The problem I have with barcode ballots/receipts is simple:
They're not human readable. Does the barcode really say "Obama" or "McCain"? OCR devices aren't complicated today and allow the same piece of information(the vote) to be read by humans and machines effectively.
Of course, I believe that ballots should generally be of the #2 pencil bubblesheet variety. Though scanning systems today don't need the #2, black/dark blue pen will work as well.
1. Good a. Is it that hard to fill out a bubble sheet? b. then why did they bother to get the paper ballots? - Quick trip to office supply store should fix c. Not good, I'll admit, but what's better, people honestly not voting or letting these faulty machines be used for another election(then another, then another)... d. Do you suggest that any one party's voters are significantly more dedicated than the others? 2. Martin Luther King Jr willingly spent time in a number of jails because of his actions; presumably our machine-killer is prepared to do the same for what he believes in. As for armed guards, why don't we already have them? After all a nut can appear anywhere anyplace*, and is it going to be a problem once the known defective machines are gone? 3. Said violator, as long as he only goes for the machines, is unlikely to end up in max. Especially if he follows my additional first and last steps(pre-arrange lawyer, call lawyer).
*Though armed loonies tend to pick on gun-free zones, oddly enough.
.5: Arrange a lawyer on retainer/willing to work pro-bono on your case 6. Call said lawyer.
Having a lawyer available right off, while showing premeditation will also help you get out of jail far quicker, as he'll already have arrangements made.
Bail money would be a good idea. Expect it to cost at least $50k, but that depends on the judge you ultimately get.
Believe it or not, hand counting is NOT the most accurate way to count. When you start counting millions of anything, just about any counting method has an error rate. All we can do is audit.
for any counting technique with worse security properties to be used.
I agree here.
Any alternate counting method should be superior to hand counting in as many ways possible. Pure electronic voting may be easy, but it fails miserably on the 'auditable' factor.
I believe that OCR compatible ballot to be the best system currently available.
Just about every person in the USA today should be familiar with those 'fill in the bubble' tests from school. Heck, I'd use the same machines, even if only for recounts/auditing purposes. They're already owned, regularly tested and used. As a bonus, it wouldn't really matter if the machine cost a million dollars - because it's already being used to tally all the standardized school tests in the district. Spread the cost around.
As long as you only care about internally initiated connections.
Not as long as you set up port forwarding.
My point with the NAT is that it pushed back the need for a shift to IP6 or equivalent protocols by a surprising amount.
We STILL haven't seen the IP enabled fridges and stoves and such we were 'supposed' to see, so the _average_ user doesn't need a externally routable IP address.
Same deal with many portable cellular browsing devices - everything goes through a proxy first.
I can see us transiting to IP6 eventually, but it'll come first in China, and the USA, like usual, will have to be dragged into it kicking and screaming on the whole.
, and those that just need a lot of cheap address space will start using ipv6 as ipv4 gets harder to get and/or more expensive.
Don't forget NAT and proxy firewalls.
With that even a organization as large as a military base would only need 1 public IP, not the 100% routable internal addresses most of them have. It's even spreading to ISPs.
Wasn't suggesting a tent. Was suggesting sharing an apartment with 2-3 others. The tent was me. Special circumstances, big tent.
That comes out to about 5-7 hundred a week with only what he reports being taxable and this was back in the early 90's to boot.
In other words cheating on his taxes. Could come back to bite him when he retires though.
I'm more worries about the people who at a point of last resort due to circumstances largely outside their immediate control. Sort of like the hand up instead of a hand out idea. On a side note, I appose state run medical coverage for the same reasons you mentioned. Almost everyone I know who isn't covered has a boat, a new car, 126 pay cable channels and so on. It isn't that most of them can't afford insurance, they chose to spend the money somewhere else.
And you can get the psychological effects without physically using drugs, right? Oh wait, no you can't.
The critical factor here is that not all drugs have psychological addiction properties, and even among drugs that do, the effects vary. This is important when you go to put somebody in a treatment program, because one can require a slow drawdown process where the individual is weaned off the drug, or you provide a less addictive substitute such as Methadone in the case of Heroin. The other you can theoretically go cold turkey with no more problem.
that that is the absolute dumbest thing I have ever heard anyone say in my entire life.
You must not get out much then.
Simply speaking, there's two types of addiction. Physiological and Psychological. Physiological is where actual changes to body chemistry occur, and bad things can happen when you withdraw. A severe alcohol addict can experience delirium tremens. Heroin can have some very bad side effects from withdrawal.
Then you have Psychological addictions. These are the people who get addicted to gambling, world of warcraft, the internet, etc... Not to say that they don't crave their addiction, but it doesn't have the body factor that Physiological does.
On the topic of the toilets - well, I'd consider them an experiment that didn't work out as well as they hoped.
It is pretty difficult to get physically addicted to alcohol (I should know), but it is most definately possible.
I believe this has a lot to do with genetics. Native American tribes have some extremely high alcoholism, while Europeans generally don't, at least without extreme effort.
My theory is that areas that developed alcoholic beverages created evolutionary pressure for people who could handle them. Thus, like Europeans being more resistant to diseases like smallpox, they're also more resistant to alcoholism. As are Asians, and probably Indians.
Difference in perspective? In my area saying something is illegal tends to imply a blanket ban.
