Stock (dividend income) sales are taxed at a much lower rate than Regular Income. They were one of the tax cuts passed by Bush back in '02 (?). Prior to that, your tax rate on stock sales was whatever your Ordinary Income rate was (seems fair, right? The more you earn, the more you're taxed). What Bush did was scrap that, and said that so long as the stock was from a US company or certain multinationals, your tax rate was capped at 15%.
This isn't exactly true. Before the '02 tax cuts, stock sales were still taxed at a different rate from ordinary income: 20% for long-term and ordinary for short term ( year) (unless you're in the 10% or 15% tax bracket). After '02 tax cuts: 15% for long-term and ordinary for less than a year (unless you're in the 10% or 15% tax bracket).
Thus, the '02 tax law basically reduced the tax rate on capital gains by 5% since ordinary income taxes were also reduced.
Since you have to grow large crops of sugar-cane to produce the Methanol, and these will consume large quantities of CO2. In the end, there will be no "new" CO2 released to the atmosphere, and the greenhouse effect will stop to increase.
This would only be true: (1) if methanol were always produced from biomass (and not petroleum) and (2) if the energy used to produce the methanol from the biomass were in itself created from biomass and/or renewables.
This is not quite as impossible as it seems. I recently read a theoretically possible proposal to use quantum entanglement for wireless power transfer. Imagine entangling two electrons. Store one electron at the power station and one in your home/car/satellite. Cause the electron in your power station to flip its spin state which will cause the entangled electron to flip oppositely. This will generate an oscillating magnetic field that can be used to do work. Anyway, if you can entangle a whole mess 'o electrons (stabily), then you've got something.
The alleged surgical and pilotting applications sound equally silly. It is an infinite regression of "if we can fit a camera in front of the surgeon's hands, we can project an image behind them to make a really cool effect that they are invisible!
This isn't exactly true. You can use photogrammatric techniques to calculate what the image would like from a given angle if you have 2 or more cameras seeing the object at other (non-oblique) angles.
While i agree that solar power is not *the* panacea, i think you're forgetting about a few other storage technologies.
1. flywheels (or more generally mechanical kinetic energy storage). there are some good flywheel technologies out there that are pretty efficient.
2. electrolysis of hydrogen from water (or more generally chemical potential energy storage). yep, you can't have fuel cells without a fuel source. producing hydrogen from water is a form of energy storage.
3. "PV=kT" style energy storage, that is, create a potential energy gradient using pressure, volume or temperture as your free variable.
what do folks here think of the likelyhood for the US freedom of information act being passed by congress and signed into law in today's political climate?
my bet is: those folks who are against the implications of outsourcing are/were against the passage of NAFTA. however, since dubya is currently the guy in power, he gets the blame. this is surprising to you?
you realize, of course, that biblical scholars have determined that the new testament was written well-after (100-400 years) the purported time of jesus. moreover, while the bulk of the new testament was written in greek, some was in latin as well as aramaic. in particular, i believe that the "meek shall inherit the earth" passage was anachronistic at the time of king james translation (which, of course, was a translation of a translation aramaic-->greek-->latin-->english). in this case, i believe that there is good evidence to suggest that "meek" was referring to an aramaic word (which i cannot recall at this time) roughly meaning "those whose ill-fortune i spit away from me because they are so destitute". you see many people believed at the time (and still today) that ill-fortune could be warded off via spitting it out when paths crossed.
okay, i always find these examples humorous. here's why: how did we come to "know" about ionizing radiation, vitamin D, ozone, skin cancer, CFCs, or vulcanology? i'll give you a big hint...science. if you wish to argue about how science is a religion, then please do not use terms related to science (or scientific discovery) as your points of contention.
funding? what are your sources? i've noticed that the cry of the pro-dubyas is that any disagreement with the dubya's policies must in fact be from liberal sources. there are many other non-liberal folks (such as libertarians) who disagree with dubya's policies. and, of course, there are apolitical groups who disagree as well. i know it's convenient to put these things in their box so you feel justified in ignoring them. but...let's call this rationalization a severe deficiency in logical thinking.
yes, but you could encrypt the vote in such a way that only during a vote recount could it be decripted by the encryption key owner (i.e. not the voter). this would ensure that you (the voter) could have a record of a vote but vote selling would be useless as there would no way to determine the vote unless you had the key.
hmm... none of those social programs i named are exculsively for "children, accident victims, sick and elderly" nor is NASA for that matter. also, how can you say we are born with NOTHING? we are not. we are born with parents who will care for us (unless unlucky). we are born in a society with public infrastructure (if we're lucky).
