Hmmm, I was a nicotine addict, and an alcohol addict, so really I think I have to disagree with you, and with another person up above who said that addiction was the need to repeat a pleasurable experience. Cigarette smoking is not, in and of itself, pleasurable. The results are not noticeably pleasurable, it just stops the desire for a cigarette by providing one. (or a drink as well) The true test that I use when talking about addiction is what happens when you do stop: For me, when I quit I suffered extreme discomfort and dislocation of my sense of self and connection to time and space. Basically I was both in pain from withdrawal and confused and dislocated from the present experience.
Now to point out why marijuana is of a different nature entirely, when I quit smoking pot, after 25 years of daily use, I had no withdrawal symptoms, no desire to smoke afterwards at all. It was over, I quit and have never looked back. While I have no desire for any of these three drugs at this point, the reason I will never smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol again is that I don't want to go through withdrawal and pain/confusion like that again. I won't smoke pot again cause I just don't want to, not afraid of anything, just over it.
agreed. I am, right now, sitting next to my son as he watches YouTube videos on the many channels he subscribes to. When something he thinks is cool he shows it to me, right now its something asbout a woman who had titanium horns attached to her forehead, we talk about how stupid you have to be to do extreme body mod in general, not just this case. That is what parenting is, sitting, chatting, and sharing some judgmental shit.
OK, but be sure to disable the GPS in your phone because that is all that OnStar is doing is tracking where you are. I find it helpful, the interface to be a little smoother and the people on the other end to be helpful people. The interface also connects to the Chevy diagnostic software that tells me stuff that is useful to me. Like I don't need an oil change for over 25,000 miles, and what is my gas mileage over whatever period I choose to keep it for. And when maintenance is really needed (as opposed to when the douchebag dealer says I should come in). All these things are things I could do myself, but I choose to let Chevy do it for me. The cost to my privacy is minimal, no worse than filling out a questionnaire about my buying experience at Amazon really.
Yes Leslie, it stopped being a rule with Winston Churchill back in the 30s: (and I quote) "that is the sort of arrant nonsense up with which I will not put." You will not find it in any reputable textbooks since the 70s, although the British textbooks might have been a little behind on that because they tend to change more slowly. Asian produced textbooks are the slowest of all by the way, they are very stodgy.
So, while no one will mark you down for doing the onerous work of syntactic convolutions required to move your prepositions from the end, you no longer need to. (yes, that was deliberate)
My wife is a TCM herbalist and acupuncturist. In Europe, her prescriptions are just that, prescriptions that must be filled at a pharmacy and she has to be licensed and certified. Here in the US she can walk into a Chinese supermarket and buy the herbs off the shelf. They are the same herbs, often from the same companies, but they are also active medicines. The US is just plain weird. They don't regulate dangerous drugs (and make no mistake, just giving drugs that are "herbal" that label doesn't make them safe for general use or give people tha ability to self diagnose or self medicate.)
Again, as I ranted earlier, the role of the government is to provide safety and protection to the citizens of that country. Our government is no longer even attempting to do this, partly because they don't have the (tax) resources and partly because of corporate pressures to not regulate industry.
Calm down folks. My first partner and I homeschooled our two kids for the first two years of my son's elementary and the firs year of my daughter's. results: My son was reading and doing math and science and writing at a sixth grade level, but he sucked at social interactions. Part of this was just personality, but still ithurt him when he went to school since he couldn't abide the stupidity of the other kids and the teachers. By high school he knew history better than his history teachers and had just blown off math for so long he forgot how to do it. My daughter was entirely different. She was a social butterfly and quite comfortable when she got to school, it was her place entirely. She still is quite good at social arrangements, in fact too good. She is the go- to person for all kinds of things when she would rather not be. Many years later, a step-daughter needed to homeschool when we lived on a small fishing island off the coast of China. She failed most of her courses and had to redo a lot of work in the summer because she really was not up to motivating herself and her mom couldn't help her in English.
So, while homeschooling is possible, it doesn't work for social interactivity, which is really all that school is good for right now. My son today recognizes this and works on this aspect of school. It works. The learning he does well, top of the class, but he admits it is easy and doesn't always do his best so that he seems to be not the "smart kid" all the time.
No, you're not. What Adams is leaving out is the simple fact that it wasn't the scientists alone who were responsible, they were just "doing science." What happened after science was : 1) marketing 2) media
here is the process:
scientist A does some research, first person to try something in terms of health, fitness and/or nutrition. He gets results, publishes, looks like decent science, but its the first time anyone has done it and in the science world the publishing is all about "look at this, check it out" Company A (who may or may not be his employer) sees his results about something that might relate to their business and send it to marketing for a spin job. A marketing guru gets hold of it and makes some commercials with guys in lab coats and people getting desired result (whatever it is). The commercial is brilliant, catching the desires and wants of the public and both encouraging the D&W and providing the "scientific" solution. Media company A: recognizes the excitement generated by the commercial, traces it back to the scientist, invites him on for an interview. Asks him 40 minutes of questions from which they extract 3 minutes of support for Company A's marketing plan which means that the corporation will pump more money into media advertising. The media and production corporations win, we lose, seriously lose because we not only die early but have to pick up the cost for the diseases which disproportionately effect people who cannot afford the health care cost and society will not allow them to rot in the gutter (which is a good thing, I mean really).