Not everyone can find a one room studio apartment for $300 a month. I have a sister with 3 kids and it costs her $6 an hour for a babysitter for all three ($2 a kid which from what I understand is cheap in my area).
I actually wasn't figuring on a studio. I was figuring on them sharing an apartment. I share a tent with six other dudes for six months at a time - I figure they can put up with two or three others.
As for the kids, well, I don't believe that minimum wage should be 'sufficient' for a custodial single parent, much less one with three kids. At some point the government just needs to realize that it's cheaper to pay him or her to stay home and take care of the kids, at least until they're in school, at which point she can work part time(like my mother did). Disclaimer - you have to be careful that you don't get women having kids to get into the system. It happened with the old one. I'm tempted to say 'screw it, pay the child care and send her to work'.
I think a study would be interesting too. I do know that when I worked in restaurants which was about 15 years ago, I had college graduates waiting tables because they claimed to make more money doing that then their chosen profession.
I've heard about this before, but never for a civil engineer - mostly for things like english/humanities degrees. Stuff that normally only qualifies you to be a teacher/professor. I guess he must have been a really good waiter, or the city/state paid crud.
Anyways, About two thirds of out wait and bar staff held degree in something. So I know college isn't a magic bullet to fix everything.
One of the arguements that I've made is that we're sending far too many people to college today - high school diplomas mean less than they used to, what used to be Junior/Senior HS classes have become freshman college classes. I'd want to fix that. Combine that with the cost of college - We have people spending amounts equal to what they'll make upon graduation, vs making money in an apprenticeship type program. It takes a long time for the slightly higher pay many college degrees give to make up for the early expense. Well, according to here, average cost for a private college is $23k, public $6k. Per year. I'll go with the public figure, and figure on a 50% increase in pay, from $40k a year to $60k a year. On graduation, the student will be $24k or more in debt, while the HS student who went to work has 4 years experience and has earned $160k. Quick spreadsheet calcs shows that the College Grad won't be better off than his peer until they're 37(5% annual value on current money over future money). Fact is, due to our generation of disdain for blue collar jobs, in many cases we're overstaffed with college grads, lowering their income, and short on workers such as plumbers, electricians, and carpenters, raising their income. Increase the cost of college to $10k, and drop the benefit to $55k/year and you'd be 47 by the time you're ahead. Overly simplistic, I know, just making a point. I'd need to plug in actual figures for average wages(IE HS +2, HS +20, College +5, +10), maybe a figure for 'semi-professional' such as electrician over 'stockboy'.
I suppose she could have told everyone that she was accusing her moms boyfriend of molesting her and her mom doesn't believe her and ask for a place to stay from one of her friends parents.
Ugly situation all around, all I can say is that she made her choice, what she felt was the best one she could make. She could have worked as a waitress - they tend to make good money, but it wouldn't have been as much as stripping, so she would have had to work more hours to get the
by omitting the cost of decommissioning and waste storage post-decommissioning
Not true in the USA. When a plant comes online a part of the 'cost' of the electricity goes into an escrow fund for eventual decommisioning. US nuclear plants at this point have plenty of money for their eventual decommisioning, especially as they've extended their service life several times.
As for the waste, by US LAW, they pay a tax per Kwh to the government in exchange for the USGov disposing of the waste. Problem: The USGov broke it's side of the deal, wasting money left and right over Yucca mountain. The organization has actually gotten sued over it, as the nuclear plants say they could have disposed of the waste for the money the government's been given.
Pretty much every country except the USA has managed to figure out a way to handle their waste - Japan and France reprocess.
Care to accurately project what the US will be like in 200 years?
While the US wasn't settled heavily 200 years ago, Europe was - and they have plenty of records, businesses, and buildings that are over 200 years old.
Heck, we've dug up graveyards and garbage dumps in the thousands of years old.
I'm just saying, for the pollution caused, properly recycled nuclear waste, or breeder reactors, end up producing 10X the power for a given amount of waste that stays radioactive for a much shorter period of time.
Given that - suddenly Yucca mountain makes a lot more sense. Given that, a nuclear plant can store a couple centuries of waste, minimum, on site vs 20 in it's pool.
California nuclear plants with the rock-solid San Andreas Fault beneath.
Then build the new plants OFF the fault, and shut down the old one on the fault once you've shut down the various other power sources that are more polluting or expensive to run.
Just to be honest - the safety and economic benefits of pebble beds over other GenIV reactor designs have yet to be proven. For another, the only water eliminated in a pebble bed is the primary coolant - secondary systems are still water/steam.
And we wave away the pesky protection and isolation of waste while it cools for a time longer than our history of recognizable civilization.
I believe that this is the first time I've heard of 'wave away' being used to disparage recycling. With recycling the waste is split 90/10 into usable fuel and waste that only needs to be stored for a couple hundred years - much more doable.
First, sorry about the 100% italics post earlier. Should have previewed.
They do so right now. Well, they don't really go looking for a diseased girls (perhaps someone with a disease already) but they hook up with streetwalkers and lot lizards who aren't certified clean for $50 instead of $200.
They don't currently have the option.
If you were to ask if it was legal or illegal to drive a car, the only correct answer would be illegal unless you have a drivers license, insurance, and permission from the owner or controller of the car.
