There are a giant number of people here who are either not "employed" (i.e. being paid cash under the table) or are not US citizens or do not have bill-paying history (young).
The Western banking system completely cuts those people out. Yet almost all of them have cell phones. Thus, T-Mobile's push.
There are a huge humber of people in the US who are simply unable to get a bank account. As far as the banking system is concerned, they do not exist. Ever see the movie, Elysium? It's like that.
It is tough to see when one is a privileged rich kid. I only learned about it when I picked up an interest in bitcoin and heard someone speak about what it meant for the poor to be able to hold wealth without a bank account and without having to carry cash.
I guess I wasn't clear enough. I would go and work for an urban farming co-operative in exchange for food and possibly shelter. Not volunteering, and not paying for the food either. This seems like a really simple answer to an otherwise impossible problem.
Were you there? You speak with the authority of one who saw it happen.
Lots of people spoke similarly about George Zimmerman. They believed the media, and were wrong.
It is perfectly plausible that the wife attacked the ex-cop as well, after the first shot. As for harrassing, I am sorry but asking a texter to put their phone away is NOT harrassment. I have done it several times, and I have been asked to put my own phone away.
As for shooting in a dark theater and the rest of our claims: were you there? My theater doesn't darken fully until the actual feature begins. I would have no problem shooting accurately up until that point, and if I had a laser or tactical light attachment, I would have no problem after the theater darkened either.
Something for you to think about: when you go to the theater, it is quite likely that several firearms are present in the audience around you. The likelihood drops where it is illegal to carry, but in most of the US, you can probably count on multiple loaded guns within your immediate vicinity.
You may hate guns, but they are all around you. We just don't show them off.
Thanks! I have had to struggle quite a bit to get through, but I have done pretty well. I am a programmer and I dislike doing things badly. I always try to find better ways to do things, including living. I have been profoundly gifted with wonderful parents, friends, and teachers who have helped me over the years.
It's possible, but when someone is right in front of you, getting visibly more angry by the moment, there may not be a lot of opportunity to back down.
Here's something most people seem to forget: Throwing popcorn at someone is assault. If I ever throw popcorn in someone's face, it will be a distraction for the next thing coming. If you throw popcorn in someone's face, that's asking for a fight. That means you are ready and prepared for a fight. Furthermore, when standing in those tight theater isles, it is difficult to move quickly. Fast escape -- the preferrable option -- isn't necessarily possible when you have an enraged man potentially climbing over seats to get at you.
I hope this does not seem like I am inventing excuses for the officer. I am not. I think it is extremely likely that he will be found to have had a history of anger management and violence issues. I do not trust police being the only ones with guns (the theater was a "Gun Free Zone") and I think this tragedy further underscores that point.
Nevertheless, I also think we should not jump to conclusions. A lot of people jumped to conclusions about the Trayvon Martin case and were terribly wrong.
Not if the 43-year old attacked him or gave him reason to believe he was about to be assaulted. Then the shooting becomes self-defense, and the (ex) officer will spend no time behind bars (and reasonably so).
Here's where your argument falls flat. Without his gun, that 71-yo might be dead on the floor after being assaulted without provocation by a man 30 years younger.
That's bullshit. I started out with similar troubles, and just had to learn better time management. Skip the time-consuming questions, focus on the fast questions, then go back and work out as much of the time-consuming questions as possible in the time alloted.
As a person who has gone back to school in his late 20's, I have struggled with some of what you describe. I'm going to just list out a few things I have done or ways I act to help improve my cognitive performance and memory.
Firstly, memory is learned, not innate. Many of the world memory game finalists and champions are ordinary people who started practicing the Method of Loci (Memory Palace, other names as well) as a memorization technique and a couple years later are placing in memory games. I cannot possibly overstate the importance of this technique. With it, I pass hard memorization classes like Orgo and Physiology with straight A's. Without it, I fail. Curiously, I found that once I started using this technique, my overall memory improved considerably.
OK, now a laundry list, in no particular order.
*) Take less classes. If stuff takes more time, allocate accordingly.
*) Nutrition is important. If you are deficient in B12 (many adults are slightly or moderately deficient in this) it will severely affect your cognitive ability and memory. Try daily supplementation with cyanocobalamin for a month. Also vitamin C, as well as eating a balanced diet. Vitamin D supplementation can help quite a bit, and some people (including myself) experience benefit from CoQ10 supplementation.
