Not to knock on any particular politician, but the libertarian idea that we could trust business to promote and maintain "internet freedom" as a pro-business stance is ridiculous. Business groups, like say the RIAA, are not going to support a government intervention that they don't control. For them, internet freedom is the freedom to protect themselves from the horrible thieves who are stealing their property. Their freedom is to be free of regulation that controls copyright laws and restricts their power to continue to keep "Happy Birthday" under copyright.
Republicans, or Libertarians, giving away my freedom to business is scary.
I remember when I was a kids and was also an army kid who traveled to Europe and back. We had all our shots, but they only included mumps, whooping Cough, and maybe pertussis? Only vaguely remember, polio yes, measles no, smallpox yes, chicken pox no, most kids got a lot of childhood illnesses and some, like my godmother, died of them finally in her old age (scarlet fever damaged her heart when very young, or so I was told).
Nowadays my son and his wife are anti-vaxxers living in a Mennonite community. They have their own way of doing things, but it does happen that they all come down with stuff at the same time. They are pretty damn healthy though, they lead a rugged life that keeps them strong. I am not so worried about them and the illnesses you are talking about, they are strong. It is the weak little pissant kids in the city, locked away all day every day behind TVs, computers and game consoles that will succumb to these illnesses even with vaccination.
Am I a Luddite? No, but the world that I see today is far away from the world I grew up in or the world my son and his family are building. The outliers might be the strongest ones in the end, friends.
excuse my rant, but why the EF do you have all this crap? wasn't the first one good enough?
I have a Sony-ericssen almost smart phone from 2007. It still plays my MP3s, movies, makes phone calls, it could do push mail for me (but frankly I don't want to be bothered by email all the time). I deliberately didn't want a camera when I got it and don't feel that I missed a thing.
And I still have it.
And I still use it.
It is still good enough for what I wanted it for.
Perhaps your phone is something more than what I see and that you are admitting. Perhaps your phone is a piece of jewelry to tell the world that you are that special person who is "cool", up to date. Special in that good, hip way?
Sorry, but you should have taken all the money you wasted on that crap and done something to help someone
Yes, and women who wear miniskirts obviously shouldn't go into a bar because everybody knows they are full of rapists. And IF she is raped and gets pregnant she obviously wanted to get pregnant by her rapist. It's science, just ask Mr Akin on the Senate science and technology committee.
Yeah, I just came back to the US and went to work at a public university. took on an extra part-time job as admin for one of the programs. The woman who was my director had never used most of her vacation time, arrived at 9 and left at 7 or 8 every day and considered this to be a virtue. My suggestion that she was foolishly working too hard, not because it meant she was getting ripped off by our employer, but because she wasn't using her "real" work time efficiently. I pointed out that the amount of time she spent on personal stuff, (you know the list) was more than the difference of overtime she was working, so she just was really hanging out at the office for no real purpose.
But her husband did the same thing, so if she went home she would be there alone, and be lonely.
And to be considered a "hard worker" you were expected to be there those extra hours. SHe was often remarked on as someone who "worked extra hard " when she wasn't actually working hard, just inefficiently.
I used to work for a very wise old man who always sent people home on time and without any overtime. "you need to be with your family" he would say. He was right. Nowadays I really appreciate that about him and spend all my off hours with my wife and kids. When I work, I focus on work and get it done. When I quit that admin job they made my part of it a full-time position, for two people. And my boss got a promotion.
An old friend of mine, now probably deceased, had been working at a local state home for the profoundly retarded. He replaced a door that had a sign on it that said "Mental Handicap." Being a playful sort he gave the sign to me (it being the perfect size for a dashboard) with the suggestion that I use it as a handicapped parking permit. I took it one step further and used it as a "park wherever the hell I want" permit. It worked, for 4 or 5 years until (because I also didn't need to lock my truck because of the sign) somebody stole it. Bastards!
AND, there are macro-economic and micro (personal in this case) economic forces as well. You are working at a macro level, but most people care about themselves. Just as the care-givers, equipment manufacturers, pharmacorps and care-providers (hospitals/clinics) think of themselves as number 1 in the equation. The role of government is to recognize that there is a way that balances all the needs and all the requirements. The implementation of that plan that recognizes a balanced and healthy approach to that equation which is positive. Why can't we do that?
1) we have created and support a system that works for only one sector of the equation, the part with the most money: therefore big Pharma and big equipment destroy the equation.