with regard to poor slobs and the evilness of social programs: do you dislike social programs like the national highway system? or social programs like public education? or social programs like the national park system? or how about social programs like water distribution and sewage drainage? do you dislike social programs addressing the health and safety of the food we eat? or the efficacy and safety of the medicines we take? what about public funding of the postal service? or of libraries? do you think that publicly funded disaster relief programs are inherently bad? what about government-backed loan guarantees for small businesses? are soocial programs that fund the police or firemen wrong?
do you not use any of these social programs? and is this what you teach your daughter?
the one problem i've always had with the robots rule the world (or some variant) scenario is that you still need to have energy for the robots to run on. it's not like power generation is free. thus, even if one were to create robots in sufficient number to become a "working" class, you would still require energy. can we keep the pace of energy production with robot creation? we seem to barely be able to keep energy production apace with human creation. even if robots are double the efficiency of humans, there seems to be an upper limit.
ah, the "privatization solves our problems" argument. while i think privatization may be good in some cases, there must be a critical mass of civil infrastructure to support it. does this exist in the space industry?
that said, i do have a modest proposal with regard to privatization. and i do believe there is a sufficient amount of civil infrastructure to support it. let's privatize the military.
the military is by far one of the largest consumers of our government budget. but, i think that folks are interested enough in personal/common defense to pay for it on an "as needed basis". we can pay for protection out of our own pockets. i imagine that it would work much like the insurance industry.
current commericial solar cell designs actually absorb a large frequency range of the sun's EM energy; little is reflected unless the angle of incidence is oblique enough. the issue is that only a certain frequency range can push electrons into the conduction layer of the material (i.e. produce electricity). the remainder of this absorbed energy will mostly increase the amount of heat in the material. this heat will either be conducted away or be re-radiated as longer wavelength photons.
let's not forget about a third argument against smoking. it turns out that diseased smokers are a tremendous burden to the health insurance industry. since we all pay to a common pool, smokers who get artificial lungs (i assume expensive) will unfairly burden those who don't smoke with increased insurance payments on average. now, if you were to pay for those lungs out of your own pocket....
yes, actually. you can predict if it will be harmful based solely on its elements (e.g. plutonium is considered harmful). also, you can predict its harmful effects based solely on how the substance will be used (e.g. granola in a bowl is okay; two tons of granola on top of you is not okay). since carbon nanotubes are not going to be sprayed into your lungs at any point during the lifetime/trashtime of the battery and carbon sitting in a trashdump leaching into groundwater is not particularly bad, i would say that pollution due to these nanotubes will not be high on the list of polluting sources in the world.
fortunately, the proposed battery doesn't superheat nanotubes and spew them out the end of an exhaust pipe. also, i find it unlikely the nanotubes would be in powder form; most likely there would be a bonding agent to ensure a constant surface area. can we say red herring?
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This isn't exactly true. Before the '02 tax cuts, stock sales were still taxed at a different rate from ordinary income: 20% for long-term and ordinary for short term ( year) (unless you're in the 10% or 15% tax bracket). After '02 tax cuts: 15% for long-term and ordinary for less than a year (unless you're in the 10% or 15% tax bracket).
Thus, the '02 tax law basically reduced the tax rate on capital gains by 5% since ordinary income taxes were also reduced.
Egad!! On a scale of 1 to geek: geek.
This is not quite as impossible as it seems. I recently read a theoretically possible proposal to use quantum entanglement for wireless power transfer. Imagine entangling two electrons. Store one electron at the power station and one in your home/car/satellite. Cause the electron in your power station to flip its spin state which will cause the entangled electron to flip oppositely. This will generate an oscillating magnetic field that can be used to do work. Anyway, if you can entangle a whole mess 'o electrons (stabily), then you've got something.
While i agree that solar power is not *the* panacea, i think you're forgetting about a few other storage technologies.
1. flywheels (or more generally mechanical kinetic energy storage). there are some good flywheel technologies out there that are pretty efficient.
2. electrolysis of hydrogen from water (or more generally chemical potential energy storage). yep, you can't have fuel cells without a fuel source. producing hydrogen from water is a form of energy storage.
