Some universities also force students to live in dorm rooms for at least a year. It boggles my mind why dorm rooms are so expensive. I had an apartment 5 blocks from campus for 600 a month that was 4 times bigger than a dorm room, yet the dorm room charged 800 and I had to share a room? This didn't even include the meal plan.
I agree with this. If they would just cut down the requirements for college so that science majors don't have to take 30 credits of gen ed's it would temporarily solve a problem. The main fix for the problem would be to mandate colleges reduce tuition. Universities have become swollen inefficient institutions. Having worked at 2 of them, both had redundant employees, some employees that didn't do anything for over half their day, people skipping out of work and taking half days twice or more a week, endless meetings that served no purpose, and ridiculous wages for upper level personnel. One university President was making 500,000 a year and actually had the nerve to petition for a wage increase when the tuition was going up. That is ridiculous.
Ok, so all the people that can't get into the military due to physical reasons, or don't believe in being part of killing are just fucked? You helped your daughters, many people don't have that. I didn't. You also went to college in a time of A) significantly lower tuition rates B) higher income and C) people didn't expect college degrees for good paying jobs. Nice work! It was easy for you because it was fucking easier back then.
Nice fucking assumptions. You assume everyone out there protesting has one of those degrees? Reality check for you, even useful degrees like engineering, sciences, mathematics, computer science all have the same problems.
Ok, so if your parents don't save then what do you do? What if they can't save because they are poor? I'd like to know how you would save for 4 years of college in a job that pays you shit wages. The only realistic option is the military basically. Say you make 10 dollars an hour 40 hours a week and have to live on your own. 4 years of college will run you about 44,000 dollars. You could make 83,000 in 4 years. Now lets subtract rent/food/bills from that. Lets say you have 200 in food a month, your rent is 400 and your bills top out at 150. Lets also factor in a car purchase of 3000 dollars and gasoline and car insurance which is about lets say 4600 a year (this is a low estimate btw). This would be like living in a modest apartment, with a decent car, an internet connection and utilities, and eating basic foods. 200*12*4 + 400*12*4 + 100*12*4 + 3000 + 4600*4 = 55,000. What is left? 28,000. Sure, thats enough for 2 years of college with books, however the 4 years you wait puts you at a disadvantage when you actually get out of school since you will be 4 years older than everyone else, delaying your financial future. This is also assuming you don't ever have any entertainment costs and you don't eat out for the whole 4 years, nor do you purchase any electronics such as a PC, and you probably don't have cable or an xbox. Its not as easy as you make it out to be.
Work-study, part time jobs, and summer jobs are never enough to pay for tuition nor all your bills usually. Did you even look up how much people usually get paid? Loans are pretty much required on some level. 100k in them, no, but you will easily get smacked with between 10-20k for a bachelors.
What makes you think students all go to college to party? What makes you think they don't have jobs? I like how you just assume all people that go to college are burn outs. Reality check for you : Even the ones with jobs and the ones getting hard and useful degrees have the exact same problem. I was employed most of my college career, but its hard to pay the ridiculous tuition rates when you can only make 9-10 dollars an hour tops. Most universities actually cap you at this if you work on campus, however typically most jobs are minimum wage. If you work off campus you have to worry about your boss not being good about your schedule and you usually make less or about the same. When I was working on my MS I was a supported student, i.e. free tuition and a stipend. Guess how much the stipend was? 1000 a month, hardly enough to survive. They even made me sign a form saying if I sought extra employment I would owe my tuition back and get terminated. I HAD to supplement my income with loans to afford to pay rent basically. Right now I am working full time and finishing up my PhD and I STILL need loans since the tuition is so damn high. This is coming from someone with a 3.75 GPA in a computational mathematics program. We are getting fucked too.
Steve Ballmer is a moron with an annoying voice. I haven't heard one intelligent thing out of his mouth. It just goes to show you that a privileged childhood leads you to success whether you deserve it or not.
U mad bro? That was pretty trollish. It's not totally understandable, but what I got out of it was "US gov. is fascist, students are fat and can't pay off loans, and Fox news is bad." Humor, yes I can see that now, but I suppose you are a victim of being associated with other nutjobs on / . once you start spouting political key phrases.
Battery technology hasn't advanced enough to support electrical powered aircraft. You will always need some form of chemical or radioactive fuel to power military aircraft. How you produce it can be green, but there will always be this limitation until you can pack a similar energy / mass into a battery.