2) as a result, the users, the healthy, the ill, the broken or dying, are not an important part of the equation. Because of that inequality, people, the users, don't use unless they are very protected from the cost by the insurance companies. Because of this, the big companies keep their prices high, because their equipment is not used often. They also constantly try to introduce something "new, improved, fewer side-effects, better results" that they can get a higher profit margin from thus perpetuating a vicious circle.
Eg: When I was in China, my doctor recommended a CAT scan. His hospital had them for about $1000. I went to the public hospital and got it done for $250.00. At the public hospital I waited in line, got called out of a group 30 or more people waiting for one of two CAT scanners. I went in, laid down, the scan was taken, an IV flushed a something into me and they took more pictures, I was told I was finished and headed out past the next patient who had a special cap on his head to keep his head in one piece after a scooter crash. Total time about 5-6 minutes in the scanner room. The photos were delivered to me two days later. The difference between the $1000 private hospital and the $250 public was that at the private I would get a "private room" scan with a personal nurse to translate for me. The public one had the tech behind a screen giving me terse instructions in Chinese. We expect babying, the Chinese don't and they save so much money because of it that it makes me want to cry. You are ripped off because of your sense of entitlement.
3) so the system is NOT an equation, we have expectations based on what the big players want to give us and want to make us pay for. My CAT scan showed I had no cancer. When I got to the US the doctor poo=pooed the scan and demanded a biopsy. If it wasn't for the insurance company it would have been $5000.00 Still it was more than the CAT scan, and all the care, blood tests and sonograms done in China put together: the results all proved the same thing. I was cheated of my time and money and the insurance company was cheated as well.
We are not getting good care, we are getting worse care than I could get in China last year. The systems used by other countries are the best for 95% of their citizens. The remaining 5%, well, how many are going without treatment today in America?
As an old geezer, I remember, vaguely of course, flying in the fifties and sixties. In fact, my earliest memory is of switching planes in Shannon (Ireland) airport coming back from Germany when I was 5 or 6 years old. I got my first Coca-Cola at the airport and it was amazing. It is my earliest "memory" (quotes because I no longer actually remember the event, I just remember the story).
My mom traveled by air to Japan in the early fifties, with my older brother who was 4 or so. She couldn't remember the exact places it stopped, but it took more than 2 days, just in airports and army bases. Coming back, she was 6 months pregnant (with me) and my brother was 5 years old and... active. Again it took forever for her and my brother and her (was it 3?) footlockers of stuff, all she had from 2 years in Japan. My dad flew back separately on army transport planes to save money.
Three years later she did it again with 2 boys and footlockers to Europe.
In her later years she traveled extensively, amazed at how easy it had become in the 80s
I remember my goggling brainfreeze when my "coordinator" ( I was an "assistant coordinator") last year told me that meeting with a student (obviously my "job" as assistant coordinator) was less important than going to a meeting. "But," I said, "I was told that students are the most important part of this job, that they are paying for our work, out raison d'etre." Nope, the meeting was the most important thing. I lasted 4 months in that job and pulled out, being "demoted" to full-time faculty again. Praise the Lord, now I can actually help students.
While I fully support the work with fusion, at the same time we need equal investment in renwables AND infrastructure.OUr existing cables, poles and distribution system is a relic of the 50s.
We need cables undergraound, we need poles gone, we need higher quality cable that leaks less power as heat (through cable resistance) and gapping at connections that wear out over time. We are losing unimaginable amounts of power every day, and when demand increases the percentage of loss increases.
Just as the health care system required a renovation, our electircal power systems require renovation. The systems of the 50s that we are using today cannot hold up to, were not designed to hold up to modern demands.
Depends, I have a (at the time I bought it) cheap "Foxit eSlick". Foxit makes some PDF readers and editors and such for the business market (cheaper, safer and more powerful than the Adobe stuff, and lighter and cheaper too of course). And they handle PDFs really well, as well as all the regular ebook formats and txt and doc and odt too as i recall. They use a WolfLinux OS underneath it BTW.
The thing with a "real" eBook reader is eInk. Without it you have a backlit screen that, I find, tires my eyes and "weakens " them. I read too much on a screen already and am trying to "strengthen" my eyes by reading more paper and eInk. It does seem to help, I still don't need glasses (except to read paper and eInk and there I just use magnifying or "reading" glasses) most of the time and i'm 57 years old. So...
