That's the other thing, it's quite obvious that women use sex as an arbitrage tool all the time to advance their life situation.
I do a lot of work for a very wealthy country club and with few exceptions, the wives of members I've seen are all very attractive and very fit, far more so than the average in my more average middle class demographic. If you don't think these women are using their sexuality to maintain a life of luxury enabled by their husband's income, you're kidding yourself.
Ironically, my experience suggests women *don't* like sex as much as men do.
I'm 49, married for 17 years to a woman I've cohabited with for 21 years. Of the dozen plus men I know in my age/socioeconomic demographic, ALL complain about their wives lack of interest in sex.
Once you filter past the life circumstances of being a full-time professional, parent and homeowner, the pattern is remarkably consistent -- a frequent "not tonight" refusal of advances, an occasional half-hearted acquiescence, and the least frequent genuine engagement, running about 4-8 weeks.
My guess is this is largely a function of reproductive evolutionary biology, as women who have borne children and are past 40 have little reason to engage in sex. Pregnancies past 40 are at a high risk for chromosomal defects (resulting in labor-intensive maintenance which might threaten resources for existing healthy children) or other health risks which might imperil the mother's health, not to mention the time and resource investments required for an infant.
Is there any way to electronically monkeywrench cameras? Some way to fuck with automatic gain control so that the image isn't any good, some kind of discreet light source that could be aimed in their direction or omnidirectionally if you didn't know where it was?
Smashing them physically seems kind of counterproductive, as it has a lot of risk and may result in the camera being moved or hardened in a way that makes smashing impractical. Plus monitoring systems may flag a down camera, especially an IP one.
I think something like an aerosol hair spray might not be a bad alternative. It would apply a blurring film that would render the image mostly useless, be a lot less unobtrusive than a smashed camera to the casual observer. And in a lot of cases, few cameras are actively monitored so the results may last a long time before it was noticed. The camera would otherwise appear operational (active circuit for analog cameras, active IP status for IP ones).
Getting at the high mounts might be a challenge, but I could see some kind of "selfie stick" type of widget which would allow you to mount a can of whatever you're spraying to a pole and push the spray button from a handle.
One of the most common lines is "prostitution exploits women" -- if that's the case, then why are prostitutes arrested? Wouldn't they then be the victims? At least in the EU that seems to be emerging model, with Sweden and now France making accepting money for sex not illegal, but paying money for sex illegal. But that's very recent, and not generally reflective of long standing practices and criminal law.
A more enduring answer seems to be that it's merely reflective of anti-sex morality, the same mindset that used to criminalize pornography, birth control and made sodomy and adultery actual crimes. Although most all of those things have mostly stopped being illegal, as society on balance has become accepting of sex as recreation -- sodomy and adultery laws have mostly been overturned or aren't enforced anymore, singles bars, Craigslist/Tinder/Grindr, etc. And also, in not the not so distant past, society was more tolerant of prostitution -- brothels operated more openly -- despite a generally stronger social prohibition on sex outside of marriage.
I think prostitution remains illegal -- with the public justification shifting in spite of general acceptance of sex outside of wedlock -- because women don't like prostitution. Despite the general changes in attitude about sex outside of marriage, women still see sexuality as a significant bargaining chip in social relations with men. Legalized prostitution thus represents a threat to women's bargaining status in relationships.
If men can buy sex whenever they want it for only money, women lose a significant bargaining advantage in relationships with men. Their sexuality no longer represents a scarce good or service and they can no longer structure their relationship demands around controlling access to sex. Which seems really ironic, since women often loudly decry being seen as "sex objects" and want to be valued for their intelligence or other personality traits, yet it seems as in spite of that, women continue to see their sexuality as primary tool in attracting and maintaining mail interest in relationships.
You would think that *women* would want prostitution legal, though, because it would in theory act as a kind of filter for men they wish to engage in more substantive relationships with. It would, in theory, make the pool of men they encounter to more likely be interested in non-sexual aspects of a relationship, reducing the effort needed to filter men who falsify their intentions in order to gain sex.
I thought I had read of that as being called "the Swedish model" because Sweden adopted it first. It tries for the most part to make the prostitute not a criminal, but the men buying sex criminals without actually making prostitution legal.
Isn't there some philosophical argument (at least) to be made that says that laws that can't be understood by ordinary men shouldn't be enforced?