I think we're into slight variances between our versions of english. In my area, if I were to ask my friends and coworkers if driving were legal, they'd say 'yes'. If you ask me if concealed carry is legal in my state, I'd answer 'with a permit'. The difference is that the vast majority of people have gone through the requirements to drive legally, so somebody who can't drive legally is the exception, not the rule.
I would agree if that is a choice they made. What I don't like is the situation where they have to in order to make a living for whatever reason.
I'm weird in that I have a vastly different idea of what the minimum it takes to live on is. I've put together budgets where a person can live on minimum wage before - and the minimum wage BEFORE the most recent raise. $5.25/hour.
When a college graduate has to strip because she can't get a job anywhere or the job doesn't pay enough to even pay on the school loans, then some other problems need to be addressed and she shouldn't be forced into a situation like that.
I think this would call for a study - just how many strippers are college graduates, and vice versa. Why? Because I don't think this would be a problem. I've known of a number of women who were strippers while IN college - but that was a choice they made. You could argue that they were bribed into the business - the high amount of money they could make per hour enabled them to get through college on far less debt, with a higher standard of living during it, on relatively few hours of work per week.
I personally know a girl who had to strip after her moms boyfriend tried to molest her repeatedly and she moved out of the house at age 18 in her senor year of high school. She had no other way of supporting herself and getting away from the guy she was exposed to at home.
Choices. It's all about the choices.
Because she was in high school, every employer treated her as a minor which meant 25 hours max a week and no more then 6 hours a day. The stripping job had less hours then that and she could make close to $400 a week off of 20 hours with most of the time being on the weekends.
She probably did have alternatives, but in this case, stripping was what ended up being her choice. Because it allowed her to maintain a standard of living she was more comfortable with, with limited time spent at work so she could better concentrate on school. Personally, I agree with you, the Mother should have done more. Life ain't fair.
On another topic - What would she have done if the stripping job had been unavailable? Either because it's illegal(local area raised stripping age to 21, or outright banned them), she was too unattractive, or if she had been a male?
Alternatives should exist. I have no problem with having stripping/prostitution paying well to attract workers. That DOES mean that you'll get people working there just for the money. But isn't that the definition of a prostitute? Sure, some will say that 'I'm forced to work here', but the way I look at it, there are always options - they just don't always look that good. She made her decision herself. She decided that working in a brothel was better than working in a McDonald's(or such).
Well, your probably right. But at least in the why do you want to work here section of the interview, it would be known when she said because I have no other options to make money. Then perhaps a non
I could believe it is there wasn't "enough" demand but I refuse to believe there is no demand.
Very good point. Yes, not enough demand is a much better statement
What matters is that the perception of the alternatives is worse then the abuse.
The perception of abused people everywhere - whether they be whore or wife, legal or illegal. Sad but true.
Because you would want specific conditions like disease free girls and such and those addons would end up being luxury items that increase the price.
I believe that relatively few people would go for an almost guaranteed diseased woman for $50 over the $200 guaranteed clean one.
You do realize that the prostitution in Nevada isn't legal, it is "permitted".
Driving is legal, but you still need a license. Just because I'd be making it legal doesn't mean that I would make it unregulated.
Lol.. I guess your not getting the problem. If the woman turns to prostitution because she is desperate for money-food-shelter or whatever for herself or her kids, they aren't going to be denying a paying john. Sure, she has that ability reject a person but the circumstances that forced her into prostitution would dictate another course of action.
Many of those getting into the stripping business, and the legal brothels are doing so because they want to - they're lured by the promise of large amounts of money for relatively little effort. If a woman chooses to do this, that is her choice. Just like it's my choice to go to work for McD's for extra money if I want to.
It would be a conspiracy but it wouldn't need to be widespread. Black balling someone on a reference or whatever when they try to shift jobs. In most smaller areas, the owners and management of businesses end up talking to each other and it is possible to make a person almost un-hire-able in the same profession. All this could be easily done just by a conversation of "X employee is a pain, threatening to sue over everything, I had cut her hours in hopes she quits" in a casual conversation to a friend could be enough to bar their employment prospects at related jobs for other companies.
Would eventually generate a lawsuit; heck stuff like this can happen NOW, for unpaid sexual favors. A lawsuit can be an uphill battle if the abuser is smart enough to not leave collaborating evidence. Again, it's an awful lot of work for a specific woman; especially if the dude can just go to a LEGAL brothel to satisfy those urges.
someone couldn't be forced into the business by depriving them of money.
I have to be honest that it wouldn't stop them from hiring into an established brothel(like Nevada), but in a case like that she'd be able to refuse/decline the attention of any specific man.
I also think that the lack of this test is probably a big factor in why pot isn't legal.
And I don't because while they currently concentrate on tests that test longevity, there are those that don't, just like there are some of the same tests for drinking, but they're hardly known or developed because there's no demand.
Yea, Not good is it. At least with it being against the law, there might be some penalties to anyone forcing someone into this type of situation and there is an attempt to remove it by making the participants (the johns) culpable to some degree.
And legalizing prostitution wouldn't legalize this. If prostitution was legal, it'd be protected under existing employment laws.
By legalizing it, you'd have the vast majority of johns going to legal brothels and prostitutes, removing the profit that makes running an illegal one worth it.
It wouldn't be parents doing it. It would be little Sally who is rebelling against her parents that flunks out of school and is left with no other option.