The thing with the eSlick that I like (and others might not) is that it has almost no "extra" features. No store to buy from, no wifi, no browser, no nothing. It is just a reader that you plug in to your computer to add books from whatever source you like. I have had this one since 2006 or so and it is still working great. So I am a fan of readers, with reservation about must have eInk and must not have all the shite everybody else wants.
"As someone alive when the USSR was still around. FUCK YOU! Those assholes got what they deserved!"
Which "those assholes" did you mean?
Because of the fall of the Iron Curtain, (which was, as is always true, two sided), the Russians got a massive injection of money from petroleum extraction in Siberia which has funded government control by corporations and allowed "them" to become a plutocracy.
While at the same time, roughly, the US got a smaller infusion of pettro dollars from Alaska and the Caribbean , over a longer period of time which has leveraged the funding of government control by corporations and allowed "them" to become a plutocracy.
I was around too, my friend, but i was also paying attention to what was happening. The US took the money from Alaska and the Cariibbean early on, used it to pump the economy and feed the corps who allowed the government to pour tons of cash into defense spending because it suited the corps to make money that way. That leveraged the failure of the USSR to keep up in defense spending which pushed us to the brink of war which the Russians "knew" they would lose. The economics of the situation: because they didn't do the extraction early they fell behind the curve of defense spending and "lost" the war before it became hot. Reagan pointed out to Gorbachov that they had lost and that they didn't have a chance. And that he was bat-shit crazy enough to use his advantage while he could. (think Iran/Contra). Game over.
Now the Russian plutocrats have the advantage and we are about to get torn up because they can buy us if they want to.
I have screamed into the wilderness for years ( and call me a neo-Luddite if you like) that our failure as a species is also our success: we like to fuck with shit. When I was a boy, I remember building rock dams in the stream, building "log cabins" in the woods, breaking things, moving things and building things: it is what we do and it is what has built a world that is rapidly becoming uninhabitable for us. Because of us.
The concept of being "God's earthly stewards" is a joke. We are children (literally) who mess with stuff that we don't understand and talk (like kids) as if we did. We DON't understand global climate change, it is happening, it has humans as an important cause, but we don't understand it at all. And yet there are people who want to dump shit in the atmosphere, the oceans or even into space to "solve" global warming.
We will probably do genetic manipulation and selective abortion more and more and the results will be hellish. We will do it because we can, like a 10 year old, justify our actions in 10 year old logic. That IS the level of our public discourse right now. Tell me, after watching 15 minutes of news on the politcal campaigns that it isn't.
We have a president who reaches up to the discourse of a 16 year old to "appeal to our higher nature." And we found that refreshing 4 years ago and find it baffling, confusing, "tricky", too nuanced today. He must be lying if the world doesn't work out the way he wanted and told us he would try to make it happen. And when it doesn't it must be his fault? That is childish: "But daddy, you said it would not rain!"
And we think we have the knowledge and skills to act as adults in the political world when we act like children in our cities, counties and states? Not mention at home? Look, I would like to live in a world where we did have thoughtful adult discourse about the issues confronting the world, the biosphere and our children's future. But who is there to have that discourse with?
Story a few months in the past (oh how quickly you forget) about how Nigerian 419 scammers actually continue to use the same tired old tropes on purpose. Their reasoning is that they will not be able to hook in people who can see through their scam, so it is a waste of time and resources to attract their attention. Better to look for that tiny group of people who, for one reason or another, lacks the reality filters to recognize them as scammers and put their time and effort into those poor fools. Thus, the people who will be tricked by an obviously false scam from a phony FBI site is exactly the patsy they are looking for. You (or I hope I) would never be their target to begin with.
They are building it in their fab plants in China. Probably can buy it there already, maybe even running android (no joke, i mentioned before I had a student who bought her MacBook air with win xp installed, from an "iStore" too").
This is, by the way, clearly an advertisement, in the same way that product placement in movies are advertisements. You are just so accustomed to it you have trouble recognizing it.
I have been sitting in an office this last semester with PhD students part-timing as adjuncts to make ends meet. Most of them have taken a little time off, but when they did they got penalized for being out of the loop for even a year or two doing work directly related to their PhD path. So, yeah, it sucks but it is true
At 40 I retired from business, spent two years kicking around at my place in the mountains and traveling, ran into something i thought was curious and interesting, went back to university and got a BA (my first) then went off to do what I wanted to do with that BA (and wife w/2 kids) after 5 years realized that the lack of an MA was slowing me down so I got one, realized the one I got was crap, but it still served my purposes well enough.