3. "PV=kT" style energy storage, that is, create a potential energy gradient using pressure, volume or temperture as your free variable.
what do folks here think of the likelyhood for the US freedom of information act being passed by congress and signed into law in today's political climate?
my bet is: those folks who are against the implications of outsourcing are/were against the passage of NAFTA. however, since dubya is currently the guy in power, he gets the blame. this is surprising to you?
you realize, of course, that biblical scholars have determined that the new testament was written well-after (100-400 years) the purported time of jesus. moreover, while the bulk of the new testament was written in greek, some was in latin as well as aramaic. in particular, i believe that the "meek shall inherit the earth" passage was anachronistic at the time of king james translation (which, of course, was a translation of a translation aramaic-->greek-->latin-->english). in this case, i believe that there is good evidence to suggest that "meek" was referring to an aramaic word (which i cannot recall at this time) roughly meaning "those whose ill-fortune i spit away from me because they are so destitute". you see many people believed at the time (and still today) that ill-fortune could be warded off via spitting it out when paths crossed.
okay, i always find these examples humorous. here's why: how did we come to "know" about ionizing radiation, vitamin D, ozone, skin cancer, CFCs, or vulcanology? i'll give you a big hint...science. if you wish to argue about how science is a religion, then please do not use terms related to science (or scientific discovery) as your points of contention.
funding? what are your sources? i've noticed that the cry of the pro-dubyas is that any disagreement with the dubya's policies must in fact be from liberal sources. there are many other non-liberal folks (such as libertarians) who disagree with dubya's policies. and, of course, there are apolitical groups who disagree as well. i know it's convenient to put these things in their box so you feel justified in ignoring them. but...let's call this rationalization a severe deficiency in logical thinking.
yes, but you could encrypt the vote in such a way that only during a vote recount could it be decripted by the encryption key owner (i.e. not the voter). this would ensure that you (the voter) could have a record of a vote but vote selling would be useless as there would no way to determine the vote unless you had the key.
but, you're not keeping it...your charging it. i.e. the budget deficit is like a huge credit card. you'll have to make payments on it at some point.
hmm... none of those social programs i named are exculsively for "children, accident victims, sick and elderly" nor is NASA for that matter. also, how can you say we are born with NOTHING? we are not. we are born with parents who will care for us (unless unlucky). we are born in a society with public infrastructure (if we're lucky).
do you not use any of these social programs? and is this what you teach your daughter?
R: I'll pay you $6
;-). to be more accurate, it would be:
D: I'll pay you $10, but I need $5 of that in taxes
Who helps the poor?-- CodeGod@fark
okay, so i have to take exception to this
R: i'll pay you $6 but you owe me $5 with interest.
D: i'll pay you $10 but i need $5 back in taxes.
the one problem i've always had with the robots rule the world (or some variant) scenario is that you still need to have energy for the robots to run on. it's not like power generation is free. thus, even if one were to create robots in sufficient number to become a "working" class, you would still require energy. can we keep the pace of energy production with robot creation? we seem to barely be able to keep energy production apace with human creation. even if robots are double the efficiency of humans, there seems to be an upper limit.
ah, the "privatization solves our problems" argument. while i think privatization may be good in some cases, there must be a critical mass of civil infrastructure to support it. does this exist in the space industry?
that said, i do have a modest proposal with regard to privatization. and i do believe there is a sufficient amount of civil infrastructure to support it. let's privatize the military.
the military is by far one of the largest consumers of our government budget. but, i think that folks are interested enough in personal/common defense to pay for it on an "as needed basis". we can pay for protection out of our own pockets. i imagine that it would work much like the insurance industry.
current commericial solar cell designs actually absorb a large frequency range of the sun's EM energy; little is reflected unless the angle of incidence is oblique enough. the issue is that only a certain frequency range can push electrons into the conduction layer of the material (i.e. produce electricity). the remainder of this absorbed energy will mostly increase the amount of heat in the material. this heat will either be conducted away or be re-radiated as longer wavelength photons.
i'm sure you meant "you're right" but maybe you left out the beginning "arrgghh!! look out to your right." i'm sure that's an oft-heard declaimation.
if you're willing to go to lower haight, i'd suggest toronado. beer lover's paradise...
let's not forget about a third argument against smoking. it turns out that diseased smokers are a tremendous burden to the health insurance industry. since we all pay to a common pool, smokers who get artificial lungs (i assume expensive) will unfairly burden those who don't smoke with increased insurance payments on average. now, if you were to pay for those lungs out of your own pocket....
yes, actually. you can predict if it will be harmful based solely on its elements (e.g. plutonium is considered harmful). also, you can predict its harmful effects based solely on how the substance will be used (e.g. granola in a bowl is okay; two tons of granola on top of you is not okay). since carbon nanotubes are not going to be sprayed into your lungs at any point during the lifetime/trashtime of the battery and carbon sitting in a trashdump leaching into groundwater is not particularly bad, i would say that pollution due to these nanotubes will not be high on the list of polluting sources in the world.
fortunately, the proposed battery doesn't superheat nanotubes and spew them out the end of an exhaust pipe. also, i find it unlikely the nanotubes would be in powder form; most likely there would be a bonding agent to ensure a constant surface area. can we say red herring?