Cutting to the chase, the public has been sold a pile of crap, the scientist has had his integrity sold down the river and the company and the media have sold what they are supposed to sell: product and mindshare. The system has worked beautifully!
The player that has not played a part in this story, the one that should be standing between the consumers and the corporations is the government. While I refuse to Libertarian bash because it is too easy a target, I do want to make clear that this IS the role of government. That without the government providing this service to the public, the public will be raped by the corporations, as they have been. ( "Oh, it is only the stupid ones, the ones that believe the media and the corporations, you should be more thoughtful in your beliefs." And so we are here blaming the poor scientist who was mistreated in all possible ways all through the process while he just did what was right in the world of science.)
Punchline: We need the government to police the corporations. To do that they need money, tax money. We need to pay this because if we don't we end up paying the cost for people in hospital for all these lifestyle diseases that ARE OUR FAULT FOR ALLOWING THE CORPORATE SHILLS THAT WE CALL POLITICIANS TO GUT OUR GOVERNMENT. It is time to return to the understanding that government is an important part of human interaction, that it is good in its role and in its very nature, and that it is only perverse when it is perverted by power mongers who use the power for self-aggrandizement: which is what has happened with corporations since the Reagan came into office. We need to get the corporations out of government, get the corporate money out of government and start to reclaim it by getting real citizens in. This begins with election reform, tax reform and (although I am not a rabid supporter of it, it would at least flush the Congress bowl quickly) term limits.
I am a linguist, a real one not just somebody with an opinion about language. I appreciate the scientific approach to knowledge and the world, I support that approach and follow it as much as humanly possible, but (you knew that was coming didn't you?) the problem lies in the growth of scientific knowledge and in the coercion of the scientific approach by big corps. For these reasons I am wary of scientific research that supports things that are used to illegally and immorally coerce people into mercantile arrangements supported by the scientific evidence of "safety."
What informs my base opinion? The effect of big tobacco back in the 60s when I was growing up 5 miles away from the Phillip Morris cigarette plant in Richmond VA. I heard the cocktail talk about the way cigarettes were being manipulated with flavors, additives and "improvements" to appeal to women and young people. Always the battle over cigarettes and cancer, and the scientists of the companies swearing on their mother's cancer ridden grave that it wasn't the tobacco that did it. You could not "prove scientifically" that tobacco was the cause of all those cancer deaths among smokers. It could be (and must be) something else.
I hear the same language today from the Monsanto scientists about how safe the gene-tech is and how it has not been proved to do any harm. I do not trust them simply because they do work for the big corps. There is no reason to trust them when their self-interest is at the fore. Even in my work, as poorly supported by anyone other than threadbare academics, I don't trust my ideas without a critic, a skeptic, a scoffer to kick dirt on them so they don't look so bright and shiny. This is the failure of science today: we cannot trust science that is propped up by sponsors who have a dog in the fight, and finding people who are reasonable but aren't being backed by someone with a dog is damn near impossible. This is how science has and is failing, and why I can't, in good faith accept much of what I read and hear.
"For all intensive purposes, 'whom' is no longer a word. That begs the question, 'who cares'?" What the phrase is: "For all intents and purposes" (the problem with a silly mistake is that it makes you look silly and encourages me to either ignore or derogate your entire comment, which is unfair.) I think if you consider the meanings involved you will see how the real phrase makes some sense and your version does not.
Now "whom is no longer a word." Yes, it is. What you mean to say is that "in my version of English I no longer find a meaning for it" because I can either use syntax to simplify my sentences to where it is not called for or use "who" when "whom" should be used (in an objective position, like in a prepositional phrase "for whom the bell tolls" or "to whom it may concern." Or as the object of a verb "The man whom I called yesterday."
OK, so I can see that in colloquial English, even I use "who" in most cases for the object of a verb, but when I am writing something for a research paper where it will be read internationally and judged valuable by colleagues around the world whose colloquial English does still use the "whom," then it only makes sense to not disturb their sensibilities by using something that they can accept as standard. Especially because it is still standard in academic writing here in the US.
So, to put a broad point on the issue of "whom," many people care, and many people who people care about care. So, if you want to be a part of the greater global society you should care too!
I've got the 75/75 plan too, which until I got a firestick for Xmas ($20.00) was a very weak connection. I had an internet speed test on the internet enabled TV which showed more like 5/10 speeds. Then with netflix it jumped and Hulu was crap, now apparently Amazon has paid them off cause the firestick never has problems. Verizon is scum, but the other choice is more expensive for less service. So what can we do until Google fiber comes around?
Yeah, my volt is so quiet that it has a special little horn to tab for a "beep-beep" in parking lots to warn people. The only thing I dislike more than the "meaty rumble" is the stink of the exhaust.
