But we as a species are still quite capable of it. Concorde was basically a passenger jet with military spec engines; expensive as hell and incredibly noisy, never exactly a great commercial idea. Basically just another penis-waving contest for the British and French governments. Both the engines and the technology to make the vehicles are still available (and massively improved), it's just there's less appetite for intra-governmental penis waving than there was a few decades ago.
Technology continues to march onwards, and I'm sure supersonic passenger flights will return as soon as the technology reaches a point where it is commercially viable. Just because people prefer to spend their money on pocket-sized super-computers (by the standards of the date when Concorde first flew) than marginally faster trans-Atlantic travel, doesn't mean the world is entering a technological dark age. Quite the reverse, in my opinion.
There are no humans on the Moon because there's nothing to do on the Moon. There are only so many kilos of regloith you can ferry back and rounds of low gravity golf you can play before there's no point spending the billions to go back. If and when someone thinks up a useful reason to go back to the moon (e.g., a way station for missions to further afield) then I'm sure we'll be back.
If the Moon were an Earth-like world, I'm sure there would be a McDonalds serving Moon Burgers up there by now.
I think that I Am Legend is pretty weak from the science fiction aspect. Omega Man and I Am Legend (the movie) did a better version of the story. The idea that Neville coming up with a cure for the plague without any prior education is a bit far fetched.
You are confusing me. You say you prefer the film I Am Legend to the novella, but go onto say that the idea of him finding a cure was pretty weak. In the movie he finds a cure (and is a professional virologist); in the book he does not (and is not). The movie has a tacked on happy ending; the book is easily one of the most crushingly depressing pieces of sci-fi I've ever read (and I mean that as a compliment).
The Will Smith movie does a good job building the tension and atmosphere in the first half, but squanders it with a mediocre second half and preposterous ending. The novella, on the other hand, takes great pleasure in crushing your spirit into the ground, only to give you the occasional brief glimpse of respite, only to crush you down again. Again, in a good way.
I will undo some moderation so as to answer your points from a UK perspective.
1. In Britain we have both active Communist Parties (and a whole assortment of other hard-left groups) and active Fascist Parties (including both the BNP & NF). You are free to join any of them (although I'd prefer you didn't).
2. Any child born to a person who is "settled" in the UK (that is, has the right to remain in the country indefinitely- in practice including all immigrants and excluding tourists/visitors) becomes a citizen.
3. We've had our fair share of scandals over the years, and I think in general the UK has come out of the other side with first class protections for minority groups. Not perfect, obviously, but the legal framework we have now is extremely robust. Anecdotally, we seem to get far fewer racism/homophobia scandals here than the US seems to get.
4. You can be any religion you like. I'm an atheist (and a strongly willed one too), and I've barely had so much as a sniff of a reason to complain. Atheism is not a dirty word- both the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are avowed atheists, and nobody seems to mind. You can be Catholic, Protestant, Muslim (up-to and including the hardcore varieties with the full face masks and so forth), Scientologist, Wiccan, Moony, whatever. You can wear your religious kit in public, take your holy days off work, all the things you could ask for. We can be a bit touchy where a person's religious belief is used to justify discrimination or whatnot in conflict with point 3 (for example, a recent case where a Hotelier refused to serve a gay couple as it was against his "Christian values"); in these instances, point 3 tends to trump point 4. Back on the politics front; I can't imagine there being much fuss if a (moderate) Muslim were a candidate to be Prime Minister, in contrast to the terrifying "Obama is a Muslim" nonsense in the States. Although having typed that, I'm probably prepared to be negatively surprised on that front.
5. I believe pre-charge detention is limited to 24 hours, extendible up to 96 hours with the agreement of a Magistrate's Court. This compares with 72 hours "in normal circumstance" in the USA, so pretty comparable.
To be honest, the US & UK are probably very similar in all sorts of ways. Most things you like about the US you'll probably find here, most things you dislike about the US are probably here too.
To be fair, the US doesn't have a monopoly on criminal law. Most civilised countries have rape and/or assault laws, and lots of them have mutual extradition treaties. We're talking about a potential rape between an Argentinean and an American America in Poland- I'd be very surprised if there aren't extradition treaties between all three of those countries.