*) What you eat is important as FUCK. Whatever food you put in your mouth, will take blood away from the brain. Eat simple, nutricious, easily-digested food for breakfast and lunch. If you have bacon and eggs for breakfast, that''s going to suck all the blood out of your brain and you won't be able to think. Try yogurt or smoothies instead, add raisins and nuts. Similarly, if you have a ham sandwich for lunch, your body is going to be digesting that instead of your class material. Don't do that. Eat minimally through the day in order to maximize cognitive function.
*) Hunger is predatory. Being slightly hungry increases memory and processing speed, at least for me. Experiment.
*) Stay away from sugar. Sugar is a drug that makes you fat, dumb, and happy. Minimize sugar intake as much as possible. Also stay away from artificial sweeteners; as bad as sugar is for your brain, it is a lot better than aspartame / nutrasweet / phenylalanine.
*) Eat a well-balanced diet, minimizing processed foods and meats. Eat fruits, vegetables and beans. Some people find it is a good idea to stay well away from grains like rice and wheat. Experiment with your diet and find out what works for you. Universally, processed foods are bad, though.
*) Exercise! This is a huge boost for making your brain work better. If you walk for 20 minutes every morning, your brain will work much better all day.
*) This goes without saying, but stay away from marijuana. It takes several days for the effects of marijuana to fade from your cognitive faculties. If you smoke MJ, save it for academic breaks. (NOTE: plenty of people will disagree with me. No, I will not cite a source because I have none. But if you smoke MJ, stop for a while.)
*) Stay away from alcohol. This drug also takes several days for your brain to recover from. Again, no scientific source, just my personal experience. If you are young and dumb, EtOH and MJ can be fine every night, but when you need to maximise every iota of brain performance that is a different story.
*) Talk to your professors. Also talk to your school's psychiatric counselling. You may be able to get extra time to complete tests if you do suffer from memory or cognitive impairment. Unless you are planning to take the MCAT or GRE or something, most professors are more than happy to make lots of allowances for struggling students. Since you are an older student, I expect teachers will actually be even happier to help you. Most teachers really like having the maturity and motivation of older students in the classroom.
*) Stay away from TV and video games. These interfere with learning. If you spend the day in lectures then spend
Why do more people not join community agriculture projects such as Urban Roots in Detroit? Efforts like these are in many of our cities now, and it always bothers me that more people do not jump in with these projects. If I found myself staring up the wrong end of the economic ladder, that's what I would do in a heartbeat.
We have vast numbers of unemployed (20%? 30%? Who knows?), and simultaneously a vast need for localized community agriculture and food sovereignty. Why do these not combine?
Humans are perpetrating the 6th great mass extinction event. They are not common, but we are causing one of them.
> Secondly: consumerism isn't about people buying assets. It's about them buying disposable, consumable items, as the norm i the economy.
My bad, but you are arguing a very fine point of definition. Most people consider cars and houses to be "assets," but the present forms of them are clear examples of the kind of consumerism that is destroying the planet.
> Thirdly: consumerism is not linked to climate change.
Bullshit. Show me some science that even begins to prove this point. It is obvious on the face of it. Where do greenhouse gases come from? The 15 biggest polluting ships in the world put out more greenhouse gases than every car in the world. Greenhouse gases come from us transporting ourselves and our goods to market, where we can consume them at our leisure. Or, in some cases, us using the terrible firepower of modern "civilization" to ensure continuing flow of energy and goods to market.
> There is absolutely nothing implicit in the idea of consumerism which is associated with climate change.
True, but the way we have implemented consumerism is directly precipitating climate change. You can argue the philosophical definition all you want, but the reality is quite clear.
> And on top of that, you can have perpetual economic growth on a finite resource base easily - since industry is essentially asymptotic towards 100% efficiency.
This is true, and is the only future in which we have a chance at surviving. However, we must stop fueling our growth on nonrenewable carbon, or we will return the earth to the stage in which it existed when all the carbon locked up in oil and coal was part of the atmosphere. It is very simple math. Carbon went from the air into the ground. We are taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the air. QED.
I wasn't just talking about climate change. I was also talking about mass extinction. Even if we solve the carbon problem, we are still systematically destroying trophic webs across the planet. Destroy enough and the whole thing collapses like an overpoisoned salt marsh or the great dead zones off so many of our formerly-healthy coastlines. However, if we can manage to stop buying so much shit, then there is greatly less pressure to extract ever more raw material from the earth. Furthermore, fewer purchases means a reduced waste stream.
