But you need to look at where a large proportion of Americans live. We have a large number of major cities that have really cold weather in the winter. At 10, 20, 30 degrees below zero, Diesel becomes a technical liability. The fuel gels, and clogged fuel lines and injectors, and pumps, don't work so well. (electric cars are going to have similar issues)
The solution(s) have traditionally been; block-heaters, and winter-blends of diesel fuel. And those solutions DO work well. But - America is a culture of convenience.
I am lucky I live in a nice warm climate. I do not know if I would have picked a diesel, if I lived in one of those northern-tier states.
It's interesting that we think of a technology like the Internet as ENABLING better communication, and allowing a freer flow of ideas throughout our civilization, bringing about a rapid increase in innovation. But citing your example: yes, the crusades brought us the arabic numeral system. . . but would that system have arisen, had we (christendom) conquered the arabs, and integrated their culture PRIOR to the invention of arabic numerals?
The unification of cultures under the internet will INHIBIT the kind of innovation that does take place in a cultural vacuum. I don't know if you can generalize this one special case, but it does give one pause. How many lunatic fringe nutbags actually sink time and energy into studying cold fusion - now that we ALL *know* that it was a blind-alley? (e.g. maybe it's not). Groupthink can be deadly on any scale.
There's a passage in Genesis or Exodus somewhere that says God will take his wrath out on sinners for 10,000 generations of their descendants. 10,000 generations, times approx 20 years per generation = 200,000 years. MINIMUM. Exodus was something like 5000 or so years ago. If you're waiting for the End Times, you're going to need a bigger calendar.
Our economic system, the free market, relies on good faith intent
For that matter, so does Communism. And this is an often-cited reason why communism has "failed".
For all practical purposes, it is completely impossible to determine a participant's good faith intent - BEFORE a transaction occurs. (ie. a product or service in exchange for currency in the case of Free Market - and a product or service in exchange for "being a comrade" (implying, doing your fair-share of the work towards the common good; including being entrusted to positions of power or responsibility over others. ..)).
In both cases, Nash's game theory suggests, we all win biggest, when we all act in good faith! But if one person acts in bad faith, they win, the rest of us lose.
So who's up for convincing all the psychopaths of the world to learn about game theory? Any takers?
Therefore. . . I digress. Anyway, I've got this bridge, in Brooklyn, NY that I'd like to sell. Any takers? It's really a great investment!
I guess this really depends on how stubborn one person is. How much they believe that their partner should just "know without my telling them" what it is, they're upset about. No amount of trying to "communicate" with such a person is going to help, because they will never allow the conversation to get to THE POINT. They will dance around it, change the subject, etc. because they're maybe ashamed about asking, and assume that the partner should just KNOW.
In such situations, it does not matter if you go to sleep angry. You're basically screwed.
I would like to make an ANTI recommendation for 5 Love Languages.
It is a book about spoiled, selfish, self-centered brats, who can't see beyond their own needs and wants, and can't think about the other person they supposedly vowed to spend the rest of their life with.
Any marriage that needs this book to survive - probably needs a mercy killing anyway.
FWIW: for three couples I know of who got this book, everything was hunkey-dorey, as soon as one party started "speaking the other person's love-language". . . then that person decided that, oh, it's not really acts of service that I like, it's gifts, or it's not physical affection I want, it's attention. You find that many people are just, at their root, unhappy as hell, for whatever reason. They refuse to look at the source of this unhappiness, (low self esteem, self loathing, whatever), and instead, try to look for anything else to blame. Usually, they'll blame their spouse, for not "meeting their needs" - not doing X, or Y, or Z. If they had the stones to actually admit they need more "X" in their life - the spouse will usually bend over backwards to accommodate, and provide more X. But this does not solve the problem that the person is still unhappy, because they hate who they are. So they'll rationalize that maybe they need more "Y".
Folks like this, with hidden personality disorders (ie. most people, apparently), can drive a spouse freaking crazy, trying to make the other person happy. The 5 Love Languages, is a guidebook, for how to drive closer to the downtown area of crazytown. 18-24 months of therapy for the self-loathing spouse is the best shot at saving the M. Or, at least saving the sanity of the person married to them.