Do I want a PhD, well.... not with the time I have left. There is one PhD department in Linguistics that, if offered a place in their program i would probably try to do it, but only one I know of right now.
BTW, at no time has money been a consideration. Not because I am fabulously wealthy, but because I can work doing what I want to do. If I need more money, i work some more. Just yesterday i was filling out an application because things are just a little tight in my projections for this fall.
Too many people do shit for money, stupid people, do what you want to do, not what will make you rich. Everyone I have met who did things just to get rich became sadly.. pitifully...just a nasty piece of work who spend half of the remainder of their life justifying their stupidity to themselves and others. (and the other half making bad buying decisions to prove that their money really is worth something)
Am I taken seriously? Yeah, pretty much. Even though I often point out to my colleagues and supervisors that I am "really" only 35 (the age I would be if I had followed the traditional career path from high school) I am accepted as someone with "terminal degree and terminal experience". I recently quit a higher paying part-time admin position because I didn't want to do it, I wanted to teach full time.
Inconclusion, I disagree with you across the board, my experience shows me that what matters is that the investment in education should be for what you want, that working at something you are interested in, not necessarily something lucrative, is key to working happy. ANd that being taken seriously has to do with how you present yourself, not necessarily how long you have done something.
And when I lived up in the mountains, 2 miles off the federal logging road I had a 4X4 Ranger that I used to haul firewood off the back lot on the other side of the stream and up a 45 degree hill. You don't need a monster truck, you need to have brains and know how to drive.
Home Depot rents delivery trucks for 25 an hour. I have a Hyundai Sonata that only carries bagged goods, so I make plans, I organize, I get three or four projects worth of stuff at once, and I have a house built in 1928 that has been eaten up by termites. Yeah, I have a lot of work to do, but planning is all it needs, planning.
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Not to knock on any particular politician, but the libertarian idea that we could trust business to promote and maintain "internet freedom" as a pro-business stance is ridiculous. Business groups, like say the RIAA, are not going to support a government intervention that they don't control. For them, internet freedom is the freedom to protect themselves from the horrible thieves who are stealing their property. Their freedom is to be free of regulation that controls copyright laws and restricts their power to continue to keep "Happy Birthday" under copyright.
Republicans, or Libertarians, giving away my freedom to business is scary.
I remember when I was a kids and was also an army kid who traveled to Europe and back. We had all our shots, but they only included mumps, whooping Cough, and maybe pertussis? Only vaguely remember, polio yes, measles no, smallpox yes, chicken pox no, most kids got a lot of childhood illnesses and some, like my godmother, died of them finally in her old age (scarlet fever damaged her heart when very young, or so I was told).
Nowadays my son and his wife are anti-vaxxers living in a Mennonite community. They have their own way of doing things, but it does happen that they all come down with stuff at the same time. They are pretty damn healthy though, they lead a rugged life that keeps them strong. I am not so worried about them and the illnesses you are talking about, they are strong. It is the weak little pissant kids in the city, locked away all day every day behind TVs, computers and game consoles that will succumb to these illnesses even with vaccination.
Am I a Luddite? No, but the world that I see today is far away from the world I grew up in or the world my son and his family are building. The outliers might be the strongest ones in the end, friends.
excuse my rant, but why the EF do you have all this crap? wasn't the first one good enough?
I have a Sony-ericssen almost smart phone from 2007. It still plays my MP3s, movies, makes phone calls, it could do push mail for me (but frankly I don't want to be bothered by email all the time). I deliberately didn't want a camera when I got it and don't feel that I missed a thing.
And I still have it.
And I still use it.
It is still good enough for what I wanted it for.
Perhaps your phone is something more than what I see and that you are admitting. Perhaps your phone is a piece of jewelry to tell the world that you are that special person who is "cool", up to date. Special in that good, hip way?
Sorry, but you should have taken all the money you wasted on that crap and done something to help someone
Yes, and women who wear miniskirts obviously shouldn't go into a bar because everybody knows they are full of rapists. And IF she is raped and gets pregnant she obviously wanted to get pregnant by her rapist. It's science, just ask Mr Akin on the Senate science and technology committee.
