The study doesn't say why $75,000 is the benchmark, but "it does seem to me a plausible number at which people would think money is not an issue," says Deaton. At that level, people probably have enough expendable cash to do things that make them feel good, like going out with friends. (The federal poverty level for a family of four, by the way, is $22,050.)
Those of us who actually know enough about the government that our founding fathers wouldn't be embarrassed to let us vote actually notice things like "WTH are Medicare, Social Security, Unemployment and servicing the national debt?"
You're one of them too.
I'm only posting this cause it's the THIRD TIMETHIS WEEK (well... last seven days) that I'm seeing this same "not only blatantly wrong but you-should-know-better-so-I-assume-dishonesty wrong" parroting. Only this time comical numbers are made to be someone else's fault. But with the same fallacy of equating trust funds (paying for social programs - where people ENTRUST a part of their paycheck to the government in return for various forms of insurance later) and direct expenditures (paying for defense NOW) parts of the budget.
I.e. Equating savings for a rainy day and spending on guns which (should that particular rainy day come) will quickly prove to be obsolete and will be bought again, several times over - and forever paying for the human costs of past wars.
Defense takes up ~20% of US Federal budget, paid out mostly directly to the military. That's your tax dollars paying for soldiers, guns, tanks, missiles, ships, bases and for buying allies through foreign aid (a tiny piece of it all). Veterans also represent a sizeable chunk of the whole thing, either through compensation paid out to them by the government, or through medical costs. Again... your tax dollars are spent on all that.
"Medicare" takes up ~27% of US Federal budget BUT... and it's a HUGE BUT... It is paid out from TRUST FUNDS, paid into by the workers, from their payroll and income taxes as INSURANCE for themselves and their families. NOT your tax dollars - THEIR tax dollars, entrusted to the government, to be paid out TO THEM in the time of need.
I.e. That's people's savings for the rainy day. Cause it rains on just and the unjust alike. And it never stops. That's why government HANDLES that much cash - but it is NOT spent. It is RETURNED to those who've provided it. With interest.
Same goes for social security, of which only a tiny chunk is actual spending instead of again - savings.
Presumably, as it is not stated in the paper as an issue per se, this method should get around safeguards intended to prevent using printouts - by requiring the fingerprint to be conductive to electricity. Which would probably work with a wet printout as well.
In FY 2013, we: - Paid over $850 billion to almost 65 million beneficiaries;
So that's where your 850 billion dollar figure comes from. Only problem is, your confirmation bias prevented you from actually reading that document. You know... like actually looking for understanding (what those numbers actually mean) instead of just fishing for BigMcHuge numbers to lean your bias on. Or you would have noticed this bit:
Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Created in 1935, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) program provides retirement and survivors benefits to qualified workers and their families. In FY 2015, we will pay about $744 billion in OASI benefits to approximately 49 million beneficiaries per month, including 89 percent of the population aged 65 and over.
Disability Insurance Established in 1956, the Disability Insurance (DI) program provides benefits for workers with disabilities and their families. In FY 2015, we will pay about $147 billion in DI benefits to approximately 11 million workers with disabilities and their family members per month.
Supplemental Security Income Established in 1972, the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program provides financial support to adults and children with disabilities and adults who are aged or blind, and have limited income and resources. In FY 2015, we will pay about $60 billion in Federal benefits and State supplementary payments to approximately 8.5 million recipients per month.
OASI and DI trust funds are collected from payroll taxes. It's insurance that working stiffs pay for themselves and their families. Not "public assistance". Or welfare. That's that last bit - SSI. Paid out to eligible "adults and children with disabilities and adults who are aged or blind, and have limited income and resources".
SSA is NOT "public assistance". Or welfare as some like to call it. But I'm sure you already know that - as you've listed both, separately. From that "better website". Where only SSI is listed under "welfare".
Now, if you'd bother to look up the SSA budget overview for 2013 (since that is what you're basing your $850 billion numbers on) you'd notice that those same programs were projected as follows: - about $672 billion in OASI benefits, - about $143 billion in DI benefits and, - about $58 billion in Federal and State Supplementation benefits. "About" $873 billion projected, all together.
I.e. Those $850 billion SSA paid out was mostly INSURANCE. Not "public assistance". Both you and the GP are off by orders of magnitude cause you don't understand the numbers you're quoting. Because bias.
But the bit I find the most hilarious is how you've looked at that chart where defense spending is just a notch or two under pensions and came up with that 62% nonsense out of your ass. Yet at the same time it just doesn't reach from that same source, to your mind, that pensioners don't actually drive around in tanks, maintain bases in foreign countries, stockpile ICBMs in their back yard, fly jets... You know... express that overwhelming opulence in some way which would rival the feed and care of the world's largest military force.
Anything that flies cares about the weight. A lot.
This process boils down to making a thin film (2 micrometers) of flexible solar cells by throwing out the bottom (or top - depending on the cell) part of the solar cell and using the same thin film as both the top and the bottom layer. I.e. Both the solar cell carrier and the coating are made out of ultra-thin coating.
Think mounting solar cells on transparent sticky tape, then adding another layer of same tape on top as protective coating. Only a lot thinner than that. Human hair is about 100 micrometers "thick".
There IS a movement to impeach Obama on exactly those grounds... except that is not the priority reason OR the main reason. Nor is there anything to that spying on people wrong - it's Obama who is abusing the Patriot Act, not the Patriot Act that is abusive.
But they do manage to make brown babies one of the reasons... no... Make that the only reason everyone actually agrees on. Hmm... Maybe you're right. Maybe racism IS the main motivator for why there IS a petition to impeach Obama.
