lowering planetary temperatures. And, best of all, if you get rid of coal mining, you throw them all out of work. So, other than starving them, freezing them, and throwing them out of work, being good about the climate does the appalachia people a lot of good.
If coal had to carry it's own weight alternative and renewable sources of energy could hold their own.
There's no such thing as an external cost for coal. There is no carbon sequestration system in place that takes up coal from the air, so, really, there's no -cost- that coal is somehow not paying. IF you make up some artificial value for "the effects of the use of coal", I could easily make an artificial value for "the effects of the use of alternative energy." I mean, the lost opportunity cost for not having reliable electricity - which is what you get when you remove baseload coal, is immense.
And yet, a natural carbon dioxide is the least of our worries - its mostly unpredicatble. However, human emissions are predictable - and forecast to grow at exponential rates
... what happens when Africa decides to get air conditioning?
There's so many problems here I don't even know where to begin.
China now exceeds the USA in CO2 emissions. Part of this is economic growth, but a surprising share is because of a massive coal seam fire that is expected to burn for at least another 50 years. The coal fire alone already produces more emissions than all US cars combined. The Chinese are exempt from Kyoto...
SO, US EMISSIONS CUTS CANNOT POSSIBLY WORK BECAUSE THE CHINESE ALREADY PRODUCE MORE CO2 THAN THE USA. Even if we go to ZERO emissions, the net CO2 balance in the atmosphere will continue to grow. Given that China has more people than the USA and EU combined, it stands to reason that China will reach a point in CO2 emissions where complete and total sequestration by all of NATO will not be sufficient to halt an increase in greenhouse gases.
Now if you think China is going to suddenly see the light and change its act, think again. China is spending billions of buckazoids a year to commission ever more coal plants. She's also making Coal to Liquids plants and is investing heavily in oil exploration off of her own shores, off Africa, and is working to build ties to the middle east.
'Managing' atmospheric gases does not mean hiding them like a corpse or feces and hoping no-one notices. It means reducing consumption, primarily, as this reduces overall emissions. Increasing emissions while relying on unproven technology to be your saviour is extremely juvenile and short-sighted.
No. Managing atmospheric must include sequestration. Please see above, and while you are at it, also add carbon emissions for the developing third world
We have to be able to take CO2 out of the air, and put it somewhere. Sorry, that's just the case. Anything that doesn't include sequestration is just a fantasy.
The idea virtually is a scam, it's the coal industry asking for grants and subsidies all across the world to support a dying business instead of looking the facts in the face and realising that renewables are the way of the future. No amount of exaggeration (Moonbeams?) on your part will change tha
The fact of the matter is that right now there is no alternative energy technology that competes with coal. If there were, people would be using that. But it doesn't exist. You can say that coal has a future, but until you produce a few trillion watts of 24x7 reliable power from windmills on a calm day and solar panels on a cloudy day, then, alternative energy doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Even already in Texas, which mandated alternative energy, customers in ERCOT are looking either at blackouts when the windmills don't go, or, they import their energy from some place, that well, uses coal.
Or the ethenol believers who conveniently neglect the big fire they have to put under that still
You have to put a big fire under oil too, to refine it, and that works out ok. Duh.
Besides, you would use nuclear power to run the still.
Without sequestration, then, mankind has no defense against a natural carbon dioxide increase. The simple fact of the matter is that while man might dump 8 gigatons of carbon into the environment, the biosphere is churning through nearly one hundred times the amount. Balancing human emissions won't guarantee a stable system - that's a mathematical impossibility, and the geologic record shows it.
If you are going to manage atmospheric gases, then manage them. Otherwise, quit moaning the about the threat of GW. Just because man may choose not to do it does not mean that nature will agree.
If I thought for half a second
That would be a lot for you. Don't strain yourself. It's the least this friendly christian could advise you.
See how well it worked on you?
