Thanks for your anecdote, which comprehensively contradicts all other research into abnormal psychology.
You could bother to look up the definition for yourself in any clinical textbook and you'd find that he was largely correct although the term sociopath isn't really used by professionals. Furthermore in both cases the definition has to do with an inability to form emotional attachments or feel empathy towards others. That has NOTHING to do with enjoying rough contact sports. The mere fact that someone enjoys a rough contact sport does not and never did mean that a person has an inability to form emotional attachments, feel empathy or that they are manipulative.
Oh, and if you like hitting people, you're violent. It's sort of the definition of the word. And hitting people is not the same thing as enjoying physical activity or contact.
You will find that most of the male population enjoys rough contact sports to some degree. If you don't personally, that is fine but you ARE an exception. Sports like (american) football, MMA, boxing, rugby, hockey etc are popular in significant part precisely because of their rough nature. Does that make the participant's violent? I suppose to a degree but sports are an appropriate outlet. And you are wrong that it isn't the same thing as enjoying physical activity and contact - it is a subset of those things. What you need to worry about is people who hit others at inappropriate times. If you step on a football field, you know what you are getting into and accept the risks involved which may include you getting hit rather hard. This does not make the person doing the hitting psychotic, sociopathic or otherwise mentally ill.
Apparently you don't know what the word sociopath means. Enjoying playing rough contact sports does not make you a sociopath. In fact off the competitive field most athletes who are good at contact sports like football, MMA, wrestling, etc are about as far from being sociopaths as you can get. I've been a wrestler and a wrestling coach for about 35 years so I speak from long first hand experience. Had you bothered to speak with anyone actually involved at those sports you'll find that most of them are very calm, caring, decent people.
When I go too long without physical contact I'm not a pleasant person to be around
Funny I would have thought the opposite.
That's because you made some ill founded assumptions about something you plainly know nothing about.
hus changing your email address could make all kinds of services you've registered for much less useful, and if you've been online for over 20 years like I have that is literally thousands of sites.
Highly unlikely you actually use logins involving your email on "thousands of sites". Unless you are really unusual you have a few dozen you deal with with any regularity and the rest you can look up or reset if you need to. I've had email addresses for over 20 years myself and have rotated email addresses numerous times. It's really not that big a deal. Furthermore if you want to keep one email address for all time buy a domain, set up a forwarder and use whatever backend suits you. Gmail, yahoo, thunderbird, whatever. Then you aren't tied to some obsolete old email address and you can change backends whenever you like.
I have dozens of web accounts, for which I use my yahoo address. It would be a huge PITA to have to change everything. And besides, what would I gain?
You can gain having an email address you control which you forward to whatever back end suits you. Why have a gmail or yahoo address when you can have a forwarding address you control for the rest of time instead? THAT is what you gain. Oh it's a bit of a bother at first but I've done it a few times and it really isn't a big deal looking back. You still can keep your old yahoo or aol address if you want to but you don't have to be tied to it.
If you have an aol address, it probably means that you have been online longer than most, and have no compelling reason to go though the considerable trouble changing your email address.
"Considerable trouble"? Basically you open a new account (Gmail or whatever) and then have that account check your old AOL account (via POP or IMAP) for a while. Anyone you actively correspond with gets replies from your new account. If you don't correspond with them via email within a year they probably don't really matter to you anyway. Shut down the old account after a year or two - or don't. It's not much trouble at all really.
What astonishes me is people who use AOL or Gmail similar accounts for their business accounts. Pay the $10 a year and set up a domain. It looks really bad to use an AOL account for your job.
Bluntly, then they shouldn't have kids -- but I don't think that's the issue.
Whether they should or should not have children is irrelevant. The fact is that they do and that child needs to be educated.
It's very difficult for a diligent single parent to 'assist their kids in succeeding', never mind one who's more apathetic.
The difficulty or lack thereof is again irrelevant. The child needs to be educated and simply dismissing the problem because of some apathetic parents is dodging the issue. Yes parental involvement matters but sometimes it doesn't happen so what do we do about that? It takes a pretty cold person to just dismiss the problem as unsolvable and blame the parents for everything.
Schools have become "food" programs where kids get 2 of their meals a day. Many are open over the summer just to provide food.
Did it occur to you that there is a good reason for that? Children need to be fed and schools for better or worse are well positioned to be a part of the solution for that. A lot of people struggle financially and getting food on the table isn't a trivial thing sometimes. Schools sometimes need to be more than just a place to learn about math and reading.
Maybe we need discuss taking kids away from parents who cant or wont provide for their kids vs. the alternative of raising an ever increasing population of people who cannot or will not take care of themselves and bring in to the world children whom they are not equipped to provide adequate care.