Let it be known that I stand with the Tea Party and demand that impeachment proceedings be brought against President Barack Obama for high crimes and misdemeanors, including, but not limited to the following:
1. Failing to protect American citizens in the Libyan embassy in Benghazi and purposefully allowing them to be tortured and murdered in cold blood. Cries for help were ignored. Pleas for ground support were brushed off. While American ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues were being slaughtered at the hands of murderers, Obama turned a blind eye and went to bed, blaming a YouTube video for the attack.
While âoejustice will be servedâ has resonated from his lips, nothing has been done to bring justice for this crime. Instead, it has been swept under the carpet. Now the Obama State Department is compounding the crimes against our diplomats and military by intimidating government civilian and military personnel into not testifying.
2. Blatant abuse and misuse of the true intention of the PATRIOT Act. Obama and is administration deem it acceptable to invade the privacy of U.S. citizens by reading our e-mail, tracking our Internet visits, comparing notes with the IRS about our taxes and âoeminingâ our every purchase. These are egregious violations of our right to privacy.
3. Outright brutal assaults on the First Amendment by the Obama Justice Department. Those who are held accountable to the highest extend of the law chose to break the law by illegally wiretapping phone lines and cell phone conversations and invading email accountsâ"spyingâ"on members of the press and accusing reporters doing their job of being criminals.
4. Under Obamaâ(TM)s ruling hand, the Internal Revenue Service purposefully, knowingly and willingly targeted conservatives and Tea Party members, delaying their non-profit status and then lying to Congress about their activities.
5. Repeatedly hiding illegal Federal activities, such as the Justice Departmentâ(TM)s âoeFast and Furiousâ program where guns were handed to KNOWN criminals and members of Mexican drug cartels then used to kill our own border agents. Obama acolytes still continue to lie to Congress and the citizens of the United States about the gun-running operation.
6. For purposefully, willfully and wrongfully putting a bounty on the heads of 22 Navy Seals aboard a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan. Obama knowingly sent those Seals to their deaths that fateful day then had his military brass issue orders to cremate the bodies for no reason. Despite the outright lies told to the American people, those men did not all die aboard that helicopter that day. Eight Navy Seals jumped out alive and fought for their lives. Again, no backup reinforcementsâ"only a team of Afghans that were waiting to ambush them. Despite false promises of âoejusticeâ by the president, nothing has been done.
7. For constant violations of the regulatory and law-making processâ"end running Congress with Executive Orders after theyâ(TM)ve voted down bills and making appointments while the Senate was in session, effectively violating the Constitution of the United States of America.
During her turn on the stage, Kennedy mounted an attack on the test's methodology. For example, she points out, it does not account for the number of questions on a survey, the number of respondents, nor other factors that can skew the results. She also takes exception to the 85% similarity threshold. "I would choose a different threshold depending on the population and the survey," she says. By putting a number on the extent of data fabrication across all surveys, "they took it too far," Kennedy says. Pew's rebuttal is now online.
Some at the meeting saw merit in both sides of the fight. Rather than overestimating data fabrication, the method of Kuriakose and Robbins "very likely underestimates the true extent of the problem," says Michael Spagat, an economist at Royal Holloway, University of London, who has investigated high-profile cases of possible data fabrication in war zones. Yet Kennedy's response impressed him, too. "I think the Pew paper is interesting and made some good points," he says. "Specifically, there isn't a hard and fast cutoff beyond which you know there is fabrication." Overall, however, Spagat remains very concerned about data fabrication in surveys. "Robbins and Kuriakose have uncovered a massive problem and the Pew paper doesn't change that."
Nothing was settled by the end, says the meeting's co-organizer Steven Koczela, president of the MassINC Polling Group in Boston and a previous survey research leader for the U.S. State Department. The case laid out by Kuriakose and Robbins "seems unassailable to me," he says, "but [Pew] are giving it their level best."
Public opinion polls these days are as much PR and marketing as anything else.
Honestly, Pew makes money doing this stuff; honest player or not, they have a vested interest in keeping up the belief that their stuff is honest, unbiased, and accurate.
But I'm entirely willing to believe opinion polls are carefully crafted, or sneakily tweaked, to arrive at the conclusions they've been commissioned to a arrive at.
This is NOT AT ALL about public opinion polls which "people who want to support a specific point" would pay to skew in a certain direction NOR is it about polls that are designed (or "sneakily tweaked") to create certain results. It's not even about confirmation bias by the pollsters or researchers leaching into the data. This is about finding cases where a pollster would just sit down and fill out a survey after survey by themselves instead of going door to door. I.e. Charging for a field survey, forging the data and then pocketing the money.
Further more, it is not about most kinds of "public" opinion polls. The results show that what most people here would consider "public opinion polls" are actually mostly free of such fabrication. It's that "other public" whose opinion polls are the issue. I.e. The "developing world" public.
From TFA:
That made the results all the more worrying: Among 1008 surveys, their test flagged 17% as likely to contain a significant portion of fabricated data. For surveys conducted in wealthy westernized nations, that figure drops to 5%, whereas for those done in the developing world it shoots up to 26%.
Surveying communities in the developing world often requires face-to-face interviews, going house-by-house in dangerous environments. So one of the inevitable problems, Robbins says, is "curbstoning" where an interviewer sits on the curb and invents survey responsesâ"often duplicating answersâ"in order to avoid risk or save time.
...tell you that your phone has drained the battery and turned off cause SomeAppTM decided to drain you battery while trying to connect to the internet to download the latest fart noises?
Point of a low-battery-use always-on device is that it is "turn-on and forget". Not that you CAN plug it in to charge five times a day or swap batteries when you notice that it is off. Spare battery is just another battery that you have to keep charged and carry with you - that only lasts hours instead of weeks or months.
