Basically you're focusing on the portion of the proceedings that follow the initial pressing of charges. The actual _court_ proceedings do always go in the way that you are saying. The problem I think is you're getting confused in two different terms. In criminal cases pressing charges is carried forward by the victim(be it a person or non-person entity). The state(crown in my case) then receives the request to press charges and either follows through or does not with "bringing" the charges before a court. The perjury thing only applies if the person has given sworn testimony/statements that they later change their minds on. It isn't done often, but to the letter of the law, can be.
There is another charge that I didn't get time to find out about just this second, its close to perjury but not perjury, has to do with wasting crown resources on frivolous charges(at least thats why the law was put into place, don't think it actually reads that way) and usually involves fines or in severe cases small amounts of jail time... that one probably isn't applicable everywhere.
For what its worth, I Am Not A Lawyer, but I did just vet this with a friend of mine who is a practicing defense attorney.
Don't know where you are from but that isn't the way it works here or, from what I understand, in sweden.
The prosecutor brings the charges in court, and the victim is then referred to as a witness, however the person/victim is the one pressing the charges. Without the cooperation of the victim charges cannot be brought, but they've found some wierd loophole to try to get around it in sweden.
The reason there is a seperation in the court room is that there is the situation where the victim(in the case of a murder, or violence resulting in an incapacity to either press charges or testify on the part of the victim) cannot press charges themselves and thus the government or a family member presses charges on their behalf. In cases of violating certain government laws the government itself is registered as the complainant/victim and charges are pressed that way. In this case the government has had no crime committed against it so those cases would not apply, and without the victims to press charges it should not be possible for the government to press charges unless they have the victims declared mentally unsound and rendered into the care of either family or the government who then press charges on their behalf.
The victim DOES have the power to drop charges but in countries like the US and Canada can then be threatened with perjury etc if things have gone too far before they try to drop the charges or rather "get the charges dropped". Also by "too far" means that a prosecutor has been assigned to "bring" the charges to the court to be heard. Pressing Charges is done by the victim initially. I believe the loophole in sweden is one that would possibly allow the same thing to happen in Canada whereby the case has gone far enough that if they either a) think they can win without victim testimony or b) have enough other reason to want to push the case whether or not they win(the case here) then the prosecutor that has been assigned can choose to continue the case without the victims who are at that point just key witnesses.
As you can see, you are partly right, but mostly wrong. This is a case that would entirely hinge on Victim testimony and as such there is no point for a prosecutor to continue it without victim testimony. This is where the power of the victim to get the charges dropped comes in. They do NOT have the legal and direct power to drop the charges, however they do entirely have the indirect and substantial power to make the charges entirely frivolous and a waste of time by refusing to testify. Which, as I mentioned, unless there is an ulterior motive, will cause the prosecutor to exercise their right to drop the charges. Which is exactly what happened. What extra loophole exists to allow another prosecutor to resurrect the charges based on nothing I have no idea.
Way to drink the kool-aid. That or you are astro turfing.
He's not even being charged by the women involved anymore. The women suddenly wanted to charge him AFTER they were approached by a swedish prosecutor. They later attempted to drop the charges, were told they couldn't, eventually succeeded in dropping the charges, only to have the charges somehow re-instituted by a swedish prosecutor with known high up US ties under pressure from the swedish government.
This is all as reported by the SWEDISH Press. Stop fucking astro-turfing to attempt to cover this shit up. This is the most blatant abuse of power by the US over its allies I've ever seen.
The difference is the Liberals choose where they get their bribes from rather more wisely than the conservatives. The liberals would bargain away less and get more out of it for themselves, these conservatives are giving away canadian rights hand over fist and seem to be getting very little in return so far.
The reason is well-known, the globaly warming climate is causing the south to north atlantic ocean current that causes britain to have much warmer than normal for your latitude, to shift out to sea more. The same current shift is causing greenland and baffin island to have much warmer than usual weather. It should also cause Newfoundland to get much warmer and balmier weather pretty soon, which I am very much in favor of. Newfoundlands previous climate of 10ft+ snow drifts all winter is much closer to what GB SHOULD have been getting, if it wasn't for that lucky ass current.
Thats hilarious. I just did the same damn thing in response to someone else in this thread. I had a relatively long post, but not as long as the other two, written out in response to that ridiculous list someone else posted.
Women are overly sensitive, from the perspective of a man. From the perspective of another woman, most women are perfectly fine.
Most of the rest of that list is a bit of a stretch of the imagination to pull out of my post, however the biggest point I'm trying to make is that the sexes are DIFFERENT. Rather than being combative about it, I think for the most part we've gotten rid of the harmful bits and the rest people should just learn to deal with, on both sides.
See, women in general from my experience seem to think that "being a good person" means being overly sensitive etc. as a sort of "well, I don't mind, but someone else might!". There are men like this too of course but most of them are gay men and the remainder are relatively speaking rare. Except in certain professions, such as psychologists, councilors, and politicians looking for votes et al.
