It's betrayal alright, but it doesn't fit the definition of treason. It does fit "malfeasance in office", and several other crimes. A million consecutive sentences for malfeasance should be sufficient punishment. Unfortunately, I see no chance of that happening.
Yeah, but voting for another party doesn't do any good either. I've done that rather consistently for decades, though altering which other party occasionally. And most people don't like to vote for someone who doesn't have a chance. (Besides, generally the people who will run for election without any chance of winning aren't any better than the incumbents, though their defects are different...and that's assuming that they're telling the truth.)
How do you propose that they hold the politicians responsible, when both parties that have a measurable chance of being elected support the same policies?
Sounds like the right advice for most kids. Doesn't sound like it would protect against scammers.... Possibly a refillable credit card? That could let them learn with limited repercussions.
OTOH, some children are "less able". I don't know how one can protect them. I have an autistic neice, and while I don't approve of the way she is being raised, I have to admit that I wouldn't know how to deal with the situation. (But Pavlov proved that the way being used is wrong. You don't positively reinforce temper tantrums.)
That's clearly not true. We could certainly be ahead of them at, say, DNA manipulation. They may not even use DNA, but even if they do it's not guaranteed that they would have advanced in that direction. (I don't see any need to master DNA editing to build, e.g., a space elevator.)
OTOH, they'd need to have mastered most of what we have developed. They'd need a recirculating air environment, e.g. And they would probably need to have mastered maintaining a closed eco-system far beyond our abilities.
You misunderstand Game Theory. Game Theory is, AFAICT, always correct. Unfortunately it's usually too difficult to calculate outside of simplified toy examples. Which is why it's used in capitalist economics, and artificially over-simplified description of how people interact. When Game Theory makes a prediction about what action will happen in capitalist economics, it's not a prescription. It merely says that if this doesn't happen, then the model you are using isn't a correct description of reality. It doesn't say it *should* be a description of reality. Unfortunately, some people, often for selfish reasons, take it as a prescription, often because taking it that way is to their benefit.
Read the article. It explains the matter in detail, and Game Theory *does* explain the actual predictions. Basically, however, a sociopath does better playing against other individuals, but in a large population will occasionally play against another sociopath, at which point both do worse.
Even so, the theory as developed is, indeed, still an oversimplification. E.g., it hasn't been developed to include unions of individuals, including unions of sociopaths. But game theory math is formidable once you get outside of toy examples.
Lasers need to be quite accurately directed. You may well need a laser to generate the signal, but you probably want to focus it at a mirror that will spread the signal around the room. The trick is to either avoid or allow for multi-path "ghosts". This will even allow the receiver to be moving around within the room (as long as it is moving "slowly" enough.. and my rough guess is that anything slower than 100 Kps would count as slow enough).
You say "to the detriment", and that isn't clear. The non-level playing field *is* clear. E.g., it's not clear that Steve Jobs was highly unethical rather than only mildly unethical. And it's not clear that he acted "to the detriment of billions of other people".
I'll agree that it's quite easy to come up with other examples where it *is* clear. But no class of people is uniform. Not even a pair of identical twins. Whenever you see them that way, you can be certain that you are simplifying...and perhaps oversimplifying.
If you own land, the title comes from someone who stole it. You didn't pay what the original inhabitants paid (usually their life). If you drink water, you depend on title to land that was stolen from the original inhabitants. Et multitudinous cetera.
Money is based on fraudulent accounting, and has been since its inception in the US, I can't say for sure WRT other countries, but that would be my expectation. The countries that used honestly founded money (that I'm aware of) only exist multiple centuries into the past. Greece, e.g., is not the same country as Classical Greece (which wasn't a country, but a collection of cities and the land separating them). Classical Greeks had honest money, though not much of it. The Romans that followed them engaged in governmentally authorized counterfeiting, though perhaps not under the Republic. Perviously fraudulent money was called "adulterating the currency", but that doen't easily apply to money printed on clothish paper (or paperish cloth). So what you paid wasn't anything honest, no matter what your intentions. Current money has it's value changed out from under you at the whim of the treasury department.