Its not so much about a "green war" as it is about reducing dependence on a supply of oil that could get cut off in a war. The first place our enemy would invade would be the Middle East. Why do you think we have a strong military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq? Its the only thing our leaders could come up with that we would (or I should say "DID") support. Why do you think there is a push to get at the oil in the Bakken formation or the oil sands? Both are not as economically feasible as a stable Middle East sending us oil, but the problem is we don't want to have our source of energy so far from home where potential enemies can cut it off. I'm not saying I agree with the whole war and "everyone's an enemy" type of thing, its just me being realistic.
Typically ICBM's have nuclear warheads. Its a waste of resources to send conventional explosives with one when you can just send a UAV or manned aircraft.
With the Bakken oil formation, the oil sands, and better drilling techniques to get to the massive quantity of oil under the Rockies I suspect we will be fine for awhile. I have family up in Montana and its an economic boom for them, as well as the North Dakotan's and Canadians. Of course its not sustainable forever, but until some unusually innovative and smart scientists come along and invent small scale reactors that can replace oil based on fusion or fuel cells or something we're pretty much stuck with oil.
Not quite yet, the cuts are supposed to happen over time. I don't dispute the need for a military, and I am glad ours is the most technologically advanced. I'm not very happy with how its used, but that's a different issue. I actually have quite a bit of respect for soldiers, as I am pretty sure I couldn't do it as I don't believe in the afterlife and I'd rather not die. Its not that I am incapable of killing or out of shape or something, just not really willing to put my life on the line, call me selfish. However, its pretty sick that we spend more than any other nation in the world, yet our carriers, missiles and armored vehicles can get shot down by technology based on decades old technology, our UAV's can get infected with viruses, our APC's and Humvee's can get taken out by improvised devices, or http://www.usni.org/news-and-features/chinese-kill-weapon. This pretty much points out the flaw with just throwing money at a objective rather than thinking it through. People need to think outside the box so to speak and come up with innovative solutions rather than paying mega-corps billions of dollars for something that can get taken out by something that costs a few thousand to a hundred thousand dollars. The AK-47 is still the #1 weapon used in the world because it just fucking works. The M-16 has gotten better, in fact I really love shooting that weapon, but you can't just bury it in the sand and expect it to work. One reason the MIG's were such great aircraft was that they wouldn't be taken down by EMP due to a reliance of vacuum tube technology. Anyway, rant over.
Alpha Centauri is a collection of 3 stars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri , so I am not sure what you mean by "on' them. We don't even know if there are planets there, and it doesn't look too good considering that binary and ternary star systems tend to have extremely unstable orbits. There is an estimate that a planet could exist in a stable orbit for 250 million years, but it would probably be hit with such varying levels of solar radiation its environment would be extremely unstable. Its better to figure out if a star has some planets in the habitable zone first. Furthermore, even with that large of an investment in space travel its doubtful we would get to another star in any feasible time frame. That would most likely be better used to research and construct space elevators, fusion reactors, propulsion systems and in developing permanent bases in orbit and on the moon. Maybe send a manned mission to Mars as well.
Or we need to advance technology enough to be able to generate gravity. I remember some theory a guy proposed that allowed for conversion between Electromagnetism and Gravity but I can't for the life of me remember who the hell it was. He even designed a hypothetical device that could do the job.
The difference is that out military budget is mostly wasted on profits for corporations, as well as dead-end research projects. The cost of research, engineering and manufacturing is much higher here. Plus we have extremely expensive and intricate hardware we strap into our machines that is ridiculously expensive to replace. We also have a higher cost of living, so our soldiers are more expensive. We also have a significant disadvantage when it comes to population, and the Chinese don't care if their population doesn't want to get drafted. Any war with the Chinese would be a pretty fair match if it didn't result in a full nuclear exchange (even then I guess its technically a fair match).
The oldest human population is in Africa, the next oldest human population is in Australia!?!? This means people somehow traveled via boats, boats that are probably like canoes to us today. Also, they didn't have any expectation there would be fertile land on the other side, for all they knew it was nothing but ocean out there or when you landed on a foreign shore it had giants or spirits killing everything off, or poisonous plants everywhere, or the gods would simply smite you. You can also look at the Polynesians, how the hell did they colonize all those islands with their primitive sea-faring abilities? During the colonization of America, they had massive ships that could store plenty of food, carry tools, and use the wind more effectively to get places quicker. They also had superior technology for farming and hunting. It was STILL dangerous for them. Imagine what it was like for the Aborigines and Polynesians. My point is, as technology advances I have no doubt it will be possible to travel between planets. Its just that we are sitting here with space ships that are like the "canoes" of the Polynesians and Aborigines, and no technology (yet) to farm where we go out in the Solar system.