It seems like there's both a basic democratic element to it -- if the rule of law derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, how can they consent to what they can't understand? I have to live my life knowing that I may be subject to laws made in such a way I can't know if I am even obeying them.
It also seems to be kind of a streamlining effect -- if laws can't be easily understood, maybe they're unnecessary or not really enforceable, Or they lack the basic coherence that says they represent a concrete idea. Complex laws are more likely to represent the interests of narrow constituencies.
I think in the legal system also has a vested interest in the complexity of law. If laws were understandable and enforceable in plain language, the legal system would have less purpose and standing.
I wonder if the alternative minimum tax is a cautionary tale about any hope of fixing it. That was actually supposed to fix the inequality of wealthy people paying no taxes at all.
Maybe it worked, but it's also never been indexed or adjusted for inflation, so the paperboy now pays it, too, but it hits HENRYs hardest. And you can't even fix the lack of inflation adjustment either, because the revenue loss can't easily be replaced without, well, taxing the rich.
You know, I blame the electronic spreadsheet (and electronic accounting) as much as anything for wealth inequality and the decline of the middle class.
I have this theory that the middle class is really nothing more than a byproduct of accounting inefficiency; the jobs and income that result from inefficiency enable a middle class, and the reason it's declining is that spreadsheets enable financial modeling so easily that pretty much everyone has been able to identify process inefficiencies and costs so well that they've eliminated the "slop" that enabled the middle class.
If you think about it, 40-50 years ago a factory made widgets but was never able to completely accurately forecast demand, so they over-ordered supplies and over-produced products, which had to be warehoused when inventory built up. All of that represents spending and jobs. Computerization enabled far more accurate forecasting and modeling, resulting in far more accurate material purchasing, labor forecasts, sales projections, cut warehousing costs and so on. Gross margin in capital didn't change that much, but because less of it was tied up in excess jobs, materials and finished product it became profit and salary for management while reducing the number of jobs necessary to create the product.
its a wonder tech ceo's have not been targets of violence. just give it time, though. to create local 'terrorists' all you need is to push people to the edge where they think they have nothing left.
If you look at the history of labor conflict in the US, it's often staggering how much violence there was. And not just sticks and stones conflict between police and pickets, but armed conflict waged more like a militia battle where it took Federal troops to impose order.
And the ugly side of it was sometimes racially motivated, with groups killing Chinese or other ethnic groups wholesale, believing their lower wages were stealing jobs.
It's hard to see that happening these days, but I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe we're better people, maybe because the economics of it aren't as dire as being an unemployed miner in Montana in 1880.
I would think we would be at the point where the HENRYs -- high earners, not rich yet, people like the highly educated professional class and SMB owners, people with a high income and wealth accumulation potential, but still needing to work due to lack of sufficient wealth accumulation -- would be starting to feel some kind of collective fear for their own status.
The working classes have largely been strip-mined for their wealth, the middle classes nearly so, and the next class on the radar screen has to be the HENRYs. There's an awful lot of income still flowing into that class that must look pretty tempting once the middle class has been finished off.
While they remain politically influential by virtue of their income and education, they probably suffer from some identity confusion, believing that their high income gives them a social status equal to the very rich, leading them to believe their interests are aligned. Really, an economic version of the false affiliation working class whites believed they had with Republicans who used social issues as a diversion while stripping them of wealth and income.
When in fact, it would seem that once the wealth accumulators no longer find sufficient wealth to strip from the middle class, they will target the "inefficiencies" of high income earners as their next source of wealth addition.
I would expect that if the HENRYs ever get sufficiently stripped of income and wealth, that the truly wealthy would just start to feed on each other.
I would date the surveillance state back to Prohibition at least. It was one of the first times where the Federal government had an organized network of agents with a mandate to spy on the citizenry to enforce a state mandate.
Maybe the market would respond to that by making more things that can be fixed, upgraded or refurbished and fewer planned obsolescence items that can't.
The problem is what people want is a portable version that can be played on any device.
A great example is a TV series. It's conceivable I might want to watch a given episode on any of 5 different devices in my house. No one download method works for all of them. And in some cases, I may want to downsample HD content to put on a physical DVD.
I want the damn content in unencrypted format and not locked to a specific hardware platform or service.
It's a question of tradeoffs. I mean, they find people who will willingly(?) let Rocco Siffridi jack them up the ass for 30 minutes.