It really doesn't mean that however. Being a good person means being there to help someone through a rough time, or to help someone that IS overly sensitive to understand a situation that may have occurred and help them through it. Going through life with such a thin skin as to be offended by this sort of stuff is not a good thing. I understand if it gets to physical harassment or someone gets singled out etc, but the rest of it is just sort of, you know, guys complaining about their wives/women in general etc. Guys don't have the same sort of crazy databasing of "everything he's done wrong" that most women seem to have, so we tend to generalize more. We complain about women, and women complain about men, they're just more specific about it.
Besides that, a LOT of men, best friends for years even, tend to insult and generally carry on with each other on a very regular basis. A lot of over-sensitive people can't even tell the difference, and I've had the comment said by many many women about some of my relationships as well as relationships they see around them, generally between men, of "You'd think they were mortal enemies".
A lot of this comes from men and women internalizing things differently etc... however most of the actual harmful behavior towards women ended upwards of 20 years ago. Right now a LOT of men are pushing back against conforming to some of this bullshit. Whereas the minority, the real idiots and misogynists were the ones doing it before.
Unfortunately this form of pushback causes some guys to just pick up some of the older, harmful ways of sexism, even though they don't really believe half of what they're saying.
We as men, in general, and not as an absolute rule, internalized things a LOT differently. I had the unfortunate situation of growing up in a family where the women are all understanding and have a great sense of humor, and all thought it was great that I generally tend to say the first thing that comes to my mind. We're also a family that appreciates honesty, even to the point of brutality, which also doesn't help.
This caused a lot of awkward situations as you might imagine. I sent several girls whose mothers I guess actually WERE like the woman I mentioned before off crying, without even knowing what the fuck I had done.
Basically what I'm saying here is that there has to be some give and take. We as men should learn to control our mouths around you women a bit as we grow up, but you as women need to grow thicker skins as you grow up. It will never work as long as one group or the other demands absolute adaptation from the other. Previously we had the women being the ones forced to adapt and now we're getting to where more and more onus is being put on the men to adapt, when we're already doing what we can for the most part.
I should also mention that men throw off the adaptation around other men, and for a long time the internet was 95%+ men in most of its dark corners. Some guys will push back because they're losing one of their few remaining bastions of sanity where they can say what they like.
Whether women like to be treated as possessions or objects or not, men are genetically geared to be hunters and warriors. Hunters and warriors that got us to the very top of the food chain. That sort of gearing is closer to grizzly bear than bunny rabbit, and grizzlies view everything in the world around them as objects to be possessed. At least 99% of us understand that women are not, but you've got to cut us some slack for discussing them as such, especially in an environment where we may not think any women are around to hear. Women for the most part ARE completely foreign, but beautiful, to many of us. Thats not a dig at the slashdot community etc, I'm married and women are STILL completely foreign to me.
Sigh, that'll teach me not to preview my posts. I missed a sentence in which I stated that while it holds true for my particular "home" it doesn't hold true for all, or even most, areas. However, because it holds true in SOME areas, it continues to be a comment that gets thrown around a fair bit.
I've lived in many different places, and I have to say, you take this way too hard. Where I'm from, women are nearly-universally much worse drivers than men due to an over-nervousness behind the wheel that causes its own distractions, in particular when it exists but the woman is simply ignoring it.
While this could be partly cultural, and could be partly genetic, I haven't noticed the same statement holding true in other places.
I have in my time seen a woman on a cell phone take a left turn through a red light in busy traffic. The worst I can say about a male driver is I've seen one back into a very obvious fence at about 10km/h and that men tend to drive a bit too fast.
So while you may think it an asinine comment, I actually have seen accident numbers where I live that back up my statements. Now, insurance rates were higher for men because when a man did get into an accident he was far more likely to be speeding and write off one or two cars. The actual accident rates were much higher for women.
And in other cases, you should actually consider the possibility that you may be an overly-sensitive overly-literal individual. Which someone else may call a "humorless bitch".
I had someone like that report me at a job site previously for chatting with a buddy of mine and it offended her that I liked her ass. This was a conversation that she overheard, and was not a part of, nor did I even realize she was nearby. Apparently it was something to do with the objectifying of women etc etc and I should appreciate her hard work more than her physical attributes etc etc. All complete bullshit, all totally unnecessary. I've had women comment that I have a nice ass before, the difference is I take the compliment for what it is and don't get my panties in a knot over it. By the by, thats been a saying for a very long time, and for a very good reason.
I get the feeling you and her might get along quite well.
30-40 years is way way overly optimistic. I have doubts that we will solve that particular problem at any point within the next 100 years but I will admit that 30-40 was put there just to avoid the arbitrary mod-downs from the fanatical solar power advocates.
This is entirely accurate for Japans current situation. Even in areas like the US where land per capita is relatively abundant they can't possibly supply all of the countries power needs on wind, hydro, and solar alone. At least not any time soon, and by soon I mean within the next 30-40 years, which is our immediate concern.
Only a very few countries in the world have enough land to supply completely sustainable energy. Canada is one, Australia is another. There are maybe 3-4 other countries that could at least mostly get onto these energy sources.
Since as you can see this is a very small club to be in, Nuclear is unfortunately the way forward for the foreseeable future.
The dollars put into this amount to approximately 40% of nvidias entire "marketing" budget.