And this doesn't exist now? See all the drug addicted hookers today. If anything, it'd remove prostitution as an escape - I'm using Nevada brothels as an example. In order to work there you have to be disease and drug free, an you're unlikely to make money unless you're fairly attractive.
It wouldn't be Scholarship being yanked, they would simply raise the bar a little because little Sally can make good money without a degree.
See strippers.
It would be some employers who instead of saying Blow me if you want the raise could in turn wait until an employee is hard up for money and then take the hours and salary away so they can have sex with them when they turn prostitute completely skirting around sexual harassment issues in the work place.
First, legal prostitutes would be able to say no to sleeping with anybody, for whatever reason. So the boss that treated them like shit - no tail for him. Besides, don't you think that it's rather convoluted to try to force a woman into prostitution in order to have sex with her, especially when you'd have to pay, just like anybody else? When he could simply go to the house and pay any of the women who're are already working there?
Besides, unless there's some sort of widespread conspiracy, the odds of driving any specific woman to prostitution is slim.
I assumed that when you said legal, it was more to the point that the government just didn't get involved with it. Sort of like when you ask a girl out on a date or something. But i don't have a problem with a regulated prostitution similar to Nevada's system. It can create rules that effectivly address and avoid the concerns I had.
When I started this, heck yes I pictured it being regulated - I set the age limit at 18, but 21 wouldn't be that bad. Personally I'd lower the drinking age to 18 as well, so at least I'm consistent.
I wouldn't necessarily go as far as the regulations for Nevada, but there would be a lot of controls. Regular exams and training, resulting in a permit. Not allowed to 'streetwalk', it has to be done at a brothel - but I'd allow 'brothels of one' if they want to do it that way. Attack a legal prostitute and your ass is going to be beaten by the bouncer before you get hauled to jail for assault & battery. Not that that's likely, lacking alcohol(and yes, I'd have rules about intoxication).
Drugs for instance, if your under the influence of them and cause harm to me either directly or by reckless and impaired behavior, and the use of those drugs had an influence, you should be punished more so then if you simply had an accident.
Agreed, generally speaking.
Unfortunately, there isn't really a test for most drugs like with alcohol were they can say with this amount in your system, you are impaired enough to be a danger to others.
You'd be surprised on how quickly this would be fixed - we already have all sorts of tests to determine the presence of drugs in the system. All we'd need would be some scientific studies to determine impairment levels.
Prostitution is another. I would hate to have a world evolve where a womans only hope for work is to exploit herself. In a day and age that women are supposed to be equal and capable of doing the same jobs, it wouldn't be that hard to force a girl into prostitution by simply denying her an education or promotion or raise and so on.
Instead of the current practice of forcing illegal immigrants into prostitution jobs? Of addicting them to illegal drugs then pimping them out before providing their next fix? Of promising women good jobs in a different country, then stealing their ID and forcing them to work in a sex house?
If it wasn't so easy to exploit women in this way (if it was legal), I could agree- let her decide. But then again, I don't want to have to pay for their kids nor force her to take birth control or have abortions.
I remain incredibly skeptical that parents would pull their kids out of school in order to turn them to prostitution. I remain skeptical that women would become ineligible for scholarships in order to turn them to prostitution. I remain skeptical that employers would refuse to hire women in order to send them to the brothel.
Refusing promotion in exchange for sexual favors, or demanding them for it, would remain sexual harassment, illegal.
If prostitution was legal - it'd be like the few brothels in Nevada - clean, safe, sanitary, with employees who make _very_ good money. Any exploitation would be reportable to the authorities, and prosecuted.
I guess I would be considered an authoritarian about right now, but I'm not sure I care.
Well, I'm a libertarian and I agree with you. I just happen to think that a number of things that are crimes now shouldn't be. Specifically: Guns*, drugs**, and prostitution***. There are a few other things that need adjustment, but those are the big ones.
Remaining crime - the ones with actual victims, I want the police to come down on like the angry hammer of thor on.
*Possession and carrying of **18+, cut with safe materials, of consistent purity ***18+, disease free, condom usage mandatory
But the problem with this is that every country says: "Fuck it, it's someone else's problem, let them deal with it. Why should I investigate it just so they get to arrest the perpetrator?".
Don't forget that many of these criminals work in states more or less friendly to them. Nigeria, China, etc... Though China might be mostly due to sheer population.
In some countries, it does work pretty well though.
And these criminals get away free as birds.
Besides the hostile country problem, you also get countries where the department wants to be paid for their effort. At least in the USA, you might be able to get the FBI involved in a crime that crossed state lines, but once you go overseas you add a whole 'nother level of bureaucracy. Diplomats. Bleh. Do you try him in the country he commited the crime in, or in the country the victim was in? Is it even a crime in his country? Is it to the point we're willing to use special forces to express our displeasure? (Not likely)
Of course, I smoothed all this stuff over by the simple statement of 'huge jurisdictional problems'.;)
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The problem I have with barcode ballots/receipts is simple:
They're not human readable. Does the barcode really say "Obama" or "McCain"? OCR devices aren't complicated today and allow the same piece of information(the vote) to be read by humans and machines effectively.
Of course, I believe that ballots should generally be of the #2 pencil bubblesheet variety. Though scanning systems today don't need the #2, black/dark blue pen will work as well.