Please note that all this isn't to extol the gold standard. It was a terrible standard (but don't think that bitcoins are any better). It's just that no individual has "earned" their position in life. NOBODY. Richer people tend to be given larger subsidies by the government, and though they usually think of them as "no more than my due" they usually get all huffy if you suggest that the same subsidies be extended to less wealthy individuals. Of course, the most desireable subsidy changes as your wealth increases, so it's usually possible to arrange things so that:
You oversimplify. It also involves a lot of hard work, and some of them didn't do anything very unethical....they just took advantage of an existing non-level playing field. (I'll grant that others ensured that the playing field *would* be non-level, but they aren't necessarily the same people.)
OTOH, I do agree that there's no justification for the excessive imbalance being maintained. And I see no way to reform the system from my position.
The thing is, your "one whoppin' good conspiracy!" is correct, except that you included one word too many. You should have said: "Hey...wait a minute...I just realized how naive I've been not to have realized that all world governements actually are conspiring to oppress us. Now that's one whoppin' good conspiracy!" Only the word "together" makes it incorrect. But sometimes some of them cooperate. (OTOH, I do accept that the secrecy is enforced contractually in this case. )
I don't think those ways would work for this magnitude of theft. The "Cayman Islands" approach is much more plausible. Or using some government's intelligence agency to launder it.
I don't believe you. There are too many "give aways" built into society, and everyone uses some of them. Why were you entitled to anything?? The state defends the title to land of those who inherit from those who brutally stole it from the original inhabitants. That's a give away on a massive scale. Those who benefit from it have no right to complain if someone else gets a smaller give away. (And, yeah, I benefit from that too. But I don't lie to myself and claim otherwise.)
Actually, you're right. The fault hasn't moved yet. But that doesn't mean closing it before it was fueled wasn't the right move. It is expected to move any decade now...and when it does we won't need another emergency.
If you want to check, it was the Diablo Canyon reactor.
Thanks for the informative comment. Smaller installations will still be less efficient, but a REALLY GOOD INSULATOR can really change the smallest practical size.
Sorry, but rephrase: nuclear is a terrible form of energy...but itcould bebetter than most alternatives.
Unfortunately, you don't get nuclear energy plants without getting arrogantly overbearing companies that aren't any more interested than they must be in safety. Technically it's an excellent idea, that could be made better by using fast breeders to burn through the "radioactive waste". As implemented....I'm not sure which is worse, the nuclear plants or the carbon emissions they replace.
Trouble is, the companies involved don't necessarily care about either the technicalities OR the safety. So how can you trust them? And therefore lawsuites.
E.g., one nuclear reactor in California was built not only at the base of a cliff, but *ON* a major fault line. Astride it. When the fault moves, and all the emergency services are needed for other purposes, guess what cliff is expected to fall where? Well, after a long political haggle, THAT plant was closed after being built, but before being started. And guess who ended up paying for it? Not the company.
Thermal energy storage doesn't work well for anything much smaller than a large industrial site. And larger is better, because you radiate heat from the surface. For small sites gravity storage is better (pump a fluid against gravity, and use it to feed a turbine as needed). Another option is compression of a gas. Ideally one should be able to electrolize something in half, and then recombine the parts to recover the energy, normally this is water & hydrogen-oxygen, but that's not necessarily the best choice, however ANY choice will have the threat of explosive recombination. For some purposes super-capacitors are interesting, but they've been "under development" for quite awhile, so there's probably some problems with them.
Additionally, most of these approaches most naturally generate DC rather than AC, so you may need to replace large amounts of equipment. (OTOH, solar cells generate DC, so you can probably just feed it into whatever converter you are already using.)
A lot of this depends on what scale of generation you are contemplating. (See the earlier comment about using lead-acid batteries.)
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It's betrayal alright, but it doesn't fit the definition of treason. It does fit "malfeasance in office", and several other crimes. A million consecutive sentences for malfeasance should be sufficient punishment. Unfortunately, I see no chance of that happening.