Basically they've started doing something that changes the industry even more to be in the hands of the content providers... When previously the hardware vendors had a bit more pull.
Back in the days of Voodoo and even for the first while of the ATI vs Nvidia era it was normal for game vendors to approach card makers for help debugging their games but there was no way in hell a card maker would pay for the privilege. Hell, back in the voodoo days they even PAID for the extra help making their games compatible with the cards in some cases.
ATI started caving and doing the same thing, which is part of what reduced their margins to the point where they just said the hell with it and sold out to AMD. AMD is refusing to play the game now so you get 1-2 week post-release bug fixes.
Um. The UK raised taxes on top of a recession. Which isn't a terrible idea, and is actually working, but years of lobbying by big business is what made it possible for people to find huge gaping loopholes to hide their money with. They need more tax reform.
In Canada and the US the tax code is going to be so ridiculously fat pretty soon that they're going to have to scrap the bulk of it and start over soon.
These jobs aren't being lost to help the four people. They're being lost to directly benefit large corporations bottom lines. These cutbacks are a DIRECT result of Harper big business tax cuts.
I've already explained this to you, and this gentleman has as well. You're either mentally handicapped or deliberately astro turfing. Given the Harper Conservatives propensity for astro turfing I'm going to assume the latter.
Public sector jobs, as I have mentioned, directly cause wealth redistribution with a VERY long tail trickle down due to the generally high paying nature of these jobs. Any cuts in this sector cannot and will not be replaced, and neither will the trickle down losses.
Its an instant blow to the jobs market for which there is no "the free market will save us!" solution. People will lose their houses, an already soft housing market will crash altogether in some places. Construction companies start closing their doors because of it. Car sales go down, everything decreases. So-called tax "overhead" from the government actually turns into a very elaborate wealth redistribution system that partially drives the economy.
No, deficit spending is not good. Yes there is a happy medium. We've had that happy medium in Canada for years. Why would you try to fix something that isn't broken?
There is one simple answer: You wouldn't. Harper is doing this purely for his own and his rich friends benefit.
Large companies do not spend their tax savings. Its a proven fact. If you believe otherwise you are deluding yourself.
The reason for these cuts are the tax cuts that Harper IS CONTINUING to put into place that are costing the country over 4 billion year over year in revenue since the GST tax cut in 07, and an additional 6 billion per year in tax cuts since he got his majority government, and that figure is growing. The entire current deficit is due to Harpers tax cuts and guess what? The corporations aren't making new jobs. They're spending the money to off shore jobs. Why the hell do some Canadians continue to support this fraud of a government?
We are seeing the country sold down the river so fast that its actually alarming.
Good luck with keeping those rights. Harper is on a war path attempting to get rid of them. He's pushing shit through at such a rate that some of it isn't even making the news because some other issue that he's trying to ram through at the same time is eating all of the air time.
He's planning on reducing the ENTIRE FEDERAL EMPLOYEE BASE by 30%. Enough to cause a fucking recession on its own since the Feds are the largest single employer in the country.
I tend to think for myself, which actually leads me to a slight democratic slant overall but in general if you took everything I say together I'm pissing off both sides.
As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle, and is likely to make a lot of people uncomfortable.
It depends which industry you are in. I tend to have seen the largest difference largely because I've worked mainly in retail and construction. When you have guys whose backs gave out years ago out-pacing the new generation, its fucking sad.
Also the guys in thier mid to late 20's were good. 10 years ago. Now you get decent work out of guys in their late 20s, and theres a steep steep drop off at 25 and below. The number keeps going up year after year. Its not at a 1:1 rate but its close to it.
If you're in a highly training intensive industry(and it sounds like you are), then the guys that you are working with have already "passed the bar" so to speak. You'll get more wheat and less chaff simply because they've gone through the work of getting there in the first place. You're getting a lot more of the guys right away that I find as a 1 in 100 to be a foreman or supervisor, or at least a guy I can count on to show up on time and actually WORK his whole shift.
Now, that said, there is also a trend in professions like accounting, IT, business management, engineering, practicing law and more to lose all work ethic for the last 5-10 years before they retire at 60. That is largely because these guys are financially secure at this point, probably have nice big golden parachutes against getting fired(Fire me? Big whoop. I have over 2 years worth of severance pay coming in a big cheque if you do. I'll just retire early.), and couldn't give a rats ass anymore. A total lack of motivation to work comes from... them really not having any motivation to keep working.
If they're close enough to retirement they even start trying to find ways to get fired without a cause that breaks their parachute agreement so that they can cash it out.
Have you looked at a chart of JUST the bush tax cuts? And where the country would have been without them?
The national debt would have been reduced to a point where some additional temporary tightening of belts in some areas, starting of new interstate highway build & repair projects, plus the government buying the bad mortgages would have mostly halted the recession in its tracks and gotten a lot of people out of trouble.
Did you even realize that your third biggest budget item is the interest on your fucking debt?
We have a similar problem happening with Harper in Canada right now as you had with Bush. He's currently talking about cutting the largest single employer in the countries work force by 30% to fix it(Yes, the Federal Government). Which alone will cause another recession in large portions of Canada. In particular in the already devastated Ontario province which hasn't even begun to recover from the last swath of destruction cut through its large manufacturing centers by the collapse of the U.S. economy.