1. Good
a. Is it that hard to fill out a bubble sheet?
b. then why did they bother to get the paper ballots? - Quick trip to office supply store should fix
c. Not good, I'll admit, but what's better, people honestly not voting or letting these faulty machines be used for another election(then another, then another)...
d. Do you suggest that any one party's voters are significantly more dedicated than the others?
2. Martin Luther King Jr willingly spent time in a number of jails because of his actions; presumably our machine-killer is prepared to do the same for what he believes in. As for armed guards, why don't we already have them? After all a nut can appear anywhere anyplace*, and is it going to be a problem once the known defective machines are gone?
3. Said violator, as long as he only goes for the machines, is unlikely to end up in max. Especially if he follows my additional first and last steps(pre-arrange lawyer, call lawyer).
*Though armed loonies tend to pick on gun-free zones, oddly enough.
.5: Arrange a lawyer on retainer/willing to work pro-bono on your case
6. Call said lawyer.
Having a lawyer available right off, while showing premeditation will also help you get out of jail far quicker, as he'll already have arrangements made.
Bail money would be a good idea. Expect it to cost at least $50k, but that depends on the judge you ultimately get.
Believe it or not, hand counting is NOT the most accurate way to count. When you start counting millions of anything, just about any counting method has an error rate. All we can do is audit.
for any counting technique with worse security properties to be used.
I agree here.
Any alternate counting method should be superior to hand counting in as many ways possible. Pure electronic voting may be easy, but it fails miserably on the 'auditable' factor.
I believe that OCR compatible ballot to be the best system currently available.
Just about every person in the USA today should be familiar with those 'fill in the bubble' tests from school. Heck, I'd use the same machines, even if only for recounts/auditing purposes. They're already owned, regularly tested and used. As a bonus, it wouldn't really matter if the machine cost a million dollars - because it's already being used to tally all the standardized school tests in the district. Spread the cost around.
As long as you only care about internally initiated connections.
Not as long as you set up port forwarding.
My point with the NAT is that it pushed back the need for a shift to IP6 or equivalent protocols by a surprising amount.
We STILL haven't seen the IP enabled fridges and stoves and such we were 'supposed' to see, so the _average_ user doesn't need a externally routable IP address.
Same deal with many portable cellular browsing devices - everything goes through a proxy first.
I can see us transiting to IP6 eventually, but it'll come first in China, and the USA, like usual, will have to be dragged into it kicking and screaming on the whole.
, and those that just need a lot of cheap address space will start using ipv6 as ipv4 gets harder to get and/or more expensive.
Don't forget NAT and proxy firewalls.
With that even a organization as large as a military base would only need 1 public IP, not the 100% routable internal addresses most of them have. It's even spreading to ISPs.
Asia must have come up with a different solution to supply clean drinking water.
They might of, eventually, but they have their share of alcoholic beverages as well... Rice wines and such.
I think most societies had some form of alcohol - The Egyptians even had beer.
The only ones that I think didn't were the native americans and australian aborigines. Africans outside of Egypt, maybe.
I'm not sure a tent would work in my area.
Wasn't suggesting a tent. Was suggesting sharing an apartment with 2-3 others. The tent was me. Special circumstances, big tent.
That comes out to about 5-7 hundred a week with only what he reports being taxable and this was back in the early 90's to boot.
In other words cheating on his taxes. Could come back to bite him when he retires though.
I'm more worries about the people who at a point of last resort due to circumstances largely outside their immediate control. Sort of like the hand up instead of a hand out idea. On a side note, I appose state run medical coverage for the same reasons you mentioned. Almost everyone I know who isn't covered has a boat, a new car, 126 pay cable channels and so on. It isn't that most of them can't afford insurance, they chose to spend the money somewhere else.
Pretty much.
And you can get the psychological effects without physically using drugs, right? Oh wait, no you can't.
The critical factor here is that not all drugs have psychological addiction properties, and even among drugs that do, the effects vary. This is important when you go to put somebody in a treatment program, because one can require a slow drawdown process where the individual is weaned off the drug, or you provide a less addictive substitute such as Methadone in the case of Heroin. The other you can theoretically go cold turkey with no more problem.
In many areas you'd get 'murals' from local artists in the area very quickly anyways... ;)
that that is the absolute dumbest thing I have ever heard anyone say in my entire life.
You must not get out much then.
Simply speaking, there's two types of addiction. Physiological and Psychological. Physiological is where actual changes to body chemistry occur, and bad things can happen when you withdraw. A severe alcohol addict can experience delirium tremens. Heroin can have some very bad side effects from withdrawal.
Then you have Psychological addictions. These are the people who get addicted to gambling, world of warcraft, the internet, etc... Not to say that they don't crave their addiction, but it doesn't have the body factor that Physiological does.
On the topic of the toilets - well, I'd consider them an experiment that didn't work out as well as they hoped.
It is pretty difficult to get physically addicted to alcohol (I should know), but it is most definately possible.
I believe this has a lot to do with genetics. Native American tribes have some extremely high alcoholism, while Europeans generally don't, at least without extreme effort.
My theory is that areas that developed alcoholic beverages created evolutionary pressure for people who could handle them. Thus, like Europeans being more resistant to diseases like smallpox, they're also more resistant to alcoholism. As are Asians, and probably Indians.
Maybe it is a difference in english or something
Difference in perspective? In my area saying something is illegal tends to imply a blanket ban.