Sigh... Taking a child away from a parent merely because they are struggling financially is about the most heartless and brutal thing I can think of. My parents were poor at one point in their lives and you think I should have been taken away from them for that? Wow... If you think putting tens of thousands of children in foster care because they have poor parent is any kind of a sane solution then you are an imbecile.
Umm, sorry to disturb your "conservatives are evil" rant, but then how do you explain the epically failing schools of many american inner cities? Cities that have been run top to bottom, city council to school district by liberals.
In no particular order: corrupt school boards, lack of funding, poor teacher quality (hard to get good teachers in areas perceived as high crime), disinterested parents, cultural aversion to education, externalities like drugs and crime, and the list goes on.
"Conservatives" are also for school choice, charter schools, school vouchers, all of which are designed to empower parents in those failing inner city districts some hope.
Bullshit. First off none of those positions supported by republicans are genuine efforts to improve those school districts. They are efforts to cause them to fail and close and oh by the way de-power teacher's unions which are a big part of the support for the Democrats. If you are going to try to convince me that Republicans give a damn about municipalities that pretty much never vote for them then you'll need some iron clad evidence.
Charter schools are nothing but cash grabs which weaken traditional public schools. I work in a school district (part time) with teachers who have taught in charter schools. They have NOTHING to do with improving school outcomes and everything to do with profit. Charter schools frequently are for-profit and I assure you that they only care about student outcomes insofar as it keeps the funding going. School choice merely results in a exodus from struggling school districts causing them to fail even faster, often without a credible backup plan in place. School funding is typically based on attendance and reducing attendance just causes financially struggling schools to struggle even more. School choice isn't a choice when you don't have the money to get to a different district which many families do not so you end up with students who have the means to leave going and those without means being stuck in an ever worsening school district.
So, I see you carefully draw boundaries around the amount of good done to support your point.
Not drawing any boundaries around the amount of good. Their actions stand alone and speak for themselves. I'm merely pointing out that in many cases their charitable acts come with strings attached. Feeding the hungry is not the same act as feeding the hungry while proselytizing to them.
Take religion out of it altogether. Would you trust a for-profit company to be charitable without any ulterior motivations? I wouldn't. Nor would I trust a religious organization for the same reasons. Doesn't mean their actions are bad but they aren't entirely trustworthy either.
But you are assuming that wars 'in the name of religion' would not have happened regardless of religion, while history shows that wars are not a religious based phenomena of society.
"Wars are not a religious based phenomena"? Bullshit. There are countless wars that have been started in whole or in part based on religious dogma and tribalism. They are so numerous it's basically pointless to enumerate them. Religion is not the only reason wars are started but it's one of the most common ones. Religious conflicts are basically tribal wars with the tribes being the followers.
I also see you conveniently dismiss the good that religious people do, while not dismissing the bad. Its nice to rationalize that away despite the facts.
I don't dismiss it, I just recognize that the motives are not always pure. A good work done for marketing is still a good work (usually). But it would be a better work if it were done simply because it was a good work without any ulterior motives. The same would apply if it were done by a secular organization. A company that does charity for marketing purposes still is doing charity but it's not wholesome in the same way it would be if they didn't try to benefit themselves in the process.
Maybe if people didn't assume religion is a root cause, but rather a symptom or tool, we'd deal with it better.
Oh religion is a symptom of a problem. It's a symptom of human insecurity, tribalism, and gullibility among other things. Organized religion is a means for some people to control and gain power over others. Thought I had made that clear but if I hadn't, my bad. Religion is a definitely a symptom of deeper problems in the human psyche but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem itself.
The war in the Middle East has grown way beyond a religious conflict.
No it hasn't. Almost all the conflicts there are basically tribal conflicts and those tribes have their roots in religion. It's not solely about religion but that is the core of it.
Are you claiming nothing bad has ever been done in the name of science?
I'm not aware of any wars or acts of genocide that have been conducted in the name of science. Of course I didn't bring science up at all so that's kind of irrelevant.
If you tried, could you find good things done in the name of religion?
Sure but almost always with disingenuous motivations usually related to marketing. Incredible amounts of charity work has been done by religious organizations. But this work is done at the end of the day as a marketing effort. Offering a hot meal to someone who is hungry is wonderful. Offering a hot meal and a bible is no longer charity - it is marketing. Doing a work of art celebrating something you personally believe in is fine. Putting it in a church to impress the public is marketing.
So yes I can find good works done in the name of religion but I have a much harder time finding good works done in the name of religion that lack ulterior motives. Good works done under false pretenses loses some of their luster.
We live in a world of empiricism, where the concepts of faith and religion are - if not outright mocked and denigrated - are under constant pressure.
Not in the USA we don't. Go to certain parts of this country and openly mock religion and let me know how that works out for you. There are several states where it is technically illegal for me to hold public office if I am an atheist. There mere fact that close to 3/4 of people openly are affiliated (at least loosely) with some form of organized religion proves that your thesis is nonsense.