A nerd may be ugly, but they won't be hung like a horse or have more than 2 minutes endurance, and you can close your eyes or turn around and not look at them.
Those 30 minutes with Rocco won't get easier with your eyes closed.
The most common usages of drone are for Predator-type vehicles used by the military and battery powered multicopters used by hobbyists and others for short-range, low-payload close in flights.
The former are extremely expensive pilotless airplanes backed by a large ground infrastructure with unique capabilities (like their own satellites). The latter are relatively inexpensive, but for the most part can't carry more than small video camera and can't travel all that far.
Based on the breathless summary of this article, they make it sound like we already have the equivalent of the former in the packaging and cost of the latter, just waiting to take off with a hundred or so gallons of pesticide or able to travel 10+ miles delivering heavy packages with precision.
Do we? Are there available commercial civilian drones that can be operated by 1-2 people able to actually do the job of a crop duster? That's about the number of people it takes to keep a crop duster flying -- a pilot and a mechanic, and they can carry enough chemicals to spray a many acres in a single flight. The Amazon thing sounds even more ridiculous, the equivalent of a small helicopter in terms of range and lift capacity.
To me this reads like wishful thinking or science fiction. "Robots could do these jobs.." Sure, but first show me the robot you've invented that can do them. I don't doubt the pilotless cropdusters are technologically possible -- you could just put in remote controls in an actual plane or helicopter, but probably not cheaper and easier than you could just hire someone to fly the thing.
I think the politics of legalization almost requires a believable and workable DUI measurement system.
One of the many false narratives against legalizing marijuana for recreational purposes is the "ZOMG, STONED DRIVERS11!!" scare tactic. The idea that if you legalize it for recreational purposes, the roads will suddenly be flooded with stoned drivers, threatening the safety, moral purity and precious bodily fluids of God-fearing Christians and their children driving down the road.
It's a scare tactic because it presumes that having pot illegal means nobody is doing this now, and pretty much anyone who smokes marijuana knows that's laughable as everyone *I* know who smokes pot is willing to drive when high, although most have some kind of responsibility threshold where they won't drive past some point. One hit in the last hour? OK. Two joints and then rush hour? Maybe not.
And for legalization advocates, it has to be something other than a zero tolerance policy. Because THC is detectable weeks after smoking pot, a zero tolerance policy is almost the same as continued criminalization. If you can only smoke pot and then not drive for 4 weeks until you test clean, what's the point? And of *course* cops that hate the idea of legalizing pot (one less harassment tool in their toolkit), will selectively enforce pot DUIs against the same people they selectively enforce pot laws against now -- minorities, young people, anyone they think they can harass. A white suburban woman in a late model SUV doing 11 MPH over the limit will need a dashboard bong to get tested, a black man in a 15 year old Cadillac pulled over for the same offense will get tested.
For legalization advocates, having a believable system means the ability to discount the argument that legalization will lead to a surge in pot DUIs, accidents and chaos. Note I said believable, not necessarily scientifically valid. Without it, there are reasonable people who will buy into the stoned driving epidemic fears and vote against it, as well as politicians who will use it as a wedge. So long as the policy is both credible enough to silence fear mongers and reassure the public AND loose enough that it can't be used as a harassment tool (ie, enough false negatives to balance false positives) it's *politically* workable.
I think the best thing would be to focus on a scientifically valid test of impairment that suspected stoned drivers would need to fail before any THC level test could be used. It would let some stoned drivers off the hook, but my sense is that most mildly stoned drivers are still within the normal range of general driving safety skills anyway. I drive more than average (25k mi per year) and there are an awful lot of just plain bad drivers out there, and I'd suspect that most average and better drivers are still more competent mildly stoned than a lot of unimpaired drivers with poor skills.
I would be inclined to believe those traits have a genetic component to them as well and may have more influence of perceived levels of intelligence and educational attainment than any one genetic component influencing actual cognition.
Any child about 12 or under who grew up in a technology household with DVRs and streaming likely has seen a fraction of the commercials children 10 or more years old saw, even if there isn't any effort to specifically block them.
I think you might be surprised at your son's reaction had he seen them. The few commercials my son does watch, it always surprises me how he sees through so many of them. "Dad, why is it the viagra commercials always have a woman a lot younger than the man?" stands out, but it's kind of interesting how they kind of see through a lot of them.