This is all to maintain tax cuts that are saving his big business buddies billions while saving the average Canadian less than $200 a year.
I'm sorry, but in no place did I blame the kids. Every single thing I mentioned can in no reasonable way be misinterpreted as me claiming that it is the fault of the kids. I apologize if you have a reading comprehension failure, but everything in there is directly the fault of the parents. No, I'm not blaming the politicians at all, you would be right about that, but it is because the responsibility ultimately lies with the PARENTS for electing them and THEN putting up with bullshit.
I had more free time in school than kids these days would have, and I learned more than they seem to be learning these days. My parents had less free time than I had, but they learned more than I did. The problem is they've confused quality with quantity and are trying to force quantity to suffice for a continuing degradation of quality. My parents got quantity AND quality and were better off for it. I got a very slightly reduced quality with a moderate amount less quantity but students these days are getting quantity, quantity, quantity, and the quality has gone straight out the window.
A lot of our problem in my opinion is that our current notion of high school is fantastically out of check with the reality that it needs to serve. You learn more slowly as you get older, and yet we're waiting until these kids brains have matured to the point where absorbing new information is incredibly time consuming before we allow them to even start the beginnings of a career path. Most of our secondary education is pretty great, but its not getting to the kids at the proper age.
Also, I don't know where the hell you live, but where I am the kids growing up today are a mixed bag, as they have always been. What I do see that frightens me is a lot of young VERY intelligent minds going to absolute waste due to a failure of parents and the education system that is supposed to support them.
I don't put on any rose-tinted glasses, but more kids are becoming lazy, again, through no fault of their own. I know we had the same sort of slackers when I was going to school, but in my day it was 3-5 per class of 25-30. Now its 8-10 per class of 25-30, and sadly a good number of that 8-10 would likely have been at or near the top of their class 20 years ago.
If you don't believe me, go ask any teacher thats been teaching for more than 20 years. All these changes that are ruining generations started in the 80's and mostly came to full culmination and penetration in the late 90's/early 00's.
Parents DO need to have some of the answers, but not many people can either a) have all of the answers in memory or b) create an answer out of thin air that relays satisfactorily.
Unfortunately due to the way we reproduce and the relatively random expressions of certain genes you can frequently end up with a situation where the child is so much smarter than the adult that the adult simply cannot answer all of their questions. In this case the adults only option is to eventually fall back on the "mystical force" or "just because I said so dammit". Giving up and giving in to the child is the worst possible option, but one that happens unfortunately frequently. Some of this is also some of what used to be called "lip" and warranted corporal punishment in some homes. While I'm not a fan of large amounts of corporal punishment in raising a child, in some cases it is warranted, and given whats been happening generation over generation with work ethic in most western countries you can't say that it didn't have an extremely good effect on work ethic.
That said, I was in the same boat as you, and have an IQ north of 170, which is easily 40 points + higher than either of my parents. I could speak fluently in full sentences by the time I was two and remember most things from the time I could walk at 9 months old.
The majority of people couldn't and still can't answer my questions. This is just a fact of life that you're going to have to learn to live with. Not everyone either a) obsesses about having the answers or b) is intelligent enough to just have most of them for everyday things.
The trick here is trust. My parents were infuriating because they never gave me enough answers to ever make me trust them. They didn't even TRY to give me the answers in most cases, and it was blatantly obvious.
My grandfather on the other hand did. I still have no problems doing what he wants me to do, because if he can explain something at all, he will, and if he can't explain it, I can trust that it just needs to be done and that I'll either find out or figure out on my own the why of it later.
Your view is entirely naive as #1 it won't work on a lot of people because even after it is explained, a lot of folks with iq's south of 110-120 ish won't understand WHY it is in their self-interest. Not to mention the social ramifications of societies entirely focused on self-interest are being felt world-wide, most notably in the largest collapsing economy in history, the United States of America. Your approach, while I find is actually recommended in some childrens books etc, is extremely flawed, and entirely the wrong way to go about child-rearing as a blanket approach.
P.S. Yes, I know some of this is a generalization, and IQ is NOT a perfectly accurate measure of, well, anything, its just the only semi-accurate one I have to hand.
A childs/NEEDS/ should be paramount. The problem is the bubble wrapping and the catering to the childs/WANTS/.
You know something I noticed not too long ago? A lot of children these days simply have no concept of "need". If they don't "want" to do something they won't, and see no reason they should. For instance if they don't "want" to do their school work, many of them won't. Its really quite simple, and while anecdotal to some extent, my experience with children recently has shown me that simply understanding that things that "need" to happen simply must, are the ones that are thought well of and have good work ethic.
For instance, the trash needs to be taken out. They want to have ice cream. Also a constant rewarding of needed doings with wanted items creates a similar problem.
Slashdot Mirror
In Canada it is, sort of.
Basically you're focusing on the portion of the proceedings that follow the initial pressing of charges. The actual _court_ proceedings do always go in the way that you are saying. The problem I think is you're getting confused in two different terms. In criminal cases pressing charges is carried forward by the victim(be it a person or non-person entity). The state(crown in my case) then receives the request to press charges and either follows through or does not with "bringing" the charges before a court. The perjury thing only applies if the person has given sworn testimony/statements that they later change their minds on. It isn't done often, but to the letter of the law, can be.