. . . or, How to be a codependent in 5 easy steps.
Your theory assumes that a woman (gasp!) would NEVER do anything so crass as to lie or manipulate, or take advantage of a guy who is so "nice".
NEVER take the word "Divorce" off the table. (and NEVER marry without a prenup! - this is not a reflection of you, this is a necessity of today's legal climate. Period) Unilateral disarmament is a guarantee of slavery. Divorce should ALWAYS be an option, should ALWAYS be on the table. Respect yourself, respect your own boundaries. It's not selfishness.
Even the flight attendants tell you: put your own oxygen mask on first, then assist others.
Last bit of advice: Nobody can love another person if they do not love themselves.
Well, First thing I'd say to you is to stop stereotyping. What you have is two people. Whatever flaws these books have, if they stereotype, then that's not really worth your time.
One of the most useful books about family communication models, is "PeopleMaking" by Virginia Satir. Yes: she has kind of a whacko hippie mentality, with utopian fantasies about how proper communication between people can save the world. But, that's just one of the chapters, and most of the rest of the book is solid, research-backed information on communication structures, and modes, and how to avoid pitfalls.
One strong caution: if one or both spouse's is an abuse victim, or has codependency or other personality issues, fear of intimacy, fear of abandonment, then no book will help you. A lot of what goes wrong in communications is caused by unhealthy coping mechanisms for insecurity, fear, and guilt, and these coping mechanisms are often habits that are very difficult to overcome. The troubled person needs to see a licensed therapist - and learn how to share vulnerable feelings and trust their partner, and themselves.
Wait a minute. Your eye doctor's name is Dr. Odin? Is he aware of the irony? (for those that aren't - Norse mythology says that Odin blinded himself, in order to achieve divine "vision").
it doesn't rely on the whims of mother nature like solar and hydroelectric do.
Uh, yeah, except the times they've had to shut down plants due to: 1. Droughts bringing rivers that are sources of cooling water down to levels too low to service the plant. (as happened a couple of years back in Tennesee) 2. El Nino conditions causing too much seaweed to grow and clog intakes for cooling water (as happened in 2000 in California).
The whims of mother nature are kind of more whimsical than most people think.
Jeez. He bought the turbines. He should just set them up, and say; "hey folks, cheap electricity here, bring your transmission lines, I'll hook ya up!"
Failing that, hook them up to an Aluminum smelting plant (they're very power-hungry operations). Then beat the crap out of Alcoa's operations in AZ, which produce a lot of carbon, because they burn natural gas.
GS may be an "American" company, but they have no loyalty to the US. They do all they can to lobby to avoid paying taxes to support the infrastructure that enables their business. There is nothing patriotic about GS, and loyalty or even sympathy to these opportunistic parasites is misplaced. Not long after they have finished looting the richest economy in the world, rest assured, they will relocate their corporate offices to greener pastures. The super-rich do not give a crap what country their estate is located in, nor do they give a crap about the people in that country. They have their own private armies, and own the officials anyway. Their peers are other super-rich people, and to them, economics, war, and politics is little more than cheap entertainment for their amusement.
You're doing this, to overcome the shortcomings of other methods of "stacking" medium-term pages for later use, like bookmarks, or relying on a search engine to recover them.
Hundreds of open tabs is the best way to save "scratch" data from web research, particularly when multitasking. I did it when I was a student writing papers, I do it when I'm in a support role, and I do it when I'm in a development role. I wish there was a better way, but apparently, nobody's imagined that paradigm yet.
Yes; and say it's possible - that you can drill in spot X, to release fault stress. Now you've allowed one edge of a tectonic plate to slip. What happens to the other edge, thousands of miles away, in another country, or under the ocean floor? What happens to all the adjacent plates? It has been shown that from time to time, a "big one" in one area can trigger others, years later, halfway across the globe, as all the plates settle into a new arrangement. This is not an engineering exercise for the faint-hearted.