I suspect the wealthier classes of people with be at the forefront of modifying themselves, I think the issue is that poor people will be left behind. It will start with longevity, strength, etc. through genetic engineering. Eventually when human prosthesis advances to the point of replacing biological parts some people will most definitely opt to replace their perfectly functional parts. Some of them will do it for their jobs, others just to have some advantage over others or for the "cool" factor. I for example would replace both of my eyes if I could see in a wider spectrum and zoom in on distant targets, or even my hearing if I could increase its sensitivity. I would consider replacing my limbs if there were more uses and the same functionality from a prosthetic. Then there is always direct human/brain interfaces. When cybernetics advances to the point human bodies can be replaced, I am positive some people with the means will just replace their bodies, especially when they are old. I suspect at this point we will have medical advances that will make degenerative brain diseases a non-issue. Some people may be brave enough to upload consciousness to a artificial brain even. If brain life support systems or artificial brains can be reduced to the size of a capsule, you could just store a bunch of brains on a rocket ship along with their engineered bodies or some robot avatars pre-designed for wherever they are going. While the "brain people" are traveling they could exist in some virtual environment where they won't have to deal with being locked up on a small ship. Fabrication and synthesis technology will be at such an advanced level you could probably just construct additional robot bodies once you get where you are going, and synthesize nutrients for your brain from materials available. This would obviously limit the planets you could go to, but it would expand the number we can currently survive on. The only issue at this point is reproduction, but you could feasibly store a bunch of eggs/sperm for a point at which you can raise them, or you could just grow brains, or create more AI's and raise them like children in a virtual environment. All of this is feasible SOMEDAY, but the main problem is that we wont be able to travel and live within our own solar system probably even our great-grandchildren's lives. The main argument against the virtual reality part is 'why travel to other stars when you create your own world on earth'. I suspect it will mainly be motivated by seeing the 'real' universe and exploiting resources out there, since any virtual environment won't necessarily be exactly like the universe, and anything you discover in it would be designed. Some curious minds will undoubtedly fire themselves off to experience things up close.
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Some universities also force students to live in dorm rooms for at least a year. It boggles my mind why dorm rooms are so expensive. I had an apartment 5 blocks from campus for 600 a month that was 4 times bigger than a dorm room, yet the dorm room charged 800 and I had to share a room? This didn't even include the meal plan.
I agree with this. If they would just cut down the requirements for college so that science majors don't have to take 30 credits of gen ed's it would temporarily solve a problem. The main fix for the problem would be to mandate colleges reduce tuition. Universities have become swollen inefficient institutions. Having worked at 2 of them, both had redundant employees, some employees that didn't do anything for over half their day, people skipping out of work and taking half days twice or more a week, endless meetings that served no purpose, and ridiculous wages for upper level personnel. One university President was making 500,000 a year and actually had the nerve to petition for a wage increase when the tuition was going up. That is ridiculous.
there is a need for professors of medieval literature, just not a large one.
Ok, so all the people that can't get into the military due to physical reasons, or don't believe in being part of killing are just fucked? You helped your daughters, many people don't have that. I didn't. You also went to college in a time of A) significantly lower tuition rates B) higher income and C) people didn't expect college degrees for good paying jobs. Nice work! It was easy for you because it was fucking easier back then.
This isn't the fault of the college students. This is the fault of the government, take it up with them.
Nice fucking assumptions. You assume everyone out there protesting has one of those degrees? Reality check for you, even useful degrees like engineering, sciences, mathematics, computer science all have the same problems.
Just because the historical context of college is that way doesn't make it right. Talk about maintaining the status quo.
Ok, so if your parents don't save then what do you do? What if they can't save because they are poor? I'd like to know how you would save for 4 years of college in a job that pays you shit wages. The only realistic option is the military basically. Say you make 10 dollars an hour 40 hours a week and have to live on your own. 4 years of college will run you about 44,000 dollars. You could make 83,000 in 4 years. Now lets subtract rent/food/bills from that. Lets say you have 200 in food a month, your rent is 400 and your bills top out at 150. Lets also factor in a car purchase of 3000 dollars and gasoline and car insurance which is about lets say 4600 a year (this is a low estimate btw). This would be like living in a modest apartment, with a decent car, an internet connection and utilities, and eating basic foods. 200*12*4 + 400*12*4 + 100*12*4 + 3000 + 4600*4 = 55,000. What is left? 28,000. Sure, thats enough for 2 years of college with books, however the 4 years you wait puts you at a disadvantage when you actually get out of school since you will be 4 years older than everyone else, delaying your financial future. This is also assuming you don't ever have any entertainment costs and you don't eat out for the whole 4 years, nor do you purchase any electronics such as a PC, and you probably don't have cable or an xbox. Its not as easy as you make it out to be.