Not everyone can find a one room studio apartment for $300 a month. I have a sister with 3 kids and it costs her $6 an hour for a babysitter for all three ($2 a kid which from what I understand is cheap in my area).
I actually wasn't figuring on a studio. I was figuring on them sharing an apartment. I share a tent with six other dudes for six months at a time - I figure they can put up with two or three others.
As for the kids, well, I don't believe that minimum wage should be 'sufficient' for a custodial single parent, much less one with three kids. At some point the government just needs to realize that it's cheaper to pay him or her to stay home and take care of the kids, at least until they're in school, at which point she can work part time(like my mother did). Disclaimer - you have to be careful that you don't get women having kids to get into the system. It happened with the old one. I'm tempted to say 'screw it, pay the child care and send her to work'.
I think a study would be interesting too. I do know that when I worked in restaurants which was about 15 years ago, I had college graduates waiting tables because they claimed to make more money doing that then their chosen profession.
I've heard about this before, but never for a civil engineer - mostly for things like english/humanities degrees. Stuff that normally only qualifies you to be a teacher/professor. I guess he must have been a really good waiter, or the city/state paid crud.
Anyways, About two thirds of out wait and bar staff held degree in something. So I know college isn't a magic bullet to fix everything.
One of the arguements that I've made is that we're sending far too many people to college today - high school diplomas mean less than they used to, what used to be Junior/Senior HS classes have become freshman college classes. I'd want to fix that. Combine that with the cost of college - We have people spending amounts equal to what they'll make upon graduation, vs making money in an apprenticeship type program. It takes a long time for the slightly higher pay many college degrees give to make up for the early expense. Well, according to here, average cost for a private college is $23k, public $6k. Per year. I'll go with the public figure, and figure on a 50% increase in pay, from $40k a year to $60k a year. On graduation, the student will be $24k or more in debt, while the HS student who went to work has 4 years experience and has earned $160k. Quick spreadsheet calcs shows that the College Grad won't be better off than his peer until they're 37(5% annual value on current money over future money). Fact is, due to our generation of disdain for blue collar jobs, in many cases we're overstaffed with college grads, lowering their income, and short on workers such as plumbers, electricians, and carpenters, raising their income. Increase the cost of college to $10k, and drop the benefit to $55k/year and you'd be 47 by the time you're ahead. Overly simplistic, I know, just making a point. I'd need to plug in actual figures for average wages(IE HS +2, HS +20, College +5, +10), maybe a figure for 'semi-professional' such as electrician over 'stockboy'.
I suppose she could have told everyone that she was accusing her moms boyfriend of molesting her and her mom doesn't believe her and ask for a place to stay from one of her friends parents.
Ugly situation all around, all I can say is that she made her choice, what she felt was the best one she could make. She could have worked as a waitress - they tend to make good money, but it wouldn't have been as much as stripping, so she would have had to work more hours to get the
by omitting the cost of decommissioning and waste storage post-decommissioning
Not true in the USA. When a plant comes online a part of the 'cost' of the electricity goes into an escrow fund for eventual decommisioning. US nuclear plants at this point have plenty of money for their eventual decommisioning, especially as they've extended their service life several times.
As for the waste, by US LAW, they pay a tax per Kwh to the government in exchange for the USGov disposing of the waste. Problem: The USGov broke it's side of the deal, wasting money left and right over Yucca mountain. The organization has actually gotten sued over it, as the nuclear plants say they could have disposed of the waste for the money the government's been given.
Pretty much every country except the USA has managed to figure out a way to handle their waste - Japan and France reprocess.
Care to accurately project what the US will be like in 200 years?
While the US wasn't settled heavily 200 years ago, Europe was - and they have plenty of records, businesses, and buildings that are over 200 years old.
Heck, we've dug up graveyards and garbage dumps in the thousands of years old.
I'm just saying, for the pollution caused, properly recycled nuclear waste, or breeder reactors, end up producing 10X the power for a given amount of waste that stays radioactive for a much shorter period of time.
Given that - suddenly Yucca mountain makes a lot more sense. Given that, a nuclear plant can store a couple centuries of waste, minimum, on site vs 20 in it's pool.
California nuclear plants with the rock-solid San Andreas Fault beneath.
Then build the new plants OFF the fault, and shut down the old one on the fault once you've shut down the various other power sources that are more polluting or expensive to run.
Just to be honest - the safety and economic benefits of pebble beds over other GenIV reactor designs have yet to be proven. For another, the only water eliminated in a pebble bed is the primary coolant - secondary systems are still water/steam.
In defense of the 'nutter', nuclear power is so expensive it's not really worth investing in, unless you are planning to build some nukes.
One, By the same arguement, Solar and wind power aren't worth investing in, because they're more expensive per kwh than nuclear.
Two, nuclear weapons aren't made from reactor waste much anymore - we have more efficient methods.
The waste from the nuclear plants in Canada, France, UK, and USA aren't used for creating nuclear weapon materials.
And we wave away the pesky protection and isolation of waste while it cools for a time longer than our history of recognizable civilization.
I believe that this is the first time I've heard of 'wave away' being used to disparage recycling. With recycling the waste is split 90/10 into usable fuel and waste that only needs to be stored for a couple hundred years - much more doable.
First, sorry about the 100% italics post earlier. Should have previewed.
