My great uncle died fighting FOR The Third Reich. Let me tell you, he was Austrian. He hated the annexation, he hated the Nazi Party, and everything they stood for, and was drafted in Graz, literally at gunpoint, while his best friend was beaten nearly to death by the conscription brownshirts. He did shoot down some British planes. About 3 days after d-day, he was fortunate enough to surrender to allied forces, and spent 4 years doing slave labor in a French POW camp. It became his goal to emigrate to the US and settle here, and he died a happy man at 89. He became worried about the direction he saw the US headed in the 1980's and 1990's. He said that his country had washed their hands and learned their lesson. (He showed me photos of what parts of Germany looked like after the war; from friends and relatives who were there, some who endured the Soviet invasion and occupation - it wasn't pretty). He said that the US is absolutely headed towards learning this lesson - and that it must be part of a nation's character to have to go through this.
Fuck Troi - you want an evil manipulative control-freak bitch who not only THINKS she can read your mind, but actually CAN read your mind? Every man's worst nightmare. No. Thank. You. You could have found the hottest woman alive to play that character, and I would not have fucked that bitch with Kirk's dick.
Yeah, wow. A big eyesore? In Vegas? Really? Inconceivable~!
Please, when they don't like it anymore, they'll just freaking dynamite it, and build the next JJ Abrams version in it's place. It's freaking Vegas, and good taste or good sense has not one damn thing to do with anything in that mothefucking town. Jesus.
Profit-maximising Corporations are a Cancer and should be treated as a disease.
There is immense profit to be made in ongoing prevention, diagonsis, and treatment of Cancer. So Cancer is really a good thing. Creates hundreds of thousands of jobs, feeds millions of children.
Frankly, the Samurai were a privileged upper-class of the 16th-18th century. And even then, most men who could call themselves "Samurai" were really basically accountants or family members, of the very upper echelons, who perhaps spent a lot of time studying martial arts, and zen philosophy, because they had nothing better to do with their time, because they had the peasants doing all their work for them. When the gun came, the Shogun dispensed with the need for sword and spear-wielding footsoldiers. Just like in Europe. These Samurai were really more of a liability to central power, than an asset. As long as he had them glued to the idea of tradition, he could keep them captivated. But that would only last so long. It was amazing that they preserved that as long as they did.
OF COURSE - the "concept" was revived in Imperial Japan, in the 20th century. As a means of propaganda, to get the Japanese people on-board with the fascist expansion of Japan's projection of power in the Pacific and Asia. It was also very convenient to motivate the soldiers to fight with an extreme frenzy of self-sacrifice and obedience, and even to get substandard pilots to use suicide-attack tactics when they were desperate, and they had more surplus equipment, and had lost most of their best pilots towards the end of the war.
But this is VERY much the same as some jackass American tobacco-chewing punk from Tennesee who wears boots (made in China) and drives a pickup truck, and watches NASCAR, and listens to country music, and calls himself a "Cowboy", and MAYBE rode a horse a couple of times in his life. We all love the idea of "rugged individualism" in this country, don't we? (but few of us "rugged individualists" would actually be "down" with Teddy Roosevelt's ideals. . . ).
At some point, the obsolete cultural legends of the past become nothing more than caricatured lifestyle stereotypes - betraying how completely empty and bankrupt, and devoid of identity our present culture is.
I have a similar story. For the iPhone. (1). I "won" one, and tried it out for 30 days. Too fucking big, and the touchscreen basically sucked ass, and I wasn't exactly happy with the expensive non-optional data-plan. Next thing I did was root it so I could use it as a media player, so I could switch back to my motorola razr. Nowadays, I'm pretty stoked about my Android. (with a hard-button keyboard). I have played around with the iPhone4, and it's much better, speed-wise. But still too big, and typing on a touch screen is stupid.
See - there's a difference between State Dept. classified, and DoD classified. And then there's NRO, and NSA, and CIA - who do not even fall under those auspices. State Dept are complete buffoons, basically. Stuff is "classified" to avoid embarrassment. YMMV - but how do you define what's REALLY important? Something that could trigger enough people to get upset and start a revolution to topple a regime, where a bunch of people who've already been miserable for 6 decades will just end up being miserable for another 6? I guess so.
Dates and times and places that nuclear weapons are being transferred? No - that stuff isn't really going to be available. And if it is, it's expired.
well, that's probably true. By the time they get around to dismantling the reactor, who knows how cheap it will be to bribe enough congressmen to get slavery legalized, so that they can simply purchase a small force of slave labor to do the cleanup. These kinds of costs are very difficult to predict this far in the future. Especially with the volatile nature of our regulatory environment vis-a-vis the Citizens United decision, and the recent STOCK bill that was just passed.