Oh, I thought that it was more like, if you look at which side is most likely to win, I would think that you'd have to with the culture that wins, hands down. Christians win. That's the thing. You couple a nuclear family with lots of kids, a largely peaceful stance coupled with the occasional holy war, and the next thing you know, you have a -dominant- cultural force that not only influences human culture but human evolution just by sheer weight of numbers.
By contrast, what does your godless liberal atheism offer? A chance to be in a minority that can't even breed enough to sustain itself? An offer to be on the side that choose pigs over people? Atheism doesn't exist, pagan religions all failed, because they were not as successful as the mix that is Christianity.
There's not even a threat to Christianity from atheism.... the numbers are so different. There's what, 2 billion christians of some kind, versus an ever miniscule number of atheists? I mean, come on liberalism is screwed up from the get go because you lower your birth rate by supporting abortion... and that's really funny in a tragic way because here you people prattle on about Darwin, yet, you ignore everything he teaches about how to make a successful culture and a dominant species.
And now, having done that, you propose to top it all off with a sort of environmental foolishness that diminishes the wealth of people. What's that going to do? You go ahead and tell people that they have to be poorer to save mother earth for your view. We'll tell people that God loves them and forgives them, and that they should do with the earth what they will, and then the heavens beyond it, when we can reach them. You tell the people that all they have is dust on death, and we'll tell the people the truth about an afterlife if we triumph in God's name. You can insult it, degrade it, and call it what you will, but you cannot deny that when it comes the fundamental values of Christian civilization, not only is God on our side, but Darwin is too.
See on the flipside, oh passenger pidgeon!
Unlike the christians, I choose to err on the side of reality.
Oh, now that's a laugh. There's no reality to what you believe in at all.
Slavery was around long before the Romans. The primary differences between Roman slaves and christian slaves is that the Roman slaves could not only earn their freedom, but were typically not beaten or subjected to extremely hard labor. Read a history book sometimes.
I have, and you haven't. Obviously. The life of a Roman slave sucked. The whole notion of a Roman slave "earning his freedom" was as much of a technicality of a slave earning his freedom in the antebellum south. It just didn't happen.
Yes, and they also spoke their native tongues.
Ah, so now you change your story. You indicted christians, I gave you positive examples, and yet, you got nothing. You still haven't answered the question, what have atheists accomplished. My answer stands : nothing. You and your kind are a bunch of stinking losers.
And yet, the estimates by those in the know put the amount of oil at much lower than that.
No, its not, not at all. If not, the amount of recoverable oil is increasing because of the advent of horizontal drilling.
If I thought for half a second it would make a difference, I'd be all for opening up those zones, but there isn't enough oil out there and it's only a stop-gap anyway.
It's trillions of dollars of stop gap. That's the thing. It's trillions of dollars. The country needs the money.
Forgetting the fact that if we opened it up today, it would be 2020 before it would be fully geared up and ready to go,
It doesn't matter. You could do what Gov Corzine proposes to do with the NJ turnpikes, which is, you build a financial security against the assett, so the gov't could get its money now. So basically the Feds create a national oil company and say, ahah, we're drilling ANWR and off the coast of california and a bunch of other places. We have proved reserves of about 10 trillion dollars. So, they IPO the thing, in the form of shares, and investors in that instrument would be entitled to a share of the oil sales profits as the assets are pumped in the future. Since we both know the price of oil is going to rise, the security would have value. You take that money, and buy a bunch of nuclear power plants.
that it's the "evil" liberals who are more interested in making sure YOUR kid has health care than your ability to drive alone to and from work in your Hummer
I, like most Christians, feel health care is important enough to make sure my kid has health care by educating myself, keeping up in tech skills, and staying employable at a high rate.
I also take the train to work.
why wouldn't they believe MORE drilling will "fix" all of their problems? All the while, they continue to rake in record profits and laugh at you all the way to the church where they pretend they believe what you do.
It's probably because you've lost your sense of economic fairness. Clearly, if you are so concerned about profits and racketeering and inequalities in christian institutions, perhaps we should look in liberal institutions as well. After all liberals have a monopoly on the national educational system. What do we find?
Rising tuitions!