Agreed. And what is more, the console which you'd expect to be most harmed by mobile phone gaming (the 3DS, which is both the same type of games as mobile phones AND is based around a vaguely unfashionable novelty tech) has been reporting surprisingly strong sales. As did the other DS sales before it.
Maybe Apple (or Android) will kill off dedicated mobile gaming at some point in the future, but they definitely aren't doing so right now. By the same token, Apple TV might one day hypothetically compete with PS and Xbox, if they ever release a version with decent hardware and started releasing games for it and so forth, but they definitely aren't doing it right now.
This console generation is shaping up to be a remarkably interesting one, with both Microsoft and Nintendo appearing to have made major missteps, with the Steambox on the horizon, and with dozens of new entrants in the budget bracket (Ouya, Gamestick, Nvidia Shield, etc.). Certainly doesn't look like the console apocalypse from here.
His example was basically of someone being tricked into answering a question which is innocuous. If someone walks in and says "Did you commit identity theft?", it is easy to answer "I'd like to see my lawyer". If someone walks in and says "Hi, how are you?", you might answer "Fine thanks", and when they then follow it up with "So, did you commit identity theft?", you might have already waived your right to silence.
It's a slightly silly (almost straw man or slippery slope fallacy) example, but when talking about constitutional law it never hurts to work things through to their ludicrous conclusions.
I beg your pardon, you are quite right. The point stands though; the two consoles are basically tied with sales within a few million of each other, compared to the previous generation where one console was more than 120 million units ahead.
I don't get it. I've just looked at the figures[1] and as of Q1 2013 the PS3 had shipped 70 million units worldwide, and as of Q2 2013 the Xbox 360 had shipped 77 million units worldwide. That seems remarkably like a "tie" to me. (The Wii outsold them both with 100 million units, and also made Nintendo an absolute fortune compared to their rivals due to their cheaper hardware profile, giving them good cause to claim that they in fact "won" that generation; but I'm sure that depends on your perspective).
Compare to the previous generation, where there was a clear winner (Sony as it happens, but that's not my point)- PS2 sold 153 million units, Xbox 24 million, Gamecube 21 million.
From where I'm sitting, it looks like Sony and MS have been locked in a head-to-head duel this generation, and both are understandably hoping to break away from their rivals (and start making some money again) with the coming generation. Sony's plan appears to be "same again but more so", and MS's plan appears to be "change everything and hope it makes us lots of money". Nintendo have gone for the "zany new peripheral" approach again. So far, the smart money would seem to be on Sony's approach.
That is not the definition of an unlawful combatant, that's the definition of a war criminal. A war criminal is still protected by (and subject to) the Laws of War.
Unlawful combatant means someone who is a civilian who takes part in military combat (with no implications one way or the other about whether they commit any further crimes while doing so). The Geneva Convention is quite clear on what happens to them- if a belligerent captures them, the belligerent can either treat them as a PoW under the regular Laws of War, or they can treat them as a civilian criminal and try them under a "regularly constituted court", subject to the usual international treaties and standards for human rights to justice.
What happens at Guantanamo (detainment without trial, trials by secret military tribunal, water boarding and other forms of cruel and unusual punishment) are illegal (and immoral) however you choose to dice it up.
Maybe you forget, but I haven't. I loved my PS2, but never bought a PS3 after a combination of the Other OS fiasco and memories of the Rootkit still lingering. I would definitely have bought one eventually otherwise.
I also haven't bought an EA game since Spore's launch, and have been deeply sceptical of any promises to come out of Microsoft's Entertainment division since the Play For Sure nonsense. I don't have unlimited money, and I find plenty to spend it on even once I've cut out companies who wind me up.
A book can be enlightening and expand your horizons, or it can be utter trash. For every Dickens novel, there's a dozen Mills & Boon or Dan Brown novels to bury it under. Same goes for the other artistic media- how many Die Hard sequels or summer Rom Coms do you get per Citizen Kane? How many Spider Man comics per Mona Lisa?
Most books are trashy time wasters, while a relatively small number of books contain intelligence and insight. Most video games are trashy time wasters, while a small number contain intelligence and insight. For every dozen Call of Duty games, there's a Shadow of the Colossus.
