Have you been in a nursing home lately? They just lie around and watch TV, or have the same boring conversations with each other over and over. By the time I'm in a nursing home, I expect to have a PC with a large selection of multiplayer online games. I expect games like WoW to take care of a lot of my social and entertainment needs when I'm old.
Ob: None of you guys are parents, are you? I have a 2-year old son, and yeah, kids are expensive, and you lose sleep. but I wouldn't trade him for anything in the world
Parents love to repeat things like this to eachother, but look at it empirically. Dr. Daniel Gilbert, a physicist turned psychologist, collected massive amounts of data regarding what makes people happy. He found that happiness tends to increase throughout life until the first child is born, then declines until the last child has left the nest.
So, I'm sorry, but the evidence does not support your claim. If you like anecdotes: My single friends are laid back and do whatever they want with their nights and weekends. My friends with kids are always freaked out about schools and pedophiles and safety and sicknesses of their spawn.
"Get a life" means "get a social life." Extroverts place high value on social interaction, and view pastimes which do not involve face-to-face interaction as undesirable.
Introverts tend to value more cerebral activities, and are dumbfounded by the values of the extroverts.
You aren't going to resolve this difference bitching about it on the internet, so just Chill. The Fuck. Out.
I can't imagine any economy where 8% of the people who want to work don't have that option, and sit around on their asses all day contributing nothing to the economy. In what context is that a success?
GDP PPP & GDP Growth Rates 2002 - 2006 est.: Year GDP in billions of USD PPP
% GDP Growth 2002 1603.740 1.3 2003 1641.774 0.9 2004 1724.647 2.1 2005 1811.561 1.5 2006 1889.783 2.3
That is not NEARLY enough to keep their unemployment rate at a reasonable level. 8% unemployment is a pretty sever economic failure.
That must be why science flourished in the Dark Ages, when the church had ultimate power, but then science halted during the Enlightenment, when it because acceptable to question religious dogma.
You got it wrong. The European* mindset is to protect established business interests at the expense of the consumer while saying it protects the consumer. The US mindset is to stay out of it for the most part, though occasionally protecting established business interests at the expense of the consumer while saying it protects the business interests.
* Not all of Europe. The UK is closer to the US, while France and Belgium are addicted to protectionism.
It is ironic that the country that has been so important to liberal thought now makes it a habit of taking away liberties from its citizens in order to protect vested business interests.
My girlfriend is French, but she has lived in Africa, the US, and Australia, and traveled extensively beyond that. She is of the opinion that French culture thrives on complaining, and the rest of the West is delightfully optimistic compared to France. She also observes that French culture seems to expect something for nothing, and would rather eat the rich than be entrepreneurs and have a go at being rich themselves.
Anyone who understands economics is anti-French, including the French economists I know. This is just one more example of the corrupt French laws that hurt the consumers, businesses, and economy of France. There is a reason the French economy is so far behind the rest of Western Europe.
The entirety of French economic policy falsely assumes wealth is a zero-sum game while completely overlooking the fact that the wealthy will flee if their tax burden is high compared to the rest of the developed world.
When I go to space, I just bring cups with internal centrifuges. Well, that and popsicles. I've never hand any trouble, though I've found it difficult to throw my cups in a straight line.
I have a front projector and white walls around the screen. If a scene has a bright white portion (say, a daytime sky), it brightens the entire room via indirect reflection, turning all the black parts of the screen to gray.
You say that like it's a joke. Anyone with a home theater that uses projection (front or rear) will tell you that white walls suck. The best paint for a theater would be the blackest black available.
Time Warner has their own VoIP phone, competing directly with Vonage. You can be sure that bytes sent by their phone would not count toward the cap. Competing phones, however, would cause you to go over your bandwidth cap and get billed by the minute.
Expect an anti-trust lawsuit from Vonage, eventually.
The way it is used today, rationality refers to conclusions which can be derived from evidence using logic. This, along with the recognition of human fallibility, is the core of the philosophy of science.
It is impossible for any religion to be rational because there is no evidence (in the scientific sense) on which to base a line of logical reasoning.
It is perfectly possible for a religion to be logical because logic can start without evidence, as in "suppose there is a god..." This is not reason, just logic.
Pudge, if you actually studied religion fairly, instead of relying on what the religion itself claims, you would know that "its positive effects far outweigh its negative ones" is a highly contentious statement. For you to parrot it as if it were fact demonstrates disturbing ignorance.
I suggest you read "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" by Dr. Daniel Dennett.
And I leave you with a quote that I hope will at least give you the slightest reason to question the dogma that has control of you.