Unlike gasoline, tuitions have been rising continually for decades, all so greedy liberals can keep screwing America's children with a shoddy education on the taxpayer's dime.
I say we tax all excess college tuition over $5,000 a year per student. If University of Delaware can get by on 5k a year per pupil, then so can MIT and Harvard and Yale. While we are at it, why don't we lift copyright protection and patents on all research papers and technologies financed in part with US taxpayer dollars.
Oh, and look at Liberals in the arts. Look at all that money... Let's legalize copying of movies and music. Why does Bruce Springsteen deserve millions of dollars
Which is funny since being gay is like being black; it's how you're born, you can't change it. So, the christians hate a whole class of people who are "just as god made 'em". How nice of them.
There's no proof of that, whatsover. A man can choose to engage in various behaviors, but he can't choose the color of his skin.
Sure I can, it's in the "good book" that it's ok, and in some cases even required, to own slaves. That's how the overwhelming majority of christians worked so hard to keep hold of slavery.
The majority of christians worked to own slavery. The historical facts are thus: slavery was common, particularly with Romans, and slavery fell out of favor as christianity took hold. By the time it died in the USA, only a minority of people were in favor of it, and ultimately, they lost the civil war.
But, to answer your question: no, I'm not in favor of the death penalty for child molestors. These people are sick and need help, not incarceration or execution.
They need to die. There's no proven therapy that rehabilitates them. Let's see how you feel after your wife gets raped.
Would that be the Hitler Youth pope? Hitler, after all, was a christian.
So was Newton, Kant, Watt, Maxwell, Clerk, DaVinci... even Galileo was a Christian, and then you have Wilson, both Roosevelts, Kennedy, Reagan, Martin Luther King Jr, even Barrack Obama says he is a Christian. Fancy that.
The people of the US are struggling to get to work and feed their families because your christian president is so hell-bent on bombing freedom into those non-christians that he's exhausting us financially. With the money we've spent on his holy war in the last year alone we could've easily come up with efficient alternative energys that would've alleviated their suffering (and not cause a food shortage like ethanol), but instead we just send wave after wave of them to die needlessly, all in the name of the jesus
Oh brother. The price of fuel is high because liberals like you have prevented drilling and refining in the USA. There's 2 trillion dollars worth of oil in Alaska alone, and trillions more sitting off the coasts, and that money could have been used to fund even your stupid socialist objectives. But oh no, you would RATHER choose to save a couple of Polar Bears and fish to feel good about yourselves then you would save your own countrymen.
Hey, Christianity has its faults, but at least we value humans more than animals. Every time you insist on enslaving people to the high price of imported energy and goods because you've outlawed all industry to save a few bears and a few frogs, you show where your true colors are. I won't even get into discussing how many millions have people have died at the hands of your atheist liberal policies because you banned all pesticides effective against the malaria mosquito. Send them nets. What a joke. You want all of those people to die too.
At the end of the day, no amount of finger pointing against a few bad christians will excuse you from your obvious and violent assault on humanity. Every time someone pays $3.50 a gallon in gasoline, or more, you've proved just how evil you really are.
That's how the overwhelming majority of christians worked so hard to keep hold of slavery.
Um,that's certainly not factually accurate. The British Empire banned the slave trade, and then, the Northern Army ended it in the USA. The South lost, you see, partially because the North had more people.
But of course, prior to Christianity, slavery was common practice. Your beloved Roman Empire, for example, existed on the backs of slaves.
It is? Really? How do you figure?
Pretty simple. A religion is merely a common group of people with a polarizing belief code of some sort. Atheists fall into that category for sure. Look at you now. You condemn with an assortment of falsehoods and pseudo-facts that are largely born of your own lifetime spent gobbling down your own barfy propaganda.
That's just your training taking over that makes you see hate everywhere because, well, you're responsible for so much of it.
No, it's common sense. You have a lot of violent opinions against christians. You condemn the whole group. You are like, the NAZI that says, "well, I don't hate black people, but I just want them to go away".