I think the ratio of trash to quality is probably quite a bit more heavily weighted to "trash" in the video game world than it is in the book world, mind.
On the other hand, if I walk up and grab your crotch and suck on my lip, you're not going to file for sexual harassment, you're going to follow me to the bathroom and fuck me silly.
Same desires. Different roles.
You have a low opinion of my gender.
As a happily married man, if you grabbed my crotch you should expect me to be very cross at you for violating my privacy in the most direct physical way possible, and (if the social norms allowed) you should expect sexual harassment proceedings. Even if you were an attractive woman, I'd still have no interest in "fucking you silly", because I'm not some brain-dead monkey.
Even if I were not married, I'd still find it aggressive and offensive if someone groped me against my will. Buy me dinner first, frankly.
That is an oversimplification from (your link) an anti-Marxist anarchist. I've got a lot of sympathy for anarchists, but that doesn't mean that he isn't oversimplifying to help prove his point.
Marxism could broadly be split into two elements- the revolutionary and reformist branches. Famously, Marx declared himself a reformist, saying of the politics of two prominent revolutionary Marxists (Guesde and Lafargue) that if their politics represented Marxism, that "...ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste" ("...what is certain is that I am not a Marxist").
The anarchist view is that any form of government- however democratic- is a dictatorship. Marx's view of a world governed by and for the masses would be a "dictatorship of the masses" in anarchist thought. That does not make Marx an authoritarian by modern (capitalist) standards; his view of things would have chimed nicely with our modern view of democracy.
I've always thought anarchism was very blue sky thinking- I see the appeal of it, but I simply can't picture a world where it could actually happen and where it could remain in a stable and sustainable state. This view is somewhat reinforced by reality- there have been a few anarchist revolutions and communities over the years, and none of them have ever grown to a meaningful size or survived for more than a few years. I'd love to be proved wrong, though.
You could argue that as all of the industrial/service/agriculture/etc. (i.e., traditionally useful) jobs become automated, more and more people will move into jobs which machines can't do, and which are arguably more pleasurable; such as the creative industries. That is, everyone will become artists, actors, musicians, athletes, designers, architects, interior decorators, theoretical scientists, anything which can't simply be automated. The money involved with manufacturing things or performing basic services and utilities should drop ever lower in comparison to the un-automatable industries, meaning that the amount of money being earned by the collective mass of people in the latter should be ample to pay for the products of the former.
The problem with this vision is the skills gap. Traditionally a large portion of the population have not needed more skills or talent than can be gained by a few months training- where will these people fit into a world where the only career options are either creative or theoretical? Will the kind of people who work down mines or on the Ford production lines be able to adapt to being a novelist or an archaeologist? Is that a temporary problem with the existing workforce, or is that something that can never be overcome- are some people unable to become bright enough for highly intellectual jobs? If anyone has the answer to that one...
I read in one article that they've turned down exactly one request in their history. Which is a scary thought- what on earth did that request contain that even they couldn't bring themselves to rubber-stamp it?
If the responder (James Clapper) had wanted to answer the question in the "most truthful" manner, he could have answered with more words than "no". Such as "No, but we didn't need to collect it because we have been provided with massive quantities of data simply by asking companies to provide it to us".
What Mr Clapper did there was what we like to call "lying by omission". By answering a question in such a way as to deliberately misunderstand what is being asked of you and therefore deliberately not providing the information expected, you are lying. It doesn't matter if you did so by saying as few words as possible.
There is no other way to interpret his answer other than that he was deliberately attempting to not tell Congress what Congress wanted him to tell them.
I hate it when people say that. My free time IS worthless. I get paid to work 9:00-17:00 Monday to Friday. There is a small amount of room for overtime when needed, but more than 1 hour a day on a regular basis would likely start to raise the hackles of my Project Manager. So from 18:00 to bedtime every weekday and all day Saturday and Sunday, I have very little earning potential. I mostly fill this time with either unpaid housework/errands, or with things that I enjoy.
So let's say I watch 2 hours of TV on a Saturday. If I DON'T watch 2 hours of TV on a Saturday, and instead spend 2 hours assembling a PC, I have not lost any money. If you enjoy building PCs at all, then you haven't even lost much by way of "relaxation potential".