The benefits that faith brings to individuals and societies are trivialized.
Because in most cases they are trivial in comparison to the problems organized religion brings. There is no benefit that religion brings that necessitates belonging to an organized religion. We're supposed to forgive and forget all the misery, bigotry, tribalism and wars caused by religion just because they open some hospitals and food banks which are really just thinly disguised efforts to convert others to their tribe? I'm supposed to ignore the idiots trying to push their prayers in public schools or theology in the science classroom? I'm supposed to be ok with priests fondling children and never going to jail for it? I'm supposed to overlook the continual and ongoing wars between various religious groups across the world?
I believe people need faith in proportion to their misery.
And I disagree with you on this. People do not have a biological need to believe in fancy mythologies even in times of stress. It demonstrably is not required. Some find comfort in doing so (which is fine) but then some inevitably feel the compulsion to try to force their bizarre ideas on the rest of the world. If believing in something irrational helps you get through the day I have no problem with that as long as you keep it to yourself.
Turn on the evening news tonight. Tell me how many stories you hear that at their core is some form of religious fighting or tribal bigotry. Israel/Palestine. Shiite/Sunni. Most acts of terrorism. Gay bashing. Anti-abortion protests. So called religious restoration acts (actually bigotry in disguise). Child abuse by priests. Oppression of women. It goes on and on. Tribal warfare, bigotry, hatred. While you don't need religion for these things, there can be no argument that religion frequently exaggerates these conflicts.
Would you be comfortable around a group of people who greatly outnumber you and who base a big part of their world view on something so fundamentally irrational and tribal and many of whom have a demonstrated propensity for violence?
Provided the crate manages to stay in place (not shatter under the load, no matter how it is secured), I guess you will be safer but the dog will still be hamburger meat.
If the accident is severe enough to shatter a crate, the last thing I need is a 50lb dog carcass flying around the cabin. Crates can help to some degree in some accidents but you are right in that the crate is more to protect me than the dog.
When it comes to transporting a dog in a car, there may be some ideas that keep them from jumping out the window or off the bed of a truck, but I've yet to see anything that would protect them in a crash.
It also prevents the dog from interfering with the operation of the vehicle, causing messes in places that are tough to clean, and keeps the dog in the vehicle until I am ready to release him. There are more reasons to crate a dog during transport than just accident safety.
Or I can just keep his head inside the window and not have to buy a stupid accessory for my dog while keeping him safe and secure. I promise you that there is no need for him to stick his head out the window of a moving car. My dog likes to do all sorts of things that are not safe. Just because he might enjoy it doesn't make it a good idea.
You can also get nice harnesses that clip in like a seatbelt and keep the dog from being a projectile. And he can still stick his head out the window.
If he can still stick his head out the window the harness is not secured tightly enough to keep him from becoming a projectile. A harness with a long tether is pointless in a car because he can still be launched. It would be functionally identical to having a seatbelt for you with several feet of slack - you may as well not wear one at that point. Plus it doesn't keep him from getting debris in his eyes. There is a very good reason why we have windshields or why drivers wear goggles when a windshield is not present. Those same reasons apply to dogs.
AOL owned 55% of TW. Did TW spin off AOL or did AOL, acting as the controlling entity of TW, spin off a dying product they called AOL.
AOL shareholders owned 55% of TW at the time of the merger. That control structure changed almost immediately but technically it was AOL buying TW despite TW actually being a much bigger entity in terms of assets and revenues at the time. TW management really ended up controlling the combined company so not long after the merger most of AOL's leadership was pushed aside.
As for your second question, it's a distinction without a difference. The entity that was AOL Time Warner in 2002 wrote off $99 billion (with a b) in goodwill from their balance sheet, basically admitting that the merger was a failure. It was a great example of company cultures failing to mesh plus AOL was wildly overvalued at the time they bought TW. When the entity that is now AOL Inc was spun off six years ago it was merely the completion of the failure of the merger. AOL Inc is NOT a dying product, but doesn't really fit with Time Warner strategically or culturally so it made sense to put it into a separate company. This benefited both shareholders and the companies themselves I think.
You'll note I never mentioned realism or accuracy. Those things are not always possible and frequently are dis-incentivized. There will be plans and financial projections but only an idiot would take them at face value. The ONLY thing that will be completely correct to say about the plans is that they will be wrong. Maybe by a little, maybe by a lot but they will be wrong.
Many of us have adjusted our side mirrors correctly, to point far more outwards than what most people do. Or even attach dead angle mirrors.
And some of us do that AND look directly to ensure what is behind us is actually clear because even well adjusted mirrors sometimes don't permit full elimination of blind spots in many vehicles.
Never depend on being able to watch out the rear side window. That's a bad habit you need to stop.