I WAS describing a niche product - i.e. driveways.
Something doesn't have to provide a complete societal solution to be useful to an individual - or the society. Enough driveways with it eventually would make a difference. If you also use your driveway as the site for your thermal storage for passive heating... this could be a nice bonus, increasing the efficiency of the system.
All I'm saying is that the idea is not completely useless. There ARE niches for it.
You do realize that even in the impossible 100% efficient system, the max thermal emission cannot exceed that which was handed to it by the sun right?
Assuming here you're not a climate change denier, only shortsighted.
What 100% efficiency?
Solar power efficiency? Nowhere near that. Energy transfer efficiency? Impossible. Second law of thermodynamics. Cannot exceed that which was handed to it by the sun? Not true - because what is stated above.
Electricity used for heating roads could not be 100% solar based even if solar panels could create electricity despite being covered with snow, in the winter, with shorter daylight times and overcast skies. Thus, energy to melt snow would have to come from other sources. Being that most of the electricity produced and used today does not come from renewable sources, all that remains are nuclear (which are a tiny percent) and fossil-fuel based electricity.
Ergo, heating up roads can and would mostly be done by burning fossil fuels. I.e. Pumping both additional heat energy into the system by melting snow with energy not coming from solar sources WHILE pumping greenhouse gasses into it as well. In other words, for every 100 Watts of electric energy spent to melt the snow, at best ~20 Watts would come from solar sources - everything else would come from traditional sources, most of which are fossil based.
ONLY in the case where ALL electricity everywhere (and energy - you can't just hide heating and cooking and various industrial processes and claim 100% renewable energy use) is produced by renewable sources would that not be true.
And even then, it would be a case of shunting solar energy from the summer side of the planet to try to keep the winter side of the planet warm... Which even should it be possible (it's not... for both technical and political reasons - like borders and such) would again be a literal case of trapping more solar energy in the form of heat which is pumped into the areas that are supposed to be cold at that time of year.
It's the same thing as using sunlight to grow trees on the sunny side of the planet, then using solar-powered chainsaws to cut them down and chop them up, putting them into solar-powered ovens and making charcoal, then transporting that charcoal in solar-powered vehicles to the dark side of the planet and burning it there. It's not carbon or energy neutral - additional energy is captured, stored and released into the system at each step.
- Reverse-discrimination against men? Rejected, per the observation that there is evidence of discrimination against women when gender is identified.
Study CLAIMS no evidence of gender bias (while concentrating on bias towards or against women only) when gender is identifiable (from name, photo or profile on GitHub). Study shows bias in interpretation of data though. It ignores error bars in graphs (no real numbers are shown, just percentage graphs) AND paints a simplistic "more-pulls-4-women-except-when-identified" image. Study's graphs on the other hand show NO BIAS towards women or men. https://peerj.com/preprints/17...
First of all, when COMPLETE IDENTITY (and thus quality of work, not just gender) is known - there is NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE between male and female "pulls".
In "insider" cases where identity is known, supposedly gender-positive (you can tell who's male or female) IDs have a slight pro-female bias (~87.5% female vs. ~86% male), with barely existent error bars for males and tiny bars for females. I keep using tildes, cause all that is presented are graphs - no percentages or real numbers are shown for this case, you have to eyeball them. Where supposedly gender-neutral IDs are used, there is a tiny pro-male bias (~88% +/- ~1% female vs. ~88.5% +/- ~0.7% male).
I.e. There is NO pro- or contra-, male or female, bias when COMPLETE IDENTITY is known.
ON THE OTHER HAND... In "outsider" cases where gender and identity is supposedly unknown (though clearly identifiable through email vs social network profiles comparison - which is where they got their data and what they are basing their study on)... There is a slight pro-female bias in supposed gender-neutral IDs (~72% +/- ~1.5% female vs. ~69% +/- ~1% male) and a tiny pro-male bias in supposed gender-positive IDs (~62.3% +/- ~0.7% female vs. ~63% +/- ~0.0something% male).
Again, these are eyeballed values. Study lists female gender neutral percentage in "outsider" cases as 71.8% and female gender identifiable percentage as 62.5% - claiming it as proof of bias against women who identify as such. These are the only values presented in numerical form in this hypothesis.
I.e. There is NO pro- or contra-, male or female, bias when full identity is (supposedly) unknown either, but study tries to claim the opposite by ignoring own findings.
In other words, while looking for a hypothesis to explain their findings of bias, they accidentally took the gender-bias hypothesis they found behind the shed, and controlled it by putting a bullet in its head. Then, not noticing that said finding of bias is dead, they kept on beating it, claiming it's alive and highly agile. Kinda like in the dead parrot sketch, only here the salesmen really do believe that the parrot is just stunned and pining for fjords.
Both times it was presented as a science-wide issue - though the survey only covered anthropological fields.
Nearly half of the study participants self-identified as anthropologists from several subfields (applied, biological, linguistic, medical, physical, psychological, and socio-cultural) (N=319/666, 47.9%). Nearly a quarter of the sample self-identified as archaeologists (N=159, 23.9%). The rest of the sample comprised biologists (N=68, 10.2%); zoologists (N=31, 4.7%); geologists (N=29, 4.4%); other life, environmental, and agricultural scientists (N=22, 3.3%); and other social scientists (N=12, 1.8%).
This time on the other hand, that survey actually CAN be used to show that this particular case is a part of a PATTERN of sexual harassment in anthropology.
Only problem is... that survey is JUNK as its methodology is crap. This is how sexual harassment was defined:
A majority (64%, N=423/658) of all survey respondents, stated that they had personally experienced sexual harassment: i.e. inappropriate or sexual remarks, comments about physical beauty, cognitive sex differences, or other such jokes.