Work-study, part time jobs, and summer jobs are never enough to pay for tuition nor all your bills usually. Did you even look up how much people usually get paid? Loans are pretty much required on some level. 100k in them, no, but you will easily get smacked with between 10-20k for a bachelors.
What makes you think students all go to college to party? What makes you think they don't have jobs? I like how you just assume all people that go to college are burn outs. Reality check for you : Even the ones with jobs and the ones getting hard and useful degrees have the exact same problem. I was employed most of my college career, but its hard to pay the ridiculous tuition rates when you can only make 9-10 dollars an hour tops. Most universities actually cap you at this if you work on campus, however typically most jobs are minimum wage. If you work off campus you have to worry about your boss not being good about your schedule and you usually make less or about the same. When I was working on my MS I was a supported student, i.e. free tuition and a stipend. Guess how much the stipend was? 1000 a month, hardly enough to survive. They even made me sign a form saying if I sought extra employment I would owe my tuition back and get terminated. I HAD to supplement my income with loans to afford to pay rent basically. Right now I am working full time and finishing up my PhD and I STILL need loans since the tuition is so damn high. This is coming from someone with a 3.75 GPA in a computational mathematics program. We are getting fucked too.
Steve Ballmer is a moron with an annoying voice. I haven't heard one intelligent thing out of his mouth. It just goes to show you that a privileged childhood leads you to success whether you deserve it or not.
U mad bro? That was pretty trollish. It's not totally understandable, but what I got out of it was "US gov. is fascist, students are fat and can't pay off loans, and Fox news is bad." Humor, yes I can see that now, but I suppose you are a victim of being associated with other nutjobs on / . once you start spouting political key phrases.
Battery technology hasn't advanced enough to support electrical powered aircraft. You will always need some form of chemical or radioactive fuel to power military aircraft. How you produce it can be green, but there will always be this limitation until you can pack a similar energy / mass into a battery.
Its not so much about a "green war" as it is about reducing dependence on a supply of oil that could get cut off in a war. The first place our enemy would invade would be the Middle East. Why do you think we have a strong military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq? Its the only thing our leaders could come up with that we would (or I should say "DID") support. Why do you think there is a push to get at the oil in the Bakken formation or the oil sands? Both are not as economically feasible as a stable Middle East sending us oil, but the problem is we don't want to have our source of energy so far from home where potential enemies can cut it off. I'm not saying I agree with the whole war and "everyone's an enemy" type of thing, its just me being realistic.
Typically ICBM's have nuclear warheads. Its a waste of resources to send conventional explosives with one when you can just send a UAV or manned aircraft.
Troll.
With the Bakken oil formation, the oil sands, and better drilling techniques to get to the massive quantity of oil under the Rockies I suspect we will be fine for awhile. I have family up in Montana and its an economic boom for them, as well as the North Dakotan's and Canadians. Of course its not sustainable forever, but until some unusually innovative and smart scientists come along and invent small scale reactors that can replace oil based on fusion or fuel cells or something we're pretty much stuck with oil.
There were theories that oil was made via abiogenic processes but it fell out of favor by the scientific community.
Not quite yet, the cuts are supposed to happen over time. I don't dispute the need for a military, and I am glad ours is the most technologically advanced. I'm not very happy with how its used, but that's a different issue. I actually have quite a bit of respect for soldiers, as I am pretty sure I couldn't do it as I don't believe in the afterlife and I'd rather not die. Its not that I am incapable of killing or out of shape or something, just not really willing to put my life on the line, call me selfish. However, its pretty sick that we spend more than any other nation in the world, yet our carriers, missiles and armored vehicles can get shot down by technology based on decades old technology, our UAV's can get infected with viruses, our APC's and Humvee's can get taken out by improvised devices, or http://www.usni.org/news-and-features/chinese-kill-weapon. This pretty much points out the flaw with just throwing money at a objective rather than thinking it through. People need to think outside the box so to speak and come up with innovative solutions rather than paying mega-corps billions of dollars for something that can get taken out by something that costs a few thousand to a hundred thousand dollars. The AK-47 is still the #1 weapon used in the world because it just fucking works. The M-16 has gotten better, in fact I really love shooting that weapon, but you can't just bury it in the sand and expect it to work. One reason the MIG's were such great aircraft was that they wouldn't be taken down by EMP due to a reliance of vacuum tube technology. Anyway, rant over.