You are exactly right. There is, most cogently, a theory that evolution of the mind moves knowledge and culture forward like this. My favorite example of this is taken from Joseph Campbell, who, admittedly, took some inspiration from Carl Jung. Campbell pointed to the rise of the Romantic tradition in Europe (troubadours, the idea of romantic affection being pre-eminent, love over procreation, etc arising at the same time as similar ideas in Japan without any physical or cultural connection between the societies. Another, more obvious, connection is the amazing rise of similar ideas in Greece (Socrates, Aristotle, Plato in three generations) India, Gautama Buddha and his disciples, China (Confucious and LaoTzu at the same time) . All of this happened in the 600-400BCE range. This confluence is often pooh-poohed based on the possibility of communication between the cultures, not the existence of records of communication.
I have put 27,000 miles on my 2014 Chevy volt, about 5/8s on straight electric, the remainder on gas driven electric. I just changed the oil at 25,000 miles when the car said it still had 20% life in it. I don't rotate tires. I have an account with on-star and myChevy that tracks the parts that need maintenance through on-star and in vehicle diagnostics (it emails me if a tire is low) and sends a monthly report with service suggestions. So far, there have been no suggestions for service. I love that little car and my mileage is running about 80 mpg overall, GM/Chevy sells and services, but it will be out of warrentee before any service is needed, so I will take it to my local mechanic who is thirsting for a chance to work on one and learn them. He sees the future. Basically the problem is change. Nobody who has gone through the roller coaster of the last thirty years in auto sales, maintenance and manufacturing looks at change positively. Who could blame them. They need to be sat down with the government and presented with a plan, supported by the government, that will give them the support to manage this change and protexct them and consumers as well as moving our process into the future. Fta effin' chance you say? I agree, but it is what is needed.
Agreed. I am wondering if the POTUS also supported this to slam the Russians? That was my initial reading of the price drop: Obama said we will hit your economy where it hurts and then it happens. Sounds reasonable to me anyway.
You don't understand the numbers, or China: They have spent the money, yes. 1/3 went to panel production mostly for overseas sales. 1/3 went to infrastructure: building production plants, developing the raw materials contracts with governments like Mongolia, Russia and the 'Stans and 1/3 goes to corruption, or what we would call corruption. The vice-president of every company and org in China is a CCCP member who must be given a gift to sign off on anything. Their actual role in the company is control of the funds, incoming and outgoing, so you can see how that all works.
The fundamentalism of the current version of Islam is the source of the theology/philosophy. It is a philosophy that supports and encourages jihadism as a solution to the problems of their political structures: mostly feudal dictatorships. The single point of beginning sometimes pointed to is the rise in power of AlWahaba and so-called Wahabism in the early 1900s. It was this brand of Sunni fundamentalism that, teamed with the political support of AbdulAziz's Saud family that led to the idea that : 1) all infidels must die to purify the world 2) non-Sunni Muslims are equally infidels 3) if you do not support the political group that is being supported by whoever is talking at that moment, you are an infidel even if you claim to be a Sunni. For these reasons, the young blogger busted for anti-government writing in Saudi Arabia is getting 1000 lashes over the next 20 weeks as an infidel and for attacking religion. So it is not just religious, it is also political and.... well, obviously fucked up.
Note, I have a number of students from the Middle East. They consider this all to be correct, and normal, logical and proper. Until they can grow past this view of the world (basically a pre-Renaissance world view) they are going to be kept in the dark ages. They can't see that they are the victims, they think that god loves them because they accept this. They need a voice of reason based on compassion and love. Frankly, it seems far off at the moment, but the sadness of the blinders they wear (stitched onto their minds) is overwhelming. In every other aspect of their world they are kind, generous, warm and loving people, but get near the theology and they turn off their minds and hearts.
As usual, everybody gets sucked into the BIG fail issue of cost/time: value as a monetary function. The value of higher education is not only monetary ( I am not pretending that money is not a factor, just that only fools make it the primary factor). Think of it from these perspectives: 1) If you have a job with 4 weeks of vacation time (with holidays) each year you are commited to 48X40=1920 hours of your life at your job. This is slightly less than 1/3 of your life. If you are doing this just for the money then you are either creating a human who is an ATM robot (as in a cash machine for your "loved ones") or is miserable and getting ground into the dust. Do something that you want to go to work on every day, no matter the money. 2) back in the day, I was taught that the reasion to study history AND math AND science AND literature AND etc is to learn the different modes of thought, understanding and reasoning. That an education gave the student multiple ways to interact with information, and that this gave the student a depth of insight that was the definition of an educated person. Certainly my education, and of the educated people I know succeeded at this at least partially. 3) my education gave me opportunities that were life enhancing and changing: when I graduated high school I had other things to do than go to university. I started businesses, started a family, lived a hard, fast life of the semi-successful businesssman, father, familyman, community person. In my 40s, I gave all that up and went to university (Beginning with a year at community college, just sayin') and got a BA. That degree let me do what I had wanted to do for twenty years: go abroad and work overseas. It was fantastic, just what I wanted. While there I found that a Masters degree would give me more opportunities to do more of what I wanted to do, so I did that. I had wanted to work overseas for 20 years but didn't have the educational foundation to do it, and now I do.