At this point, he's better at skipping commercials with the Tivo remote than I am.
And I get that with VCs and startups before they go public, and the spend money to make money concept. I've been around too many under-capitalized businesses and totally get the idea of losing money building up a foundation for future growth.
But Twitter as an example already has done an IPO and in theory is past the point at which VCs sink money in -- the stock is already issued.
I'm guessing at Twitter's scale the idea that they are losing money is mostly nominal, and that the business isn't absolute, negative cash flow and that substantial portions of their losses are paper losses, with the real portion of the loss something they can kick down the road a fair number of times before it becomes a meaningful problem -- you issue bonds, collect the cash, and then issue new bonds to pay off the old bonds and collect the extra cash, ad nauseum until you've taken on so much debt it just collapses.
I'd love to hear a "explain it to me like I was 5" accounting-focused explanation of how a business like Twitter manages to lose money and still pay the bills.
Conceptually it makes sense when a business has been around for some time and had profitable years and then has a year where they lose money -- they might have cash reserves or access to credit to make up the shortfall.
But a shorter-lived business like Twatter that's maybe never made a profit -- they don't have a savings account with reserves built up from previous years' profit because they've never had it.
How does that work? People are willing to loan them the money because of their high valuation? The corporation holds some of its own stock and sells it to provide cash? It's all funny accounting math, and their "losses" aren't actually negative cash balances but a bunch of accounting gobbledygook that "add up" to a loss, but they're actually slightly better than break even in cash flow?
I have a client who buys refurbished PCs for "non-critical" employees, so they're 2-odd years old when they get them. Many get SSDs swapped in after two years (4 total years old) for the hard disks and have had their lifetime extended nearly indefinitely.
It wouldn't surprise me to see some of these machines outlive Windows 7 extended support if the power supply doesn't quit before that or there's some compelling reason to view the OS as obsolete. This would probably make some of them 8 or even more years since their build date.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the other thing, it's quite obvious that women use sex as an arbitrage tool all the time to advance their life situation.
I do a lot of work for a very wealthy country club and with few exceptions, the wives of members I've seen are all very attractive and very fit, far more so than the average in my more average middle class demographic. If you don't think these women are using their sexuality to maintain a life of luxury enabled by their husband's income, you're kidding yourself.
Ironically, my experience suggests women *don't* like sex as much as men do.
I'm 49, married for 17 years to a woman I've cohabited with for 21 years. Of the dozen plus men I know in my age/socioeconomic demographic, ALL complain about their wives lack of interest in sex.
Once you filter past the life circumstances of being a full-time professional, parent and homeowner, the pattern is remarkably consistent -- a frequent "not tonight" refusal of advances, an occasional half-hearted acquiescence, and the least frequent genuine engagement, running about 4-8 weeks.
My guess is this is largely a function of reproductive evolutionary biology, as women who have borne children and are past 40 have little reason to engage in sex. Pregnancies past 40 are at a high risk for chromosomal defects (resulting in labor-intensive maintenance which might threaten resources for existing healthy children) or other health risks which might imperil the mother's health, not to mention the time and resource investments required for an infant.
Plus, in self-driving cars you'll be able to smoke pot and that won't work in a self-driving bus.
Is there any way to electronically monkeywrench cameras? Some way to fuck with automatic gain control so that the image isn't any good, some kind of discreet light source that could be aimed in their direction or omnidirectionally if you didn't know where it was?
Smashing them physically seems kind of counterproductive, as it has a lot of risk and may result in the camera being moved or hardened in a way that makes smashing impractical. Plus monitoring systems may flag a down camera, especially an IP one.
I think something like an aerosol hair spray might not be a bad alternative. It would apply a blurring film that would render the image mostly useless, be a lot less unobtrusive than a smashed camera to the casual observer. And in a lot of cases, few cameras are actively monitored so the results may last a long time before it was noticed. The camera would otherwise appear operational (active circuit for analog cameras, active IP status for IP ones).
Getting at the high mounts might be a challenge, but I could see some kind of "selfie stick" type of widget which would allow you to mount a can of whatever you're spraying to a pole and push the spray button from a handle.
Why is prostitution illegal at all?
One of the most common lines is "prostitution exploits women" -- if that's the case, then why are prostitutes arrested? Wouldn't they then be the victims? At least in the EU that seems to be emerging model, with Sweden and now France making accepting money for sex not illegal, but paying money for sex illegal. But that's very recent, and not generally reflective of long standing practices and criminal law.