There is another charge that I didn't get time to find out about just this second, its close to perjury but not perjury, has to do with wasting crown resources on frivolous charges(at least thats why the law was put into place, don't think it actually reads that way) and usually involves fines or in severe cases small amounts of jail time... that one probably isn't applicable everywhere.
For what its worth, I Am Not A Lawyer, but I did just vet this with a friend of mine who is a practicing defense attorney.
Don't know where you are from but that isn't the way it works here or, from what I understand, in sweden.
The prosecutor brings the charges in court, and the victim is then referred to as a witness, however the person/victim is the one pressing the charges. Without the cooperation of the victim charges cannot be brought, but they've found some wierd loophole to try to get around it in sweden.
The reason there is a seperation in the court room is that there is the situation where the victim(in the case of a murder, or violence resulting in an incapacity to either press charges or testify on the part of the victim) cannot press charges themselves and thus the government or a family member presses charges on their behalf. In cases of violating certain government laws the government itself is registered as the complainant/victim and charges are pressed that way. In this case the government has had no crime committed against it so those cases would not apply, and without the victims to press charges it should not be possible for the government to press charges unless they have the victims declared mentally unsound and rendered into the care of either family or the government who then press charges on their behalf.
The victim DOES have the power to drop charges but in countries like the US and Canada can then be threatened with perjury etc if things have gone too far before they try to drop the charges or rather "get the charges dropped". Also by "too far" means that a prosecutor has been assigned to "bring" the charges to the court to be heard. Pressing Charges is done by the victim initially. I believe the loophole in sweden is one that would possibly allow the same thing to happen in Canada whereby the case has gone far enough that if they either a) think they can win without victim testimony or b) have enough other reason to want to push the case whether or not they win(the case here) then the prosecutor that has been assigned can choose to continue the case without the victims who are at that point just key witnesses.
As you can see, you are partly right, but mostly wrong. This is a case that would entirely hinge on Victim testimony and as such there is no point for a prosecutor to continue it without victim testimony. This is where the power of the victim to get the charges dropped comes in. They do NOT have the legal and direct power to drop the charges, however they do entirely have the indirect and substantial power to make the charges entirely frivolous and a waste of time by refusing to testify. Which, as I mentioned, unless there is an ulterior motive, will cause the prosecutor to exercise their right to drop the charges. Which is exactly what happened. What extra loophole exists to allow another prosecutor to resurrect the charges based on nothing I have no idea.
Way to drink the kool-aid. That or you are astro turfing.
He's not even being charged by the women involved anymore. The women suddenly wanted to charge him AFTER they were approached by a swedish prosecutor. They later attempted to drop the charges, were told they couldn't, eventually succeeded in dropping the charges, only to have the charges somehow re-instituted by a swedish prosecutor with known high up US ties under pressure from the swedish government.
This is all as reported by the SWEDISH Press. Stop fucking astro-turfing to attempt to cover this shit up. This is the most blatant abuse of power by the US over its allies I've ever seen.
The difference is the Liberals choose where they get their bribes from rather more wisely than the conservatives. The liberals would bargain away less and get more out of it for themselves, these conservatives are giving away canadian rights hand over fist and seem to be getting very little in return so far.
I have no idea why this is marked insightful.
The reason is well-known, the globaly warming climate is causing the south to north atlantic ocean current that causes britain to have much warmer than normal for your latitude, to shift out to sea more. The same current shift is causing greenland and baffin island to have much warmer than usual weather. It should also cause Newfoundland to get much warmer and balmier weather pretty soon, which I am very much in favor of. Newfoundlands previous climate of 10ft+ snow drifts all winter is much closer to what GB SHOULD have been getting, if it wasn't for that lucky ass current.
Thats hilarious. I just did the same damn thing in response to someone else in this thread. I had a relatively long post, but not as long as the other two, written out in response to that ridiculous list someone else posted.
*poof* Gone.
So he/she got the short answer instead.
RIM is definitely the better fit, but its a moot point anyways since MS already de-facto owns Nokia.
I mean, Nokia threw any chance of gaining back market share away for MS already.
Women are overly sensitive, from the perspective of a man. From the perspective of another woman, most women are perfectly fine.
Most of the rest of that list is a bit of a stretch of the imagination to pull out of my post, however the biggest point I'm trying to make is that the sexes are DIFFERENT. Rather than being combative about it, I think for the most part we've gotten rid of the harmful bits and the rest people should just learn to deal with, on both sides.
See, women in general from my experience seem to think that "being a good person" means being overly sensitive etc. as a sort of "well, I don't mind, but someone else might!". There are men like this too of course but most of them are gay men and the remainder are relatively speaking rare. Except in certain professions, such as psychologists, councilors, and politicians looking for votes et al.