We're going to disagree on that. If I have visibility in any direction outside of a vehicle I'm going to make full use of it when circumstances allow me to do so safely. I would say you should never ignore any means of increasing your situational awareness. There are times when it is 100% appropriate to use rear windows to observe what is going on around your vehicle while driving. There also are times when you absolutely shouldn't. Good drivers know the difference.
It may be blocked or not even there (pickup trucks).
If it isn't there then it isn't an issue. There are some cars that have absolutely terrible visibility but that doesn't mean you don't use it when you have it.
And by turning your head, you lose sight of what's even more dangerous - what's ahead of you.
Pro-tip: You don't turn your head when there is a reasonable probability of hitting something in front of you. If turning your head for long enough to check your blind spot is dangerous in all cases then you aren't a very good driver because it should only take a fraction of a second and can easily be done quite safely. Some vehicles simply are not equipped well enough to eliminate blind spots and the ability to check directly and safely is an important driving skill. Ideally it shouldn't be necessary but the simple fact is that sometimes it is required in the real world.
You are correct, I do use the non-driver side back seat window. But the driver side back seat window is totally blocked by my head rest and not viewable.
What do you drive? I'd like to make a note never to buy that car because I've never been in a vehicle I couldn't turn my head and see out the driver's side rear window well enough to make useful driving decisions. Certainly never such that I was blocked by the headrest. The B-pillar sometimes gets in the way but not the seat itself.
Your dog is deprived of a simple pleasure. Hooray for you.
My dog arrives safely at his destination and won't become a 50lb projectile that could kill both of us in an accident. He also won't get any debris in his eyes that I'll have to have a vet remove later. My dog has plenty of joy in his life and I promise you will not know he missed anything by keeping his head inside the window.
Right, then in the case of projects receiving public funding, they subtract a percentage to make it palatable before presenting it.:)
Oh they're much more clever than that. They'll tinker with the underlying assumptions, cost of capital, expected returns, net present value, and more. You'll find it stuffed with more BS than a cattle farm. Government budgets are notoriously full of bogus assumptions and outright fabrications because they know nobody who gives a damn is really going to read them and even if they did most wouldn't understand it anyway. Pretty much every financial projection you have ever read about is wrong - the only question is whether their model was even close. I've done my share of them and it's really hard to get them right - borderline impossible really. You're really just hoping to get a model that is close enough to be useful.
Sad thing is that good financial analysis is super important and really hard to do well. Some of the brightest people I know do it for a living and are pretty good at it but unfortunately even a talented and honest person will come up with inaccurate models because the real world is just that hard to predict. Unfortunately a lot of people doing financial modeling are neither talented nor honest.
When you say "EVERY project like this", what kind of project are you referring to?
I mean every project with more than a trivial amount of capital required. EVERY project. Public, private, doesn't matter. Building a warehouse, a building, an assembly line, or a machine? There will be a budget and capital analysis along with an ROI analysis if a profit is involved. If you are talking more than a few tens of thousands of dollars (and often less), odds are someone has done a financial analysis on it. It would be very unusual for such an analysis to not be done.
The F-35 is an example of a taxpayer-funded project that has gone way over budget.
The only thing you can be certain of in any budget is that it is wrong. The only question is by how much it will be wrong. Some budget are very close to reality, others not so much. Some are created in an honest and earnest attempt to be correct and conservative. Others are disingenuous bits of garbage barely worth the paper they are written on. The F-35 is a pretty much textbook example of a budget gone wrong.
I don't see any point in looking at the estimated cost of a project that hasn't even begun yet.
Speaking as someone who does such cost estimating professionally, I can assure you that EVERY project like this has the costs evaluated long before anyone breaks ground. A company would have to be insane to not have conducted the due diligence on every aspect of a project of this scale. They have to evaluate if there is a satisfactory ROI. They have to have some sort of idea what it ought to cost so that they can know how things are going. They have to budget the money. Of course there will be cost variances but you can't even begin to manage a project like this unless you have some idea what it should cost.
That is $15/hr. I hope no one thinks paying that for any kuind of critical security infrastructure is a good idea. They could be bribed with things like free movie tickets or a Big Mac.
What it means is that they hired some Mexicans or other foreigners to do the grunt work of attaching things to walls so they wouldn't have to pay much. Any time you have hard grunt labor where you want to pay as little as possible (picking in fields, construction, etc) chances are non-trivial that they are paying someone who was born in another country to do it.
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Thanks for your anecdote, which comprehensively contradicts all other research into abnormal psychology.
You could bother to look up the definition for yourself in any clinical textbook and you'd find that he was largely correct although the term sociopath isn't really used by professionals. Furthermore in both cases the definition has to do with an inability to form emotional attachments or feel empathy towards others. That has NOTHING to do with enjoying rough contact sports. The mere fact that someone enjoys a rough contact sport does not and never did mean that a person has an inability to form emotional attachments, feel empathy or that they are manipulative.