Yeah, but voting for another party doesn't do any good either. I've done that rather consistently for decades, though altering which other party occasionally. And most people don't like to vote for someone who doesn't have a chance. (Besides, generally the people who will run for election without any chance of winning aren't any better than the incumbents, though their defects are different...and that's assuming that they're telling the truth.)
How do you propose that they hold the politicians responsible, when both parties that have a measurable chance of being elected support the same policies?
Sounds like the right advice for most kids. Doesn't sound like it would protect against scammers. ... Possibly a refillable credit card? That could let them learn with limited repercussions.
OTOH, some children are "less able". I don't know how one can protect them. I have an autistic neice, and while I don't approve of the way she is being raised, I have to admit that I wouldn't know how to deal with the situation. (But Pavlov proved that the way being used is wrong. You don't positively reinforce temper tantrums.)
If judges are only going to behave as mindless automatons, they should be replaced by cheaper ones that don't take time off and work 24/7.
If this were a single data point, I would agree with you. Unfortunately, it's merely the most recent.
That's clearly not true. We could certainly be ahead of them at, say, DNA manipulation. They may not even use DNA, but even if they do it's not guaranteed that they would have advanced in that direction. (I don't see any need to master DNA editing to build, e.g., a space elevator.)
OTOH, they'd need to have mastered most of what we have developed. They'd need a recirculating air environment, e.g. And they would probably need to have mastered maintaining a closed eco-system far beyond our abilities.
Well, fungi are often infectious across species boundaries. They do, however, tend to start off as external parasites.
I understand why you choose to be anonymous.
You misunderstand Game Theory. Game Theory is, AFAICT, always correct. Unfortunately it's usually too difficult to calculate outside of simplified toy examples. Which is why it's used in capitalist economics, and artificially over-simplified description of how people interact. When Game Theory makes a prediction about what action will happen in capitalist economics, it's not a prescription. It merely says that if this doesn't happen, then the model you are using isn't a correct description of reality. It doesn't say it *should* be a description of reality. Unfortunately, some people, often for selfish reasons, take it as a prescription, often because taking it that way is to their benefit.
Read the article. It explains the matter in detail, and Game Theory *does* explain the actual predictions. Basically, however, a sociopath does better playing against other individuals, but in a large population will occasionally play against another sociopath, at which point both do worse.
Even so, the theory as developed is, indeed, still an oversimplification. E.g., it hasn't been developed to include unions of individuals, including unions of sociopaths. But game theory math is formidable once you get outside of toy examples.
Lasers need to be quite accurately directed. You may well need a laser to generate the signal, but you probably want to focus it at a mirror that will spread the signal around the room. The trick is to either avoid or allow for multi-path "ghosts". This will even allow the receiver to be moving around within the room (as long as it is moving "slowly" enough .. and my rough guess is that anything slower than 100 Kps would count as slow enough).
You say "to the detriment", and that isn't clear. The non-level playing field *is* clear. E.g., it's not clear that Steve Jobs was highly unethical rather than only mildly unethical. And it's not clear that he acted "to the detriment of billions of other people".
I'll agree that it's quite easy to come up with other examples where it *is* clear. But no class of people is uniform. Not even a pair of identical twins. Whenever you see them that way, you can be certain that you are simplifying...and perhaps oversimplifying.
If you own land, the title comes from someone who stole it. You didn't pay what the original inhabitants paid (usually their life). If you drink water, you depend on title to land that was stolen from the original inhabitants. Et multitudinous cetera.
Money is based on fraudulent accounting, and has been since its inception in the US, I can't say for sure WRT other countries, but that would be my expectation. The countries that used honestly founded money (that I'm aware of) only exist multiple centuries into the past. Greece, e.g., is not the same country as Classical Greece (which wasn't a country, but a collection of cities and the land separating them). Classical Greeks had honest money, though not much of it. The Romans that followed them engaged in governmentally authorized counterfeiting, though perhaps not under the Republic. Perviously fraudulent money was called "adulterating the currency", but that doen't easily apply to money printed on clothish paper (or paperish cloth). So what you paid wasn't anything honest, no matter what your intentions. Current money has it's value changed out from under you at the whim of the treasury department.