It really doesn't mean that however. Being a good person means being there to help someone through a rough time, or to help someone that IS overly sensitive to understand a situation that may have occurred and help them through it. Going through life with such a thin skin as to be offended by this sort of stuff is not a good thing. I understand if it gets to physical harassment or someone gets singled out etc, but the rest of it is just sort of, you know, guys complaining about their wives/women in general etc. Guys don't have the same sort of crazy databasing of "everything he's done wrong" that most women seem to have, so we tend to generalize more. We complain about women, and women complain about men, they're just more specific about it.
Besides that, a LOT of men, best friends for years even, tend to insult and generally carry on with each other on a very regular basis. A lot of over-sensitive people can't even tell the difference, and I've had the comment said by many many women about some of my relationships as well as relationships they see around them, generally between men, of "You'd think they were mortal enemies".
A lot of this comes from men and women internalizing things differently etc... however most of the actual harmful behavior towards women ended upwards of 20 years ago. Right now a LOT of men are pushing back against conforming to some of this bullshit. Whereas the minority, the real idiots and misogynists were the ones doing it before.
Unfortunately this form of pushback causes some guys to just pick up some of the older, harmful ways of sexism, even though they don't really believe half of what they're saying.
We as men, in general, and not as an absolute rule, internalized things a LOT differently. I had the unfortunate situation of growing up in a family where the women are all understanding and have a great sense of humor, and all thought it was great that I generally tend to say the first thing that comes to my mind. We're also a family that appreciates honesty, even to the point of brutality, which also doesn't help.
This caused a lot of awkward situations as you might imagine. I sent several girls whose mothers I guess actually WERE like the woman I mentioned before off crying, without even knowing what the fuck I had done.
Basically what I'm saying here is that there has to be some give and take. We as men should learn to control our mouths around you women a bit as we grow up, but you as women need to grow thicker skins as you grow up. It will never work as long as one group or the other demands absolute adaptation from the other. Previously we had the women being the ones forced to adapt and now we're getting to where more and more onus is being put on the men to adapt, when we're already doing what we can for the most part.
I should also mention that men throw off the adaptation around other men, and for a long time the internet was 95%+ men in most of its dark corners. Some guys will push back because they're losing one of their few remaining bastions of sanity where they can say what they like.
Whether women like to be treated as possessions or objects or not, men are genetically geared to be hunters and warriors. Hunters and warriors that got us to the very top of the food chain. That sort of gearing is closer to grizzly bear than bunny rabbit, and grizzlies view everything in the world around them as objects to be possessed. At least 99% of us understand that women are not, but you've got to cut us some slack for discussing them as such, especially in an environment where we may not think any women are around to hear. Women for the most part ARE completely foreign, but beautiful, to many of us. Thats not a dig at the slashdot community etc, I'm married and women are STILL completely foreign to me.
Sigh, that'll teach me not to preview my posts. I missed a sentence in which I stated that while it holds true for my particular "home" it doesn't hold true for all, or even most, areas. However, because it holds true in SOME areas, it continues to be a comment that gets thrown around a fair bit.
I've lived in many different places, and I have to say, you take this way too hard. Where I'm from, women are nearly-universally much worse drivers than men due to an over-nervousness behind the wheel that causes its own distractions, in particular when it exists but the woman is simply ignoring it.
While this could be partly cultural, and could be partly genetic, I haven't noticed the same statement holding true in other places.
I have in my time seen a woman on a cell phone take a left turn through a red light in busy traffic. The worst I can say about a male driver is I've seen one back into a very obvious fence at about 10km/h and that men tend to drive a bit too fast.
So while you may think it an asinine comment, I actually have seen accident numbers where I live that back up my statements. Now, insurance rates were higher for men because when a man did get into an accident he was far more likely to be speeding and write off one or two cars. The actual accident rates were much higher for women.
And in other cases, you should actually consider the possibility that you may be an overly-sensitive overly-literal individual. Which someone else may call a "humorless bitch".
I had someone like that report me at a job site previously for chatting with a buddy of mine and it offended her that I liked her ass. This was a conversation that she overheard, and was not a part of, nor did I even realize she was nearby. Apparently it was something to do with the objectifying of women etc etc and I should appreciate her hard work more than her physical attributes etc etc. All complete bullshit, all totally unnecessary. I've had women comment that I have a nice ass before, the difference is I take the compliment for what it is and don't get my panties in a knot over it. By the by, thats been a saying for a very long time, and for a very good reason.
I get the feeling you and her might get along quite well.
30-40 years is way way overly optimistic. I have doubts that we will solve that particular problem at any point within the next 100 years but I will admit that 30-40 was put there just to avoid the arbitrary mod-downs from the fanatical solar power advocates.
This is entirely accurate for Japans current situation. Even in areas like the US where land per capita is relatively abundant they can't possibly supply all of the countries power needs on wind, hydro, and solar alone. At least not any time soon, and by soon I mean within the next 30-40 years, which is our immediate concern.
Only a very few countries in the world have enough land to supply completely sustainable energy. Canada is one, Australia is another. There are maybe 3-4 other countries that could at least mostly get onto these energy sources.
Since as you can see this is a very small club to be in, Nuclear is unfortunately the way forward for the foreseeable future.
This needs to be modded up ^^
The dollars put into this amount to approximately 40% of nvidias entire "marketing" budget.