Oh, and if you like hitting people, you're violent. It's sort of the definition of the word. And hitting people is not the same thing as enjoying physical activity or contact.
You will find that most of the male population enjoys rough contact sports to some degree. If you don't personally, that is fine but you ARE an exception. Sports like (american) football, MMA, boxing, rugby, hockey etc are popular in significant part precisely because of their rough nature. Does that make the participant's violent? I suppose to a degree but sports are an appropriate outlet. And you are wrong that it isn't the same thing as enjoying physical activity and contact - it is a subset of those things. What you need to worry about is people who hit others at inappropriate times. If you step on a football field, you know what you are getting into and accept the risks involved which may include you getting hit rather hard. This does not make the person doing the hitting psychotic, sociopathic or otherwise mentally ill.
The mind of the true sociopath.
Apparently you don't know what the word sociopath means. Enjoying playing rough contact sports does not make you a sociopath. In fact off the competitive field most athletes who are good at contact sports like football, MMA, wrestling, etc are about as far from being sociopaths as you can get. I've been a wrestler and a wrestling coach for about 35 years so I speak from long first hand experience. Had you bothered to speak with anyone actually involved at those sports you'll find that most of them are very calm, caring, decent people.
When I go too long without physical contact I'm not a pleasant person to be around
Funny I would have thought the opposite.
That's because you made some ill founded assumptions about something you plainly know nothing about.
hus changing your email address could make all kinds of services you've registered for much less useful, and if you've been online for over 20 years like I have that is literally thousands of sites.
Highly unlikely you actually use logins involving your email on "thousands of sites". Unless you are really unusual you have a few dozen you deal with with any regularity and the rest you can look up or reset if you need to. I've had email addresses for over 20 years myself and have rotated email addresses numerous times. It's really not that big a deal. Furthermore if you want to keep one email address for all time buy a domain, set up a forwarder and use whatever backend suits you. Gmail, yahoo, thunderbird, whatever. Then you aren't tied to some obsolete old email address and you can change backends whenever you like.
I have dozens of web accounts, for which I use my yahoo address. It would be a huge PITA to have to change everything. And besides, what would I gain?
You can gain having an email address you control which you forward to whatever back end suits you. Why have a gmail or yahoo address when you can have a forwarding address you control for the rest of time instead? THAT is what you gain. Oh it's a bit of a bother at first but I've done it a few times and it really isn't a big deal looking back. You still can keep your old yahoo or aol address if you want to but you don't have to be tied to it.
If you have an aol address, it probably means that you have been online longer than most, and have no compelling reason to go though the considerable trouble changing your email address.
"Considerable trouble"? Basically you open a new account (Gmail or whatever) and then have that account check your old AOL account (via POP or IMAP) for a while. Anyone you actively correspond with gets replies from your new account. If you don't correspond with them via email within a year they probably don't really matter to you anyway. Shut down the old account after a year or two - or don't. It's not much trouble at all really.
What astonishes me is people who use AOL or Gmail similar accounts for their business accounts. Pay the $10 a year and set up a domain. It looks really bad to use an AOL account for your job.
Bluntly, then they shouldn't have kids -- but I don't think that's the issue.
Whether they should or should not have children is irrelevant. The fact is that they do and that child needs to be educated.
It's very difficult for a diligent single parent to 'assist their kids in succeeding', never mind one who's more apathetic.
The difficulty or lack thereof is again irrelevant. The child needs to be educated and simply dismissing the problem because of some apathetic parents is dodging the issue. Yes parental involvement matters but sometimes it doesn't happen so what do we do about that? It takes a pretty cold person to just dismiss the problem as unsolvable and blame the parents for everything.
Schools have become "food" programs where kids get 2 of their meals a day. Many are open over the summer just to provide food.
Did it occur to you that there is a good reason for that? Children need to be fed and schools for better or worse are well positioned to be a part of the solution for that. A lot of people struggle financially and getting food on the table isn't a trivial thing sometimes. Schools sometimes need to be more than just a place to learn about math and reading.
Maybe we need discuss taking kids away from parents who cant or wont provide for their kids vs. the alternative of raising an ever increasing population of people who cannot or will not take care of themselves and bring in to the world children whom they are not equipped to provide adequate care.
Sigh... Taking a child away from a parent merely because they are struggling financially is about the most heartless and brutal thing I can think of. My parents were poor at one point in their lives and you think I should have been taken away from them for that? Wow... If you think putting tens of thousands of children in foster care because they have poor parent is any kind of a sane solution then you are an imbecile.
Umm, sorry to disturb your "conservatives are evil" rant, but then how do you explain the epically failing schools of many american inner cities? Cities that have been run top to bottom, city council to school district by liberals.