If a sudden breakthrough in solar panels occurred, the solar panel manufacturers would go bankrupt because the sale price would be too low for them to make a profit. Which is exactly what has been happening since 2008.
. . . no; the REAL problem is that it's not children coming up with these prices. It's thousands of algorithmic trading programs running on tens of thousands of computers making hundreds of thousands of trades per second based on millions upon millions of datapoints, and secret, corporate-proprietary formulae, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Some of these programs may be perfectly legit. Some may do a great job at creating a more stable market. And some clever little devils may have figured a way to scam programs into making trades in unnatural spikes and valleys that introduce predictable volatility that can be taken advantage of; and that money's got to come from somewhere.
Ultimately - it comes out of the consumer's pocket.
We can debate whether this activity is ethical or moral - or whether it does the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. But a million dollars in a million hands will circulate in the economy. While a million dollars in a psychopathic white-collar criminal's hand, is going to sit in his Anonymous Swiss Bank account, and be used as a figure on a piece of paper, with which he can maybe impress one or two other psychopathic white-collar criminals. As a whole, I do not believe this is of any benefit.
It's actually a gross understatement of facts to say simply that the US "cannot physically produce oil at the rate that the US consumes oil" - because part of that production, RELIES on the consumption. We need a steady supply of oil/gasoline/diesel to: operate pumps, refineries, truck/rail transport and distribution, . . . and never mind what happens immediately to the airline industry, the stock/commodities trading, farming.
We would be in a fucking shitton of trouble within 3-5 days. Within 30, even the military would have trouble distributing its internal supply from the SPR to adequately maintain order. (This maybe wasn't a problem before GWB sent the national guard to Iraq. It may or may not be a problem any more, now that those troops are being redeployed). Food? lol. Backup power for nuclear station cooling systems? um, let's not talk about that, okay? That makes people uncomfortable.
Every single one: self-entitled incompetent arrogant assholes. (the project/program managers, not technical leads).
Female bosses - a mixed bag. The good ones, were really good. The bad one: had a sexist male-hating axe to grind, and promoted women exclusively within the organization, regardless of merit, which created some pretty toxic situations with female team leads who basically sucked. But these were the exceptions rather than the rule. Once the man-hater was "promoted" to a different location, and her flying-monkey underlings removed, (one fired for excessive absenteeism, and finally, showing up completely drunk at work) - things got better.
No. It was about the dollar/oil in Libya. It was about the dollar/oil in Iraq. And it's about the dollar/oil in Iran. The nukes are about deterring the inevitable invasion. The transition to oil bourse from petro dollar is seen as Iran's only alternative to develop an independent modern economy. But they know that others have tried, and have been smacked-down. Everyone else who trades in dollars is a de-facto western-bloc client state. They know that with nuclear weapons, they will have the independence to pull off the currency transition, because it will deter invasion. (of course, they underestimate us. I believe that the western powers will invade anyway. Nukes or no nukes. We are objectively at war with Pakistan. And they have nukes. no biggie)
The idea that democracies are less belligerent is a fallacy.
. . . well this was even true of ancient Athens. Or the Scandinavians (Vikings), who were Monarchy/Parliamentarians, but still a form a democracy. Famously rather belligerent, for several hundred years.
There are some basic factual realities about the "let's colonize mars" discussion. 5 minutes of quiet contemplation, for most people, I would think, should just make sense. (for example, it would be FAR easier for us to colonize ANTARCTICA! it's a lot closer, and WAY more hospitable!)
I am a descendant of a Norwegian immigrant who was so enslaved, in a copper-mining interest. From the very first day, his debt increased, day by day. It was mathematically impossible to get out, as set by the terms of the company, and the company-owned businesses that supplied food and shelter. What he didn't know, was at the time, these terms had been outlawed for several years, in the US. He learned that before being hustled onto the train by armed thugs. Luckily, he had smuggled a letter out, prior to arriving at the mine, to a relative who was already homesteading in Iowa. The relative came, and "bought" him. It was a very small amount, for a farmer. But for a miner, trapped in that town, an impossible sum. Unfortunately, they also lost their horse, and they (along with his wife, who was pregnant) were forced to walk over 800 miles back to Iowa. During this journey, the baby was lost, due to a harsh winter. (For this, they left Norway?) He ended up working on his relative's farm, and for the first season, paid his debt, and purchased his own farm. Five years later, the US Government came in and seized the mine, and freed the (illegally) indentured.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, my bio says I don't work for the CIA anymore either.