Basically they've started doing something that changes the industry even more to be in the hands of the content providers... When previously the hardware vendors had a bit more pull.
Back in the days of Voodoo and even for the first while of the ATI vs Nvidia era it was normal for game vendors to approach card makers for help debugging their games but there was no way in hell a card maker would pay for the privilege. Hell, back in the voodoo days they even PAID for the extra help making their games compatible with the cards in some cases.
ATI started caving and doing the same thing, which is part of what reduced their margins to the point where they just said the hell with it and sold out to AMD. AMD is refusing to play the game now so you get 1-2 week post-release bug fixes.
Um. The UK raised taxes on top of a recession. Which isn't a terrible idea, and is actually working, but years of lobbying by big business is what made it possible for people to find huge gaping loopholes to hide their money with. They need more tax reform.
In Canada and the US the tax code is going to be so ridiculously fat pretty soon that they're going to have to scrap the bulk of it and start over soon.
These jobs aren't being lost to help the four people. They're being lost to directly benefit large corporations bottom lines. These cutbacks are a DIRECT result of Harper big business tax cuts.
I've already explained this to you, and this gentleman has as well. You're either mentally handicapped or deliberately astro turfing. Given the Harper Conservatives propensity for astro turfing I'm going to assume the latter.
Public sector jobs, as I have mentioned, directly cause wealth redistribution with a VERY long tail trickle down due to the generally high paying nature of these jobs. Any cuts in this sector cannot and will not be replaced, and neither will the trickle down losses.
Its an instant blow to the jobs market for which there is no "the free market will save us!" solution. People will lose their houses, an already soft housing market will crash altogether in some places. Construction companies start closing their doors because of it. Car sales go down, everything decreases. So-called tax "overhead" from the government actually turns into a very elaborate wealth redistribution system that partially drives the economy.
No, deficit spending is not good. Yes there is a happy medium. We've had that happy medium in Canada for years. Why would you try to fix something that isn't broken?
There is one simple answer: You wouldn't. Harper is doing this purely for his own and his rich friends benefit.
Large companies do not spend their tax savings. Its a proven fact. If you believe otherwise you are deluding yourself.
The reason for these cuts are the tax cuts that Harper IS CONTINUING to put into place that are costing the country over 4 billion year over year in revenue since the GST tax cut in 07, and an additional 6 billion per year in tax cuts since he got his majority government, and that figure is growing. The entire current deficit is due to Harpers tax cuts and guess what? The corporations aren't making new jobs. They're spending the money to off shore jobs. Why the hell do some Canadians continue to support this fraud of a government?
We are seeing the country sold down the river so fast that its actually alarming.
Good luck with keeping those rights. Harper is on a war path attempting to get rid of them. He's pushing shit through at such a rate that some of it isn't even making the news because some other issue that he's trying to ram through at the same time is eating all of the air time.
He's planning on reducing the ENTIRE FEDERAL EMPLOYEE BASE by 30%. Enough to cause a fucking recession on its own since the Feds are the largest single employer in the country.
Mod this up.
I tend to think for myself, which actually leads me to a slight democratic slant overall but in general if you took everything I say together I'm pissing off both sides.
As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle, and is likely to make a lot of people uncomfortable.
It depends which industry you are in. I tend to have seen the largest difference largely because I've worked mainly in retail and construction. When you have guys whose backs gave out years ago out-pacing the new generation, its fucking sad.
Also the guys in thier mid to late 20's were good. 10 years ago. Now you get decent work out of guys in their late 20s, and theres a steep steep drop off at 25 and below. The number keeps going up year after year. Its not at a 1:1 rate but its close to it.
If you're in a highly training intensive industry(and it sounds like you are), then the guys that you are working with have already "passed the bar" so to speak. You'll get more wheat and less chaff simply because they've gone through the work of getting there in the first place. You're getting a lot more of the guys right away that I find as a 1 in 100 to be a foreman or supervisor, or at least a guy I can count on to show up on time and actually WORK his whole shift.
Now, that said, there is also a trend in professions like accounting, IT, business management, engineering, practicing law and more to lose all work ethic for the last 5-10 years before they retire at 60. That is largely because these guys are financially secure at this point, probably have nice big golden parachutes against getting fired(Fire me? Big whoop. I have over 2 years worth of severance pay coming in a big cheque if you do. I'll just retire early.), and couldn't give a rats ass anymore. A total lack of motivation to work comes from... them really not having any motivation to keep working.
If they're close enough to retirement they even start trying to find ways to get fired without a cause that breaks their parachute agreement so that they can cash it out.
Um. Right.
Have you looked at a chart of JUST the bush tax cuts? And where the country would have been without them?
The national debt would have been reduced to a point where some additional temporary tightening of belts in some areas, starting of new interstate highway build & repair projects, plus the government buying the bad mortgages would have mostly halted the recession in its tracks and gotten a lot of people out of trouble.
Did you even realize that your third biggest budget item is the interest on your fucking debt?
We have a similar problem happening with Harper in Canada right now as you had with Bush. He's currently talking about cutting the largest single employer in the countries work force by 30% to fix it(Yes, the Federal Government). Which alone will cause another recession in large portions of Canada. In particular in the already devastated Ontario province which hasn't even begun to recover from the last swath of destruction cut through its large manufacturing centers by the collapse of the U.S. economy.