Which is funny since being gay is like being black; it's how you're born, you can't change it.
There's not a single shred of scientific evidence for that, though, that's the problem. In fact, the whole problem with your belief system is that you have no way of legitimately arguing that people are innately equal. By what yardstick do you do that? Past historical accomplishment - there's inequality there. Current economic or political accomplishment - there's inequality there. Really, without some sort of viewing humanity in terms of some faith, there's no legitimate way to ascribe the very equality that you feel is violated. How do you say that different cultures are "equal", and worthy of "equal" respect, when scientifically speaking, they are not.
Would that be the Hitler Youth pope? Hitler, after all, was a christian.
So was Isaac Newton, Queen Elizabeth, Francis Bacon, James Watt, Gregor Mendel, Maxwell, Clerk, Edison, Bell, Ford, Rockefeller, Hollerith, Gates, DeForest, Roosevelt, Lincoln, King... seems like Christians have done an aweful lot. What have atheists done? Not much. I guess that makes you all a bunch of stinking losers.
never said I hated christians, I said they were delusional. I pity them, just as I pity anyone else who suffers from mental illness
Dude, you couldn't pity your own mother, if she died in front of you.
Basically, if Blizzard loses, then, they can't effectively stop cheating on their systems. That pretty much hoses their business. On the other hand, if Blizzard wins, then, software companies essentially get the right to decide who inter operates with them, and that's just a worldwide disaster.
So, unfortunately, online gamers, but, gaming has to the needs of humanity for a free market. So, there's always going to be cheaters and you'll never really have an honest online game experience with strangers. About the best that Blizzard could do would be to try and have a secure link of some sort to dissuade developers from writing cheat-bots.
LOL! Only a christian would go there
Actually, no. That's a reasonable guess because being gay is really the only thing that gets you frowned in on many christian sects.
You can't say that christians are racist, when in fact, there are christian churches of white, black, hispanic and even asian persuasion. You can't say that christians are all slavers, when, in fact, it was devoted christians that worked to end slavery. You can't say that christians are all socialists, or all capitalists, when christians are in both camps, and you can't say that christians are warmongers, when you have the current pope and many religious leaders routinely calling for an end to all wars. So, the only reason you could really justify hating about two billion people on the planet, would be if in fact, you were gay, in which case, many christians probably would view your acts as something of a moral choice.
So, if you aren't gay, then, there's really no reason to be so hateful, and given that, is it really so intelligent to waste so much energy hating? Were you molested, or, was something you made up to explain why you might be a molester yourself. Do you use your hatred of christianity to absolve yourself of your own crimes? Like, when you cheat on your partners, do you tell yourself, Christians are worse, so therefor, you are ok? How many times have you hit your children or beat your wife? I'll bet they are black and blue. At least you save money at Christmas. You don't have to get kids anything. You just say, "well, I'm not participating in this crazy religious holiday". That's good for you! For sure!
Rock on dude.
No, I'm not gay, I'm just educated and intelligent.
Yeah, but you are still a bigot, and, you aren't even intelligent enough to see that atheism is another religion too. Woopy.
I also don't believe in Zeus, Thor, Saturn (the god, not the planet), Freya, Mithra, etc...does that make me gay, too?
Actually, well, probably.
Are you one of the ones who molest female children or male children?
No. Actually, I'm the kind that favors the death penalty for all child molestors and rapists. Are you the kind of educated man that wants to set them free, or convinces me that I should pay taxes to keep these people alive? Or are you the kind of educated man that argues that poor Tookie Williams was misunderstood, the kind of reasonable man that pretends that drug dealers are just another sort of business men, the sort of reasonable, educated man that wants to save a few elk in the frozen wastelands of Alaska while meanwhile millions of people in the USA struggle to eat and get to work so that your fraudulent conscience may be appeased.
Has anyone else wondered how Ray Ozzie worked himself up so far in the MS food chain? I mean, he had a semi-interesting web site that he used to hype himself as the expert of the internet in MS circles. Yet, everything they've done since he came on board has been floundering crap.