A more enduring answer seems to be that it's merely reflective of anti-sex morality, the same mindset that used to criminalize pornography, birth control and made sodomy and adultery actual crimes. Although most all of those things have mostly stopped being illegal, as society on balance has become accepting of sex as recreation -- sodomy and adultery laws have mostly been overturned or aren't enforced anymore, singles bars, Craigslist/Tinder/Grindr, etc. And also, in not the not so distant past, society was more tolerant of prostitution -- brothels operated more openly -- despite a generally stronger social prohibition on sex outside of marriage.
I think prostitution remains illegal -- with the public justification shifting in spite of general acceptance of sex outside of wedlock -- because women don't like prostitution. Despite the general changes in attitude about sex outside of marriage, women still see sexuality as a significant bargaining chip in social relations with men. Legalized prostitution thus represents a threat to women's bargaining status in relationships.
If men can buy sex whenever they want it for only money, women lose a significant bargaining advantage in relationships with men. Their sexuality no longer represents a scarce good or service and they can no longer structure their relationship demands around controlling access to sex. Which seems really ironic, since women often loudly decry being seen as "sex objects" and want to be valued for their intelligence or other personality traits, yet it seems as in spite of that, women continue to see their sexuality as primary tool in attracting and maintaining mail interest in relationships.
You would think that *women* would want prostitution legal, though, because it would in theory act as a kind of filter for men they wish to engage in more substantive relationships with. It would, in theory, make the pool of men they encounter to more likely be interested in non-sexual aspects of a relationship, reducing the effort needed to filter men who falsify their intentions in order to gain sex.
I thought I had read of that as being called "the Swedish model" because Sweden adopted it first. It tries for the most part to make the prostitute not a criminal, but the men buying sex criminals without actually making prostitution legal.
You don't pay for the vagina, you pay for them to go away after.
Isn't there some philosophical argument (at least) to be made that says that laws that can't be understood by ordinary men shouldn't be enforced?
It seems like there's both a basic democratic element to it -- if the rule of law derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, how can they consent to what they can't understand? I have to live my life knowing that I may be subject to laws made in such a way I can't know if I am even obeying them.
It also seems to be kind of a streamlining effect -- if laws can't be easily understood, maybe they're unnecessary or not really enforceable, Or they lack the basic coherence that says they represent a concrete idea. Complex laws are more likely to represent the interests of narrow constituencies.
I think in the legal system also has a vested interest in the complexity of law. If laws were understandable and enforceable in plain language, the legal system would have less purpose and standing.
I wonder if the alternative minimum tax is a cautionary tale about any hope of fixing it. That was actually supposed to fix the inequality of wealthy people paying no taxes at all.
Maybe it worked, but it's also never been indexed or adjusted for inflation, so the paperboy now pays it, too, but it hits HENRYs hardest. And you can't even fix the lack of inflation adjustment either, because the revenue loss can't easily be replaced without, well, taxing the rich.
You know, I blame the electronic spreadsheet (and electronic accounting) as much as anything for wealth inequality and the decline of the middle class.
I have this theory that the middle class is really nothing more than a byproduct of accounting inefficiency; the jobs and income that result from inefficiency enable a middle class, and the reason it's declining is that spreadsheets enable financial modeling so easily that pretty much everyone has been able to identify process inefficiencies and costs so well that they've eliminated the "slop" that enabled the middle class.
If you think about it, 40-50 years ago a factory made widgets but was never able to completely accurately forecast demand, so they over-ordered supplies and over-produced products, which had to be warehoused when inventory built up. All of that represents spending and jobs. Computerization enabled far more accurate forecasting and modeling, resulting in far more accurate material purchasing, labor forecasts, sales projections, cut warehousing costs and so on. Gross margin in capital didn't change that much, but because less of it was tied up in excess jobs, materials and finished product it became profit and salary for management while reducing the number of jobs necessary to create the product.
its a wonder tech ceo's have not been targets of violence. just give it time, though. to create local 'terrorists' all you need is to push people to the edge where they think they have nothing left.
If you look at the history of labor conflict in the US, it's often staggering how much violence there was. And not just sticks and stones conflict between police and pickets, but armed conflict waged more like a militia battle where it took Federal troops to impose order.