. . . yeah. I was actually hoping that when US troops found WMD in Iraq, that they'd also find the Purchase Orders signed-off by Don Rumsfeld in the '80's. Must have gotten lost in the shuffle somewhere.
Well, let's be frank here. Democrats selected Obama over Clinton in the primary, (and did not turn out for Gore in '00) - because of the wishy-washiness of the moderates of the Democratic party - as exemplified by the policies of the Clinton administration '92-'99. The moderates who still bear tremendous power in the Democratic Party STILL believe that the US is a right-leaning country. And they're terrified to lean too far left. And instead of taking advantage of shifting demographics, and the appalling outcome of 8 years under Bush - the party pushed Obama to take on Rahm Emmanual as chief of staff. The day Obama selected Emmanual, I knew that Obama was going to be no different than Clinton would have been, and no different than the preceeding 8 years of Bill Clinton.
As President, Obama has been neutered, by the Yellow Dogs. I think he would have been far more effective had he remained a Senator.
Here's an example: a baker finds his business doing well, with people lining up around the block to buy his signature muffins. So he wants to buy another oven to produce more muffins, and hire two more counter staff to handle the customers. Then cap and trade gets passed, forcing him instead to buy a replacement oven for the one he already has, plus get new windows and air conditioning, not to mention all the similar upgrades in his own home. This consumes the money he would've spend on that new oven and new employees, leaving him in the same position as before. So how exactly has this helped him or the economy?
Well - at least he hasn't been "taxed" by having to pay for a war on foreign soil to protect the natural gas supply to his old oven. (never mind the hideous moral costs involved where deaths and "collateral damage" are involved). His new oven will have a lower operating cost, and wont poison the environment his descendants will have to live in 50-100 years down the road.
Here's a hint why this is bad: you're forcing people to spend money to, in effect, tread water, instead of letting them invest in something that will expand their business.
Only, "people" have had decades now to invest in "expanding their business" - and they haven't done so. Instead, they've continued to expand unsustainable practices, and profit-taking. Private industry chose to gut the US's manufacturing capacity, short term profit in exchange for long-term domestic economic security.
So - where do you think this tax money will go?
It will go towards investment in R&D for renewable energy sources. Which private industry has not done on any meaningful scale; and in fact, has expended significant resources to PREVENT such R&D. (cite: Exxon's purchase and shutdown of battery suppliers for electric cars).
When cheap renewables are available - we'll stop treading water with hidden costs, declining supply, and the toxic political effects of a petroleum-based economy.
So let's say that a group of investors buys up all the local mom'n'pop carpenter shops, imports cheap wood from a third-world country, where they've lobbied to get their government to covertly install a US-friendly dictator to ensure continued low prices for that natural resource, but only to large "bulk buyers" (ie. the investor group, not the small time carpenters).
Then the group of investors pays foreign children a dollar a month to churn out products on a massive scale, and prices them at $5.00. Until all the mom'n'pop carpenters that are left are run out of business, then they raise their prices to $15.00 a pair.
So, subtracting their much lowered labor and materials costs, gives them about $14.90 of profit per pair, against a global market for wooden shoes.
Instead of investing on R&D for better shoes, or healthcare for their workers, or a way to use materials in a more sustainable matter, the bulk of this money is pocketed by executives and board members in the form of massive compensation packages.
These folks, in turn, sock this money away in a tax-sheltered offshore account, and used to bribe^H^H^H^H^H lobby politicians for continued military support to keep their third-world dictator in power, so they can keep their offshore production costs low. Those politicians, of course, DO spend their money domestically, which employs countless crooked accountants and regulatory officials who shield them from ethics investigations and whatnot. And THOSE people spend their money buying more and more wooden shoes.
See?
Everybody wins.
Except the poor kids at the factory in the third-world country.
I don't think Hitler would have held on to Europe THIS long. There are a lot of other factors that would have taken place over the next 60 years - enough to throw many curve-balls into that theory.