In no particular order: corrupt school boards, lack of funding, poor teacher quality (hard to get good teachers in areas perceived as high crime), disinterested parents, cultural aversion to education, externalities like drugs and crime, and the list goes on.
"Conservatives" are also for school choice, charter schools, school vouchers, all of which are designed to empower parents in those failing inner city districts some hope.
Bullshit. First off none of those positions supported by republicans are genuine efforts to improve those school districts. They are efforts to cause them to fail and close and oh by the way de-power teacher's unions which are a big part of the support for the Democrats. If you are going to try to convince me that Republicans give a damn about municipalities that pretty much never vote for them then you'll need some iron clad evidence.
Charter schools are nothing but cash grabs which weaken traditional public schools. I work in a school district (part time) with teachers who have taught in charter schools. They have NOTHING to do with improving school outcomes and everything to do with profit. Charter schools frequently are for-profit and I assure you that they only care about student outcomes insofar as it keeps the funding going. School choice merely results in a exodus from struggling school districts causing them to fail even faster, often without a credible backup plan in place. School funding is typically based on attendance and reducing attendance just causes financially struggling schools to struggle even more. School choice isn't a choice when you don't have the money to get to a different district which many families do not so you end up with students who have the means to leave going and those without means being stuck in an ever worsening school district.
So, I see you carefully draw boundaries around the amount of good done to support your point.
Not drawing any boundaries around the amount of good. Their actions stand alone and speak for themselves. I'm merely pointing out that in many cases their charitable acts come with strings attached. Feeding the hungry is not the same act as feeding the hungry while proselytizing to them.
Take religion out of it altogether. Would you trust a for-profit company to be charitable without any ulterior motivations? I wouldn't. Nor would I trust a religious organization for the same reasons. Doesn't mean their actions are bad but they aren't entirely trustworthy either.
But you are assuming that wars 'in the name of religion' would not have happened regardless of religion, while history shows that wars are not a religious based phenomena of society.
"Wars are not a religious based phenomena"? Bullshit. There are countless wars that have been started in whole or in part based on religious dogma and tribalism. They are so numerous it's basically pointless to enumerate them. Religion is not the only reason wars are started but it's one of the most common ones. Religious conflicts are basically tribal wars with the tribes being the followers.
I also see you conveniently dismiss the good that religious people do, while not dismissing the bad. Its nice to rationalize that away despite the facts.
I don't dismiss it, I just recognize that the motives are not always pure. A good work done for marketing is still a good work (usually). But it would be a better work if it were done simply because it was a good work without any ulterior motives. The same would apply if it were done by a secular organization. A company that does charity for marketing purposes still is doing charity but it's not wholesome in the same way it would be if they didn't try to benefit themselves in the process.
Maybe if people didn't assume religion is a root cause, but rather a symptom or tool, we'd deal with it better.
Oh religion is a symptom of a problem. It's a symptom of human insecurity, tribalism, and gullibility among other things. Organized religion is a means for some people to control and gain power over others. Thought I had made that clear but if I hadn't, my bad. Religion is a definitely a symptom of deeper problems in the human psyche but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem itself.
The war in the Middle East has grown way beyond a religious conflict.
No it hasn't. Almost all the conflicts there are basically tribal conflicts and those tribes have their roots in religion. It's not solely about religion but that is the core of it.
Are you claiming nothing bad has ever been done in the name of science?
I'm not aware of any wars or acts of genocide that have been conducted in the name of science. Of course I didn't bring science up at all so that's kind of irrelevant.
If you tried, could you find good things done in the name of religion?
Sure but almost always with disingenuous motivations usually related to marketing. Incredible amounts of charity work has been done by religious organizations. But this work is done at the end of the day as a marketing effort. Offering a hot meal to someone who is hungry is wonderful. Offering a hot meal and a bible is no longer charity - it is marketing. Doing a work of art celebrating something you personally believe in is fine. Putting it in a church to impress the public is marketing.
So yes I can find good works done in the name of religion but I have a much harder time finding good works done in the name of religion that lack ulterior motives. Good works done under false pretenses loses some of their luster.
We live in a world of empiricism, where the concepts of faith and religion are - if not outright mocked and denigrated - are under constant pressure.
Not in the USA we don't. Go to certain parts of this country and openly mock religion and let me know how that works out for you. There are several states where it is technically illegal for me to hold public office if I am an atheist. There mere fact that close to 3/4 of people openly are affiliated (at least loosely) with some form of organized religion proves that your thesis is nonsense.
The benefits that faith brings to individuals and societies are trivialized.