This is all to maintain tax cuts that are saving his big business buddies billions while saving the average Canadian less than $200 a year.
It may have been said, but its never been more true.
I'm a manager, and I'm having to hire fucking 50-60 year olds because they CAN WORK HARDER than the 15-20 year olds that apply for the same damn job.
I'm sorry, but in no place did I blame the kids. Every single thing I mentioned can in no reasonable way be misinterpreted as me claiming that it is the fault of the kids. I apologize if you have a reading comprehension failure, but everything in there is directly the fault of the parents. No, I'm not blaming the politicians at all, you would be right about that, but it is because the responsibility ultimately lies with the PARENTS for electing them and THEN putting up with bullshit.
I had more free time in school than kids these days would have, and I learned more than they seem to be learning these days. My parents had less free time than I had, but they learned more than I did. The problem is they've confused quality with quantity and are trying to force quantity to suffice for a continuing degradation of quality. My parents got quantity AND quality and were better off for it. I got a very slightly reduced quality with a moderate amount less quantity but students these days are getting quantity, quantity, quantity, and the quality has gone straight out the window.
A lot of our problem in my opinion is that our current notion of high school is fantastically out of check with the reality that it needs to serve. You learn more slowly as you get older, and yet we're waiting until these kids brains have matured to the point where absorbing new information is incredibly time consuming before we allow them to even start the beginnings of a career path. Most of our secondary education is pretty great, but its not getting to the kids at the proper age.
Also, I don't know where the hell you live, but where I am the kids growing up today are a mixed bag, as they have always been. What I do see that frightens me is a lot of young VERY intelligent minds going to absolute waste due to a failure of parents and the education system that is supposed to support them.
I don't put on any rose-tinted glasses, but more kids are becoming lazy, again, through no fault of their own. I know we had the same sort of slackers when I was going to school, but in my day it was 3-5 per class of 25-30. Now its 8-10 per class of 25-30, and sadly a good number of that 8-10 would likely have been at or near the top of their class 20 years ago.
If you don't believe me, go ask any teacher thats been teaching for more than 20 years. All these changes that are ruining generations started in the 80's and mostly came to full culmination and penetration in the late 90's/early 00's.
Parents DO need to have some of the answers, but not many people can either a) have all of the answers in memory or b) create an answer out of thin air that relays satisfactorily.
Unfortunately due to the way we reproduce and the relatively random expressions of certain genes you can frequently end up with a situation where the child is so much smarter than the adult that the adult simply cannot answer all of their questions. In this case the adults only option is to eventually fall back on the "mystical force" or "just because I said so dammit". Giving up and giving in to the child is the worst possible option, but one that happens unfortunately frequently. Some of this is also some of what used to be called "lip" and warranted corporal punishment in some homes. While I'm not a fan of large amounts of corporal punishment in raising a child, in some cases it is warranted, and given whats been happening generation over generation with work ethic in most western countries you can't say that it didn't have an extremely good effect on work ethic.
That said, I was in the same boat as you, and have an IQ north of 170, which is easily 40 points + higher than either of my parents. I could speak fluently in full sentences by the time I was two and remember most things from the time I could walk at 9 months old.
The majority of people couldn't and still can't answer my questions. This is just a fact of life that you're going to have to learn to live with. Not everyone either a) obsesses about having the answers or b) is intelligent enough to just have most of them for everyday things.
The trick here is trust. My parents were infuriating because they never gave me enough answers to ever make me trust them. They didn't even TRY to give me the answers in most cases, and it was blatantly obvious.
My grandfather on the other hand did. I still have no problems doing what he wants me to do, because if he can explain something at all, he will, and if he can't explain it, I can trust that it just needs to be done and that I'll either find out or figure out on my own the why of it later.
Your view is entirely naive as #1 it won't work on a lot of people because even after it is explained, a lot of folks with iq's south of 110-120 ish won't understand WHY it is in their self-interest. Not to mention the social ramifications of societies entirely focused on self-interest are being felt world-wide, most notably in the largest collapsing economy in history, the United States of America. Your approach, while I find is actually recommended in some childrens books etc, is extremely flawed, and entirely the wrong way to go about child-rearing as a blanket approach.
P.S. Yes, I know some of this is a generalization, and IQ is NOT a perfectly accurate measure of, well, anything, its just the only semi-accurate one I have to hand.
Actually I believe you're both wrong.
Also you're both mostly right.
A childs /NEEDS/ should be paramount. The problem is the bubble wrapping and the catering to the childs /WANTS/.
You know something I noticed not too long ago? A lot of children these days simply have no concept of "need". If they don't "want" to do something they won't, and see no reason they should. For instance if they don't "want" to do their school work, many of them won't. Its really quite simple, and while anecdotal to some extent, my experience with children recently has shown me that simply understanding that things that "need" to happen simply must, are the ones that are thought well of and have good work ethic.
For instance, the trash needs to be taken out. They want to have ice cream. Also a constant rewarding of needed doings with wanted items creates a similar problem.