The shuttle could have stayed in orbit for months if it didn't have a crew.
So what? It would still have been outrageously expensive to launch, overly complicated, unreliable (two failures in just over 100 missions), required substantial refurbishment between missions, etc. There simply are better ways to solve the problems the shuttle was supposed to tackle. It was a design by committee that ultimately failed in its primary purpose which was to reduce cost to orbit and allow more rapid launches. This isn't to say it wasn't a capable vehicle but the economics of it were poor and it held us back for several decades.
And I don't see this thing taking a full crew + 22 ton payload anytime soon.
Presumably it wasn't designed to do that so why is that a problem?
The shuttle was never used to its full capabilities.
Disagree. The problem with the shuttle was that it's capabilities weren't what they needed to be. Technically it was reusable but so much work and expense went into each refurbishment that they may as well have not bothered. The shuttle was supposed to reduce cost to orbit and it did nothing of the sort. The fact that it was capable of bringing items back from orbit is a minor detail which misses the big picture. The shuttle wasn't economically capable of solving the space junk problem which is really the only common reason to bring most items back from orbit aside from science experiments and astronauts. Once you make getting to orbit economical THEN it is worth worrying about bringing stuff back economically. The shuttle design was simply not capable of doing that economically.
Nothing in the AAP could have safely brought a satellite back from orbit as the shuttle managed on 4 occasions.
I said "along the lines of the AAP", as in something similar. It didn't have to be that program specifically. It's an example of a type of program that would have been more likely to succeed. It's all moot at this point and SpaceX (and some others) are finally making progress on the problems. It's just a shame we wasted so much time and money on the shuttle.
The USA managed to build and launch an airliner sized crewed reusable spaceplane called the shuttle in the 1970s.
At huge expense and suspect reliability. The shuttle never lived up to the expectations for the project. It was too expensive and complex. The shuttle wasn't in principle a bad idea but the final design was something we did because we could, not because it was the best approach. We probably should have done something more along the lines of the Apollo Applications Program had we known what we know now.
I'd love to know whats so cutting edge about the X35 that they're trying to keep this midget version of the shuttle secret.
Probably little or nothing to do with the external parts of the craft. Could be weapons, surveillance equipment, or it might just be a test bed for classified technology. It's staying in orbit for really long periods of time so that's probably a hint. Lots of potential reasons why it's all hush hush.
A drink or two a week? That's light drinking. I think you must move in social circles where people rarely drink at all.
Light drinking is having a few drinks a year. Moderate drinking is having a drink or two a week. If you rarely go a day without at least one drink I don't buy the argument that you are drinking "moderately".
In southern Germany, for example, it's not at all unusual to have a beer with your lunch, and another with dinner. In France or Italy, it will be a glass of wine - about the same amount of alcohol. That's 1-2 drinks per day, every day.
That is only moderate in the sense that it's less than someone who consumes dangerous amounts of alcohol. The region you are from does not change that fact nor do the local social norms.
As in all things in life, there's a trade-off. Alcohol helps people relax after a stressful day. It also has a few health benefits
So does exercise. That's a poor justification for drinking. If you want to drink just enjoy it and stop trying to justify it to the rest of us. It's like eating at McDonalds and then trying to claim that the burger does have some nutrients. I don't care if you drink but don't waste your breath telling me it has "health benefits" and that you need it to relax.
Heck, you can die from drinking too much water.
It's called hyponatremia or in really extreme cases, drowning. You can die from consuming too much of anything. There is nothing that in a large enough quantity isn't fatal and in a small enough quantity isn't harmless. That's not relevant to what constitutes moderate.
That is the opinion of the majority of the US citizens. Or did you forget that he won the election but lost the vote?
Reigning in the federal government, both in terms of power and size, is something a lot of us want to see, along with fiscal responsibility.
Fine goals as an ideal but HOW you go about it matters greatly. Trump certainly is not going to be the guy to get you there. Fiscal responsibility? Don't make me laugh. The republicans haven't given a shit about fiscal responsibility since Reagan took office. That's why we have this absurdly large debt. They want to have their cake (medicare and a large military) and eat it too (no taxes) which simply isn't possible. The republicans had 8 years to propose sensible fixes to the Affordable Care Act and they did nothing. They simply refused to negotiate. Once Trump was in office they rush through a monstrous bill that will hurt millions of people and you call that fiscal responsibility? Fuck off...
Trump at least promised those kinds of things, and we all know Clinton couldn't care less about changing the status quo in those areas.
Trump never promised to reign in the federal government. You just assumed he did. In point of fact he has quite explicitly attempting to expand federal power influence to suit his world view. Disagree with Clinton's policies all you want but at least she wasn't a hypocrite about her views on the role government should play. Yes she wasn't interested in small government and a majority of the votes cast agreed with her that that was fine. Just because you favor small government doesn't mean you are right or that it's necessarily the best solution to our problems.
The "America first" concept also has merit in this day and age, as it sure seems our government is throwing billions of dollars every which way globally, to prop up and otherwise fund any number of governments and organizations.
"America First" is merely code for xenophobia and isolationism and protectionism. It's an appeal to nationalism instead of logic. The US is already the most powerful country in the world by most reasonable measures. It already IS america first. Pretending that we do not live in a global economy is absurd. Trump is promising nonsense like returning manufacturing jobs to the US that he cannot possibly make happen.