Now, let's say that I could save £100 by assembling a PC from parts over buying the same PC pre-assembled. If it takes me 4 hours to do, I've essentially earned myself £25 an hour in savings. Compared to sitting on my arse watching TV, that's not a bad return on my time really.
I have a PC that I bought with gaming in mind (to a reasonable gaming spec), but which is also my main "everything" PC. Yes I use it to play the latest games on, but I also use it for working from home, internet banking, code compiling, etc. etc. Seeing as I need a decent PC for those things, if I bought an Xbox I'd still need to buy a PC too. Obviously the PC could be lower spec if I didn't use it for gaming, but all the same- a £400 Xbox plus a £200 PC isn't far off the £700 I spent on this gaming PC.
No. Arsenic, unlike lead, DOES have a safe minimum dose. Lead is almost uniquely dangerous in this respect. To quote Wikipedia:
There is apparently no lower threshold to the dose-response relationship (unlike other heavy metals such as mercury).[108] Reduced academic performance has been associated with lead exposure even at blood lead levels lower than 5 g/dL.[109][110] Blood lead levels below 10 g/dL have been reported to be associated with lower IQ and behavior problems such as aggression, in proportion with blood lead levels.[6] Between the blood lead levels of 5 and 35 g/dL, an IQ decrease of 2–4 points for each g/dL increase is reported in children.[26]
For comparison, I've just found a USDA paper claiming that 12-25 g of arsenic is actually REQUIRED by humans as part of a healthy diet. Don't ask me if that claim is valid, but it does give you a sense of the difference in toxicity between arsenic and lead that this can even be considered and not denounced as totally insane.
If you have been exposed to even relatively small doses of lead, you may have suffered minor brain damage leading to a loss of several IQ points. And that goes for all of us, by the way.If you've been exposed to lead in any serious direct way (as your post suggests), personally I'd be pretty pissed about it.
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But we as a species are still quite capable of it. Concorde was basically a passenger jet with military spec engines; expensive as hell and incredibly noisy, never exactly a great commercial idea. Basically just another penis-waving contest for the British and French governments. Both the engines and the technology to make the vehicles are still available (and massively improved), it's just there's less appetite for intra-governmental penis waving than there was a few decades ago.
Technology continues to march onwards, and I'm sure supersonic passenger flights will return as soon as the technology reaches a point where it is commercially viable. Just because people prefer to spend their money on pocket-sized super-computers (by the standards of the date when Concorde first flew) than marginally faster trans-Atlantic travel, doesn't mean the world is entering a technological dark age. Quite the reverse, in my opinion.
There are no humans on the Moon because there's nothing to do on the Moon. There are only so many kilos of regloith you can ferry back and rounds of low gravity golf you can play before there's no point spending the billions to go back. If and when someone thinks up a useful reason to go back to the moon (e.g., a way station for missions to further afield) then I'm sure we'll be back.
If the Moon were an Earth-like world, I'm sure there would be a McDonalds serving Moon Burgers up there by now.
Hyperbole.
I think that I Am Legend is pretty weak from the science fiction aspect. Omega Man and I Am Legend (the movie) did a better version of the story. The idea that Neville coming up with a cure for the plague without any prior education is a bit far fetched.
You are confusing me. You say you prefer the film I Am Legend to the novella, but go onto say that the idea of him finding a cure was pretty weak. In the movie he finds a cure (and is a professional virologist); in the book he does not (and is not). The movie has a tacked on happy ending; the book is easily one of the most crushingly depressing pieces of sci-fi I've ever read (and I mean that as a compliment).
The Will Smith movie does a good job building the tension and atmosphere in the first half, but squanders it with a mediocre second half and preposterous ending. The novella, on the other hand, takes great pleasure in crushing your spirit into the ground, only to give you the occasional brief glimpse of respite, only to crush you down again. Again, in a good way.
Serious answer- presumably they mean "million", as in megahertz or megajoule.
I for one find the idea of SI prefixes for currency exciting in ways I can't quite explain.
On the other hand, they might have meant $1,048,576, in which case god help us all.
I will undo some moderation so as to answer your points from a UK perspective.