Yeah, I just came back to the US and went to work at a public university. took on an extra part-time job as admin for one of the programs. The woman who was my director had never used most of her vacation time, arrived at 9 and left at 7 or 8 every day and considered this to be a virtue. My suggestion that she was foolishly working too hard, not because it meant she was getting ripped off by our employer, but because she wasn't using her "real" work time efficiently. I pointed out that the amount of time she spent on personal stuff, (you know the list) was more than the difference of overtime she was working, so she just was really hanging out at the office for no real purpose.
But her husband did the same thing, so if she went home she would be there alone, and be lonely.
And to be considered a "hard worker" you were expected to be there those extra hours. SHe was often remarked on as someone who "worked extra hard " when she wasn't actually working hard, just inefficiently.
I used to work for a very wise old man who always sent people home on time and without any overtime. "you need to be with your family" he would say. He was right. Nowadays I really appreciate that about him and spend all my off hours with my wife and kids. When I work, I focus on work and get it done. When I quit that admin job they made my part of it a full-time position, for two people. And my boss got a promotion.
An old friend of mine, now probably deceased, had been working at a local state home for the profoundly retarded. He replaced a door that had a sign on it that said "Mental Handicap." Being a playful sort he gave the sign to me (it being the perfect size for a dashboard) with the suggestion that I use it as a handicapped parking permit. I took it one step further and used it as a "park wherever the hell I want" permit. It worked, for 4 or 5 years until (because I also didn't need to lock my truck because of the sign) somebody stole it. Bastards!
That's 10.75 Canadian Dollars eh?
AND, there are macro-economic and micro (personal in this case) economic forces as well. You are working at a macro level, but most people care about themselves. Just as the care-givers, equipment manufacturers, pharmacorps and care-providers (hospitals/clinics) think of themselves as number 1 in the equation. The role of government is to recognize that there is a way that balances all the needs and all the requirements. The implementation of that plan that recognizes a balanced and healthy approach to that equation which is positive. Why can't we do that?
1) we have created and support a system that works for only one sector of the equation, the part with the most money: therefore big Pharma and big equipment destroy the equation.
2) as a result, the users, the healthy, the ill, the broken or dying, are not an important part of the equation. Because of that inequality, people, the users, don't use unless they are very protected from the cost by the insurance companies. Because of this, the big companies keep their prices high, because their equipment is not used often. They also constantly try to introduce something "new, improved, fewer side-effects, better results" that they can get a higher profit margin from thus perpetuating a vicious circle.
Eg: When I was in China, my doctor recommended a CAT scan. His hospital had them for about $1000. I went to the public hospital and got it done for $250.00. At the public hospital I waited in line, got called out of a group 30 or more people waiting for one of two CAT scanners. I went in, laid down, the scan was taken, an IV flushed a something into me and they took more pictures, I was told I was finished and headed out past the next patient who had a special cap on his head to keep his head in one piece after a scooter crash. Total time about 5-6 minutes in the scanner room. The photos were delivered to me two days later. The difference between the $1000 private hospital and the $250 public was that at the private I would get a "private room" scan with a personal nurse to translate for me. The public one had the tech behind a screen giving me terse instructions in Chinese. We expect babying, the Chinese don't and they save so much money because of it that it makes me want to cry. You are ripped off because of your sense of entitlement.
3) so the system is NOT an equation, we have expectations based on what the big players want to give us and want to make us pay for. My CAT scan showed I had no cancer. When I got to the US the doctor poo=pooed the scan and demanded a biopsy. If it wasn't for the insurance company it would have been $5000.00 Still it was more than the CAT scan, and all the care, blood tests and sonograms done in China put together: the results all proved the same thing. I was cheated of my time and money and the insurance company was cheated as well.
We are not getting good care, we are getting worse care than I could get in China last year. The systems used by other countries are the best for 95% of their citizens. The remaining 5%, well, how many are going without treatment today in America?
As an old geezer, I remember, vaguely of course, flying in the fifties and sixties. In fact, my earliest memory is of switching planes in Shannon (Ireland) airport coming back from Germany when I was 5 or 6 years old. I got my first Coca-Cola at the airport and it was amazing. It is my earliest "memory" (quotes because I no longer actually remember the event, I just remember the story).
My mom traveled by air to Japan in the early fifties, with my older brother who was 4 or so. She couldn't remember the exact places it stopped, but it took more than 2 days, just in airports and army bases. Coming back, she was 6 months pregnant (with me) and my brother was 5 years old and ... active. Again it took forever for her and my brother and her (was it 3?) footlockers of stuff, all she had from 2 years in Japan. My dad flew back separately on army transport planes to save money.