Look, I think Trump has a chance to drive some good change for our country.
Nothing Trump has promised to do would be good for the country and quite a bit of his agenda will hurt a lot of people. While you are technically correct that he has a chance to drive good change he has given no indication that the change he wants is actually good. I think your optimism that Trump has any interest in being a positive agent for change is misplaced.
Please note that I thought the same of Obama, based on some of his campaign promises, but was sadly disappointed (I am not holding my breath for Trump).
Why? Trump is working very hard to make good on his (frankly horrifying) campaign promises. What you should hope for is that he fails in his attempts to make good on them. Furthermore pretending Obama and Trump are the chickens of a feather is patently ridiculous. The only thing they have in common is the job title. No president can make good on all their campaign promises. They aren't dictators even though Trump clearly has aspirations to become one.
That said, pretending that the Trump administration doesn't have serious problems at this point doesn't help anyone: Trump, the administration, or the American people.
The Trump administration IS a serious problem in addition to having serious problems.
They were drinking this over the course of a week. It would be a high amount if consumed in a single day, but not when spread out over 7.
If you are on average consuming one or more pints of beer every day then that is a rather brisk consumption of the product. Just because they aren't typically drinking enough to get plastered doesn't make it moderate unless you are comparing them to alcoholics.
While 35% of those who didn't drink were found to have shrinkage on the right side of the hippocampus, the figure was 65% for those who drank on average between 14 and 21 units a week, and 77% for those who drank 30 or more units a week.
Per the article 14 units = approximately 6 pints of beer. Is that really moderate drinking? That's basically having a drink or more a day. Not alcoholic territory or anything but that's pretty steady consumption. Moderate drinking to my mind would be maybe a pint or two a week at most. Not having a drink with dinner every night. I'm not being critical. If someone enjoys a beer or glass of wine with dinner that's fine as long as they do so responsibly but it isn't what I consider moderate consumption.
Anyway, alcohol isn't good for you. News at 11... I'm pretty sure that anyone drinking a pint a day isn't overly concerned about the health effects, good or bad.
There's these things called anti-trust laws. You may have heard of them. The idea that Google is all powerful is exactly why Google is not at liberty to use its power.
As long as Google isn't specifically discriminating against WSJ it doesn't apply. It sounds like they have the same algorithm for WSJ articles as everyone else. No abuse of power here. WSJ is seemingly looking for special treatment from Google that they haven't paid Google for.
What is a search engine's purpose? To find you relevant information? Or to find you less relevant free information?
If the information is trapped behind a paywall then the search engine can't find it for you. At most it can hint that it might exist. The WSJ wants to have its cake and eat it too. They basically want google to provide free advertising for them. I have no interest in a subscription to WSJ and as far as I'm concerned any results trapped behind a paywall should rightfully be lower in the rankings of relevance. If I wanted a subscription to WSJ I would already have one. If WSJ wants to trade fewer total readers for more paying readers I get that and have no problem with it. But I also have no interest in google returning search results that are trapped behind paywalls because that is approximately useless to me.
Interesting combination of genetic fallacy and ad hominem-- especially interesting since you attacked their ability to think rationally while thinking irrationally yourself!
Exactly where do you think I was irrational? Brietbart and Fox News ARE right wing and they are not as a routine matter even remotely interested in actual facts. If they aren't interested in facts then they are irrational ("looney") as far as being a source of actual news. The are perfectly rational as businesses or as (vile) propaganda machines but they utterly fail as reasonable sources of information and/or opinions. Listen to most of the talking heads for either organization and tell me with a straight face that they are engaging in any sort of credible and honest journalism and I'll call you a liar.
And if you are going to quote fallacies at me, get them right. There is no genetic fallacy in my statement. I made no argument that because a story came from those sources it was de-facto false. Sometimes they actually do report factual news. I'm simply pointing out that as a general proposition Fox News and Brietbart are at best unreliable sources of objective news which is completely true. Furthermore an ad-hominem attack attacks the individual instead of their argument. Since in many cases Fox News and Brietbart present clearly and demonstrably false information to further an ideological position (and to make money doing so) there is no argument to rebut. They are simply knowingly telling lies and I'm calling them out on it.
In which cases, specifically?
Quite a few. You'd have a hard time naming a news source that hasn't failed to maintain journalistic standards from time to time. WSJ is no exception though as a general proposition they are better than most. I've read more than a few articles from the WSJ that were preposterous and poorly researched nonsense. I'm quite confident you could read any given edition of their paper and find a few yourself.
Currently you are correct about there being wide swaths of the workforce who can't work remotely even if they wanted to. Eventually though, we'll have remotely controlled surrogate robots that we can control from home to do any physical task that we can currently do ourselves.
What color is the sky on your planet? What you describe will not happen within the lifetime of anyone reading this if it ever happens at all. Even presuming the technical issues are resolvable within the next century (unlikely) the economics of it are very unlikely to be feasible. Do you have the vaguest comprehension of how expensive robots like what you describe would be? You really think a worker in a minimum wage job is going to be able to afford such a device? I think you have a very fanciful notion of what the future will look like. Put down the Wall-E DVD and step away.
The Bruce Willis movie Surrogates dealt with this theme. Although it's science fiction now, sometime in the next few decades the technology will be there, and it won't be so fictitious.