Education helps you grow, to do what you really want to do and to live the way you really want to: forget the money, that is for chumps and fools who think it can buy happiness or security.+
OK, then explain why Germany, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, France and Spain no longer are at replacement birthrate? Explain why the US is only there because of immigrant populations. The Chinese one child policy was the result of overpopulation destroying their economy through the agricultural demand on too many children. The resulting reduction of population has helped to feed the economy and the growth of an educated populace. You are just plain wrong and probably misunderstand evolution.
I deliberately didn't include Russia, which is just the saddest example of low replacement rate (less than 2, maybe near 1.5 children per couple now) because the problems are social: abortion is the preferred birth control method and the effect of cheap Vodka on the death rate and health problems with FAS babies and unhealthy parents. It is really bad right now.
Well, it used to be much harder to get and keep a license, the one notable exception being drunk driving. When I took my first road test (1970) I failed because the system was designed to fail almost everybody. My ex-partner failed 3 times (should have been permanent, but that is a different rant). The tester deliberately set me up to fail and I did: Pull up to stop sign at a "T" intersection onto a 4 lane highway. "Turn left please." I turn left, as I'm turning he says "at the next light [one block up the road] turn left again" I turn into the left hand lane and then prepare to turn left again. On returning to the parking lot he explained why I failed because of that situation. "When you turn onto a four lane rooad you must turn into the far right-hand lane until you can pick up speed to merge into the left turn lane." That was the rule, the law, the test.
Nowadays, they don't even test for parallel parking ability, much less rules of the road.
What is the logical flaw called when you use data that relates to only one situation (like speed limits for limited access highways) to define a problem that has a much wider range (like speed limits for all roads)? That is the situation I see here. While I might want to disagree with you about setting speed limits based on the "avaerage driver" it is because I live in Florida where we have a significant number of aged drivers who have no skills or abilities for driving on a high-speed roadway of any type, but they are allowed and expected to. Putting them on I-95 or I-75 is just asking for accidents.
Oh, and I just want to add that I hate the American focus on driving and on getting places faster. I try to travel by public transport and to use that time to my advantyage rather than waste hours of my day driving. I really don't care how fast I can go, and when I occasionally drive to my daughters house on the other side of the state I take state roads that max at 60mph rather than the I-75 route at 70mph. But now I mostly just take the train, its easier and I can read or plan lessons while I ride.
"That means they are set were the speed most people feel comfortable driving is faster than the posted limit - in other words in places where the limit is wrong, as on average drivers pick a reasonable speed"
I disagree. I live on a street that is entirely residential, in a district that is mostly residential, but has a highway feeder entrance ramp nearby. Two roads, mine and the one parallel get not only a disproportionate amount of traffic, but higher speed traffic than other streets in our area. Yes, there are larger roads bracketing the area that were designed to take the traffic and allow a higher speed, but they have traffic lights. So, we get the "greedy, speedy" types that must rush through our street, killing dogs and cats, honking at kids and adults on bikes, and breaking the speed limit in a residential area. We need a speed camera(s) to stop this traffic.
Or.... here is a (libertarian) solution. When I was a kid in the early suburbs, there was a nacent suburb being built on the hill beyond our house. The only way in to the suburb was past our house. Every afternoon, just after my dad got home from work, a resident from up the hill came flying over the rise before our house and dropped into a lower gear as he went down to the bridge over a little creek at the bottom before the hill and then up the hill to the burb. Dad flagged him down one day and asked him, in the name of the pets and children in our set of houses, to slow down and quite driving like an asshat. He didn't . So, a week or so later, dad came home and grabbed a fencepost from the pile beside the driveway and stood by the side of the road. I watched and listened as the sportscar came barrelling down the road and over the rise dad dropped the fencepost into the road and stepped back behind a tree out of sight. The car hit the fencepost, jumped up, out of control landed sliding into the ditch and rolled into the empty lot across the street. Dad grabbed the post, sauntered over to the pile and threw it back on it and went into the house without even a glance at the sportscar or its driver. Problem solved.
mmmmmm, i disagree, but that doesn't necessarily make me right. We buy 1 new phone every 2 or three years for the whole family. This last time, my wife got a Nexus 5, I got her Samsung Infuse (a G2 clone for ATT) and my son got my old Sony Ericcsen m608i which is still an awesome phone ( I bought it in 2007). Tablets, I bought one, loved it (a WeTab) but it had one too many sudden decceleration events and had to be retired. No desire to replace it at all. My work gave me a Nexus 7 and I gave it back, the Samsung phone does all I need.
The one thing we doo all use is real e-ink ebook readers. I buy about 1 a year of those and we all use them all the time. While we do, occasionally, read paper books, e-ink is so wonderful for reading, especially in bed or a chair, that I only read paper when I have a table to rest it on nowadays. So, for me, I think that you aren't telling about our patterns.
I am cautious about this because when you describe Americans, who buy cheap Apple trash that is broken or outmoded on a regular and predetermined schedule then you are correct. The number of people who I see in my office who can't wait to dump their old, slow, broken iTrash is insane, especially bercause they are lusting for new (soon to be) slow, broken iTrash. What is up with that? Isn't that the definition of insanity all over again?