They do so right now. Well, they don't really go looking for a diseased girls (perhaps someone with a disease already) but they hook up with streetwalkers and lot lizards who aren't certified clean for $50 instead of $200.
They don't currently have the option.
If you were to ask if it was legal or illegal to drive a car, the only correct answer would be illegal unless you have a drivers license, insurance, and permission from the owner or controller of the car.
I think we're into slight variances between our versions of english. In my area, if I were to ask my friends and coworkers if driving were legal, they'd say 'yes'. If you ask me if concealed carry is legal in my state, I'd answer 'with a permit'. The difference is that the vast majority of people have gone through the requirements to drive legally, so somebody who can't drive legally is the exception, not the rule.
I would agree if that is a choice they made. What I don't like is the situation where they have to in order to make a living for whatever reason.
I'm weird in that I have a vastly different idea of what the minimum it takes to live on is. I've put together budgets where a person can live on minimum wage before - and the minimum wage BEFORE the most recent raise. $5.25/hour.
When a college graduate has to strip because she can't get a job anywhere or the job doesn't pay enough to even pay on the school loans, then some other problems need to be addressed and she shouldn't be forced into a situation like that.
I think this would call for a study - just how many strippers are college graduates, and vice versa. Why? Because I don't think this would be a problem. I've known of a number of women who were strippers while IN college - but that was a choice they made. You could argue that they were bribed into the business - the high amount of money they could make per hour enabled them to get through college on far less debt, with a higher standard of living during it, on relatively few hours of work per week.
I personally know a girl who had to strip after her moms boyfriend tried to molest her repeatedly and she moved out of the house at age 18 in her senor year of high school. She had no other way of supporting herself and getting away from the guy she was exposed to at home.
Choices. It's all about the choices.
Because she was in high school, every employer treated her as a minor which meant 25 hours max a week and no more then 6 hours a day. The stripping job had less hours then that and she could make close to $400 a week off of 20 hours with most of the time being on the weekends.
She probably did have alternatives, but in this case, stripping was what ended up being her choice. Because it allowed her to maintain a standard of living she was more comfortable with, with limited time spent at work so she could better concentrate on school. Personally, I agree with you, the Mother should have done more. Life ain't fair.
On another topic - What would she have done if the stripping job had been unavailable? Either because it's illegal(local area raised stripping age to 21, or outright banned them), she was too unattractive, or if she had been a male?
Alternatives should exist. I have no problem with having stripping/prostitution paying well to attract workers. That DOES mean that you'll get people working there just for the money. But isn't that the definition of a prostitute? Sure, some will say that 'I'm forced to work here', but the way I look at it, there are always options - they just don't always look that good. She made her decision herself. She decided that working in a brothel was better than working in a McDonald's(or such).
Well, your probably right. But at least in the why do you want to work here section of the interview, it would be known when she said because I have no other options to make money. Then perhaps a non
I could believe it is there wasn't "enough" demand but I refuse to believe there is no demand.
Very good point. Yes, not enough demand is a much better statement
What matters is that the perception of the alternatives is worse then the abuse.
The perception of abused people everywhere - whether they be whore or wife, legal or illegal. Sad but true.
Because you would want specific conditions like disease free girls and such and those addons would end up being luxury items that increase the price.
I believe that relatively few people would go for an almost guaranteed diseased woman for $50 over the $200 guaranteed clean one.
You do realize that the prostitution in Nevada isn't legal, it is "permitted".
Driving is legal, but you still need a license. Just because I'd be making it legal doesn't mean that I would make it unregulated.
Lol.. I guess your not getting the problem. If the woman turns to prostitution because she is desperate for money-food-shelter or whatever for herself or her kids, they aren't going to be denying a paying john. Sure, she has that ability reject a person but the circumstances that forced her into prostitution would dictate another course of action.
Many of those getting into the stripping business, and the legal brothels are doing so because they want to - they're lured by the promise of large amounts of money for relatively little effort. If a woman chooses to do this, that is her choice. Just like it's my choice to go to work for McD's for extra money if I want to.
It would be a conspiracy but it wouldn't need to be widespread. Black balling someone on a reference or whatever when they try to shift jobs. In most smaller areas, the owners and management of businesses end up talking to each other and it is possible to make a person almost un-hire-able in the same profession. All this could be easily done just by a conversation of "X employee is a pain, threatening to sue over everything, I had cut her hours in hopes she quits" in a casual conversation to a friend could be enough to bar their employment prospects at related jobs for other companies.
Would eventually generate a lawsuit; heck stuff like this can happen NOW, for unpaid sexual favors. A lawsuit can be an uphill battle if the abuser is smart enough to not leave collaborating evidence. Again, it's an awful lot of work for a specific woman; especially if the dude can just go to a LEGAL brothel to satisfy those urges.
someone couldn't be forced into the business by depriving them of money.
I have to be honest that it wouldn't stop them from hiring into an established brothel(like Nevada), but in a case like that she'd be able to refuse/decline the attention of any specific man.
I also think that the lack of this test is probably a big factor in why pot isn't legal.
And I don't because while they currently concentrate on tests that test longevity, there are those that don't, just like there are some of the same tests for drinking, but they're hardly known or developed because there's no demand.
Yea, Not good is it. At least with it being against the law, there might be some penalties to anyone forcing someone into this type of situation and there is an attempt to remove it by making the participants (the johns) culpable to some degree.