Because in most cases they are trivial in comparison to the problems organized religion brings. There is no benefit that religion brings that necessitates belonging to an organized religion. We're supposed to forgive and forget all the misery, bigotry, tribalism and wars caused by religion just because they open some hospitals and food banks which are really just thinly disguised efforts to convert others to their tribe? I'm supposed to ignore the idiots trying to push their prayers in public schools or theology in the science classroom? I'm supposed to be ok with priests fondling children and never going to jail for it? I'm supposed to overlook the continual and ongoing wars between various religious groups across the world?
I believe people need faith in proportion to their misery.
And I disagree with you on this. People do not have a biological need to believe in fancy mythologies even in times of stress. It demonstrably is not required. Some find comfort in doing so (which is fine) but then some inevitably feel the compulsion to try to force their bizarre ideas on the rest of the world. If believing in something irrational helps you get through the day I have no problem with that as long as you keep it to yourself.
maybe the relig-a-phobes will calm down now.
Turn on the evening news tonight. Tell me how many stories you hear that at their core is some form of religious fighting or tribal bigotry. Israel/Palestine. Shiite/Sunni. Most acts of terrorism. Gay bashing. Anti-abortion protests. So called religious restoration acts (actually bigotry in disguise). Child abuse by priests. Oppression of women. It goes on and on. Tribal warfare, bigotry, hatred. While you don't need religion for these things, there can be no argument that religion frequently exaggerates these conflicts.
Would you be comfortable around a group of people who greatly outnumber you and who base a big part of their world view on something so fundamentally irrational and tribal and many of whom have a demonstrated propensity for violence?
Provided the crate manages to stay in place (not shatter under the load, no matter how it is secured), I guess you will be safer but the dog will still be hamburger meat.
If the accident is severe enough to shatter a crate, the last thing I need is a 50lb dog carcass flying around the cabin. Crates can help to some degree in some accidents but you are right in that the crate is more to protect me than the dog.
When it comes to transporting a dog in a car, there may be some ideas that keep them from jumping out the window or off the bed of a truck, but I've yet to see anything that would protect them in a crash.
It also prevents the dog from interfering with the operation of the vehicle, causing messes in places that are tough to clean, and keeps the dog in the vehicle until I am ready to release him. There are more reasons to crate a dog during transport than just accident safety.
Or I can just keep his head inside the window and not have to buy a stupid accessory for my dog while keeping him safe and secure. I promise you that there is no need for him to stick his head out the window of a moving car. My dog likes to do all sorts of things that are not safe. Just because he might enjoy it doesn't make it a good idea.
You can also get nice harnesses that clip in like a seatbelt and keep the dog from being a projectile. And he can still stick his head out the window.
If he can still stick his head out the window the harness is not secured tightly enough to keep him from becoming a projectile. A harness with a long tether is pointless in a car because he can still be launched. It would be functionally identical to having a seatbelt for you with several feet of slack - you may as well not wear one at that point. Plus it doesn't keep him from getting debris in his eyes. There is a very good reason why we have windshields or why drivers wear goggles when a windshield is not present. Those same reasons apply to dogs.
AOL owned 55% of TW. Did TW spin off AOL or did AOL, acting as the controlling entity of TW, spin off a dying product they called AOL.
AOL shareholders owned 55% of TW at the time of the merger. That control structure changed almost immediately but technically it was AOL buying TW despite TW actually being a much bigger entity in terms of assets and revenues at the time. TW management really ended up controlling the combined company so not long after the merger most of AOL's leadership was pushed aside.
As for your second question, it's a distinction without a difference. The entity that was AOL Time Warner in 2002 wrote off $99 billion (with a b) in goodwill from their balance sheet, basically admitting that the merger was a failure. It was a great example of company cultures failing to mesh plus AOL was wildly overvalued at the time they bought TW. When the entity that is now AOL Inc was spun off six years ago it was merely the completion of the failure of the merger. AOL Inc is NOT a dying product, but doesn't really fit with Time Warner strategically or culturally so it made sense to put it into a separate company. This benefited both shareholders and the companies themselves I think.
Oh, there will be plans. Realistic plans?
You'll note I never mentioned realism or accuracy. Those things are not always possible and frequently are dis-incentivized. There will be plans and financial projections but only an idiot would take them at face value. The ONLY thing that will be completely correct to say about the plans is that they will be wrong. Maybe by a little, maybe by a lot but they will be wrong.
Many of us have adjusted our side mirrors correctly, to point far more outwards than what most people do. Or even attach dead angle mirrors.
And some of us do that AND look directly to ensure what is behind us is actually clear because even well adjusted mirrors sometimes don't permit full elimination of blind spots in many vehicles.
Never depend on being able to watch out the rear side window. That's a bad habit you need to stop.
We're going to disagree on that. If I have visibility in any direction outside of a vehicle I'm going to make full use of it when circumstances allow me to do so safely. I would say you should never ignore any means of increasing your situational awareness. There are times when it is 100% appropriate to use rear windows to observe what is going on around your vehicle while driving. There also are times when you absolutely shouldn't. Good drivers know the difference.