PDF version defined that a LITTLE differently:
Have you ever personally experienced inappropriate or sexual remarks, comments about physical beauty, cognitive sex differences, or other jokes, at a field site?
This is what kind of data was gathered:
A majority of survey respondents reported that they had directly observed or been told about the occurrence of other field site researchers and/or colleagues making inappropriate or sexual remarks at their most recent or most notable field site (N=448/619, 72.4%).
I.e. Literal hearsay was accepted as data.
Also, while the study claims that "Men were more likely to report that comments never occurred, whereas women were more likely to report that comments occurred frequently" - graphs representing that data show something else. First off... by using "proportion of respondents" as a y-axis of the graph, 50 males who answered "never" (as well as 50 who answered "rarely") is depicted as MORE than 117 females who answered "never" AND 180 females who answered "rarely".
In other words, 100 males and 297 females answered "never" or "rarely". While 20+12 males and 94+90 females answered "regularly" or "frequently". I.e. However you look at it - that line about women being more likely to report "frequent" comments IS BULLSHIT.
Also, while on the side of "sexual harassment" survey was rather broad in defining sexual harassment, definition of "sexual assault" was rather vague.
Have you ever experienced physical sexual harassment, unwanted sexual contact, or sexual contact in which you could not or did not give consent or felt it would be unsafe to fight back or not give your consent at a field site?
I.e. On one side "other jokes" are sexual harassment. On the other, no definition of "unwanted sexual contact" or "physical sexual harassment" is given, while it is implied that it is something different from "sexual contact in which you could not or did not give consent or felt it would be unsafe to fight back or not give your consent".
Or as you put it... "only about 1.5x the world average of ~2.3% of GDP".
Or... we could look at it like this... USA spends ALONE as much as 9 (NINE) next biggest world military spenders COMBINED. And then some. USA = China + Saudi Arabia + Russia + UK + France + Japan + India + Germany + South Korea + 14.7 billion dollars (change). Or, you can take the other source - where USA spends more, but so does everyone else, thus USA spends "only" as much as the next top 7 spenders. And change.
Also, do note that "% of GDP" is just one of the factors one has to take in consideration when comparing military spending. Otherwise, one might get a bright idea that Saudi Arabia has the biggest and baddest military force on the planet, from all that cherry picking.
On a side note... a large wealthy household being large still makes them assholes for spending millions on lobster and caviar. Just like "Oh, but I have 5 kids" is not an excuse for speeding in one's Lamborghini - it actually just makes one a bigger dick.
I have even done a few nasty binges where I would swear to "stop by midnight" only to look outside and see that it was dawn.
Losing oneself in a book, reading until the break of dawn cause you "just couldn't put the book down" is a common occurrence. Often referred to with a dose of nostalgia and sympathy, along with reading with a flashlight, under the covers.
It's not the medium - it's the message. Humans are suckers for vicarious experiences. Particularly in the form of fiction - but they will also gladly waste hours and travel miles to watch millionaires kick or throw a ball around.
I remember when I was about 12, I had this odd skin reaction that was like just random inflammation, and I could never figure out what caused it. It used to really freak people out.. I could sometimes just take my fingernail and scratch lightly on my arm and write words and about 20 to 30 minutes later the word would swell up and turn red and look like someone had carved a word on me with a knife and then 20 minutes after that it was gone.
Letters I and F have sharp and thus ugly corners, making the word IF ugly.
G and D on the other hand are rounded and smooth on the outside, making the word GUARD beautiful and stylish. In the next iteration all words will have round corners and will be white.
But why even do it in your driveway when its much cheaper to put them on the roof?
Same basic reason that underlies all those "let's put it on the roads" - it's a large and mostly empty surface which has to be kept clear and uncluttered 99% of the time. Bonus points for it being attached to the actual building where actual people would spend actual harvested electricity - instead of miles from nowhere, with all the losses of transporting the electricity to the actual households.
Sure... you COULD build a solar roof over your driveway... but maybe you need special permits and such for that. Maybe you or your family members don't want a roof on stilts in front of your home or over your yard - while you do want more solar capacity than what your roof may provide.
A niche solution for all those niches where regular roof-mounted solar panels can't be installed, but there is free and empty walking/driving surface nearby. Hell, even those solar-fucking hexagons make sense if you rip out most of the bullshit (LEDs, heaters, 20 tons or so of concrete "access ports" and foundation...) and use them for paving roads in parks and gardens. IF they can be produced cheaply enough, that is.
But not compared to the cost of paving the roads - compared to cost of installing regular solar panels, on, around or over that surface. Besides, solar fucking hexagons were the only ones retarded enough to suggest ripping out existing roads and putting in magical hexagons instead. French Wattway assumes existing asphalt roads underneath the glued-on photovoltaics, Dutch SolaRoad is assembled from concrete slabs with a top layer of photovoltaics - which is just the thing for driveways.
Slashdot Mirror
Except there's not a clearly defined boundary line that a person crosses at a certain income level.
http://content.time.com/time/m...
The study doesn't say why $75,000 is the benchmark, but "it does seem to me a plausible number at which people would think money is not an issue," says Deaton. At that level, people probably have enough expendable cash to do things that make them feel good, like going out with friends. (The federal poverty level for a family of four, by the way, is $22,050.)
Those of us who actually know enough about the government that our founding fathers wouldn't be embarrassed to let us vote actually notice things like "WTH are Medicare, Social Security, Unemployment and servicing the national debt?"
You're one of them too.