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Hmmm, I was a nicotine addict, and an alcohol addict, so really I think I have to disagree with you, and with another person up above who said that addiction was the need to repeat a pleasurable experience. Cigarette smoking is not, in and of itself, pleasurable. The results are not noticeably pleasurable, it just stops the desire for a cigarette by providing one. (or a drink as well) The true test that I use when talking about addiction is what happens when you do stop: For me, when I quit I suffered extreme discomfort and dislocation of my sense of self and connection to time and space. Basically I was both in pain from withdrawal and confused and dislocated from the present experience.
Now to point out why marijuana is of a different nature entirely, when I quit smoking pot, after 25 years of daily use, I had no withdrawal symptoms, no desire to smoke afterwards at all. It was over, I quit and have never looked back. While I have no desire for any of these three drugs at this point, the reason I will never smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol again is that I don't want to go through withdrawal and pain/confusion like that again. I won't smoke pot again cause I just don't want to, not afraid of anything, just over it.
agreed. I am, right now, sitting next to my son as he watches YouTube videos on the many channels he subscribes to. When something he thinks is cool he shows it to me, right now its something asbout a woman who had titanium horns attached to her forehead, we talk about how stupid you have to be to do extreme body mod in general, not just this case. That is what parenting is, sitting, chatting, and sharing some judgmental shit.
OK, but be sure to disable the GPS in your phone because that is all that OnStar is doing is tracking where you are. I find it helpful, the interface to be a little smoother and the people on the other end to be helpful people. The interface also connects to the Chevy diagnostic software that tells me stuff that is useful to me. Like I don't need an oil change for over 25,000 miles, and what is my gas mileage over whatever period I choose to keep it for. And when maintenance is really needed (as opposed to when the douchebag dealer says I should come in). All these things are things I could do myself, but I choose to let Chevy do it for me. The cost to my privacy is minimal, no worse than filling out a questionnaire about my buying experience at Amazon really.
don't you mean apostrophes?
Yes Leslie, it stopped being a rule with Winston Churchill back in the 30s: (and I quote) "that is the sort of arrant nonsense up with which I will not put."
You will not find it in any reputable textbooks since the 70s, although the British textbooks might have been a little behind on that because they tend to change more slowly. Asian produced textbooks are the slowest of all by the way, they are very stodgy.
So, while no one will mark you down for doing the onerous work of syntactic convolutions required to move your prepositions from the end, you no longer need to. (yes, that was deliberate)
My wife is a TCM herbalist and acupuncturist. In Europe, her prescriptions are just that, prescriptions that must be filled at a pharmacy and she has to be licensed and certified. Here in the US she can walk into a Chinese supermarket and buy the herbs off the shelf. They are the same herbs, often from the same companies, but they are also active medicines. The US is just plain weird. They don't regulate dangerous drugs (and make no mistake, just giving drugs that are "herbal" that label doesn't make them safe for general use or give people tha ability to self diagnose or self medicate.)
Again, as I ranted earlier, the role of the government is to provide safety and protection to the citizens of that country. Our government is no longer even attempting to do this, partly because they don't have the (tax) resources and partly because of corporate pressures to not regulate industry.
Calm down folks.
My first partner and I homeschooled our two kids for the first two years of my son's elementary and the firs year of my daughter's. results:
My son was reading and doing math and science and writing at a sixth grade level, but he sucked at social interactions. Part of this was just personality, but still ithurt him when he went to school since he couldn't abide the stupidity of the other kids and the teachers. By high school he knew history better than his history teachers and had just blown off math for so long he forgot how to do it.
My daughter was entirely different. She was a social butterfly and quite comfortable when she got to school, it was her place entirely. She still is quite good at social arrangements, in fact too good. She is the go- to person for all kinds of things when she would rather not be.
Many years later, a step-daughter needed to homeschool when we lived on a small fishing island off the coast of China. She failed most of her courses and had to redo a lot of work in the summer because she really was not up to motivating herself and her mom couldn't help her in English.
So, while homeschooling is possible, it doesn't work for social interactivity, which is really all that school is good for right now. My son today recognizes this and works on this aspect of school. It works. The learning he does well, top of the class, but he admits it is easy and doesn't always do his best so that he seems to be not the "smart kid" all the time.
No, you're not. What Adams is leaving out is the simple fact that it wasn't the scientists alone who were responsible, they were just "doing science." What happened after science was :
1) marketing
2) media
here is the process:
scientist A does some research, first person to try something in terms of health, fitness and/or nutrition. He gets results, publishes, looks like decent science, but its the first time anyone has done it and in the science world the publishing is all about "look at this, check it out"
Company A (who may or may not be his employer) sees his results about something that might relate to their business and send it to marketing for a spin job. A marketing guru gets hold of it and makes some commercials with guys in lab coats and people getting desired result (whatever it is). The commercial is brilliant, catching the desires and wants of the public and both encouraging the D&W and providing the "scientific" solution.
Media company A: recognizes the excitement generated by the commercial, traces it back to the scientist, invites him on for an interview. Asks him 40 minutes of questions from which they extract 3 minutes of support for Company A's marketing plan which means that the corporation will pump more money into media advertising. The media and production corporations win, we lose, seriously lose because we not only die early but have to pick up the cost for the diseases which disproportionately effect people who cannot afford the health care cost and society will not allow them to rot in the gutter (which is a good thing, I mean really).