(... didn't DIE)
My great uncle died fighting FOR The Third Reich. Let me tell you, he was Austrian. He hated the annexation, he hated the Nazi Party, and everything they stood for, and was drafted in Graz, literally at gunpoint, while his best friend was beaten nearly to death by the conscription brownshirts. He did shoot down some British planes. About 3 days after d-day, he was fortunate enough to surrender to allied forces, and spent 4 years doing slave labor in a French POW camp. It became his goal to emigrate to the US and settle here, and he died a happy man at 89. He became worried about the direction he saw the US headed in the 1980's and 1990's. He said that his country had washed their hands and learned their lesson. (He showed me photos of what parts of Germany looked like after the war; from friends and relatives who were there, some who endured the Soviet invasion and occupation - it wasn't pretty). He said that the US is absolutely headed towards learning this lesson - and that it must be part of a nation's character to have to go through this.
This all sounds exactly like what was going down at Circuit City before they went under.
Think of the Star Wars fanboy shame.
They could NEVER go to WorldCon there. LOL!
Fuck Troi - you want an evil manipulative control-freak bitch who not only THINKS she can read your mind, but actually CAN read your mind? Every man's worst nightmare. No. Thank. You. You could have found the hottest woman alive to play that character, and I would not have fucked that bitch with Kirk's dick.
Yeah, wow. A big eyesore? In Vegas? Really? Inconceivable~!
Please, when they don't like it anymore, they'll just freaking dynamite it, and build the next JJ Abrams version in it's place. It's freaking Vegas, and good taste or good sense has not one damn thing to do with anything in that mothefucking town. Jesus.
Quite right. Now they need to build Serenity.
Naw; Creature of the Black Lagoon was AWESOME in 3D also.
Profit-maximising Corporations are a Cancer and should be treated as a disease.
There is immense profit to be made in ongoing prevention, diagonsis, and treatment of Cancer. So Cancer is really a good thing. Creates hundreds of thousands of jobs, feeds millions of children.
Frankly, the Samurai were a privileged upper-class of the 16th-18th century. And even then, most men who could call themselves "Samurai" were really basically accountants or family members, of the very upper echelons, who perhaps spent a lot of time studying martial arts, and zen philosophy, because they had nothing better to do with their time, because they had the peasants doing all their work for them. When the gun came, the Shogun dispensed with the need for sword and spear-wielding footsoldiers. Just like in Europe. These Samurai were really more of a liability to central power, than an asset. As long as he had them glued to the idea of tradition, he could keep them captivated. But that would only last so long. It was amazing that they preserved that as long as they did.
OF COURSE - the "concept" was revived in Imperial Japan, in the 20th century. As a means of propaganda, to get the Japanese people on-board with the fascist expansion of Japan's projection of power in the Pacific and Asia. It was also very convenient to motivate the soldiers to fight with an extreme frenzy of self-sacrifice and obedience, and even to get substandard pilots to use suicide-attack tactics when they were desperate, and they had more surplus equipment, and had lost most of their best pilots towards the end of the war.
But this is VERY much the same as some jackass American tobacco-chewing punk from Tennesee who wears boots (made in China) and drives a pickup truck, and watches NASCAR, and listens to country music, and calls himself a "Cowboy", and MAYBE rode a horse a couple of times in his life. We all love the idea of "rugged individualism" in this country, don't we? (but few of us "rugged individualists" would actually be "down" with Teddy Roosevelt's ideals. . . ).
At some point, the obsolete cultural legends of the past become nothing more than caricatured lifestyle stereotypes - betraying how completely empty and bankrupt, and devoid of identity our present culture is.
I have a similar story. For the iPhone. (1). I "won" one, and tried it out for 30 days. Too fucking big, and the touchscreen basically sucked ass, and I wasn't exactly happy with the expensive non-optional data-plan. Next thing I did was root it so I could use it as a media player, so I could switch back to my motorola razr. Nowadays, I'm pretty stoked about my Android. (with a hard-button keyboard). I have played around with the iPhone4, and it's much better, speed-wise. But still too big, and typing on a touch screen is stupid.
See - there's a difference between State Dept. classified, and DoD classified. And then there's NRO, and NSA, and CIA - who do not even fall under those auspices. State Dept are complete buffoons, basically. Stuff is "classified" to avoid embarrassment. YMMV - but how do you define what's REALLY important? Something that could trigger enough people to get upset and start a revolution to topple a regime, where a bunch of people who've already been miserable for 6 decades will just end up being miserable for another 6? I guess so.
Dates and times and places that nuclear weapons are being transferred? No - that stuff isn't really going to be available. And if it is, it's expired.
well, that's probably true. By the time they get around to dismantling the reactor, who knows how cheap it will be to bribe enough congressmen to get slavery legalized, so that they can simply purchase a small force of slave labor to do the cleanup. These kinds of costs are very difficult to predict this far in the future. Especially with the volatile nature of our regulatory environment vis-a-vis the Citizens United decision, and the recent STOCK bill that was just passed.
If a sudden breakthrough in solar panels occurred, the solar panel manufacturers would go bankrupt because the sale price would be too low for them to make a profit. Which is exactly what has been happening since 2008.