Three years later she did it again with 2 boys and footlockers to Europe.
In her later years she traveled extensively, amazed at how easy it had become in the 80s
Ah, the old days! So glamourous.
Yeah, Verizon IS offering a tiered access plan
" I think many people buy Macs because" they are marketed on a "reputation of them being less trouble and the" touted "aesthetic attraction of OSX."
FTFY
I remember my goggling brainfreeze when my "coordinator" ( I was an "assistant coordinator") last year told me that meeting with a student (obviously my "job" as assistant coordinator) was less important than going to a meeting. "But," I said, "I was told that students are the most important part of this job, that they are paying for our work, out raison d'etre." Nope, the meeting was the most important thing. I lasted 4 months in that job and pulled out, being "demoted" to full-time faculty again. Praise the Lord, now I can actually help students.
i have an old-school eInk ereader with only buttons, no wifi, no DRM. the only way to go IMO
And don't forget the "anal leakage" as well, just to make it really useful for contraception.
While I fully support the work with fusion, at the same time we need equal investment in renwables AND infrastructure.OUr existing cables, poles and distribution system is a relic of the 50s.
We need cables undergraound, we need poles gone, we need higher quality cable that leaks less power as heat (through cable resistance) and gapping at connections that wear out over time. We are losing unimaginable amounts of power every day, and when demand increases the percentage of loss increases.
Just as the health care system required a renovation, our electircal power systems require renovation. The systems of the 50s that we are using today cannot hold up to, were not designed to hold up to modern demands.
"Ebook readers aren't great for PDFs"
Depends, I have a (at the time I bought it) cheap "Foxit eSlick". Foxit makes some PDF readers and editors and such for the business market (cheaper, safer and more powerful than the Adobe stuff, and lighter and cheaper too of course). And they handle PDFs really well, as well as all the regular ebook formats and txt and doc and odt too as i recall. They use a WolfLinux OS underneath it BTW.
The thing with a "real" eBook reader is eInk. Without it you have a backlit screen that, I find, tires my eyes and "weakens " them. I read too much on a screen already and am trying to "strengthen" my eyes by reading more paper and eInk. It does seem to help, I still don't need glasses (except to read paper and eInk and there I just use magnifying or "reading" glasses) most of the time and i'm 57 years old. So...
The thing with the eSlick that I like (and others might not) is that it has almost no "extra" features. No store to buy from, no wifi, no browser, no nothing. It is just a reader that you plug in to your computer to add books from whatever source you like. I have had this one since 2006 or so and it is still working great. So I am a fan of readers, with reservation about must have eInk and must not have all the shite everybody else wants.
"As someone alive when the USSR was still around. FUCK YOU! Those assholes got what they deserved!"
Which "those assholes" did you mean?
Because of the fall of the Iron Curtain, (which was, as is always true, two sided), the Russians got a massive injection of money from petroleum extraction in Siberia which has funded government control by corporations and allowed "them" to become a plutocracy.
While at the same time, roughly, the US got a smaller infusion of pettro dollars from Alaska and the Caribbean , over a longer period of time which has leveraged the funding of government control by corporations and allowed "them" to become a plutocracy.
I was around too, my friend, but i was also paying attention to what was happening. The US took the money from Alaska and the Cariibbean early on, used it to pump the economy and feed the corps who allowed the government to pour tons of cash into defense spending because it suited the corps to make money that way. That leveraged the failure of the USSR to keep up in defense spending which pushed us to the brink of war which the Russians "knew" they would lose. The economics of the situation: because they didn't do the extraction early they fell behind the curve of defense spending and "lost" the war before it became hot. Reagan pointed out to Gorbachov that they had lost and that they didn't have a chance. And that he was bat-shit crazy enough to use his advantage while he could. (think Iran/Contra). Game over.
Now the Russian plutocrats have the advantage and we are about to get torn up because they can buy us if they want to.
I have screamed into the wilderness for years ( and call me a neo-Luddite if you like) that our failure as a species is also our success: we like to fuck with shit. When I was a boy, I remember building rock dams in the stream, building "log cabins" in the woods, breaking things, moving things and building things: it is what we do and it is what has built a world that is rapidly becoming uninhabitable for us. Because of us.
