It is very easy to see the origins of a war when you have the benefit of time, access to documents from all sides and a whole lot of historians poring over the evidence.
My granddad signed up for the territorial army (or whatever it was called back then) in 1938 because he was convinced there wasn't a war coming and he needed the extra income it brought it. Now he may have been a little bit, er, wrong, but so was mjmx when he said "everyone knew war was inevitable".
Also nukes suck for anything other than sabre rattling and as for giving you a bigger voice on the world stage? I don't think so. I really don't see Pakistan leading the way and they have nukes.
I am not an expert but I would have thought that Australia is one of the few countries that has the geography to be able to use nukes defensively. An attack would have to come from the north, and might only be to capture the resources there. That part of the country is relatively unpopulated, giving a good opportunity for a tactical nuke strike on home territory.
Not saying it would be a good idea, but one hell of a way to put off an invasion.
What I want to know is HOW, and why the intelligence agencies of Brazil, Germany etc are so incompetent that they can't discover or stop it.
I would also be very interested to know how much US tech firms are in bed with the intelligence gathering. No-one seems to be asking the important questions.
Living in cities under sea level? That went well for New Orleans didn't it?
I hope you are right on the sea level rises. Because us warming the planet up is likely to have other implications that we will have to deal with. Our biggest problem with all of this is that any major change in an ecosystem will create unexpected change that we haven't modeled, which could prove catastrophic.
As it happens I am an optimist about the human race, so I think that we will overcome whatever gets thrown at us, although there may be many casualties along the way. I just don't understand why climate change deniers swallow the corporate propaganda so wholeheartedly. Dammit I want electric cars and quieter, unpolluted cities via clean energy NOW. That they are good for the environment is just a bonus.
While you might be okay if you live in Australia (unless you live in the entrance or around Newcastle) people in the Netherlands, southern Vietnam or the Shanghai and Macau areas won't be too happy about a 1 - 2m rise (see http://flood.firetree.net/)
The problem is that all of our coastal infrastructure is built around existing sea levels. Including many of the worlds major cities. Change that sea level and there are going to be consequences.
And of course if we get into a positive feedback loop and the sea rise is significantly more than anticipated, we are all fucked.
I think the point of stack ranking is that it gets rid of the worst of the team regardless. In theory this might work if you had an unlimited supply, since a random hire should be better than the worst of a team of n on average over your organisation. However what this does to morale and team culture over time is not worth it.
Even if it did work, there would come a time when everyone left in your organisation was better than a random hire, on average.
Another part of the Accenture model, at least in Australia, was to take new recruits out of there home city. Pay them badly but expense them well. As a result being away from their friends and family they bond with other team members, which helps reinforce the long hours party with the company mentality. Throw in the stint in the US which includes grooming training and you have something which has many features of a cult.
It might work if there was a way to objectively rate the whole company. But when applied to small teams it is a recipe for back stabbing, cliques and other anti-social activities.
If I had to sack 20% of employees every year I would make sure I got replacements who I would be happy to sack the following year unless I had someone I wanted to get shot of.
The problem with this system is that if you have two people running a course, one might be training people really well, the other very poorly. Which means you get two sets of students with the same grades but widely different abilities.
IIRC Opec quotas are based on stated reserves. Given this there is every reason to over state reserves, which means there is probably much less of the stuff left in the ground than people think.
Except that much of it is controlled by a cartel, which decides the supply side of the equation. Right now the price is relatively low because the cartel know that if they try to restrict supply further then the short term price may go up but the world economy will go to hell which will destroy demand.
Surely chess is a game, not a sport. I know the difference is subtle, but chess does not require any physical exertion beyond the lifting of the pieces.
And yes, I know snooker, pool and darts are not much better. But there must be a line, or go, scrabble and monopoly would be sports too.
At the risk of sounding sexist, I wonder if it is because men seem to have more of a tendency to become single minded/obsessive about things. I don't know whether it is just more socially acceptable, but I note that men are far more likely to be the ones that have all consuming hobbies.
As to whether this is a product of the way society is structured or nature I have no idea.
Just because a companies P/E is low does not mean they are undervalued. It could mean the market expects that future earnings (you know, the ones that actually count if you are buying a stock) are going to be lower than they have been.
Maybe you have never worked on complex projects where it is important that everyone is on the same page, and where consensus has to be reached.
It is basic maths. 2 people knowing what each are doing takes one meeting, 3 would take 3 meetings, 4 would take 6 meetings and 5 would take 10 meetings. Your way just doesn't scale. Oh and that assumes that the second person you talk to doesn't require you to go back to the first.
Slashdot Mirror
But that is just not true. Everyone knowns pedos also use encryption.
It is very easy to see the origins of a war when you have the benefit of time, access to documents from all sides and a whole lot of historians poring over the evidence.
My granddad signed up for the territorial army (or whatever it was called back then) in 1938 because he was convinced there wasn't a war coming and he needed the extra income it brought it. Now he may have been a little bit, er, wrong, but so was mjmx when he said "everyone knew war was inevitable".
mjmx was right about fnj though.
You don't let your own people stay the victims of an invasion.
Could be. Or it could be that the British claims to Antarctic Territory become much more tenuous without the Falklands and South Georgia.
Did it say "I for one welcome our roman overlords?"