And the ugly side of it was sometimes racially motivated, with groups killing Chinese or other ethnic groups wholesale, believing their lower wages were stealing jobs.
It's hard to see that happening these days, but I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe we're better people, maybe because the economics of it aren't as dire as being an unemployed miner in Montana in 1880.
I would think we would be at the point where the HENRYs -- high earners, not rich yet, people like the highly educated professional class and SMB owners, people with a high income and wealth accumulation potential, but still needing to work due to lack of sufficient wealth accumulation -- would be starting to feel some kind of collective fear for their own status.
The working classes have largely been strip-mined for their wealth, the middle classes nearly so, and the next class on the radar screen has to be the HENRYs. There's an awful lot of income still flowing into that class that must look pretty tempting once the middle class has been finished off.
While they remain politically influential by virtue of their income and education, they probably suffer from some identity confusion, believing that their high income gives them a social status equal to the very rich, leading them to believe their interests are aligned. Really, an economic version of the false affiliation working class whites believed they had with Republicans who used social issues as a diversion while stripping them of wealth and income.
When in fact, it would seem that once the wealth accumulators no longer find sufficient wealth to strip from the middle class, they will target the "inefficiencies" of high income earners as their next source of wealth addition.
I would expect that if the HENRYs ever get sufficiently stripped of income and wealth, that the truly wealthy would just start to feed on each other.
I would date the surveillance state back to Prohibition at least. It was one of the first times where the Federal government had an organized network of agents with a mandate to spy on the citizenry to enforce a state mandate.
Maybe the market would respond to that by making more things that can be fixed, upgraded or refurbished and fewer planned obsolescence items that can't.
The problem is what people want is a portable version that can be played on any device.
A great example is a TV series. It's conceivable I might want to watch a given episode on any of 5 different devices in my house. No one download method works for all of them. And in some cases, I may want to downsample HD content to put on a physical DVD.
I want the damn content in unencrypted format and not locked to a specific hardware platform or service.
It's a question of tradeoffs. I mean, they find people who will willingly(?) let Rocco Siffridi jack them up the ass for 30 minutes.
A nerd may be ugly, but they won't be hung like a horse or have more than 2 minutes endurance, and you can close your eyes or turn around and not look at them.
Those 30 minutes with Rocco won't get easier with your eyes closed.
The most common usages of drone are for Predator-type vehicles used by the military and battery powered multicopters used by hobbyists and others for short-range, low-payload close in flights.
The former are extremely expensive pilotless airplanes backed by a large ground infrastructure with unique capabilities (like their own satellites). The latter are relatively inexpensive, but for the most part can't carry more than small video camera and can't travel all that far.
Based on the breathless summary of this article, they make it sound like we already have the equivalent of the former in the packaging and cost of the latter, just waiting to take off with a hundred or so gallons of pesticide or able to travel 10+ miles delivering heavy packages with precision.
Do we? Are there available commercial civilian drones that can be operated by 1-2 people able to actually do the job of a crop duster? That's about the number of people it takes to keep a crop duster flying -- a pilot and a mechanic, and they can carry enough chemicals to spray a many acres in a single flight. The Amazon thing sounds even more ridiculous, the equivalent of a small helicopter in terms of range and lift capacity.
To me this reads like wishful thinking or science fiction. "Robots could do these jobs.." Sure, but first show me the robot you've invented that can do them. I don't doubt the pilotless cropdusters are technologically possible -- you could just put in remote controls in an actual plane or helicopter, but probably not cheaper and easier than you could just hire someone to fly the thing.
I'm surprised the bounty isn't a chance to make a personal video with some kind of on-screen talent. It might attract more motivated participants.
But then again, it may cost them more than $25k to get talent to agree to shag a beardy programmer.
I think the politics of legalization almost requires a believable and workable DUI measurement system.
One of the many false narratives against legalizing marijuana for recreational purposes is the "ZOMG, STONED DRIVERS11!!" scare tactic. The idea that if you legalize it for recreational purposes, the roads will suddenly be flooded with stoned drivers, threatening the safety, moral purity and precious bodily fluids of God-fearing Christians and their children driving down the road.
It's a scare tactic because it presumes that having pot illegal means nobody is doing this now, and pretty much anyone who smokes marijuana knows that's laughable as everyone *I* know who smokes pot is willing to drive when high, although most have some kind of responsibility threshold where they won't drive past some point. One hit in the last hour? OK. Two joints and then rush hour? Maybe not.