1. In Britain we have both active Communist Parties (and a whole assortment of other hard-left groups) and active Fascist Parties (including both the BNP & NF). You are free to join any of them (although I'd prefer you didn't).
2. Any child born to a person who is "settled" in the UK (that is, has the right to remain in the country indefinitely- in practice including all immigrants and excluding tourists/visitors) becomes a citizen.
3. We've had our fair share of scandals over the years, and I think in general the UK has come out of the other side with first class protections for minority groups. Not perfect, obviously, but the legal framework we have now is extremely robust. Anecdotally, we seem to get far fewer racism/homophobia scandals here than the US seems to get.
4. You can be any religion you like. I'm an atheist (and a strongly willed one too), and I've barely had so much as a sniff of a reason to complain. Atheism is not a dirty word- both the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are avowed atheists, and nobody seems to mind. You can be Catholic, Protestant, Muslim (up-to and including the hardcore varieties with the full face masks and so forth), Scientologist, Wiccan, Moony, whatever. You can wear your religious kit in public, take your holy days off work, all the things you could ask for. We can be a bit touchy where a person's religious belief is used to justify discrimination or whatnot in conflict with point 3 (for example, a recent case where a Hotelier refused to serve a gay couple as it was against his "Christian values"); in these instances, point 3 tends to trump point 4. Back on the politics front; I can't imagine there being much fuss if a (moderate) Muslim were a candidate to be Prime Minister, in contrast to the terrifying "Obama is a Muslim" nonsense in the States. Although having typed that, I'm probably prepared to be negatively surprised on that front.
5. I believe pre-charge detention is limited to 24 hours, extendible up to 96 hours with the agreement of a Magistrate's Court. This compares with 72 hours "in normal circumstance" in the USA, so pretty comparable.
To be honest, the US & UK are probably very similar in all sorts of ways. Most things you like about the US you'll probably find here, most things you dislike about the US are probably here too.
To be fair, the US doesn't have a monopoly on criminal law. Most civilised countries have rape and/or assault laws, and lots of them have mutual extradition treaties. We're talking about a potential rape between an Argentinean and an American America in Poland- I'd be very surprised if there aren't extradition treaties between all three of those countries.
Agreed. And what is more, the console which you'd expect to be most harmed by mobile phone gaming (the 3DS, which is both the same type of games as mobile phones AND is based around a vaguely unfashionable novelty tech) has been reporting surprisingly strong sales. As did the other DS sales before it.
Maybe Apple (or Android) will kill off dedicated mobile gaming at some point in the future, but they definitely aren't doing so right now. By the same token, Apple TV might one day hypothetically compete with PS and Xbox, if they ever release a version with decent hardware and started releasing games for it and so forth, but they definitely aren't doing it right now.
This console generation is shaping up to be a remarkably interesting one, with both Microsoft and Nintendo appearing to have made major missteps, with the Steambox on the horizon, and with dozens of new entrants in the budget bracket (Ouya, Gamestick, Nvidia Shield, etc.). Certainly doesn't look like the console apocalypse from here.
His example was basically of someone being tricked into answering a question which is innocuous. If someone walks in and says "Did you commit identity theft?", it is easy to answer "I'd like to see my lawyer". If someone walks in and says "Hi, how are you?", you might answer "Fine thanks", and when they then follow it up with "So, did you commit identity theft?", you might have already waived your right to silence.
It's a slightly silly (almost straw man or slippery slope fallacy) example, but when talking about constitutional law it never hurts to work things through to their ludicrous conclusions.
I beg your pardon, you are quite right. The point stands though; the two consoles are basically tied with sales within a few million of each other, compared to the previous generation where one console was more than 120 million units ahead.
Damn, forgot my citation link:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_(seventh_generation)#Sales_standings
I don't get it. I've just looked at the figures[1] and as of Q1 2013 the PS3 had shipped 70 million units worldwide, and as of Q2 2013 the Xbox 360 had shipped 77 million units worldwide. That seems remarkably like a "tie" to me. (The Wii outsold them both with 100 million units, and also made Nintendo an absolute fortune compared to their rivals due to their cheaper hardware profile, giving them good cause to claim that they in fact "won" that generation; but I'm sure that depends on your perspective).