I think Hitler would have run into ALL of the issues that Europe, the USSR, and the US have run into in the intevening time; the Middle East (what, you think it's really Israel they're pissed about? No - it's Western Imperialism, whether that's European Jews, the Roman Empire, - basically any excuse to direct xenophobia against "external" enemies, rather than the shortcomings of their own political systems), confrontation with Japan/Asia over oil resources, etc.
Certainly, his timing in taking on the USSR was a huge flaw. But had he instead successfully navigated that, there were a whole series of huge challenges ahead. Not the LEAST of which was the USA - and I don't think anyone could envision a what state the US would be in given a Third-reich-controlled Europe, Africa, and Western-Asia; and probably having suffered (and ultimately repelled) German attacks on the US mainland. Likely the US would have laid-low for a decade or so, but there would have been an inevitable clash later. The outcome of that would have depended on who was better (more effectively) able to deploy nuclear weapons. But this would be certainly resolved by now.
Warning about theater troupes/groups - Full Of Attention Whores. All you really need to do to get laid is show someone some attention. Talk to them, or listen. The problem with that is, all anybody else needs to do to get laid by that person is show them some attention.
Regarding Ashley Madison: Do yourself a huge favor and NEVER date a known cheater. If they cheat with you, they will cheat ON you. You are no different, you are not special. You're just another lay to them. It's all about them stroking their low self esteem.
And after you dump them, they'll cheat on the next person, and the ones after that.
Cheaters live in a delusional state of mind that allows them to blame others for their shortcomings (moral and otherwise), and will never admit that what they're doing is wrong. They're not lying, because they actually BELIEVE their own crap.
GM went bankrupt because they began (long ago) to focus their business as a FINANCIAL SERVICES company (GMAC) that happened to also sell cars. Basically, their vertical integration killed them.
They went under for the same reason all the other big banks have been struggling. (plus, gas-price volatility).
Slashdot Mirror
What does it give you?
It puts your IP in someone else's hands.
For safekeeping.
Kinda makes you feel all comfortable and warm inside, doesn't it?
I drive an 03 Jetta TDI.
But you need to look at where a large proportion of Americans live. We have a large number of major cities that have really cold weather in the winter. At 10, 20, 30 degrees below zero, Diesel becomes a technical liability. The fuel gels, and clogged fuel lines and injectors, and pumps, don't work so well. (electric cars are going to have similar issues)
The solution(s) have traditionally been; block-heaters, and winter-blends of diesel fuel. And those solutions DO work well. But - America is a culture of convenience.
I am lucky I live in a nice warm climate. I do not know if I would have picked a diesel, if I lived in one of those northern-tier states.
It's interesting that we think of a technology like the Internet as ENABLING better communication, and allowing a freer flow of ideas throughout our civilization, bringing about a rapid increase in innovation. But citing your example: yes, the crusades brought us the arabic numeral system. . . but would that system have arisen, had we (christendom) conquered the arabs, and integrated their culture PRIOR to the invention of arabic numerals?
The unification of cultures under the internet will INHIBIT the kind of innovation that does take place in a cultural vacuum. I don't know if you can generalize this one special case, but it does give one pause. How many lunatic fringe nutbags actually sink time and energy into studying cold fusion - now that we ALL *know* that it was a blind-alley? (e.g. maybe it's not). Groupthink can be deadly on any scale.
The Rapture myth has no basis in scripture.
There's a passage in Genesis or Exodus somewhere that says God will take his wrath out on sinners for 10,000 generations of their descendants. 10,000 generations, times approx 20 years per generation = 200,000 years. MINIMUM. Exodus was something like 5000 or so years ago. If you're waiting for the End Times, you're going to need a bigger calendar.
Our economic system, the free market, relies on good faith intent
For that matter, so does Communism. And this is an often-cited reason why communism has "failed".
For all practical purposes, it is completely impossible to determine a participant's good faith intent - BEFORE a transaction occurs. (ie. a product or service in exchange for currency in the case of Free Market - and a product or service in exchange for "being a comrade" (implying, doing your fair-share of the work towards the common good; including being entrusted to positions of power or responsibility over others. . .)).