So you saw it in a sci-fi movie and decided it was inevitable? Here's a top tip for you. Most sci-fi is light on the science and heavy on the fiction. Just because someone can dream of an idea doesn't mean it will actually come to pass.
Many of our machinists and welding technicians rarely or never come into the shop. They travel to the job site, do their work, and spend the rest of their time at home.
If you are going to say someone works from home that means they actually do work they get paid for while in their own residence. What you are describing are essentially contractors that travel to a job site to do their work. Just because they don't work in the same place every day doesn't mean they work from home.
It's not usual for executives and management to be able to do some of their work outside the office. This does not describe anywhere close to half the work force in the vast majority of companies.
Being a right leaning news source. Doesn't automatically discredit it. I actually like getting a balance to the news just as long as it is thoughtful, and not propaganda.
Agreed. The problem is that FAR too much of the right wing media is nothing but fear mongering propaganda. The left has their versions too to be sure but the folks on the right have made an art form (and a ton of money) out of scaring conservative mostly-white voters. Fox News doesn't even pretend to have journalistic integrity. They simply spout whatever right wing talking points will keep their demographic of viewers glued to their channel. If this requires some talking face to shamelessly spout obvious and evidence free lies then they do that without even a hint of irony.
The WSJ generally manages to retain some semblance of journalistic integrity. Doesn't mean they are always correct or above reproach but they have a solid track record of mostly rational discourse and doing actual research to determine real facts. This differs sharply from companies like Fox News and Brietbart which have no discernible regard for truth unless it supports their existing ideology.
I know some people think that going into the office helps productivity or something through face-to-face communication, but I haven't had that experience at all as a developer.
You say that as if it is an opinion. It's a fact for most people, myself included. Most people are not IT workers and even fewer are software developers. Working remotely can work just fine for IT work in many circumstances. You cannot generalize that however.
You're sitting there in the huge amounts of traffic congestion, thinking what the heck is the point in all these people moving from A to B when they could be working from home?
You are assuming they would spend the time they currently spend commuting doing additional work for the company. Generally not true in the majority of cases. If they are paid hourly (around 60% of workers are) then you would have to pay them for that extra time worked. The commuting is done on their own time and on their own dime. The point of all that commuting is to facilitate the work that needs to be done, most of which cannot be done effectively (or managed effectively) remotely for most industries.
Then you go into the office just to be distracted all the time...
No, I go into the office because I literally cannot do my job outside of it. My job involves more than writing code or working quietly on a computer all day. I don't mean to minimize the importance of writing code - just pointing out that most people do other things for a living. Whatever distractions the office brings are more than outweighed by the productivity gains. Plus I have worked from home in the past and personally I find working at home FAR more distracting than working in my office.
several years of anti-net neutrality articles and opinion pieces, including ones written by paid shills of the telecom industry. (don't believe me, do your own research, it's not hard).
The WSJ is a reliably right wing media source. It's not a far-right loony bin like Brietbart or even Fox News - they have better editorial control than that - but they definitely have a political leaning. I consider them about as far as you can go on a right wing perspective without completely sacrificing rational thought. I consider them sort of the right wing equivalent of the New York Times. Useful sometimes but shouldn't be your only source of info.
As for doing their own research, you are wrong in the sense that it is hard and perhaps more importantly it is expensive. If it wasn't hard and expensive then what would be the point of paying WSJ journalists to do the leg work? That doesn't excuse them not doing it but it is actually hard to do well. You are right of course that for the WSJ to remain worthy of being read they need to actually do their own research and retain some semblance of journalistic integrity. In some cases they have definitely failed in that regard.
Ha... what a laugh. I do plenty of engineering from home and it works out just fine.
That depends strongly on the sort of engineering you do. I do most of the engineering work at my company (a manufacturing company) and about the only thing I could do remotely would be some documentation writing like work instructions and emailing. It's not that I don't want to be able to work from home sometimes but it just isn't practical most of the time. I need to communicate with my co-workers quite a lot (numerous times daily in most cases) and only a handful are reliably sitting at a desk with a phone or email handy. The engineering I do is mostly process engineering so I need to be able to see the products flowing through the plant and I cannot really do that effectively from home. Just my situation of course but I'm hardly unique.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the trend towards remote working "is inexorable" in America's labor force, with 43% of workers now doing at least some of their work from home...
In select industries among white collar workers perhaps but as a general proposition? I don't buy it. It's trivial to name entire industries where it isn't even possible to do much in the way of useful work from home even if you wanted to. Restaurant work, many types of nursing, manufacturing assembly work, maintenance, machining, retail sales, most farming, mining, foundry workers, drivers, etc. The list goes on and on and almost certainly accounts for well over half the work force. Unless they are talking about trivial stuff like answering emails etc from home the 43% statistic doesn't pass the smell test. I guarantee you that 43% of Walmart workers are not working from home.
Remote working is a hugely useful thing and fits a lot of IT work nicely but it doesn't generalize to every job. Speaking for my job, aside from answering the occasional email I couldn't possibly do my job at home. (I'm the GM of a small manufacturing company) We have two people in our company that can usefully work away from the office some of the time - our sales and purchasing managers - and even they have to be in the office a good chuck of time. We might be able to expand that to select IT and accounting functions as we get larger and maybe certain bits of engineering but that won't cover anywhere near even half of 43% of our work force. Everyone else is pretty much as useless as tits on a bull away from the office, myself included. That's pretty typical of manufacturing companies.