Alpha Centauri is a collection of 3 stars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri , so I am not sure what you mean by "on' them. We don't even know if there are planets there, and it doesn't look too good considering that binary and ternary star systems tend to have extremely unstable orbits. There is an estimate that a planet could exist in a stable orbit for 250 million years, but it would probably be hit with such varying levels of solar radiation its environment would be extremely unstable. Its better to figure out if a star has some planets in the habitable zone first. Furthermore, even with that large of an investment in space travel its doubtful we would get to another star in any feasible time frame. That would most likely be better used to research and construct space elevators, fusion reactors, propulsion systems and in developing permanent bases in orbit and on the moon. Maybe send a manned mission to Mars as well.
Or we need to advance technology enough to be able to generate gravity. I remember some theory a guy proposed that allowed for conversion between Electromagnetism and Gravity but I can't for the life of me remember who the hell it was. He even designed a hypothetical device that could do the job.
The difference is that out military budget is mostly wasted on profits for corporations, as well as dead-end research projects. The cost of research, engineering and manufacturing is much higher here. Plus we have extremely expensive and intricate hardware we strap into our machines that is ridiculously expensive to replace. We also have a higher cost of living, so our soldiers are more expensive. We also have a significant disadvantage when it comes to population, and the Chinese don't care if their population doesn't want to get drafted. Any war with the Chinese would be a pretty fair match if it didn't result in a full nuclear exchange (even then I guess its technically a fair match).
The oldest human population is in Africa, the next oldest human population is in Australia!?!? This means people somehow traveled via boats, boats that are probably like canoes to us today. Also, they didn't have any expectation there would be fertile land on the other side, for all they knew it was nothing but ocean out there or when you landed on a foreign shore it had giants or spirits killing everything off, or poisonous plants everywhere, or the gods would simply smite you. You can also look at the Polynesians, how the hell did they colonize all those islands with their primitive sea-faring abilities? During the colonization of America, they had massive ships that could store plenty of food, carry tools, and use the wind more effectively to get places quicker. They also had superior technology for farming and hunting. It was STILL dangerous for them. Imagine what it was like for the Aborigines and Polynesians. My point is, as technology advances I have no doubt it will be possible to travel between planets. Its just that we are sitting here with space ships that are like the "canoes" of the Polynesians and Aborigines, and no technology (yet) to farm where we go out in the Solar system.
I suspect the wealthier classes of people with be at the forefront of modifying themselves, I think the issue is that poor people will be left behind. It will start with longevity, strength, etc. through genetic engineering. Eventually when human prosthesis advances to the point of replacing biological parts some people will most definitely opt to replace their perfectly functional parts. Some of them will do it for their jobs, others just to have some advantage over others or for the "cool" factor. I for example would replace both of my eyes if I could see in a wider spectrum and zoom in on distant targets, or even my hearing if I could increase its sensitivity. I would consider replacing my limbs if there were more uses and the same functionality from a prosthetic. Then there is always direct human/brain interfaces. When cybernetics advances to the point human bodies can be replaced, I am positive some people with the means will just replace their bodies, especially when they are old. I suspect at this point we will have medical advances that will make degenerative brain diseases a non-issue. Some people may be brave enough to upload consciousness to a artificial brain even. If brain life support systems or artificial brains can be reduced to the size of a capsule, you could just store a bunch of brains on a rocket ship along with their engineered bodies or some robot avatars pre-designed for wherever they are going. While the "brain people" are traveling they could exist in some virtual environment where they won't have to deal with being locked up on a small ship. Fabrication and synthesis technology will be at such an advanced level you could probably just construct additional robot bodies once you get where you are going, and synthesize nutrients for your brain from materials available. This would obviously limit the planets you could go to, but it would expand the number we can currently survive on. The only issue at this point is reproduction, but you could feasibly store a bunch of eggs/sperm for a point at which you can raise them, or you could just grow brains, or create more AI's and raise them like children in a virtual environment. All of this is feasible SOMEDAY, but the main problem is that we wont be able to travel and live within our own solar system probably even our great-grandchildren's lives. The main argument against the virtual reality part is 'why travel to other stars when you create your own world on earth'. I suspect it will mainly be motivated by seeing the 'real' universe and exploiting resources out there, since any virtual environment won't necessarily be exactly like the universe, and anything you discover in it would be designed. Some curious minds will undoubtedly fire themselves off to experience things up close.
I suspect many overlooked the 1980's quantifier. Its not uncommon for people to not read the whole question.