The concept of being "God's earthly stewards" is a joke. We are children (literally) who mess with stuff that we don't understand and talk (like kids) as if we did. We DON't understand global climate change, it is happening, it has humans as an important cause, but we don't understand it at all. And yet there are people who want to dump shit in the atmosphere, the oceans or even into space to "solve" global warming.
We will probably do genetic manipulation and selective abortion more and more and the results will be hellish. We will do it because we can, like a 10 year old, justify our actions in 10 year old logic. That IS the level of our public discourse right now. Tell me, after watching 15 minutes of news on the politcal campaigns that it isn't.
We have a president who reaches up to the discourse of a 16 year old to "appeal to our higher nature." And we found that refreshing 4 years ago and find it baffling, confusing, "tricky", too nuanced today. He must be lying if the world doesn't work out the way he wanted and told us he would try to make it happen. And when it doesn't it must be his fault? That is childish: "But daddy, you said it would not rain!"
And we think we have the knowledge and skills to act as adults in the political world when we act like children in our cities, counties and states? Not mention at home? Look, I would like to live in a world where we did have thoughtful adult discourse about the issues confronting the world, the biosphere and our children's future. But who is there to have that discourse with?
Bedbugs mostly, they have been discovered to be a major infestation across the US (seriously)
Story a few months in the past (oh how quickly you forget) about how Nigerian 419 scammers actually continue to use the same tired old tropes on purpose. Their reasoning is that they will not be able to hook in people who can see through their scam, so it is a waste of time and resources to attract their attention. Better to look for that tiny group of people who, for one reason or another, lacks the reality filters to recognize them as scammers and put their time and effort into those poor fools. Thus, the people who will be tricked by an obviously false scam from a phony FBI site is exactly the patsy they are looking for. You (or I hope I) would never be their target to begin with.
They are building it in their fab plants in China. Probably can buy it there already, maybe even running android (no joke, i mentioned before I had a student who bought her MacBook air with win xp installed, from an "iStore" too").
This is, by the way, clearly an advertisement, in the same way that product placement in movies are advertisements. You are just so accustomed to it you have trouble recognizing it.
I have been sitting in an office this last semester with PhD students part-timing as adjuncts to make ends meet. Most of them have taken a little time off, but when they did they got penalized for being out of the loop for even a year or two doing work directly related to their PhD path. So, yeah, it sucks but it is true
At 40 I retired from business, spent two years kicking around at my place in the mountains and traveling, ran into something i thought was curious and interesting, went back to university and got a BA (my first) then went off to do what I wanted to do with that BA (and wife w/2 kids) after 5 years realized that the lack of an MA was slowing me down so I got one, realized the one I got was crap, but it still served my purposes well enough.
Do I want a PhD, well.... not with the time I have left. There is one PhD department in Linguistics that, if offered a place in their program i would probably try to do it, but only one I know of right now.
BTW, at no time has money been a consideration. Not because I am fabulously wealthy, but because I can work doing what I want to do. If I need more money, i work some more. Just yesterday i was filling out an application because things are just a little tight in my projections for this fall.
Too many people do shit for money, stupid people, do what you want to do, not what will make you rich. Everyone I have met who did things just to get rich became sadly .. pitifully...just a nasty piece of work who spend half of the remainder of their life justifying their stupidity to themselves and others. (and the other half making bad buying decisions to prove that their money really is worth something)
Am I taken seriously? Yeah, pretty much. Even though I often point out to my colleagues and supervisors that I am "really" only 35 (the age I would be if I had followed the traditional career path from high school) I am accepted as someone with "terminal degree and terminal experience". I recently quit a higher paying part-time admin position because I didn't want to do it, I wanted to teach full time.
Inconclusion, I disagree with you across the board, my experience shows me that what matters is that the investment in education should be for what you want, that working at something you are interested in, not necessarily something lucrative, is key to working happy. ANd that being taken seriously has to do with how you present yourself, not necessarily how long you have done something.
And when I lived up in the mountains, 2 miles off the federal logging road I had a 4X4 Ranger that I used to haul firewood off the back lot on the other side of the stream and up a 45 degree hill. You don't need a monster truck, you need to have brains and know how to drive.
Home Depot rents delivery trucks for 25 an hour. I have a Hyundai Sonata that only carries bagged goods, so I make plans, I organize, I get three or four projects worth of stuff at once, and I have a house built in 1928 that has been eaten up by termites. Yeah, I have a lot of work to do, but planning is all it needs, planning.