It may be blocked or not even there (pickup trucks).
If it isn't there then it isn't an issue. There are some cars that have absolutely terrible visibility but that doesn't mean you don't use it when you have it.
And by turning your head, you lose sight of what's even more dangerous - what's ahead of you.
Pro-tip: You don't turn your head when there is a reasonable probability of hitting something in front of you. If turning your head for long enough to check your blind spot is dangerous in all cases then you aren't a very good driver because it should only take a fraction of a second and can easily be done quite safely. Some vehicles simply are not equipped well enough to eliminate blind spots and the ability to check directly and safely is an important driving skill. Ideally it shouldn't be necessary but the simple fact is that sometimes it is required in the real world.
You are correct, I do use the non-driver side back seat window. But the driver side back seat window is totally blocked by my head rest and not viewable.
What do you drive? I'd like to make a note never to buy that car because I've never been in a vehicle I couldn't turn my head and see out the driver's side rear window well enough to make useful driving decisions. Certainly never such that I was blocked by the headrest. The B-pillar sometimes gets in the way but not the seat itself.
Your dog is deprived of a simple pleasure. Hooray for you.
My dog arrives safely at his destination and won't become a 50lb projectile that could kill both of us in an accident. He also won't get any debris in his eyes that I'll have to have a vet remove later. My dog has plenty of joy in his life and I promise you will not know he missed anything by keeping his head inside the window.
Right, then in the case of projects receiving public funding, they subtract a percentage to make it palatable before presenting it. :)
Oh they're much more clever than that. They'll tinker with the underlying assumptions, cost of capital, expected returns, net present value, and more. You'll find it stuffed with more BS than a cattle farm. Government budgets are notoriously full of bogus assumptions and outright fabrications because they know nobody who gives a damn is really going to read them and even if they did most wouldn't understand it anyway. Pretty much every financial projection you have ever read about is wrong - the only question is whether their model was even close. I've done my share of them and it's really hard to get them right - borderline impossible really. You're really just hoping to get a model that is close enough to be useful.
Sad thing is that good financial analysis is super important and really hard to do well. Some of the brightest people I know do it for a living and are pretty good at it but unfortunately even a talented and honest person will come up with inaccurate models because the real world is just that hard to predict. Unfortunately a lot of people doing financial modeling are neither talented nor honest.
When you say "EVERY project like this", what kind of project are you referring to?
I mean every project with more than a trivial amount of capital required. EVERY project. Public, private, doesn't matter. Building a warehouse, a building, an assembly line, or a machine? There will be a budget and capital analysis along with an ROI analysis if a profit is involved. If you are talking more than a few tens of thousands of dollars (and often less), odds are someone has done a financial analysis on it. It would be very unusual for such an analysis to not be done.
The F-35 is an example of a taxpayer-funded project that has gone way over budget.
The only thing you can be certain of in any budget is that it is wrong. The only question is by how much it will be wrong. Some budget are very close to reality, others not so much. Some are created in an honest and earnest attempt to be correct and conservative. Others are disingenuous bits of garbage barely worth the paper they are written on. The F-35 is a pretty much textbook example of a budget gone wrong.
Did I miss something? There is no company called AOL.
Apparently you missed a lot of things. There very much is a a company called AOL Inc which has annual revenues of around $2.3 billion.
Time Warner bought them out like 10 years ago.
It was 15 years ago and you have it backwards. AOL bought Time Warner, not the other way around. AOL shareholders owned 55% of the merged company.
Is Time Warner the one selling off the AOL branch of products?
AOL was spun off from Time Warner six years ago into an independent company.
If so, this is a Time Warner-Verizon deal.
No it isn't. Time-Warner has nothing to do with this deal.
I don't see any point in looking at the estimated cost of a project that hasn't even begun yet.
Speaking as someone who does such cost estimating professionally, I can assure you that EVERY project like this has the costs evaluated long before anyone breaks ground. A company would have to be insane to not have conducted the due diligence on every aspect of a project of this scale. They have to evaluate if there is a satisfactory ROI. They have to have some sort of idea what it ought to cost so that they can know how things are going. They have to budget the money. Of course there will be cost variances but you can't even begin to manage a project like this unless you have some idea what it should cost.
That is $15/hr. I hope no one thinks paying that for any kuind of critical security infrastructure is a good idea. They could be bribed with things like free movie tickets or a Big Mac.
What it means is that they hired some Mexicans or other foreigners to do the grunt work of attaching things to walls so they wouldn't have to pay much. Any time you have hard grunt labor where you want to pay as little as possible (picking in fields, construction, etc) chances are non-trivial that they are paying someone who was born in another country to do it.