Cutting to the chase, the public has been sold a pile of crap, the scientist has had his integrity sold down the river and the company and the media have sold what they are supposed to sell: product and mindshare. The system has worked beautifully!
The player that has not played a part in this story, the one that should be standing between the consumers and the corporations is the government. While I refuse to Libertarian bash because it is too easy a target, I do want to make clear that this IS the role of government. That without the government providing this service to the public, the public will be raped by the corporations, as they have been. ( "Oh, it is only the stupid ones, the ones that believe the media and the corporations, you should be more thoughtful in your beliefs." And so we are here blaming the poor scientist who was mistreated in all possible ways all through the process while he just did what was right in the world of science.)
Punchline: We need the government to police the corporations. To do that they need money, tax money. We need to pay this because if we don't we end up paying the cost for people in hospital for all these lifestyle diseases that ARE OUR FAULT FOR ALLOWING THE CORPORATE SHILLS THAT WE CALL POLITICIANS TO GUT OUR GOVERNMENT. It is time to return to the understanding that government is an important part of human interaction, that it is good in its role and in its very nature, and that it is only perverse when it is perverted by power mongers who use the power for self-aggrandizement: which is what has happened with corporations since the Reagan came into office. We need to get the corporations out of government, get the corporate money out of government and start to reclaim it by getting real citizens in. This begins with election reform, tax reform and (although I am not a rabid supporter of it, it would at least flush the Congress bowl quickly) term limits.
I am a linguist, a real one not just somebody with an opinion about language. I appreciate the scientific approach to knowledge and the world, I support that approach and follow it as much as humanly possible, but (you knew that was coming didn't you?) the problem lies in the growth of scientific knowledge and in the coercion of the scientific approach by big corps. For these reasons I am wary of scientific research that supports things that are used to illegally and immorally coerce people into mercantile arrangements supported by the scientific evidence of "safety."
What informs my base opinion? The effect of big tobacco back in the 60s when I was growing up 5 miles away from the Phillip Morris cigarette plant in Richmond VA. I heard the cocktail talk about the way cigarettes were being manipulated with flavors, additives and "improvements" to appeal to women and young people. Always the battle over cigarettes and cancer, and the scientists of the companies swearing on their mother's cancer ridden grave that it wasn't the tobacco that did it. You could not "prove scientifically" that tobacco was the cause of all those cancer deaths among smokers. It could be (and must be) something else.
I hear the same language today from the Monsanto scientists about how safe the gene-tech is and how it has not been proved to do any harm. I do not trust them simply because they do work for the big corps. There is no reason to trust them when their self-interest is at the fore. Even in my work, as poorly supported by anyone other than threadbare academics, I don't trust my ideas without a critic, a skeptic, a scoffer to kick dirt on them so they don't look so bright and shiny. This is the failure of science today: we cannot trust science that is propped up by sponsors who have a dog in the fight, and finding people who are reasonable but aren't being backed by someone with a dog is damn near impossible. This is how science has and is failing, and why I can't, in good faith accept much of what I read and hear.
"For all intensive purposes, 'whom' is no longer a word. That begs the question, 'who cares'?"
What the phrase is: "For all intents and purposes" (the problem with a silly mistake is that it makes you look silly and encourages me to either ignore or derogate your entire comment, which is unfair.) I think if you consider the meanings involved you will see how the real phrase makes some sense and your version does not.
Now "whom is no longer a word." Yes, it is. What you mean to say is that "in my version of English I no longer find a meaning for it" because I can either use syntax to simplify my sentences to where it is not called for or use "who" when "whom" should be used (in an objective position, like in a prepositional phrase "for whom the bell tolls" or "to whom it may concern." Or as the object of a verb "The man whom I called yesterday."
OK, so I can see that in colloquial English, even I use "who" in most cases for the object of a verb, but when I am writing something for a research paper where it will be read internationally and judged valuable by colleagues around the world whose colloquial English does still use the "whom," then it only makes sense to not disturb their sensibilities by using something that they can accept as standard. Especially because it is still standard in academic writing here in the US.
So, to put a broad point on the issue of "whom," many people care, and many people who people care about care. So, if you want to be a part of the greater global society you should care too!
I've got the 75/75 plan too, which until I got a firestick for Xmas ($20.00) was a very weak connection. I had an internet speed test on the internet enabled TV which showed more like 5/10 speeds. Then with netflix it jumped and Hulu was crap, now apparently Amazon has paid them off cause the firestick never has problems. Verizon is scum, but the other choice is more expensive for less service. So what can we do until Google fiber comes around?
Yeah, my volt is so quiet that it has a special little horn to tab for a "beep-beep" in parking lots to warn people. The only thing I dislike more than the "meaty rumble" is the stink of the exhaust.