We will likely never have a significant number of self driving cars. Once we have autonomous vehicles, there are plenty of better ways to transport people.
I wouldn't be so fast about assuming that to be universally true. I think what will happen is that autonomous technology will incrementally get added to existing cars and then eventually we will have a lot of self driving vehicles on the road. Not all of them will be completely self driving for some time to come if ever but probably most of them will incorporate the tech over the coming decades.
If you can call a vehicle on demand, why would you call a huge 4 person vehicle for 1 person?
Because it is unlikely to come to pass that you will be able to call a vehicle on demand in a lot of places. Furthermore the type of vehicle needed at any given time can vary wildly. There are times when a little 1 or 2 seat car with no storage is fine. Other times you might need to haul a bunch of stuff home from the lumber yard and need a very different sort of vehicle. Furthermore what do you do when there isn't a car immediately available. Most places in the USA you cannot simply walk out your front door and hail a cab even today. What might make sense in Manhattan won't make much sense in rural Kansas. Don't get me wrong, I think ride sharing will be a thing just like taxis are today, but I don't think people are going to stop owning cars any time in the foreseeable future.
Why would I go to the grocery store when the grocery store can bring the food to me?
Because you want to pick out your groceries. I don't know if you've ever spent any time at a meat counter or in the produce section but there is pretty wide variability in the products. I don't really trust someone else to not pick me a bunch of pre-wilted lettuce or meat that isn't sketchy. Sure you can order commodity boxed goods with reasonable confidence but not everything. Plus I don't need a self driving car to have groceries brought to me - companies like Amazon are already dealing with that problem. We go to the grocery store because it is economically efficient to do so. I don't see self driving cars solving that problem.
Autonomous vehicles also means that lawn mowers can be centrally located, they can drive to your house, mow your lawn and return to a central location.
How would this be cheaper than what we currently have? You are adding a huge amount of complexity to a rather primitive and cheap device. Are you talking about lawn care services or just the little push mower people keep in the garage?
Complex robots of all kinds become more practical if they are able to transport themself.
True but that complexity has to come with an economic benefit attached. It's not just a technology problem, it's also an economic problem. Self driving cars are potentially viable because they can eliminate some pretty substantial opportunity costs in regards to human transport. It's not so clear that something like a lawn mower would carry similar benefits.
A law against a man in a lady's restroom is to prevent sexual assault.
We are preventing sexual assault from a trans-woman being in a men's restroom? Or a gay man in a men's bathroom? Or a gay trans man in a women's restroom? I think you haven't really thought this through. The reason we have gender separated bathrooms is far more complicated than prevention of sexual assault. It has a lot more to do with privacy and social comfort than the relatively low risk of assault in nearly all circumstances.
Not all instances of reckless driving, drunk driving, speeding, and driving on the wrong side of a divided highway cause death or injury; the laws are still proper.
By that logic you are arguing that Jim Crow laws were proper because some black people might assault some white people. Just because a problem could arise it doesn't automatically follow that it makes a law just or proper.
A law against a man in a lady's restroom is to prevent sexual assault. Not all cases of a man in a lady's restroom result in sexual assault, a law preventing a man in a lady's restroom is still proper.
Your concept of gender fails to account for the fact that it isn't binary. Without even getting into sexual preference there are people who are hermaphrodites. Genetically they have parts from both men and women. There also are people who have had their secondary sexual characteristics surgically altered to the other gender. Gender isn't as simple as many people like yourself seem to believe it to be.
People being secure in their persons is essential to a civilized society, it is of far more importance than "health care, job creation, infrastructure" (only the last of which is a valid government function.)
Oh bullshit. Government has a lot of functions beyond infrastructure. If the only valid government function was infrastructure the US Constitution would be a lot simpler than it is. Furthermore people being secure in their persons does not necessitate plainly bigoted and irrational laws targeting innocent people who aren't hurting anyone.
Because some people are bigots and are seeking avenues to express their bigotry. What's ironic is that the political right is all about "freedom" except when something offends their religious teachings and/or local social norms and then they are all about government intervention. Hypocritical to say the least. We've seen this play out before with interracial marriage, Jim Crow, gay marriage, women's lib, and many others. That's why we keep seeing these so-called "religious freedom laws" which are really just another attempt to legislate bigotry in a rather transparent disguise.
but America losing it's manufacturing base probably hit them just as hard.
Several problems with that statement.
1) America hasn't lost its manufacturing base. That is a myth unsupported by facts. American manufacturing is alive and well and produces over $3 TRILLION in goods annually. The manufacturing that has left is labor intensiveNobody's encouraging kids to go into EE anymore because there's no jobs to speak of (out side of the top end design work, which just doesn't employ that many). I'm not gonna buy my kid a bunch of electronics to learn for a career that finished going overseas in the 90s.
False. My day job is to run a manufacturing company that makes wire harnesses. Your prediction of the death of electronics could not be less true. I deal with this stuff on a daily basis. The auto industry is hiring all the electrical people they can get as we electrify cars. A typical car has many miles of wires and more electronics than any other device most of us use on a daily basis.
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The shuttle could have stayed in orbit for months if it didn't have a crew.