I'm only posting this cause it's the THIRD TIME THIS WEEK (well... last seven days) that I'm seeing this same "not only blatantly wrong but you-should-know-better-so-I-assume-dishonesty wrong" parroting.
Only this time comical numbers are made to be someone else's fault.
But with the same fallacy of equating trust funds (paying for social programs - where people ENTRUST a part of their paycheck to the government in return for various forms of insurance later) and direct expenditures (paying for defense NOW) parts of the budget.
I.e. Equating savings for a rainy day and spending on guns which (should that particular rainy day come) will quickly prove to be obsolete and will be bought again, several times over - and forever paying for the human costs of past wars.
They can neither confirm nor deny such information.
Defense takes up ~20% of US Federal budget, paid out mostly directly to the military.
That's your tax dollars paying for soldiers, guns, tanks, missiles, ships, bases and for buying allies through foreign aid (a tiny piece of it all).
Veterans also represent a sizeable chunk of the whole thing, either through compensation paid out to them by the government, or through medical costs.
Again... your tax dollars are spent on all that.
"Medicare" takes up ~27% of US Federal budget BUT... and it's a HUGE BUT...
It is paid out from TRUST FUNDS, paid into by the workers, from their payroll and income taxes as INSURANCE for themselves and their families.
NOT your tax dollars - THEIR tax dollars, entrusted to the government, to be paid out TO THEM in the time of need.
I.e. That's people's savings for the rainy day.
Cause it rains on just and the unjust alike. And it never stops.
That's why government HANDLES that much cash - but it is NOT spent.
It is RETURNED to those who've provided it. With interest.
Same goes for social security, of which only a tiny chunk is actual spending instead of again - savings.
Yeah, I know. But this IS Slashdot after all.
... hiring people to "imaginate" solutions before.
And prior to that too.
Usually they produce a lot of nothing.
...in an inkjet instead of a laser printer.
Presumably, as it is not stated in the paper as an issue per se, this method should get around safeguards intended to prevent using printouts - by requiring the fingerprint to be conductive to electricity.
Which would probably work with a wet printout as well.
You forgot to add "Burma Shave" at the end.
That's an ostrich.
He's an isolationist who wants to believe that treating foreign policy as someone else's problem is a viable strategy.
From your sources:
In FY 2013, we:
- Paid over $850 billion to almost 65 million beneficiaries;
So that's where your 850 billion dollar figure comes from.
Only problem is, your confirmation bias prevented you from actually reading that document.
You know... like actually looking for understanding (what those numbers actually mean) instead of just fishing for BigMcHuge numbers to lean your bias on.
Or you would have noticed this bit:
Old-Age and Survivors Insurance
Created in 1935, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) program provides retirement and survivors benefits to qualified workers and their families.
In FY 2015, we will pay about $744 billion in OASI benefits to approximately 49 million beneficiaries per month, including 89 percent of the population aged 65 and over.
Disability Insurance
Established in 1956, the Disability Insurance (DI) program provides benefits for workers with disabilities and their families.
In FY 2015, we will pay about $147 billion in DI benefits to approximately 11 million workers with disabilities and their family members per month.
Supplemental Security Income
Established in 1972, the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program provides financial support to adults and children with disabilities and adults who are aged or blind, and have limited income and resources.
In FY 2015, we will pay about $60 billion in Federal benefits and State supplementary payments to approximately 8.5 million recipients per month.
OASI and DI trust funds are collected from payroll taxes.
It's insurance that working stiffs pay for themselves and their families.
Not "public assistance". Or welfare.
That's that last bit - SSI. Paid out to eligible "adults and children with disabilities and adults who are aged or blind, and have limited income and resources".
SSA is NOT "public assistance". Or welfare as some like to call it.
But I'm sure you already know that - as you've listed both, separately. From that "better website".
Where only SSI is listed under "welfare".
Now, if you'd bother to look up the SSA budget overview for 2013 (since that is what you're basing your $850 billion numbers on) you'd notice that those same programs were projected as follows:
- about $672 billion in OASI benefits,
- about $143 billion in DI benefits and,
- about $58 billion in Federal and State Supplementation benefits.
"About" $873 billion projected, all together.
I.e. Those $850 billion SSA paid out was mostly INSURANCE. Not "public assistance".
Both you and the GP are off by orders of magnitude cause you don't understand the numbers you're quoting.
Because bias.
But the bit I find the most hilarious is how you've looked at that chart where defense spending is just a notch or two under pensions and came up with that 62% nonsense out of your ass.
Yet at the same time it just doesn't reach from that same source, to your mind, that pensioners don't actually drive around in tanks, maintain bases in foreign countries, stockpile ICBMs in their back yard, fly jets...
You know... express that overwhelming opulence in some way which would rival the feed and care of the world's largest military force.
Anything that flies cares about the weight. A lot.
This process boils down to making a thin film (2 micrometers) of flexible solar cells by throwing out the bottom (or top - depending on the cell) part of the solar cell and using the same thin film as both the top and the bottom layer.
I.e. Both the solar cell carrier and the coating are made out of ultra-thin coating.
Think mounting solar cells on transparent sticky tape, then adding another layer of same tape on top as protective coating.
Only a lot thinner than that. Human hair is about 100 micrometers "thick".
There IS a movement to impeach Obama on exactly those grounds... except that is not the priority reason OR the main reason.
Nor is there anything to that spying on people wrong - it's Obama who is abusing the Patriot Act, not the Patriot Act that is abusive.
But they do manage to make brown babies one of the reasons... no... Make that the only reason everyone actually agrees on.
Hmm... Maybe you're right.
Maybe racism IS the main motivator for why there IS a petition to impeach Obama.
http://www.teaparty.org/impeac...
TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE U.S. CONGRESS:
Let it be known that I stand with the Tea Party and demand that impeachment proceedings be brought against President Barack Obama for high crimes and misdemeanors, including, but not limited to the following:
1. Failing to protect American citizens in the Libyan embassy in Benghazi and purposefully allowing them to be tortured and murdered in cold blood. Cries for help were ignored. Pleas for ground support were brushed off. While American ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues were being slaughtered at the hands of murderers, Obama turned a blind eye and went to bed, blaming a YouTube video for the attack.
While âoejustice will be servedâ has resonated from his lips, nothing has been done to bring justice for this crime. Instead, it has been swept under the carpet. Now the Obama State Department is compounding the crimes against our diplomats and military by intimidating government civilian and military personnel into not testifying.
2. Blatant abuse and misuse of the true intention of the PATRIOT Act. Obama and is administration deem it acceptable to invade the privacy of U.S. citizens by reading our e-mail, tracking our Internet visits, comparing notes with the IRS about our taxes and âoeminingâ our every purchase. These are egregious violations of our right to privacy.
3. Outright brutal assaults on the First Amendment by the Obama Justice Department. Those who are held accountable to the highest extend of the law chose to break the law by illegally wiretapping phone lines and cell phone conversations and invading email accountsâ"spyingâ"on members of the press and accusing reporters doing their job of being criminals.
4. Under Obamaâ(TM)s ruling hand, the Internal Revenue Service purposefully, knowingly and willingly targeted conservatives and Tea Party members, delaying their non-profit status and then lying to Congress about their activities.
5. Repeatedly hiding illegal Federal activities, such as the Justice Departmentâ(TM)s âoeFast and Furiousâ program where guns were handed to KNOWN criminals and members of Mexican drug cartels then used to kill our own border agents. Obama acolytes still continue to lie to Congress and the citizens of the United States about the gun-running operation.
6. For purposefully, willfully and wrongfully putting a bounty on the heads of 22 Navy Seals aboard a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan. Obama knowingly sent those Seals to their deaths that fateful day then had his military brass issue orders to cremate the bodies for no reason. Despite the outright lies told to the American people, those men did not all die aboard that helicopter that day. Eight Navy Seals jumped out alive and fought for their lives. Again, no backup reinforcementsâ"only a team of Afghans that were waiting to ambush them. Despite false promises of âoejusticeâ by the president, nothing has been done.
7. For constant violations of the regulatory and law-making processâ"end running Congress with Executive Orders after theyâ(TM)ve voted down bills and making appointments while the Senate was in session, effectively violating the Constitution of the United States of America.
8. Allowing criminals to go unchecked a
From TFA:
During her turn on the stage, Kennedy mounted an attack on the test's methodology. For example, she points out, it does not account for the number of questions on a survey, the number of respondents, nor other factors that can skew the results. She also takes exception to the 85% similarity threshold. "I would choose a different threshold depending on the population and the survey," she says. By putting a number on the extent of data fabrication across all surveys, "they took it too far," Kennedy says. Pew's rebuttal is now online.
Some at the meeting saw merit in both sides of the fight. Rather than overestimating data fabrication, the method of Kuriakose and Robbins "very likely underestimates the true extent of the problem," says Michael Spagat, an economist at Royal Holloway, University of London, who has investigated high-profile cases of possible data fabrication in war zones. Yet Kennedy's response impressed him, too. "I think the Pew paper is interesting and made some good points," he says. "Specifically, there isn't a hard and fast cutoff beyond which you know there is fabrication." Overall, however, Spagat remains very concerned about data fabrication in surveys. "Robbins and Kuriakose have uncovered a massive problem and the Pew paper doesn't change that."
Nothing was settled by the end, says the meeting's co-organizer Steven Koczela, president of the MassINC Polling Group in Boston and a previous survey research leader for the U.S. State Department. The case laid out by Kuriakose and Robbins "seems unassailable to me," he says, "but [Pew] are giving it their level best."
Public opinion polls these days are as much PR and marketing as anything else.
Honestly, Pew makes money doing this stuff; honest player or not, they have a vested interest in keeping up the belief that their stuff is honest, unbiased, and accurate.
But I'm entirely willing to believe opinion polls are carefully crafted, or sneakily tweaked, to arrive at the conclusions they've been commissioned to a arrive at.
This is NOT AT ALL about public opinion polls which "people who want to support a specific point" would pay to skew in a certain direction NOR is it about polls that are designed (or "sneakily tweaked") to create certain results.
It's not even about confirmation bias by the pollsters or researchers leaching into the data.
This is about finding cases where a pollster would just sit down and fill out a survey after survey by themselves instead of going door to door.
I.e. Charging for a field survey, forging the data and then pocketing the money.
Further more, it is not about most kinds of "public" opinion polls.
The results show that what most people here would consider "public opinion polls" are actually mostly free of such fabrication.
It's that "other public" whose opinion polls are the issue.
I.e. The "developing world" public.
From TFA:
That made the results all the more worrying: Among 1008 surveys, their test flagged 17% as likely to contain a significant portion of fabricated data.
For surveys conducted in wealthy westernized nations, that figure drops to 5%, whereas for those done in the developing world it shoots up to 26%.
Surveying communities in the developing world often requires face-to-face interviews, going house-by-house in dangerous environments.
So one of the inevitable problems, Robbins says, is "curbstoning" where an interviewer sits on the curb and invents survey responsesâ"often duplicating answersâ"in order to avoid risk or save time.
Stop talking to yourself.
...tell you that your phone has drained the battery and turned off cause SomeAppTM decided to drain you battery while trying to connect to the internet to download the latest fart noises?