Deflation == the end of an age of excess. Many see it as a nightmare, but it is the only thing I have seen that has a prayer of saving us. Feel free to disagree; I don't have to convince you. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about this, and am simply stating what I perceive as the truth.
Funny, I would argue the exact opposite. That is purely a matter of perspective... and a pretty limited perspective at that.
Bitcoin does not suffer from weaknesses inherent in a centralized-control system. It is global. Think about that; the first truely global currency with universal appeal in every counry, and all you can do is sit there and bash it.
As for stability, your concern is misplaced. I use it for daily transactions, and find the volatility to be an attractive feature rather than a hindrance. Volatility is bad if it goes in one direction for a long time. These crazy swings? Not so bad.
> Deflation makes an item worth $1000, worth $990 later. It hurts people with assets. However, if you have cash, that same amount of cash will buy more as deflation continues. Deflation is bad because SMART people stop buying things that will be cheaper tomorrow and inventory in shops is a bad thing because you pay interest on holding it while it reduces in value.
You are correct in every point. What you miss, however, is the elephant in the room. If people stop buying assets, that means the end of consumerism. From an ecological perspective, this is the only way to stop the climate catastrophe and mass extinction events that are becoming increasingly serious.
> Yeah, but OnStar is a service with a monthly payment. If you don't want it, don't pay it. They're not going to waste bandwidth on you if you're not paying.
Bullshit. Police can have your car turned off regardless of whether you are a subscriber. They clearly have access to it whenever they want. You think they won't waste bandwidth on you, but the fact is the data is quite valuable.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a giant number of people here who are either not "employed" (i.e. being paid cash under the table) or are not US citizens or do not have bill-paying history (young).
The Western banking system completely cuts those people out. Yet almost all of them have cell phones. Thus, T-Mobile's push.
There are a huge humber of people in the US who are simply unable to get a bank account. As far as the banking system is concerned, they do not exist. Ever see the movie, Elysium? It's like that.
It is tough to see when one is a privileged rich kid. I only learned about it when I picked up an interest in bitcoin and heard someone speak about what it meant for the poor to be able to hold wealth without a bank account and without having to carry cash.
Haha what are you even talking about? It separates dissolved O2, not chemically bound O2. That is, assuming it works.
True, but it does feel like shit until you figure out how to induce the switch.
I guess I wasn't clear enough. I would go and work for an urban farming co-operative in exchange for food and possibly shelter. Not volunteering, and not paying for the food either. This seems like a really simple answer to an otherwise impossible problem.
There is a bit of line between stimulating the intellect with hunger and starving brain cells with glucose deprivation.
I like to snack lightly on almonds or some other nut to keep my brain working on these days. :)
Were you there? You speak with the authority of one who saw it happen.
Lots of people spoke similarly about George Zimmerman. They believed the media, and were wrong.
It is perfectly plausible that the wife attacked the ex-cop as well, after the first shot. As for harrassing, I am sorry but asking a texter to put their phone away is NOT harrassment. I have done it several times, and I have been asked to put my own phone away.
As for shooting in a dark theater and the rest of our claims: were you there? My theater doesn't darken fully until the actual feature begins. I would have no problem shooting accurately up until that point, and if I had a laser or tactical light attachment, I would have no problem after the theater darkened either.
Something for you to think about: when you go to the theater, it is quite likely that several firearms are present in the audience around you. The likelihood drops where it is illegal to carry, but in most of the US, you can probably count on multiple loaded guns within your immediate vicinity.
You may hate guns, but they are all around you. We just don't show them off.
Thanks! I have had to struggle quite a bit to get through, but I have done pretty well. I am a programmer and I dislike doing things badly. I always try to find better ways to do things, including living. I have been profoundly gifted with wonderful parents, friends, and teachers who have helped me over the years.
It's how I code! :)
It's possible, but when someone is right in front of you, getting visibly more angry by the moment, there may not be a lot of opportunity to back down.
Here's something most people seem to forget: Throwing popcorn at someone is assault. If I ever throw popcorn in someone's face, it will be a distraction for the next thing coming. If you throw popcorn in someone's face, that's asking for a fight. That means you are ready and prepared for a fight. Furthermore, when standing in those tight theater isles, it is difficult to move quickly. Fast escape -- the preferrable option -- isn't necessarily possible when you have an enraged man potentially climbing over seats to get at you.