And for legalization advocates, it has to be something other than a zero tolerance policy. Because THC is detectable weeks after smoking pot, a zero tolerance policy is almost the same as continued criminalization. If you can only smoke pot and then not drive for 4 weeks until you test clean, what's the point? And of *course* cops that hate the idea of legalizing pot (one less harassment tool in their toolkit), will selectively enforce pot DUIs against the same people they selectively enforce pot laws against now -- minorities, young people, anyone they think they can harass. A white suburban woman in a late model SUV doing 11 MPH over the limit will need a dashboard bong to get tested, a black man in a 15 year old Cadillac pulled over for the same offense will get tested.
For legalization advocates, having a believable system means the ability to discount the argument that legalization will lead to a surge in pot DUIs, accidents and chaos. Note I said believable, not necessarily scientifically valid. Without it, there are reasonable people who will buy into the stoned driving epidemic fears and vote against it, as well as politicians who will use it as a wedge. So long as the policy is both credible enough to silence fear mongers and reassure the public AND loose enough that it can't be used as a harassment tool (ie, enough false negatives to balance false positives) it's *politically* workable.
I think the best thing would be to focus on a scientifically valid test of impairment that suspected stoned drivers would need to fail before any THC level test could be used. It would let some stoned drivers off the hook, but my sense is that most mildly stoned drivers are still within the normal range of general driving safety skills anyway. I drive more than average (25k mi per year) and there are an awful lot of just plain bad drivers out there, and I'd suspect that most average and better drivers are still more competent mildly stoned than a lot of unimpaired drivers with poor skills.
I would be inclined to believe those traits have a genetic component to them as well and may have more influence of perceived levels of intelligence and educational attainment than any one genetic component influencing actual cognition.
Any child about 12 or under who grew up in a technology household with DVRs and streaming likely has seen a fraction of the commercials children 10 or more years old saw, even if there isn't any effort to specifically block them.
I think you might be surprised at your son's reaction had he seen them. The few commercials my son does watch, it always surprises me how he sees through so many of them. "Dad, why is it the viagra commercials always have a woman a lot younger than the man?" stands out, but it's kind of interesting how they kind of see through a lot of them.
At this point, he's better at skipping commercials with the Tivo remote than I am.
And I get that with VCs and startups before they go public, and the spend money to make money concept. I've been around too many under-capitalized businesses and totally get the idea of losing money building up a foundation for future growth.
But Twitter as an example already has done an IPO and in theory is past the point at which VCs sink money in -- the stock is already issued.
I'm guessing at Twitter's scale the idea that they are losing money is mostly nominal, and that the business isn't absolute, negative cash flow and that substantial portions of their losses are paper losses, with the real portion of the loss something they can kick down the road a fair number of times before it becomes a meaningful problem -- you issue bonds, collect the cash, and then issue new bonds to pay off the old bonds and collect the extra cash, ad nauseum until you've taken on so much debt it just collapses.
They are conflating the philosophical question of *what* government should do with the practical side of *how* it does it.
Replacing the DEA with cyborgs or bureaucrats with database applications only changes the implementation, not the reach and scope.
I'd love to hear a "explain it to me like I was 5" accounting-focused explanation of how a business like Twitter manages to lose money and still pay the bills.
Conceptually it makes sense when a business has been around for some time and had profitable years and then has a year where they lose money -- they might have cash reserves or access to credit to make up the shortfall.
But a shorter-lived business like Twatter that's maybe never made a profit -- they don't have a savings account with reserves built up from previous years' profit because they've never had it.
How does that work? People are willing to loan them the money because of their high valuation? The corporation holds some of its own stock and sells it to provide cash? It's all funny accounting math, and their "losses" aren't actually negative cash balances but a bunch of accounting gobbledygook that "add up" to a loss, but they're actually slightly better than break even in cash flow?
I have a client who buys refurbished PCs for "non-critical" employees, so they're 2-odd years old when they get them. Many get SSDs swapped in after two years (4 total years old) for the hard disks and have had their lifetime extended nearly indefinitely.
It wouldn't surprise me to see some of these machines outlive Windows 7 extended support if the power supply doesn't quit before that or there's some compelling reason to view the OS as obsolete. This would probably make some of them 8 or even more years since their build date.