So what? It would still have been outrageously expensive to launch, overly complicated, unreliable (two failures in just over 100 missions), required substantial refurbishment between missions, etc. There simply are better ways to solve the problems the shuttle was supposed to tackle. It was a design by committee that ultimately failed in its primary purpose which was to reduce cost to orbit and allow more rapid launches. This isn't to say it wasn't a capable vehicle but the economics of it were poor and it held us back for several decades.
And I don't see this thing taking a full crew + 22 ton payload anytime soon.
Presumably it wasn't designed to do that so why is that a problem?
The shuttle was never used to its full capabilities.
Disagree. The problem with the shuttle was that it's capabilities weren't what they needed to be. Technically it was reusable but so much work and expense went into each refurbishment that they may as well have not bothered. The shuttle was supposed to reduce cost to orbit and it did nothing of the sort. The fact that it was capable of bringing items back from orbit is a minor detail which misses the big picture. The shuttle wasn't economically capable of solving the space junk problem which is really the only common reason to bring most items back from orbit aside from science experiments and astronauts. Once you make getting to orbit economical THEN it is worth worrying about bringing stuff back economically. The shuttle design was simply not capable of doing that economically.
Nothing in the AAP could have safely brought a satellite back from orbit as the shuttle managed on 4 occasions.
I said "along the lines of the AAP", as in something similar. It didn't have to be that program specifically. It's an example of a type of program that would have been more likely to succeed. It's all moot at this point and SpaceX (and some others) are finally making progress on the problems. It's just a shame we wasted so much time and money on the shuttle.
The USA managed to build and launch an airliner sized crewed reusable spaceplane called the shuttle in the 1970s.
At huge expense and suspect reliability. The shuttle never lived up to the expectations for the project. It was too expensive and complex. The shuttle wasn't in principle a bad idea but the final design was something we did because we could, not because it was the best approach. We probably should have done something more along the lines of the Apollo Applications Program had we known what we know now.
I'd love to know whats so cutting edge about the X35 that they're trying to keep this midget version of the shuttle secret.
Probably little or nothing to do with the external parts of the craft. Could be weapons, surveillance equipment, or it might just be a test bed for classified technology. It's staying in orbit for really long periods of time so that's probably a hint. Lots of potential reasons why it's all hush hush.
A drink or two a week? That's light drinking. I think you must move in social circles where people rarely drink at all.
Light drinking is having a few drinks a year. Moderate drinking is having a drink or two a week. If you rarely go a day without at least one drink I don't buy the argument that you are drinking "moderately".
In southern Germany, for example, it's not at all unusual to have a beer with your lunch, and another with dinner. In France or Italy, it will be a glass of wine - about the same amount of alcohol. That's 1-2 drinks per day, every day.
That is only moderate in the sense that it's less than someone who consumes dangerous amounts of alcohol. The region you are from does not change that fact nor do the local social norms.
As in all things in life, there's a trade-off. Alcohol helps people relax after a stressful day. It also has a few health benefits
So does exercise. That's a poor justification for drinking. If you want to drink just enjoy it and stop trying to justify it to the rest of us. It's like eating at McDonalds and then trying to claim that the burger does have some nutrients. I don't care if you drink but don't waste your breath telling me it has "health benefits" and that you need it to relax.
Heck, you can die from drinking too much water.
It's called hyponatremia or in really extreme cases, drowning. You can die from consuming too much of anything. There is nothing that in a large enough quantity isn't fatal and in a small enough quantity isn't harmless. That's not relevant to what constitutes moderate.
Well, that of course is your opinion.
That is the opinion of the majority of the US citizens. Or did you forget that he won the election but lost the vote?
Reigning in the federal government, both in terms of power and size, is something a lot of us want to see, along with fiscal responsibility.
Fine goals as an ideal but HOW you go about it matters greatly. Trump certainly is not going to be the guy to get you there. Fiscal responsibility? Don't make me laugh. The republicans haven't given a shit about fiscal responsibility since Reagan took office. That's why we have this absurdly large debt. They want to have their cake (medicare and a large military) and eat it too (no taxes) which simply isn't possible. The republicans had 8 years to propose sensible fixes to the Affordable Care Act and they did nothing. They simply refused to negotiate. Once Trump was in office they rush through a monstrous bill that will hurt millions of people and you call that fiscal responsibility? Fuck off...
Trump at least promised those kinds of things, and we all know Clinton couldn't care less about changing the status quo in those areas.
Trump never promised to reign in the federal government. You just assumed he did. In point of fact he has quite explicitly attempting to expand federal power influence to suit his world view. Disagree with Clinton's policies all you want but at least she wasn't a hypocrite about her views on the role government should play. Yes she wasn't interested in small government and a majority of the votes cast agreed with her that that was fine. Just because you favor small government doesn't mean you are right or that it's necessarily the best solution to our problems.
The "America first" concept also has merit in this day and age, as it sure seems our government is throwing billions of dollars every which way globally, to prop up and otherwise fund any number of governments and organizations.
"America First" is merely code for xenophobia and isolationism and protectionism. It's an appeal to nationalism instead of logic. The US is already the most powerful country in the world by most reasonable measures. It already IS america first. Pretending that we do not live in a global economy is absurd. Trump is promising nonsense like returning manufacturing jobs to the US that he cannot possibly make happen.
At least he has not appointed to his horse.
He has appointed a number of horses asses though...
Look, I think Trump has a chance to drive some good change for our country.