And legalizing prostitution wouldn't legalize this. If prostitution was legal, it'd be protected under existing employment laws.
By legalizing it, you'd have the vast majority of johns going to legal brothels and prostitutes, removing the profit that makes running an illegal one worth it.
It wouldn't be parents doing it. It would be little Sally who is rebelling against her parents that flunks out of school and is left with no other option.
And this doesn't exist now? See all the drug addicted hookers today. If anything, it'd remove prostitution as an escape - I'm using Nevada brothels as an example. In order to work there you have to be disease and drug free, an you're unlikely to make money unless you're fairly attractive.
It wouldn't be Scholarship being yanked, they would simply raise the bar a little because little Sally can make good money without a degree.
See strippers.
It would be some employers who instead of saying Blow me if you want the raise could in turn wait until an employee is hard up for money and then take the hours and salary away so they can have sex with them when they turn prostitute completely skirting around sexual harassment issues in the work place.
First, legal prostitutes would be able to say no to sleeping with anybody, for whatever reason. So the boss that treated them like shit - no tail for him. Besides, don't you think that it's rather convoluted to try to force a woman into prostitution in order to have sex with her, especially when you'd have to pay, just like anybody else? When he could simply go to the house and pay any of the women who're are already working there?
Besides, unless there's some sort of widespread conspiracy, the odds of driving any specific woman to prostitution is slim.
I assumed that when you said legal, it was more to the point that the government just didn't get involved with it. Sort of like when you ask a girl out on a date or something. But i don't have a problem with a regulated prostitution similar to Nevada's system. It can create rules that effectivly address and avoid the concerns I had.
When I started this, heck yes I pictured it being regulated - I set the age limit at 18, but 21 wouldn't be that bad. Personally I'd lower the drinking age to 18 as well, so at least I'm consistent.
I wouldn't necessarily go as far as the regulations for Nevada, but there would be a lot of controls. Regular exams and training, resulting in a permit. Not allowed to 'streetwalk', it has to be done at a brothel - but I'd allow 'brothels of one' if they want to do it that way. Attack a legal prostitute and your ass is going to be beaten by the bouncer before you get hauled to jail for assault & battery. Not that that's likely, lacking alcohol(and yes, I'd have rules about intoxication).
Drugs for instance, if your under the influence of them and cause harm to me either directly or by reckless and impaired behavior, and the use of those drugs had an influence, you should be punished more so then if you simply had an accident.
Agreed, generally speaking.
Unfortunately, there isn't really a test for most drugs like with alcohol were they can say with this amount in your system, you are impaired enough to be a danger to others.
You'd be surprised on how quickly this would be fixed - we already have all sorts of tests to determine the presence of drugs in the system. All we'd need would be some scientific studies to determine impairment levels.
Prostitution is another. I would hate to have a world evolve where a womans only hope for work is to exploit herself. In a day and age that women are supposed to be equal and capable of doing the same jobs, it wouldn't be that hard to force a girl into prostitution by simply denying her an education or promotion or raise and so on.
Instead of the current practice of forcing illegal immigrants into prostitution jobs? Of addicting them to illegal drugs then pimping them out before providing their next fix? Of promising women good jobs in a different country, then stealing their ID and forcing them to work in a sex house?
If it wasn't so easy to exploit women in this way (if it was legal), I could agree- let her decide. But then again, I don't want to have to pay for their kids nor force her to take birth control or have abortions.
I remain incredibly skeptical that parents would pull their kids out of school in order to turn them to prostitution. I remain skeptical that women would become ineligible for scholarships in order to turn them to prostitution. I remain skeptical that employers would refuse to hire women in order to send them to the brothel.
Refusing promotion in exchange for sexual favors, or demanding them for it, would remain sexual harassment, illegal.
If prostitution was legal - it'd be like the few brothels in Nevada - clean, safe, sanitary, with employees who make _very_ good money. Any exploitation would be reportable to the authorities, and prosecuted.
I guess I would be considered an authoritarian about right now, but I'm not sure I care.
Well, I'm a libertarian and I agree with you. I just happen to think that a number of things that are crimes now shouldn't be. Specifically: Guns*, drugs**, and prostitution***. There are a few other things that need adjustment, but those are the big ones.
Remaining crime - the ones with actual victims, I want the police to come down on like the angry hammer of thor on.
*Possession and carrying of
**18+, cut with safe materials, of consistent purity
***18+, disease free, condom usage mandatory
But the problem with this is that every country says: "Fuck it, it's someone else's problem, let them deal with it. Why should I investigate it just so they get to arrest the perpetrator?".
Don't forget that many of these criminals work in states more or less friendly to them. Nigeria, China, etc... Though China might be mostly due to sheer population.
In some countries, it does work pretty well though.
And these criminals get away free as birds.
Besides the hostile country problem, you also get countries where the department wants to be paid for their effort. At least in the USA, you might be able to get the FBI involved in a crime that crossed state lines, but once you go overseas you add a whole 'nother level of bureaucracy. Diplomats. Bleh. Do you try him in the country he commited the crime in, or in the country the victim was in? Is it even a crime in his country? Is it to the point we're willing to use special forces to express our displeasure? (Not likely)
Of course, I smoothed all this stuff over by the simple statement of 'huge jurisdictional problems'. ;)