You are exactly right. There is, most cogently, a theory that evolution of the mind moves knowledge and culture forward like this. My favorite example of this is taken from Joseph Campbell, who, admittedly, took some inspiration from Carl Jung. Campbell pointed to the rise of the Romantic tradition in Europe (troubadours, the idea of romantic affection being pre-eminent, love over procreation, etc arising at the same time as similar ideas in Japan without any physical or cultural connection between the societies. Another, more obvious, connection is the amazing rise of similar ideas in Greece (Socrates, Aristotle, Plato in three generations) India, Gautama Buddha and his disciples, China (Confucious and LaoTzu at the same time) . All of this happened in the 600-400BCE range. This confluence is often pooh-poohed based on the possibility of communication between the cultures, not the existence of records of communication.
I have put 27,000 miles on my 2014 Chevy volt, about 5/8s on straight electric, the remainder on gas driven electric. I just changed the oil at 25,000 miles when the car said it still had 20% life in it. I don't rotate tires. I have an account with on-star and myChevy that tracks the parts that need maintenance through on-star and in vehicle diagnostics (it emails me if a tire is low) and sends a monthly report with service suggestions. So far, there have been no suggestions for service. I love that little car and my mileage is running about 80 mpg overall, GM/Chevy sells and services, but it will be out of warrentee before any service is needed, so I will take it to my local mechanic who is thirsting for a chance to work on one and learn them. He sees the future.
Basically the problem is change. Nobody who has gone through the roller coaster of the last thirty years in auto sales, maintenance and manufacturing looks at change positively. Who could blame them. They need to be sat down with the government and presented with a plan, supported by the government, that will give them the support to manage this change and protexct them and consumers as well as moving our process into the future.
Fta effin' chance you say? I agree, but it is what is needed.
Everyone else? Like all hardware is OSX certified? Try putting any old HDD or SSD into a macbook and see how that works.
Agreed. I am wondering if the POTUS also supported this to slam the Russians? That was my initial reading of the price drop: Obama said we will hit your economy where it hurts and then it happens. Sounds reasonable to me anyway.
You don't understand the numbers, or China: They have spent the money, yes. 1/3 went to panel production mostly for overseas sales. 1/3 went to infrastructure: building production plants, developing the raw materials contracts with governments like Mongolia, Russia and the 'Stans and 1/3 goes to corruption, or what we would call corruption. The vice-president of every company and org in China is a CCCP member who must be given a gift to sign off on anything. Their actual role in the company is control of the funds, incoming and outgoing, so you can see how that all works.
The fundamentalism of the current version of Islam is the source of the theology/philosophy. It is a philosophy that supports and encourages jihadism as a solution to the problems of their political structures: mostly feudal dictatorships. The single point of beginning sometimes pointed to is the rise in power of AlWahaba and so-called Wahabism in the early 1900s. It was this brand of Sunni fundamentalism that, teamed with the political support of AbdulAziz's Saud family that led to the idea that : .... well, obviously fucked up.
1) all infidels must die to purify the world
2) non-Sunni Muslims are equally infidels
3) if you do not support the political group that is being supported by whoever is talking at that moment, you are an infidel even if you claim to be a Sunni. For these reasons, the young blogger busted for anti-government writing in Saudi Arabia is getting 1000 lashes over the next 20 weeks as an infidel and for attacking religion.
So it is not just religious, it is also political and
Note, I have a number of students from the Middle East. They consider this all to be correct, and normal, logical and proper. Until they can grow past this view of the world (basically a pre-Renaissance world view) they are going to be kept in the dark ages. They can't see that they are the victims, they think that god loves them because they accept this. They need a voice of reason based on compassion and love. Frankly, it seems far off at the moment, but the sadness of the blinders they wear (stitched onto their minds) is overwhelming. In every other aspect of their world they are kind, generous, warm and loving people, but get near the theology and they turn off their minds and hearts.
As usual, everybody gets sucked into the BIG fail issue of cost/time: value as a monetary function. The value of higher education is not only monetary ( I am not pretending that money is not a factor, just that only fools make it the primary factor). Think of it from these perspectives:
1) If you have a job with 4 weeks of vacation time (with holidays) each year you are commited to 48X40=1920 hours of your life at your job. This is slightly less than 1/3 of your life. If you are doing this just for the money then you are either creating a human who is an ATM robot (as in a cash machine for your "loved ones") or is miserable and getting ground into the dust. Do something that you want to go to work on every day, no matter the money.
2) back in the day, I was taught that the reasion to study history AND math AND science AND literature AND etc is to learn the different modes of thought, understanding and reasoning. That an education gave the student multiple ways to interact with information, and that this gave the student a depth of insight that was the definition of an educated person. Certainly my education, and of the educated people I know succeeded at this at least partially.
3) my education gave me opportunities that were life enhancing and changing: when I graduated high school I had other things to do than go to university. I started businesses, started a family, lived a hard, fast life of the semi-successful businesssman, father, familyman, community person. In my 40s, I gave all that up and went to university (Beginning with a year at community college, just sayin') and got a BA. That degree let me do what I had wanted to do for twenty years: go abroad and work overseas. It was fantastic, just what I wanted. While there I found that a Masters degree would give me more opportunities to do more of what I wanted to do, so I did that. I had wanted to work overseas for 20 years but didn't have the educational foundation to do it, and now I do.