Nothing Trump has promised to do would be good for the country and quite a bit of his agenda will hurt a lot of people. While you are technically correct that he has a chance to drive good change he has given no indication that the change he wants is actually good. I think your optimism that Trump has any interest in being a positive agent for change is misplaced.
Please note that I thought the same of Obama, based on some of his campaign promises, but was sadly disappointed (I am not holding my breath for Trump).
Why? Trump is working very hard to make good on his (frankly horrifying) campaign promises. What you should hope for is that he fails in his attempts to make good on them. Furthermore pretending Obama and Trump are the chickens of a feather is patently ridiculous. The only thing they have in common is the job title. No president can make good on all their campaign promises. They aren't dictators even though Trump clearly has aspirations to become one.
That said, pretending that the Trump administration doesn't have serious problems at this point doesn't help anyone: Trump, the administration, or the American people.
The Trump administration IS a serious problem in addition to having serious problems.
He described Wray as "a man of impeccable credentials.
Translation: "He is loyal to Trump"
The 1920s called, they wanted their busybody-temperance movement back.
Your AA sponsor called and wondered why you weren't at the last meeting...
The UK government is funding studies like these by the boatload.
And that is relevant why? And what does it have to do with the definition of "moderate drinking"?
They were drinking this over the course of a week. It would be a high amount if consumed in a single day, but not when spread out over 7.
If you are on average consuming one or more pints of beer every day then that is a rather brisk consumption of the product. Just because they aren't typically drinking enough to get plastered doesn't make it moderate unless you are comparing them to alcoholics.
While 35% of those who didn't drink were found to have shrinkage on the right side of the hippocampus, the figure was 65% for those who drank on average between 14 and 21 units a week, and 77% for those who drank 30 or more units a week.
Per the article 14 units = approximately 6 pints of beer. Is that really moderate drinking? That's basically having a drink or more a day. Not alcoholic territory or anything but that's pretty steady consumption. Moderate drinking to my mind would be maybe a pint or two a week at most. Not having a drink with dinner every night. I'm not being critical. If someone enjoys a beer or glass of wine with dinner that's fine as long as they do so responsibly but it isn't what I consider moderate consumption.
Anyway, alcohol isn't good for you. News at 11... I'm pretty sure that anyone drinking a pint a day isn't overly concerned about the health effects, good or bad.
There's these things called anti-trust laws. You may have heard of them. The idea that Google is all powerful is exactly why Google is not at liberty to use its power.
As long as Google isn't specifically discriminating against WSJ it doesn't apply. It sounds like they have the same algorithm for WSJ articles as everyone else. No abuse of power here. WSJ is seemingly looking for special treatment from Google that they haven't paid Google for.
What is a search engine's purpose? To find you relevant information? Or to find you less relevant free information?
If the information is trapped behind a paywall then the search engine can't find it for you. At most it can hint that it might exist. The WSJ wants to have its cake and eat it too. They basically want google to provide free advertising for them. I have no interest in a subscription to WSJ and as far as I'm concerned any results trapped behind a paywall should rightfully be lower in the rankings of relevance. If I wanted a subscription to WSJ I would already have one. If WSJ wants to trade fewer total readers for more paying readers I get that and have no problem with it. But I also have no interest in google returning search results that are trapped behind paywalls because that is approximately useless to me.
Interesting combination of genetic fallacy and ad hominem-- especially interesting since you attacked their ability to think rationally while thinking irrationally yourself!
Exactly where do you think I was irrational? Brietbart and Fox News ARE right wing and they are not as a routine matter even remotely interested in actual facts. If they aren't interested in facts then they are irrational ("looney") as far as being a source of actual news. The are perfectly rational as businesses or as (vile) propaganda machines but they utterly fail as reasonable sources of information and/or opinions. Listen to most of the talking heads for either organization and tell me with a straight face that they are engaging in any sort of credible and honest journalism and I'll call you a liar.
And if you are going to quote fallacies at me, get them right. There is no genetic fallacy in my statement. I made no argument that because a story came from those sources it was de-facto false. Sometimes they actually do report factual news. I'm simply pointing out that as a general proposition Fox News and Brietbart are at best unreliable sources of objective news which is completely true. Furthermore an ad-hominem attack attacks the individual instead of their argument. Since in many cases Fox News and Brietbart present clearly and demonstrably false information to further an ideological position (and to make money doing so) there is no argument to rebut. They are simply knowingly telling lies and I'm calling them out on it.
In which cases, specifically?
Quite a few. You'd have a hard time naming a news source that hasn't failed to maintain journalistic standards from time to time. WSJ is no exception though as a general proposition they are better than most. I've read more than a few articles from the WSJ that were preposterous and poorly researched nonsense. I'm quite confident you could read any given edition of their paper and find a few yourself.
Currently you are correct about there being wide swaths of the workforce who can't work remotely even if they wanted to. Eventually though, we'll have remotely controlled surrogate robots that we can control from home to do any physical task that we can currently do ourselves.
What color is the sky on your planet? What you describe will not happen within the lifetime of anyone reading this if it ever happens at all. Even presuming the technical issues are resolvable within the next century (unlikely) the economics of it are very unlikely to be feasible. Do you have the vaguest comprehension of how expensive robots like what you describe would be? You really think a worker in a minimum wage job is going to be able to afford such a device? I think you have a very fanciful notion of what the future will look like. Put down the Wall-E DVD and step away.