Point of a low-battery-use always-on device is that it is "turn-on and forget".
Not that you CAN plug it in to charge five times a day or swap batteries when you notice that it is off.
Spare battery is just another battery that you have to keep charged and carry with you - that only lasts hours instead of weeks or months.
I WAS describing a niche product - i.e. driveways.
Something doesn't have to provide a complete societal solution to be useful to an individual - or the society.
Enough driveways with it eventually would make a difference.
If you also use your driveway as the site for your thermal storage for passive heating... this could be a nice bonus, increasing the efficiency of the system.
All I'm saying is that the idea is not completely useless. There ARE niches for it.
You do realize that even in the impossible 100% efficient system, the max thermal emission cannot exceed that which was handed to it by the sun right?
Assuming here you're not a climate change denier, only shortsighted.
What 100% efficiency?
Solar power efficiency? Nowhere near that.
Energy transfer efficiency? Impossible. Second law of thermodynamics.
Cannot exceed that which was handed to it by the sun? Not true - because what is stated above.
Electricity used for heating roads could not be 100% solar based even if solar panels could create electricity despite being covered with snow, in the winter, with shorter daylight times and overcast skies.
Thus, energy to melt snow would have to come from other sources.
Being that most of the electricity produced and used today does not come from renewable sources, all that remains are nuclear (which are a tiny percent) and fossil-fuel based electricity.
Ergo, heating up roads can and would mostly be done by burning fossil fuels.
I.e. Pumping both additional heat energy into the system by melting snow with energy not coming from solar sources WHILE pumping greenhouse gasses into it as well.
In other words, for every 100 Watts of electric energy spent to melt the snow, at best ~20 Watts would come from solar sources - everything else would come from traditional sources, most of which are fossil based.
ONLY in the case where ALL electricity everywhere (and energy - you can't just hide heating and cooking and various industrial processes and claim 100% renewable energy use) is produced by renewable sources would that not be true.
And even then, it would be a case of shunting solar energy from the summer side of the planet to try to keep the winter side of the planet warm...
Which even should it be possible (it's not... for both technical and political reasons - like borders and such) would again be a literal case of trapping more solar energy in the form of heat which is pumped into the areas that are supposed to be cold at that time of year.
It's the same thing as using sunlight to grow trees on the sunny side of the planet, then using solar-powered chainsaws to cut them down and chop them up, putting them into solar-powered ovens and making charcoal, then transporting that charcoal in solar-powered vehicles to the dark side of the planet and burning it there.
It's not carbon or energy neutral - additional energy is captured, stored and released into the system at each step.
- Reverse-discrimination against men? Rejected, per the observation that there is evidence of discrimination against women when gender is identified.
Study CLAIMS no evidence of gender bias (while concentrating on bias towards or against women only) when gender is identifiable (from name, photo or profile on GitHub).
Study shows bias in interpretation of data though.
It ignores error bars in graphs (no real numbers are shown, just percentage graphs) AND paints a simplistic "more-pulls-4-women-except-when-identified" image.
Study's graphs on the other hand show NO BIAS towards women or men.
https://peerj.com/preprints/17...
First of all, when COMPLETE IDENTITY (and thus quality of work, not just gender) is known - there is NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE between male and female "pulls".
In "insider" cases where identity is known, supposedly gender-positive (you can tell who's male or female) IDs have a slight pro-female bias (~87.5% female vs. ~86% male), with barely existent error bars for males and tiny bars for females.
I keep using tildes, cause all that is presented are graphs - no percentages or real numbers are shown for this case, you have to eyeball them.
Where supposedly gender-neutral IDs are used, there is a tiny pro-male bias (~88% +/- ~1% female vs. ~88.5% +/- ~0.7% male).
I.e. There is NO pro- or contra-, male or female, bias when COMPLETE IDENTITY is known.
ON THE OTHER HAND...
In "outsider" cases where gender and identity is supposedly unknown (though clearly identifiable through email vs social network profiles comparison - which is where they got their data and what they are basing their study on)...
There is a slight pro-female bias in supposed gender-neutral IDs (~72% +/- ~1.5% female vs. ~69% +/- ~1% male) and a tiny pro-male bias in supposed gender-positive IDs (~62.3% +/- ~0.7% female vs. ~63% +/- ~0.0something% male).
Again, these are eyeballed values.
Study lists female gender neutral percentage in "outsider" cases as 71.8% and female gender identifiable percentage as 62.5% - claiming it as proof of bias against women who identify as such.
These are the only values presented in numerical form in this hypothesis.
I.e. There is NO pro- or contra-, male or female, bias when full identity is (supposedly) unknown either, but study tries to claim the opposite by ignoring own findings.
In other words, while looking for a hypothesis to explain their findings of bias, they accidentally took the gender-bias hypothesis they found behind the shed, and controlled it by putting a bullet in its head.
Then, not noticing that said finding of bias is dead, they kept on beating it, claiming it's alive and highly agile.
Kinda like in the dead parrot sketch, only here the salesmen really do believe that the parrot is just stunned and pining for fjords.
Why does the area of academic research matter?
Humans love patterns and "big things" more than insular and isolated cases.
Article quotes heavily the Survey of Academic Field Experiences which was featured here at Slashdot at least twice.
http://science.slashdot.org/st...
http://science.slashdot.org/st...
Both times it was presented as a science-wide issue - though the survey only covered anthropological fields.
Nearly half of the study participants self-identified as anthropologists from several subfields (applied, biological, linguistic, medical, physical, psychological, and socio-cultural) (N=319/666, 47.9%).
Nearly a quarter of the sample self-identified as archaeologists (N=159, 23.9%).