. . . no; the REAL problem is that it's not children coming up with these prices. It's thousands of algorithmic trading programs running on tens of thousands of computers making hundreds of thousands of trades per second based on millions upon millions of datapoints, and secret, corporate-proprietary formulae, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Some of these programs may be perfectly legit. Some may do a great job at creating a more stable market. And some clever little devils may have figured a way to scam programs into making trades in unnatural spikes and valleys that introduce predictable volatility that can be taken advantage of; and that money's got to come from somewhere.
Ultimately - it comes out of the consumer's pocket.
We can debate whether this activity is ethical or moral - or whether it does the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. But a million dollars in a million hands will circulate in the economy. While a million dollars in a psychopathic white-collar criminal's hand, is going to sit in his Anonymous Swiss Bank account, and be used as a figure on a piece of paper, with which he can maybe impress one or two other psychopathic white-collar criminals. As a whole, I do not believe this is of any benefit.
You know what would change those speculators' minds also?
A blindfold, a cigarette, a brick wall, and a firing squad.
It's actually a gross understatement of facts to say simply that the US "cannot physically produce oil at the rate that the US consumes oil" - because part of that production, RELIES on the consumption. We need a steady supply of oil/gasoline/diesel to: operate pumps, refineries, truck/rail transport and distribution, . . . and never mind what happens immediately to the airline industry, the stock/commodities trading, farming.
We would be in a fucking shitton of trouble within 3-5 days. Within 30, even the military would have trouble distributing its internal supply from the SPR to adequately maintain order. (This maybe wasn't a problem before GWB sent the national guard to Iraq. It may or may not be a problem any more, now that those troops are being redeployed). Food? lol. Backup power for nuclear station cooling systems? um, let's not talk about that, okay? That makes people uncomfortable.
Every single one: self-entitled incompetent arrogant assholes.
(the project/program managers, not technical leads).
Female bosses - a mixed bag. The good ones, were really good. The bad one: had a sexist male-hating axe to grind, and promoted women exclusively within the organization, regardless of merit, which created some pretty toxic situations with female team leads who basically sucked. But these were the exceptions rather than the rule. Once the man-hater was "promoted" to a different location, and her flying-monkey underlings removed, (one fired for excessive absenteeism, and finally, showing up completely drunk at work) - things got better.
I have a female boss now, and she's great.
No. It was about the dollar/oil in Libya. It was about the dollar/oil in Iraq. And it's about the dollar/oil in Iran. The nukes are about deterring the inevitable invasion. The transition to oil bourse from petro dollar is seen as Iran's only alternative to develop an independent modern economy. But they know that others have tried, and have been smacked-down. Everyone else who trades in dollars is a de-facto western-bloc client state. They know that with nuclear weapons, they will have the independence to pull off the currency transition, because it will deter invasion. (of course, they underestimate us. I believe that the western powers will invade anyway. Nukes or no nukes. We are objectively at war with Pakistan. And they have nukes. no biggie)
The idea that democracies are less belligerent is a fallacy.
. . . well this was even true of ancient Athens. Or the Scandinavians (Vikings), who were Monarchy/Parliamentarians, but still a form a democracy. Famously rather belligerent, for several hundred years.
It used to be that we said that "The Desktop Computer Is Not Going Away Any Time Soon"
Well. . . that was a long time ago.
There are some basic factual realities about the "let's colonize mars" discussion. 5 minutes of quiet contemplation, for most people, I would think, should just make sense. (for example, it would be FAR easier for us to colonize ANTARCTICA! it's a lot closer, and WAY more hospitable!)
But I still love the speculation.
I am a descendant of a Norwegian immigrant who was so enslaved, in a copper-mining interest. From the very first day, his debt increased, day by day. It was mathematically impossible to get out, as set by the terms of the company, and the company-owned businesses that supplied food and shelter. What he didn't know, was at the time, these terms had been outlawed for several years, in the US. He learned that before being hustled onto the train by armed thugs. Luckily, he had smuggled a letter out, prior to arriving at the mine, to a relative who was already homesteading in Iowa. The relative came, and "bought" him. It was a very small amount, for a farmer. But for a miner, trapped in that town, an impossible sum. Unfortunately, they also lost their horse, and they (along with his wife, who was pregnant) were forced to walk over 800 miles back to Iowa. During this journey, the baby was lost, due to a harsh winter. (For this, they left Norway?) He ended up working on his relative's farm, and for the first season, paid his debt, and purchased his own farm. Five years later, the US Government came in and seized the mine, and freed the (illegally) indentured.
Gawd, effing HATCH! Finally, someone else GETS it!
We need ROCKET SCIENTISTS to design our space vehicles. NOT POLITICIANS!