Compare to the previous generation, where there was a clear winner (Sony as it happens, but that's not my point)- PS2 sold 153 million units, Xbox 24 million, Gamecube 21 million.
From where I'm sitting, it looks like Sony and MS have been locked in a head-to-head duel this generation, and both are understandably hoping to break away from their rivals (and start making some money again) with the coming generation. Sony's plan appears to be "same again but more so", and MS's plan appears to be "change everything and hope it makes us lots of money". Nintendo have gone for the "zany new peripheral" approach again. So far, the smart money would seem to be on Sony's approach.
That is not the definition of an unlawful combatant, that's the definition of a war criminal. A war criminal is still protected by (and subject to) the Laws of War.
Unlawful combatant means someone who is a civilian who takes part in military combat (with no implications one way or the other about whether they commit any further crimes while doing so). The Geneva Convention is quite clear on what happens to them- if a belligerent captures them, the belligerent can either treat them as a PoW under the regular Laws of War, or they can treat them as a civilian criminal and try them under a "regularly constituted court", subject to the usual international treaties and standards for human rights to justice.
What happens at Guantanamo (detainment without trial, trials by secret military tribunal, water boarding and other forms of cruel and unusual punishment) are illegal (and immoral) however you choose to dice it up.
Maybe you forget, but I haven't. I loved my PS2, but never bought a PS3 after a combination of the Other OS fiasco and memories of the Rootkit still lingering. I would definitely have bought one eventually otherwise.
I also haven't bought an EA game since Spore's launch, and have been deeply sceptical of any promises to come out of Microsoft's Entertainment division since the Play For Sure nonsense. I don't have unlimited money, and I find plenty to spend it on even once I've cut out companies who wind me up.
A book can be enlightening and expand your horizons, or it can be utter trash. For every Dickens novel, there's a dozen Mills & Boon or Dan Brown novels to bury it under. Same goes for the other artistic media- how many Die Hard sequels or summer Rom Coms do you get per Citizen Kane? How many Spider Man comics per Mona Lisa?
Most books are trashy time wasters, while a relatively small number of books contain intelligence and insight. Most video games are trashy time wasters, while a small number contain intelligence and insight. For every dozen Call of Duty games, there's a Shadow of the Colossus.
I think the ratio of trash to quality is probably quite a bit more heavily weighted to "trash" in the video game world than it is in the book world, mind.
On the other hand, if I walk up and grab your crotch and suck on my lip, you're not going to file for sexual harassment, you're going to follow me to the bathroom and fuck me silly.
Same desires. Different roles.
You have a low opinion of my gender.
As a happily married man, if you grabbed my crotch you should expect me to be very cross at you for violating my privacy in the most direct physical way possible, and (if the social norms allowed) you should expect sexual harassment proceedings. Even if you were an attractive woman, I'd still have no interest in "fucking you silly", because I'm not some brain-dead monkey.
Even if I were not married, I'd still find it aggressive and offensive if someone groped me against my will. Buy me dinner first, frankly.
Man: Well I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away!
That is an oversimplification from (your link) an anti-Marxist anarchist. I've got a lot of sympathy for anarchists, but that doesn't mean that he isn't oversimplifying to help prove his point.
Marxism could broadly be split into two elements- the revolutionary and reformist branches. Famously, Marx declared himself a reformist, saying of the politics of two prominent revolutionary Marxists (Guesde and Lafargue) that if their politics represented Marxism, that "...ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste" ("...what is certain is that I am not a Marxist").
The anarchist view is that any form of government- however democratic- is a dictatorship. Marx's view of a world governed by and for the masses would be a "dictatorship of the masses" in anarchist thought. That does not make Marx an authoritarian by modern (capitalist) standards; his view of things would have chimed nicely with our modern view of democracy.
I've always thought anarchism was very blue sky thinking- I see the appeal of it, but I simply can't picture a world where it could actually happen and where it could remain in a stable and sustainable state. This view is somewhat reinforced by reality- there have been a few anarchist revolutions and communities over the years, and none of them have ever grown to a meaningful size or survived for more than a few years. I'd love to be proved wrong, though.