The rest of the sample comprised biologists (N=68, 10.2%); zoologists (N=31, 4.7%); geologists (N=29, 4.4%); other life, environmental, and agricultural scientists (N=22, 3.3%); and other social scientists (N=12, 1.8%).
This time on the other hand, that survey actually CAN be used to show that this particular case is a part of a PATTERN of sexual harassment in anthropology.
Only problem is... that survey is JUNK as its methodology is crap.
This is how sexual harassment was defined:
A majority (64%, N=423/658) of all survey respondents, stated that they had personally experienced sexual harassment: i.e. inappropriate or sexual remarks, comments about physical beauty, cognitive sex differences, or other such jokes.
PDF version defined that a LITTLE differently:
Have you ever personally experienced inappropriate or sexual remarks, comments about physical beauty, cognitive sex differences, or other jokes, at a field site?
This is what kind of data was gathered:
A majority of survey respondents reported that they had directly observed or been told about the occurrence of other field site researchers and/or colleagues making inappropriate or sexual remarks at their most recent or most notable field site (N=448/619, 72.4%).
I.e. Literal hearsay was accepted as data.
Also, while the study claims that "Men were more likely to report that comments never occurred, whereas women were more likely to report that comments occurred frequently" - graphs representing that data show something else.
First off... by using "proportion of respondents" as a y-axis of the graph, 50 males who answered "never" (as well as 50 who answered "rarely") is depicted as MORE than 117 females who answered "never" AND 180 females who answered "rarely".
In other words, 100 males and 297 females answered "never" or "rarely".
While 20+12 males and 94+90 females answered "regularly" or "frequently".
I.e. However you look at it - that line about women being more likely to report "frequent" comments IS BULLSHIT.
Also, while on the side of "sexual harassment" survey was rather broad in defining sexual harassment, definition of "sexual assault" was rather vague.
Have you ever experienced physical sexual harassment, unwanted sexual contact, or sexual contact in which you could not or did not give consent or felt it would be unsafe to fight back or not give your consent at a field site?
I.e. On one side "other jokes" are sexual harassment.
On the other, no definition of "unwanted sexual contact" or "physical sexual harassment" is given, while it is implied that it is something different from "sexual contact in which you could not or did not give consent or felt it would be unsafe to fight back or not give your consent".
Or as you put it... "only about 1.5x the world average of ~2.3% of GDP".
Or... we could look at it like this...
USA spends ALONE as much as 9 (NINE) next biggest world military spenders COMBINED. And then some.
USA = China + Saudi Arabia + Russia + UK + France + Japan + India + Germany + South Korea + 14.7 billion dollars (change).
Or, you can take the other source - where USA spends more, but so does everyone else, thus USA spends "only" as much as the next top 7 spenders. And change.
Also, do note that "% of GDP" is just one of the factors one has to take in consideration when comparing military spending.
Otherwise, one might get a bright idea that Saudi Arabia has the biggest and baddest military force on the planet, from all that cherry picking.
On a side note... a large wealthy household being large still makes them assholes for spending millions on lobster and caviar.
Just like "Oh, but I have 5 kids" is not an excuse for speeding in one's Lamborghini - it actually just makes one a bigger dick.
I have even done a few nasty binges where I would swear to "stop by midnight" only to look outside and see that it was dawn.
Losing oneself in a book, reading until the break of dawn cause you "just couldn't put the book down" is a common occurrence.
Often referred to with a dose of nostalgia and sympathy, along with reading with a flashlight, under the covers.
It's not the medium - it's the message.
Humans are suckers for vicarious experiences.
Particularly in the form of fiction - but they will also gladly waste hours and travel miles to watch millionaires kick or throw a ball around.
I remember when I was about 12, I had this odd skin reaction that was like just random inflammation, and I could never figure out what caused it. It used to really freak people out.. I could sometimes just take my fingernail and scratch lightly on my arm and write words and about 20 to 30 minutes later the word would swell up and turn red and look like someone had carved a word on me with a knife and then 20 minutes after that it was gone.
That's dermatographic urticaria. It's relatively common - about 5% of people have it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Letters I and F have sharp and thus ugly corners, making the word IF ugly.
G and D on the other hand are rounded and smooth on the outside, making the word GUARD beautiful and stylish.
In the next iteration all words will have round corners and will be white.
But why even do it in your driveway when its much cheaper to put them on the roof?
Same basic reason that underlies all those "let's put it on the roads" - it's a large and mostly empty surface which has to be kept clear and uncluttered 99% of the time.
Bonus points for it being attached to the actual building where actual people would spend actual harvested electricity - instead of miles from nowhere, with all the losses of transporting the electricity to the actual households.
Sure... you COULD build a solar roof over your driveway... but maybe you need special permits and such for that.
Maybe you or your family members don't want a roof on stilts in front of your home or over your yard - while you do want more solar capacity than what your roof may provide.
A niche solution for all those niches where regular roof-mounted solar panels can't be installed, but there is free and empty walking/driving surface nearby.
Hell, even those solar-fucking hexagons make sense if you rip out most of the bullshit (LEDs, heaters, 20 tons or so of concrete "access ports" and foundation...) and use them for paving roads in parks and gardens.
IF they can be produced cheaply enough, that is.
But not compared to the cost of paving the roads - compared to cost of installing regular solar panels, on, around or over that surface.
Besides, solar fucking hexagons were the only ones retarded enough to suggest ripping out existing roads and putting in magical hexagons instead.
French Wattway assumes existing asphalt roads underneath the glued-on photovoltaics, Dutch SolaRoad is assembled from concrete slabs with a top layer of photovoltaics - which is just the thing for driveways.