In both cases, Nash's game theory suggests, we all win biggest, when we all act in good faith!
But if one person acts in bad faith, they win, the rest of us lose.
So who's up for convincing all the psychopaths of the world to learn about game theory? Any takers?
Therefore. . . I digress.
Anyway, I've got this bridge, in Brooklyn, NY that I'd like to sell. Any takers? It's really a great investment!
I guess this really depends on how stubborn one person is. How much they believe that their partner should just "know without my telling them" what it is, they're upset about. No amount of trying to "communicate" with such a person is going to help, because they will never allow the conversation to get to THE POINT. They will dance around it, change the subject, etc. because they're maybe ashamed about asking, and assume that the partner should just KNOW.
In such situations, it does not matter if you go to sleep angry. You're basically screwed.
I would like to make an ANTI recommendation for 5 Love Languages.
It is a book about spoiled, selfish, self-centered brats, who can't see beyond their own needs and wants, and can't think about the other person they supposedly vowed to spend the rest of their life with.
Any marriage that needs this book to survive - probably needs a mercy killing anyway.
FWIW: for three couples I know of who got this book, everything was hunkey-dorey, as soon as one party started "speaking the other person's love-language". . . then that person decided that, oh, it's not really acts of service that I like, it's gifts, or it's not physical affection I want, it's attention. You find that many people are just, at their root, unhappy as hell, for whatever reason. They refuse to look at the source of this unhappiness, (low self esteem, self loathing, whatever), and instead, try to look for anything else to blame. Usually, they'll blame their spouse, for not "meeting their needs" - not doing X, or Y, or Z. If they had the stones to actually admit they need more "X" in their life - the spouse will usually bend over backwards to accommodate, and provide more X. But this does not solve the problem that the person is still unhappy, because they hate who they are. So they'll rationalize that maybe they need more "Y".
Folks like this, with hidden personality disorders (ie. most people, apparently), can drive a spouse freaking crazy, trying to make the other person happy. The 5 Love Languages, is a guidebook, for how to drive closer to the downtown area of crazytown. 18-24 months of therapy for the self-loathing spouse is the best shot at saving the M. Or, at least saving the sanity of the person married to them.
. . . or, How to be a codependent in 5 easy steps.
Your theory assumes that a woman (gasp!) would NEVER do anything so crass as to lie or manipulate, or take advantage of a guy who is so "nice".
NEVER take the word "Divorce" off the table. (and NEVER marry without a prenup! - this is not a reflection of you, this is a necessity of today's legal climate. Period) Unilateral disarmament is a guarantee of slavery. Divorce should ALWAYS be an option, should ALWAYS be on the table. Respect yourself, respect your own boundaries. It's not selfishness.
Even the flight attendants tell you: put your own oxygen mask on first, then assist others.
Last bit of advice: Nobody can love another person if they do not love themselves.
Well, First thing I'd say to you is to stop stereotyping. What you have is two people. Whatever flaws these books have, if they stereotype, then that's not really worth your time.
One of the most useful books about family communication models, is "PeopleMaking" by Virginia Satir. Yes: she has kind of a whacko hippie mentality, with utopian fantasies about how proper communication between people can save the world. But, that's just one of the chapters, and most of the rest of the book is solid, research-backed information on communication structures, and modes, and how to avoid pitfalls.
One strong caution: if one or both spouse's is an abuse victim, or has codependency or other personality issues, fear of intimacy, fear of abandonment, then no book will help you. A lot of what goes wrong in communications is caused by unhealthy coping mechanisms for insecurity, fear, and guilt, and these coping mechanisms are often habits that are very difficult to overcome. The troubled person needs to see a licensed therapist - and learn how to share vulnerable feelings and trust their partner, and themselves.
Wait a minute. Your eye doctor's name is Dr. Odin? Is he aware of the irony?
(for those that aren't - Norse mythology says that Odin blinded himself, in order to achieve divine "vision").
it doesn't rely on the whims of mother nature like solar and hydroelectric do.