"Good men will do good things, and evil men will do evil things, but for a good man to do evil things--that takes religion."
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So, I'm sorry, but the evidence does not support your claim. If you like anecdotes: My single friends are laid back and do whatever they want with their nights and weekends. My friends with kids are always freaked out about schools and pedophiles and safety and sicknesses of their spawn.
"Get a life" means "get a social life." Extroverts place high value on social interaction, and view pastimes which do not involve face-to-face interaction as undesirable.
Introverts tend to value more cerebral activities, and are dumbfounded by the values of the extroverts.
You aren't going to resolve this difference bitching about it on the internet, so just Chill. The Fuck. Out.
In which economic theory is France's stratospheric unemployment rate not a failure?
I can't imagine any economy where 8% of the people who want to work don't have that option, and sit around on their asses all day contributing nothing to the economy. In what context is that a success?
GDP PPP & GDP Growth Rates 2002 - 2006 est.:
Year GDP
in billions of USD PPP
% GDP Growth
2002 1603.740 1.3
2003 1641.774 0.9
2004 1724.647 2.1
2005 1811.561 1.5
2006 1889.783 2.3
That is not NEARLY enough to keep their unemployment rate at a reasonable level. 8% unemployment is a pretty sever economic failure.
If you want a more empirical measure of the level of complaining in various countries, look at the number of strikes in France.
s/because/became/;
That must be why science flourished in the Dark Ages, when the church had ultimate power, but then science halted during the Enlightenment, when it because acceptable to question religious dogma.
Wait... am I misremembering that?
I was referring to growth rate.
You got it wrong. The European* mindset is to protect established business interests at the expense of the consumer while saying it protects the consumer. The US mindset is to stay out of it for the most part, though occasionally protecting established business interests at the expense of the consumer while saying it protects the business interests.
* Not all of Europe. The UK is closer to the US, while France and Belgium are addicted to protectionism.
It is ironic that the country that has been so important to liberal thought now makes it a habit of taking away liberties from its citizens in order to protect vested business interests.
My girlfriend is French, but she has lived in Africa, the US, and Australia, and traveled extensively beyond that. She is of the opinion that French culture thrives on complaining, and the rest of the West is delightfully optimistic compared to France. She also observes that French culture seems to expect something for nothing, and would rather eat the rich than be entrepreneurs and have a go at being rich themselves.
So perhaps it is YOU who doesn't understand.
Anyone who understands economics is anti-French, including the French economists I know. This is just one more example of the corrupt French laws that hurt the consumers, businesses, and economy of France. There is a reason the French economy is so far behind the rest of Western Europe.
The entirety of French economic policy falsely assumes wealth is a zero-sum game while completely overlooking the fact that the wealthy will flee if their tax burden is high compared to the rest of the developed world.
When I go to space, I just bring cups with internal centrifuges. Well, that and popsicles. I've never hand any trouble, though I've found it difficult to throw my cups in a straight line.
I'm not talking about the screen. I'm talking about the walls around the screen.
I have a front projector and white walls around the screen. If a scene has a bright white portion (say, a daytime sky), it brightens the entire room via indirect reflection, turning all the black parts of the screen to gray.
Taser: It's the universal language.
You say that like it's a joke. Anyone with a home theater that uses projection (front or rear) will tell you that white walls suck. The best paint for a theater would be the blackest black available.
No, it's about phones.
Time Warner has their own VoIP phone, competing directly with Vonage. You can be sure that bytes sent by their phone would not count toward the cap. Competing phones, however, would cause you to go over your bandwidth cap and get billed by the minute.
Expect an anti-trust lawsuit from Vonage, eventually.
The way it is used today, rationality refers to conclusions which can be derived from evidence using logic. This, along with the recognition of human fallibility, is the core of the philosophy of science.
It is impossible for any religion to be rational because there is no evidence (in the scientific sense) on which to base a line of logical reasoning.
It is perfectly possible for a religion to be logical because logic can start without evidence, as in "suppose there is a god..." This is not reason, just logic.
Pudge, if you actually studied religion fairly, instead of relying on what the religion itself claims, you would know that "its positive effects far outweigh its negative ones" is a highly contentious statement. For you to parrot it as if it were fact demonstrates disturbing ignorance.
I suggest you read "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" by Dr. Daniel Dennett.
And I leave you with a quote that I hope will at least give you the slightest reason to question the dogma that has control of you.
"Good men will do good things, and evil men will do evil things, but for a good man to do evil things--that takes religion."
Many athiests hate christian beliefs. Many christians hate athiests.
Just so you know, a lot of people on /. automatically mod down anyone who has a bold sig. We don't take kindly to spam on slashdot.