Please note that all this isn't to extol the gold standard. It was a terrible standard (but don't think that bitcoins are any better). It's just that no individual has "earned" their position in life. NOBODY. Richer people tend to be given larger subsidies by the government, and though they usually think of them as "no more than my due" they usually get all huffy if you suggest that the same subsidies be extended to less wealthy individuals. Of course, the most desireable subsidy changes as your wealth increases, so it's usually possible to arrange things so that:
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread. La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain. -- Anatole France -- http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A...
You oversimplify. It also involves a lot of hard work, and some of them didn't do anything very unethical....they just took advantage of an existing non-level playing field. (I'll grant that others ensured that the playing field *would* be non-level, but they aren't necessarily the same people.)
OTOH, I do agree that there's no justification for the excessive imbalance being maintained. And I see no way to reform the system from my position.
The thing is, your "one whoppin' good conspiracy!" is correct, except that you included one word too many. You should have said: "Hey...wait a minute...I just realized how naive I've been not to have realized that all world governements actually are conspiring to oppress us. Now that's one whoppin' good conspiracy!" Only the word "together" makes it incorrect. But sometimes some of them cooperate. (OTOH, I do accept that the secrecy is enforced contractually in this case. )
I don't think those ways would work for this magnitude of theft. The "Cayman Islands" approach is much more plausible. Or using some government's intelligence agency to launder it.
They have occasionally done the right thing. I wouldn't want to claim that it was their common practice, but they have done it.
I don't believe you. There are too many "give aways" built into society, and everyone uses some of them. Why were you entitled to anything?? The state defends the title to land of those who inherit from those who brutally stole it from the original inhabitants. That's a give away on a massive scale. Those who benefit from it have no right to complain if someone else gets a smaller give away. (And, yeah, I benefit from that too. But I don't lie to myself and claim otherwise.)
I'd prefer:
2015-12-27rc, 2015-12-29rc, 2016-01-02rc, 2016-01-06!
Actually, you're right. The fault hasn't moved yet. But that doesn't mean closing it before it was fueled wasn't the right move. It is expected to move any decade now...and when it does we won't need another emergency.
If you want to check, it was the Diablo Canyon reactor.
Thanks for the informative comment. Smaller installations will still be less efficient, but a REALLY GOOD INSULATOR can really change the smallest practical size.
Sorry, but rephrase:
nuclear is a terrible form of energy...but it could be better than most alternatives.
Unfortunately, you don't get nuclear energy plants without getting arrogantly overbearing companies that aren't any more interested than they must be in safety. Technically it's an excellent idea, that could be made better by using fast breeders to burn through the "radioactive waste". As implemented....I'm not sure which is worse, the nuclear plants or the carbon emissions they replace.
Trouble is, the companies involved don't necessarily care about either the technicalities OR the safety. So how can you trust them? And therefore lawsuites.
E.g., one nuclear reactor in California was built not only at the base of a cliff, but *ON* a major fault line. Astride it. When the fault moves, and all the emergency services are needed for other purposes, guess what cliff is expected to fall where? Well, after a long political haggle, THAT plant was closed after being built, but before being started. And guess who ended up paying for it? Not the company.
Thermal energy storage doesn't work well for anything much smaller than a large industrial site. And larger is better, because you radiate heat from the surface. For small sites gravity storage is better (pump a fluid against gravity, and use it to feed a turbine as needed). Another option is compression of a gas. Ideally one should be able to electrolize something in half, and then recombine the parts to recover the energy, normally this is water & hydrogen-oxygen, but that's not necessarily the best choice, however ANY choice will have the threat of explosive recombination. For some purposes super-capacitors are interesting, but they've been "under development" for quite awhile, so there's probably some problems with them.
Additionally, most of these approaches most naturally generate DC rather than AC, so you may need to replace large amounts of equipment. (OTOH, solar cells generate DC, so you can probably just feed it into whatever converter you are already using.)
A lot of this depends on what scale of generation you are contemplating. (See the earlier comment about using lead-acid batteries.)