The Bruce Willis movie Surrogates dealt with this theme. Although it's science fiction now, sometime in the next few decades the technology will be there, and it won't be so fictitious.
So you saw it in a sci-fi movie and decided it was inevitable? Here's a top tip for you. Most sci-fi is light on the science and heavy on the fiction. Just because someone can dream of an idea doesn't mean it will actually come to pass.
Many of our machinists and welding technicians rarely or never come into the shop. They travel to the job site, do their work, and spend the rest of their time at home.
If you are going to say someone works from home that means they actually do work they get paid for while in their own residence. What you are describing are essentially contractors that travel to a job site to do their work. Just because they don't work in the same place every day doesn't mean they work from home.
It's not usual for executives and management to be able to do some of their work outside the office. This does not describe anywhere close to half the work force in the vast majority of companies.
Being a right leaning news source. Doesn't automatically discredit it. I actually like getting a balance to the news just as long as it is thoughtful, and not propaganda.
Agreed. The problem is that FAR too much of the right wing media is nothing but fear mongering propaganda. The left has their versions too to be sure but the folks on the right have made an art form (and a ton of money) out of scaring conservative mostly-white voters. Fox News doesn't even pretend to have journalistic integrity. They simply spout whatever right wing talking points will keep their demographic of viewers glued to their channel. If this requires some talking face to shamelessly spout obvious and evidence free lies then they do that without even a hint of irony.
The WSJ generally manages to retain some semblance of journalistic integrity. Doesn't mean they are always correct or above reproach but they have a solid track record of mostly rational discourse and doing actual research to determine real facts. This differs sharply from companies like Fox News and Brietbart which have no discernible regard for truth unless it supports their existing ideology.
I know some people think that going into the office helps productivity or something through face-to-face communication, but I haven't had that experience at all as a developer.
You say that as if it is an opinion. It's a fact for most people, myself included. Most people are not IT workers and even fewer are software developers. Working remotely can work just fine for IT work in many circumstances. You cannot generalize that however.
You're sitting there in the huge amounts of traffic congestion, thinking what the heck is the point in all these people moving from A to B when they could be working from home?
You are assuming they would spend the time they currently spend commuting doing additional work for the company. Generally not true in the majority of cases. If they are paid hourly (around 60% of workers are) then you would have to pay them for that extra time worked. The commuting is done on their own time and on their own dime. The point of all that commuting is to facilitate the work that needs to be done, most of which cannot be done effectively (or managed effectively) remotely for most industries.
Then you go into the office just to be distracted all the time...
No, I go into the office because I literally cannot do my job outside of it. My job involves more than writing code or working quietly on a computer all day. I don't mean to minimize the importance of writing code - just pointing out that most people do other things for a living. Whatever distractions the office brings are more than outweighed by the productivity gains. Plus I have worked from home in the past and personally I find working at home FAR more distracting than working in my office.
several years of anti-net neutrality articles and opinion pieces, including ones written by paid shills of the telecom industry. (don't believe me, do your own research, it's not hard).
The WSJ is a reliably right wing media source. It's not a far-right loony bin like Brietbart or even Fox News - they have better editorial control than that - but they definitely have a political leaning. I consider them about as far as you can go on a right wing perspective without completely sacrificing rational thought. I consider them sort of the right wing equivalent of the New York Times. Useful sometimes but shouldn't be your only source of info.
As for doing their own research, you are wrong in the sense that it is hard and perhaps more importantly it is expensive. If it wasn't hard and expensive then what would be the point of paying WSJ journalists to do the leg work? That doesn't excuse them not doing it but it is actually hard to do well. You are right of course that for the WSJ to remain worthy of being read they need to actually do their own research and retain some semblance of journalistic integrity. In some cases they have definitely failed in that regard.
Ha ... what a laugh. I do plenty of engineering from home and it works out just fine.
That depends strongly on the sort of engineering you do. I do most of the engineering work at my company (a manufacturing company) and about the only thing I could do remotely would be some documentation writing like work instructions and emailing. It's not that I don't want to be able to work from home sometimes but it just isn't practical most of the time. I need to communicate with my co-workers quite a lot (numerous times daily in most cases) and only a handful are reliably sitting at a desk with a phone or email handy. The engineering I do is mostly process engineering so I need to be able to see the products flowing through the plant and I cannot really do that effectively from home.
Just my situation of course but I'm hardly unique.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the trend towards remote working "is inexorable" in America's labor force, with 43% of workers now doing at least some of their work from home...
In select industries among white collar workers perhaps but as a general proposition? I don't buy it. It's trivial to name entire industries where it isn't even possible to do much in the way of useful work from home even if you wanted to. Restaurant work, many types of nursing, manufacturing assembly work, maintenance, machining, retail sales, most farming, mining, foundry workers, drivers, etc. The list goes on and on and almost certainly accounts for well over half the work force. Unless they are talking about trivial stuff like answering emails etc from home the 43% statistic doesn't pass the smell test. I guarantee you that 43% of Walmart workers are not working from home.
Remote working is a hugely useful thing and fits a lot of IT work nicely but it doesn't generalize to every job. Speaking for my job, aside from answering the occasional email I couldn't possibly do my job at home. (I'm the GM of a small manufacturing company) We have two people in our company that can usefully work away from the office some of the time - our sales and purchasing managers - and even they have to be in the office a good chuck of time. We might be able to expand that to select IT and accounting functions as we get larger and maybe certain bits of engineering but that won't cover anywhere near even half of 43% of our work force. Everyone else is pretty much as useless as tits on a bull away from the office, myself included. That's pretty typical of manufacturing companies.