Also nukes suck for anything other than sabre rattling and as for giving you a bigger voice on the world stage? I don't think so. I really don't see Pakistan leading the way and they have nukes.
I am not an expert but I would have thought that Australia is one of the few countries that has the geography to be able to use nukes defensively. An attack would have to come from the north, and might only be to capture the resources there. That part of the country is relatively unpopulated, giving a good opportunity for a tactical nuke strike on home territory.
Not saying it would be a good idea, but one hell of a way to put off an invasion.
Despite what people may think australia cannot defend itself without support. America is the ONLY logical source of that support.
It could if it had kept a few of the nuclear weapons that the UK tested on its soil. There are rumours that this was the deal after all...
And the US will only provide support if it is in its own interests. Not something I would want to rely on.
What I want to know is HOW, and why the intelligence agencies of Brazil, Germany etc are so incompetent that they can't discover or stop it.
I would also be very interested to know how much US tech firms are in bed with the intelligence gathering. No-one seems to be asking the important questions.
Living in cities under sea level? That went well for New Orleans didn't it?
I hope you are right on the sea level rises. Because us warming the planet up is likely to have other implications that we will have to deal with. Our biggest problem with all of this is that any major change in an ecosystem will create unexpected change that we haven't modeled, which could prove catastrophic.
As it happens I am an optimist about the human race, so I think that we will overcome whatever gets thrown at us, although there may be many casualties along the way. I just don't understand why climate change deniers swallow the corporate propaganda so wholeheartedly. Dammit I want electric cars and quieter, unpolluted cities via clean energy NOW. That they are good for the environment is just a bonus.
While you might be okay if you live in Australia (unless you live in the entrance or around Newcastle) people in the Netherlands, southern Vietnam or the Shanghai and Macau areas won't be too happy about a 1 - 2m rise (see http://flood.firetree.net/)
The problem is that all of our coastal infrastructure is built around existing sea levels. Including many of the worlds major cities. Change that sea level and there are going to be consequences.
And of course if we get into a positive feedback loop and the sea rise is significantly more than anticipated, we are all fucked.
Sometimes the right person you hired goes wrong further down the track for no fault of yours, or theirs for that matter. Shit happens, people change.
I think the point of stack ranking is that it gets rid of the worst of the team regardless. In theory this might work if you had an unlimited supply, since a random hire should be better than the worst of a team of n on average over your organisation. However what this does to morale and team culture over time is not worth it.
Even if it did work, there would come a time when everyone left in your organisation was better than a random hire, on average.
Another part of the Accenture model, at least in Australia, was to take new recruits out of there home city. Pay them badly but expense them well. As a result being away from their friends and family they bond with other team members, which helps reinforce the long hours party with the company mentality. Throw in the stint in the US which includes grooming training and you have something which has many features of a cult.
It might work if there was a way to objectively rate the whole company. But when applied to small teams it is a recipe for back stabbing, cliques and other anti-social activities.
If I had to sack 20% of employees every year I would make sure I got replacements who I would be happy to sack the following year unless I had someone I wanted to get shot of.
The problem with this system is that if you have two people running a course, one might be training people really well, the other very poorly. Which means you get two sets of students with the same grades but widely different abilities.
See what the oil price is when the world economy recovers and ask that question again.
Cars and light trucks make up less than 50% of oil usage in the USA, which has about half of the worlds oil-fired power plants: http://globalenergyobservatory.org/list.php?db=PowerPlants&type=Oil
Using that logic it would be mad for Saudi Arabia to be investing in solar power. But they are doing so big time http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/486391/20130704/saudi-arabia-renewable-energy-solar-power.htm#.UoBN_icho-U
IIRC Opec quotas are based on stated reserves. Given this there is every reason to over state reserves, which means there is probably much less of the stuff left in the ground than people think.
Except that much of it is controlled by a cartel, which decides the supply side of the equation. Right now the price is relatively low because the cartel know that if they try to restrict supply further then the short term price may go up but the world economy will go to hell which will destroy demand.
Unless they have an aimbot
You quote an Israeli source. Did you give a thought that this is likely at best propaganda and at worse complete lies?
Quite apart from anything else the deputy of a branch of the army is NOT the same thing as the official spokesperson of the country.
Most of Europe being at the mercy of Russia for a large part of its gas is of far more real concern.
Surely chess is a game, not a sport. I know the difference is subtle, but chess does not require any physical exertion beyond the lifting of the pieces.
And yes, I know snooker, pool and darts are not much better. But there must be a line, or go, scrabble and monopoly would be sports too.
At the risk of sounding sexist, I wonder if it is because men seem to have more of a tendency to become single minded/obsessive about things. I don't know whether it is just more socially acceptable, but I note that men are far more likely to be the ones that have all consuming hobbies.
As to whether this is a product of the way society is structured or nature I have no idea.
Just because a companies P/E is low does not mean they are undervalued. It could mean the market expects that future earnings (you know, the ones that actually count if you are buying a stock) are going to be lower than they have been.
While you are still holding the shares you haven't won anything, except on paper.
Maybe you have never worked on complex projects where it is important that everyone is on the same page, and where consensus has to be reached.
It is basic maths. 2 people knowing what each are doing takes one meeting, 3 would take 3 meetings, 4 would take 6 meetings and 5 would take 10 meetings. Your way just doesn't scale. Oh and that assumes that the second person you talk to doesn't require you to go back to the first.