Uh, yeah, except the times they've had to shut down plants due to:
1. Droughts bringing rivers that are sources of cooling water down to levels too low to service the plant. (as happened a couple of years back in Tennesee)
2. El Nino conditions causing too much seaweed to grow and clog intakes for cooling water (as happened in 2000 in California).
The whims of mother nature are kind of more whimsical than most people think.
Jeez. He bought the turbines. He should just set them up, and say; "hey folks, cheap electricity here, bring your transmission lines, I'll hook ya up!"
Failing that, hook them up to an Aluminum smelting plant (they're very power-hungry operations). Then beat the crap out of Alcoa's operations in AZ, which produce a lot of carbon, because they burn natural gas.
GS may be an "American" company, but they have no loyalty to the US. They do all they can to lobby to avoid paying taxes to support the infrastructure that enables their business. There is nothing patriotic about GS, and loyalty or even sympathy to these opportunistic parasites is misplaced. Not long after they have finished looting the richest economy in the world, rest assured, they will relocate their corporate offices to greener pastures. The super-rich do not give a crap what country their estate is located in, nor do they give a crap about the people in that country. They have their own private armies, and own the officials anyway. Their peers are other super-rich people, and to them, economics, war, and politics is little more than cheap entertainment for their amusement.
That's not a bad habit.
It is a legitimate, and fairly common use-case.
You're doing this, to overcome the shortcomings of other methods of "stacking" medium-term pages for later use, like bookmarks, or relying on a search engine to recover them.
Hundreds of open tabs is the best way to save "scratch" data from web research, particularly when multitasking. I did it when I was a student writing papers, I do it when I'm in a support role, and I do it when I'm in a development role. I wish there was a better way, but apparently, nobody's imagined that paradigm yet.
Yes; and say it's possible - that you can drill in spot X, to release fault stress.
Now you've allowed one edge of a tectonic plate to slip. What happens to the other edge, thousands of miles away, in another country, or under the ocean floor? What happens to all the adjacent plates?
It has been shown that from time to time, a "big one" in one area can trigger others, years later, halfway across the globe, as all the plates settle into a new arrangement. This is not an engineering exercise for the faint-hearted.
. . . yeah. I was actually hoping that when US troops found WMD in Iraq, that they'd also find the Purchase Orders signed-off by Don Rumsfeld in the '80's. Must have gotten lost in the shuffle somewhere.
Take a look at the scoreboard:
Well, let's be frank here.
Democrats selected Obama over Clinton in the primary, (and did not turn out for Gore in '00) - because of the wishy-washiness of the moderates of the Democratic party - as exemplified by the policies of the Clinton administration '92-'99. The moderates who still bear tremendous power in the Democratic Party STILL believe that the US is a right-leaning country. And they're terrified to lean too far left. And instead of taking advantage of shifting demographics, and the appalling outcome of 8 years under Bush - the party pushed Obama to take on Rahm Emmanual as chief of staff. The day Obama selected Emmanual, I knew that Obama was going to be no different than Clinton would have been, and no different than the preceeding 8 years of Bill Clinton.
As President, Obama has been neutered, by the Yellow Dogs. I think he would have been far more effective had he remained a Senator.
Here's an example: a baker finds his business doing well, with people lining up around the block to buy his signature muffins. So he wants to buy another oven to produce more muffins, and hire two more counter staff to handle the customers. Then cap and trade gets passed, forcing him instead to buy a replacement oven for the one he already has, plus get new windows and air conditioning, not to mention all the similar upgrades in his own home. This consumes the money he would've spend on that new oven and new employees, leaving him in the same position as before. So how exactly has this helped him or the economy?
Well - at least he hasn't been "taxed" by having to pay for a war on foreign soil to protect the natural gas supply to his old oven. (never mind the hideous moral costs involved where deaths and "collateral damage" are involved). His new oven will have a lower operating cost, and wont poison the environment his descendants will have to live in 50-100 years down the road.
Here's a hint why this is bad: you're forcing people to spend money to, in effect, tread water, instead of letting them invest in something that will expand their business.