Education helps you grow, to do what you really want to do and to live the way you really want to: forget the money, that is for chumps and fools who think it can buy happiness or security.+
OK, then explain why Germany, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, France and Spain no longer are at replacement birthrate?
Explain why the US is only there because of immigrant populations.
The Chinese one child policy was the result of overpopulation destroying their economy through the agricultural demand on too many children. The resulting reduction of population has helped to feed the economy and the growth of an educated populace. You are just plain wrong and probably misunderstand evolution.
I deliberately didn't include Russia, which is just the saddest example of low replacement rate (less than 2, maybe near 1.5 children per couple now) because the problems are social: abortion is the preferred birth control method and the effect of cheap Vodka on the death rate and health problems with FAS babies and unhealthy parents. It is really bad right now.
Well, it used to be much harder to get and keep a license, the one notable exception being drunk driving. When I took my first road test (1970) I failed because the system was designed to fail almost everybody. My ex-partner failed 3 times (should have been permanent, but that is a different rant). The tester deliberately set me up to fail and I did: Pull up to stop sign at a "T" intersection onto a 4 lane highway. "Turn left please." I turn left, as I'm turning he says "at the next light [one block up the road] turn left again" I turn into the left hand lane and then prepare to turn left again. On returning to the parking lot he explained why I failed because of that situation. "When you turn onto a four lane rooad you must turn into the far right-hand lane until you can pick up speed to merge into the left turn lane." That was the rule, the law, the test.
Nowadays, they don't even test for parallel parking ability, much less rules of the road.
What is the logical flaw called when you use data that relates to only one situation (like speed limits for limited access highways) to define a problem that has a much wider range (like speed limits for all roads)?
That is the situation I see here. While I might want to disagree with you about setting speed limits based on the "avaerage driver" it is because I live in Florida where we have a significant number of aged drivers who have no skills or abilities for driving on a high-speed roadway of any type, but they are allowed and expected to. Putting them on I-95 or I-75 is just asking for accidents.
Oh, and I just want to add that I hate the American focus on driving and on getting places faster. I try to travel by public transport and to use that time to my advantyage rather than waste hours of my day driving. I really don't care how fast I can go, and when I occasionally drive to my daughters house on the other side of the state I take state roads that max at 60mph rather than the I-75 route at 70mph. But now I mostly just take the train, its easier and I can read or plan lessons while I ride.
"That means they are set were the speed most people feel comfortable driving is faster than the posted limit - in other words in places where the limit is wrong, as on average drivers pick a reasonable speed"
I disagree. I live on a street that is entirely residential, in a district that is mostly residential, but has a highway feeder entrance ramp nearby. Two roads, mine and the one parallel get not only a disproportionate amount of traffic, but higher speed traffic than other streets in our area. Yes, there are larger roads bracketing the area that were designed to take the traffic and allow a higher speed, but they have traffic lights. So, we get the "greedy, speedy" types that must rush through our street, killing dogs and cats, honking at kids and adults on bikes, and breaking the speed limit in a residential area. We need a speed camera(s) to stop this traffic.
Or.... here is a (libertarian) solution. When I was a kid in the early suburbs, there was a nacent suburb being built on the hill beyond our house. The only way in to the suburb was past our house. Every afternoon, just after my dad got home from work, a resident from up the hill came flying over the rise before our house and dropped into a lower gear as he went down to the bridge over a little creek at the bottom before the hill and then up the hill to the burb. Dad flagged him down one day and asked him, in the name of the pets and children in our set of houses, to slow down and quite driving like an asshat. He didn't . So, a week or so later, dad came home and grabbed a fencepost from the pile beside the driveway and stood by the side of the road. I watched and listened as the sportscar came barrelling down the road and over the rise dad dropped the fencepost into the road and stepped back behind a tree out of sight. The car hit the fencepost, jumped up, out of control landed sliding into the ditch and rolled into the empty lot across the street. Dad grabbed the post, sauntered over to the pile and threw it back on it and went into the house without even a glance at the sportscar or its driver. Problem solved.
mmmmmm, i disagree, but that doesn't necessarily make me right. We buy 1 new phone every 2 or three years for the whole family. This last time, my wife got a Nexus 5, I got her Samsung Infuse (a G2 clone for ATT) and my son got my old Sony Ericcsen m608i which is still an awesome phone ( I bought it in 2007). Tablets, I bought one, loved it (a WeTab) but it had one too many sudden decceleration events and had to be retired. No desire to replace it at all. My work gave me a Nexus 7 and I gave it back, the Samsung phone does all I need.
The one thing we doo all use is real e-ink ebook readers. I buy about 1 a year of those and we all use them all the time. While we do, occasionally, read paper books, e-ink is so wonderful for reading, especially in bed or a chair, that I only read paper when I have a table to rest it on nowadays. So, for me, I think that you aren't telling about our patterns.
I am cautious about this because when you describe Americans, who buy cheap Apple trash that is broken or outmoded on a regular and predetermined schedule then you are correct. The number of people who I see in my office who can't wait to dump their old, slow, broken iTrash is insane, especially bercause they are lusting for new (soon to be) slow, broken iTrash. What is up with that? Isn't that the definition of insanity all over again?
It's not European, It's Asian.