We will likely never have a significant number of self driving cars. Once we have autonomous vehicles, there are plenty of better ways to transport people.
I wouldn't be so fast about assuming that to be universally true. I think what will happen is that autonomous technology will incrementally get added to existing cars and then eventually we will have a lot of self driving vehicles on the road. Not all of them will be completely self driving for some time to come if ever but probably most of them will incorporate the tech over the coming decades.
If you can call a vehicle on demand, why would you call a huge 4 person vehicle for 1 person?
Because it is unlikely to come to pass that you will be able to call a vehicle on demand in a lot of places. Furthermore the type of vehicle needed at any given time can vary wildly. There are times when a little 1 or 2 seat car with no storage is fine. Other times you might need to haul a bunch of stuff home from the lumber yard and need a very different sort of vehicle. Furthermore what do you do when there isn't a car immediately available. Most places in the USA you cannot simply walk out your front door and hail a cab even today. What might make sense in Manhattan won't make much sense in rural Kansas. Don't get me wrong, I think ride sharing will be a thing just like taxis are today, but I don't think people are going to stop owning cars any time in the foreseeable future.
Why would I go to the grocery store when the grocery store can bring the food to me?
Because you want to pick out your groceries. I don't know if you've ever spent any time at a meat counter or in the produce section but there is pretty wide variability in the products. I don't really trust someone else to not pick me a bunch of pre-wilted lettuce or meat that isn't sketchy. Sure you can order commodity boxed goods with reasonable confidence but not everything. Plus I don't need a self driving car to have groceries brought to me - companies like Amazon are already dealing with that problem. We go to the grocery store because it is economically efficient to do so. I don't see self driving cars solving that problem.
Autonomous vehicles also means that lawn mowers can be centrally located, they can drive to your house, mow your lawn and return to a central location.
How would this be cheaper than what we currently have? You are adding a huge amount of complexity to a rather primitive and cheap device. Are you talking about lawn care services or just the little push mower people keep in the garage?
Complex robots of all kinds become more practical if they are able to transport themself.
True but that complexity has to come with an economic benefit attached. It's not just a technology problem, it's also an economic problem. Self driving cars are potentially viable because they can eliminate some pretty substantial opportunity costs in regards to human transport. It's not so clear that something like a lawn mower would carry similar benefits.
A law against a man in a lady's restroom is to prevent sexual assault.
We are preventing sexual assault from a trans-woman being in a men's restroom? Or a gay man in a men's bathroom? Or a gay trans man in a women's restroom? I think you haven't really thought this through. The reason we have gender separated bathrooms is far more complicated than prevention of sexual assault. It has a lot more to do with privacy and social comfort than the relatively low risk of assault in nearly all circumstances.
Not all instances of reckless driving, drunk driving, speeding, and driving on the wrong side of a divided highway cause death or injury; the laws are still proper.
By that logic you are arguing that Jim Crow laws were proper because some black people might assault some white people. Just because a problem could arise it doesn't automatically follow that it makes a law just or proper.
A law against a man in a lady's restroom is to prevent sexual assault. Not all cases of a man in a lady's restroom result in sexual assault, a law preventing a man in a lady's restroom is still proper.
Your concept of gender fails to account for the fact that it isn't binary. Without even getting into sexual preference there are people who are hermaphrodites. Genetically they have parts from both men and women. There also are people who have had their secondary sexual characteristics surgically altered to the other gender. Gender isn't as simple as many people like yourself seem to believe it to be.
People being secure in their persons is essential to a civilized society, it is of far more importance than "health care, job creation, infrastructure" (only the last of which is a valid government function.)
Oh bullshit. Government has a lot of functions beyond infrastructure. If the only valid government function was infrastructure the US Constitution would be a lot simpler than it is. Furthermore people being secure in their persons does not necessitate plainly bigoted and irrational laws targeting innocent people who aren't hurting anyone.
Seriously. Why is this an issue?
Because some people are bigots and are seeking avenues to express their bigotry. What's ironic is that the political right is all about "freedom" except when something offends their religious teachings and/or local social norms and then they are all about government intervention. Hypocritical to say the least. We've seen this play out before with interracial marriage, Jim Crow, gay marriage, women's lib, and many others. That's why we keep seeing these so-called "religious freedom laws" which are really just another attempt to legislate bigotry in a rather transparent disguise.
but America losing it's manufacturing base probably hit them just as hard.
Several problems with that statement.
1) America hasn't lost its manufacturing base. That is a myth unsupported by facts. American manufacturing is alive and well and produces over $3 TRILLION in goods annually. The manufacturing that has left is labor intensiveNobody's encouraging kids to go into EE anymore because there's no jobs to speak of (out side of the top end design work, which just doesn't employ that many). I'm not gonna buy my kid a bunch of electronics to learn for a career that finished going overseas in the 90s.
False. My day job is to run a manufacturing company that makes wire harnesses. Your prediction of the death of electronics could not be less true. I deal with this stuff on a daily basis. The auto industry is hiring all the electrical people they can get as we electrify cars. A typical car has many miles of wires and more electronics than any other device most of us use on a daily basis.