Only, "people" have had decades now to invest in "expanding their business" - and they haven't done so. Instead, they've continued to expand unsustainable practices, and profit-taking. Private industry chose to gut the US's manufacturing capacity, short term profit in exchange for long-term domestic economic security.
So - where do you think this tax money will go?
It will go towards investment in R&D for renewable energy sources. Which private industry has not done on any meaningful scale; and in fact, has expended significant resources to PREVENT such R&D. (cite: Exxon's purchase and shutdown of battery suppliers for electric cars).
When cheap renewables are available - we'll stop treading water with hidden costs, declining supply, and the toxic political effects of a petroleum-based economy.
So let's say that a group of investors buys up all the local mom'n'pop carpenter shops, imports cheap wood from a third-world country, where they've lobbied to get their government to covertly install a US-friendly dictator to ensure continued low prices for that natural resource, but only to large "bulk buyers" (ie. the investor group, not the small time carpenters).
Then the group of investors pays foreign children a dollar a month to churn out products on a massive scale, and prices them at $5.00. Until all the mom'n'pop carpenters that are left are run out of business, then they raise their prices to $15.00 a pair.
So, subtracting their much lowered labor and materials costs, gives them about $14.90 of profit per pair, against a global market for wooden shoes.
Instead of investing on R&D for better shoes, or healthcare for their workers, or a way to use materials in a more sustainable matter, the bulk of this money is pocketed by executives and board members in the form of massive compensation packages.
These folks, in turn, sock this money away in a tax-sheltered offshore account, and used to bribe^H^H^H^H^H lobby politicians for continued military support to keep their third-world dictator in power, so they can keep their offshore production costs low. Those politicians, of course, DO spend their money domestically, which employs countless crooked accountants and regulatory officials who shield them from ethics investigations and whatnot. And THOSE people spend their money buying more and more wooden shoes.
See?
Everybody wins.
Except the poor kids at the factory in the third-world country.
I don't think Hitler would have held on to Europe THIS long. There are a lot of other factors that would have taken place over the next 60 years - enough to throw many curve-balls into that theory.
I think Hitler would have run into ALL of the issues that Europe, the USSR, and the US have run into in the intevening time; the Middle East (what, you think it's really Israel they're pissed about? No - it's Western Imperialism, whether that's European Jews, the Roman Empire, - basically any excuse to direct xenophobia against "external" enemies, rather than the shortcomings of their own political systems), confrontation with Japan/Asia over oil resources, etc.
Certainly, his timing in taking on the USSR was a huge flaw. But had he instead successfully navigated that, there were a whole series of huge challenges ahead. Not the LEAST of which was the USA - and I don't think anyone could envision a what state the US would be in given a Third-reich-controlled Europe, Africa, and Western-Asia; and probably having suffered (and ultimately repelled) German attacks on the US mainland. Likely the US would have laid-low for a decade or so, but there would have been an inevitable clash later. The outcome of that would have depended on who was better (more effectively) able to deploy nuclear weapons. But this would be certainly resolved by now.
Warning about theater troupes/groups - Full Of Attention Whores. All you really need to do to get laid is show someone some attention. Talk to them, or listen. The problem with that is, all anybody else needs to do to get laid by that person is show them some attention.
Regarding Ashley Madison:
Do yourself a huge favor and NEVER date a known cheater. If they cheat with you, they will cheat ON you. You are no different, you are not special. You're just another lay to them. It's all about them stroking their low self esteem.
And after you dump them, they'll cheat on the next person, and the ones after that.
Cheaters live in a delusional state of mind that allows them to blame others for their shortcomings (moral and otherwise), and will never admit that what they're doing is wrong. They're not lying, because they actually BELIEVE their own crap.
My advice from BTDT-land.
I imagine that aviation has been the bane of birds since there's been such a thing as aviation.
GM went bankrupt because they began (long ago) to focus their business as a FINANCIAL SERVICES company (GMAC) that happened to also sell cars. Basically, their vertical integration killed them.
They went under for the same reason all the other big banks have been struggling. (plus, gas-price volatility).