You could argue that as all of the industrial/service/agriculture/etc. (i.e., traditionally useful) jobs become automated, more and more people will move into jobs which machines can't do, and which are arguably more pleasurable; such as the creative industries. That is, everyone will become artists, actors, musicians, athletes, designers, architects, interior decorators, theoretical scientists, anything which can't simply be automated. The money involved with manufacturing things or performing basic services and utilities should drop ever lower in comparison to the un-automatable industries, meaning that the amount of money being earned by the collective mass of people in the latter should be ample to pay for the products of the former.
The problem with this vision is the skills gap. Traditionally a large portion of the population have not needed more skills or talent than can be gained by a few months training- where will these people fit into a world where the only career options are either creative or theoretical? Will the kind of people who work down mines or on the Ford production lines be able to adapt to being a novelist or an archaeologist? Is that a temporary problem with the existing workforce, or is that something that can never be overcome- are some people unable to become bright enough for highly intellectual jobs? If anyone has the answer to that one...
I read in one article that they've turned down exactly one request in their history. Which is a scary thought- what on earth did that request contain that even they couldn't bring themselves to rubber-stamp it?
If the responder (James Clapper) had wanted to answer the question in the "most truthful" manner, he could have answered with more words than "no". Such as "No, but we didn't need to collect it because we have been provided with massive quantities of data simply by asking companies to provide it to us".
What Mr Clapper did there was what we like to call "lying by omission". By answering a question in such a way as to deliberately misunderstand what is being asked of you and therefore deliberately not providing the information expected, you are lying. It doesn't matter if you did so by saying as few words as possible.
There is no other way to interpret his answer other than that he was deliberately attempting to not tell Congress what Congress wanted him to tell them.
I hate it when people say that. My free time IS worthless. I get paid to work 9:00-17:00 Monday to Friday. There is a small amount of room for overtime when needed, but more than 1 hour a day on a regular basis would likely start to raise the hackles of my Project Manager. So from 18:00 to bedtime every weekday and all day Saturday and Sunday, I have very little earning potential. I mostly fill this time with either unpaid housework/errands, or with things that I enjoy.
So let's say I watch 2 hours of TV on a Saturday. If I DON'T watch 2 hours of TV on a Saturday, and instead spend 2 hours assembling a PC, I have not lost any money. If you enjoy building PCs at all, then you haven't even lost much by way of "relaxation potential".
Now, let's say that I could save £100 by assembling a PC from parts over buying the same PC pre-assembled. If it takes me 4 hours to do, I've essentially earned myself £25 an hour in savings. Compared to sitting on my arse watching TV, that's not a bad return on my time really.
I have a PC that I bought with gaming in mind (to a reasonable gaming spec), but which is also my main "everything" PC. Yes I use it to play the latest games on, but I also use it for working from home, internet banking, code compiling, etc. etc. Seeing as I need a decent PC for those things, if I bought an Xbox I'd still need to buy a PC too. Obviously the PC could be lower spec if I didn't use it for gaming, but all the same- a £400 Xbox plus a £200 PC isn't far off the £700 I spent on this gaming PC.
No. Arsenic, unlike lead, DOES have a safe minimum dose. Lead is almost uniquely dangerous in this respect. To quote Wikipedia:
There is apparently no lower threshold to the dose-response relationship (unlike other heavy metals such as mercury).[108] Reduced academic performance has been associated with lead exposure even at blood lead levels lower than 5 g/dL.[109][110] Blood lead levels below 10 g/dL have been reported to be associated with lower IQ and behavior problems such as aggression, in proportion with blood lead levels.[6] Between the blood lead levels of 5 and 35 g/dL, an IQ decrease of 2–4 points for each g/dL increase is reported in children.[26]
For comparison, I've just found a USDA paper claiming that 12-25 g of arsenic is actually REQUIRED by humans as part of a healthy diet. Don't ask me if that claim is valid, but it does give you a sense of the difference in toxicity between arsenic and lead that this can even be considered and not denounced as totally insane.
If you have been exposed to even relatively small doses of lead, you may have suffered minor brain damage leading to a loss of several IQ points. And that goes for all of us, by the way.If you've been exposed to lead in any serious direct way (as your post suggests), personally I'd be pretty pissed about it.
High:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22813893