I hope this does not seem like I am inventing excuses for the officer. I am not. I think it is extremely likely that he will be found to have had a history of anger management and violence issues. I do not trust police being the only ones with guns (the theater was a "Gun Free Zone") and I think this tragedy further underscores that point.
Nevertheless, I also think we should not jump to conclusions. A lot of people jumped to conclusions about the Trayvon Martin case and were terribly wrong.
When did you develop such an anti-gun position?
Not if the 43-year old attacked him or gave him reason to believe he was about to be assaulted. Then the shooting becomes self-defense, and the (ex) officer will spend no time behind bars (and reasonably so).
Here's where your argument falls flat. Without his gun, that 71-yo might be dead on the floor after being assaulted without provocation by a man 30 years younger.
That's bullshit. I started out with similar troubles, and just had to learn better time management. Skip the time-consuming questions, focus on the fast questions, then go back and work out as much of the time-consuming questions as possible in the time alloted.
Few students do this.
As a person who has gone back to school in his late 20's, I have struggled with some of what you describe. I'm going to just list out a few things I have done or ways I act to help improve my cognitive performance and memory.
Firstly, memory is learned, not innate. Many of the world memory game finalists and champions are ordinary people who started practicing the Method of Loci (Memory Palace, other names as well) as a memorization technique and a couple years later are placing in memory games. I cannot possibly overstate the importance of this technique. With it, I pass hard memorization classes like Orgo and Physiology with straight A's. Without it, I fail. Curiously, I found that once I started using this technique, my overall memory improved considerably.
OK, now a laundry list, in no particular order.
*) Take less classes. If stuff takes more time, allocate accordingly.
*) Nutrition is important. If you are deficient in B12 (many adults are slightly or moderately deficient in this) it will severely affect your cognitive ability and memory. Try daily supplementation with cyanocobalamin for a month. Also vitamin C, as well as eating a balanced diet. Vitamin D supplementation can help quite a bit, and some people (including myself) experience benefit from CoQ10 supplementation.
*) What you eat is important as FUCK. Whatever food you put in your mouth, will take blood away from the brain. Eat simple, nutricious, easily-digested food for breakfast and lunch. If you have bacon and eggs for breakfast, that''s going to suck all the blood out of your brain and you won't be able to think. Try yogurt or smoothies instead, add raisins and nuts. Similarly, if you have a ham sandwich for lunch, your body is going to be digesting that instead of your class material. Don't do that. Eat minimally through the day in order to maximize cognitive function.
*) Hunger is predatory. Being slightly hungry increases memory and processing speed, at least for me. Experiment.
*) Stay away from sugar. Sugar is a drug that makes you fat, dumb, and happy. Minimize sugar intake as much as possible. Also stay away from artificial sweeteners; as bad as sugar is for your brain, it is a lot better than aspartame / nutrasweet / phenylalanine.
*) Eat a well-balanced diet, minimizing processed foods and meats. Eat fruits, vegetables and beans. Some people find it is a good idea to stay well away from grains like rice and wheat. Experiment with your diet and find out what works for you. Universally, processed foods are bad, though.
*) Exercise! This is a huge boost for making your brain work better. If you walk for 20 minutes every morning, your brain will work much better all day.
*) This goes without saying, but stay away from marijuana. It takes several days for the effects of marijuana to fade from your cognitive faculties. If you smoke MJ, save it for academic breaks. (NOTE: plenty of people will disagree with me. No, I will not cite a source because I have none. But if you smoke MJ, stop for a while.)
*) Stay away from alcohol. This drug also takes several days for your brain to recover from. Again, no scientific source, just my personal experience. If you are young and dumb, EtOH and MJ can be fine every night, but when you need to maximise every iota of brain performance that is a different story.
*) Talk to your professors. Also talk to your school's psychiatric counselling. You may be able to get extra time to complete tests if you do suffer from memory or cognitive impairment. Unless you are planning to take the MCAT or GRE or something, most professors are more than happy to make lots of allowances for struggling students. Since you are an older student, I expect teachers will actually be even happier to help you. Most teachers really like having the maturity and motivation of older students in the classroom.
*) Stay away from TV and video games. These interfere with learning. If you spend the day in lectures then spend
Why do more people not join community agriculture projects such as Urban Roots in Detroit? Efforts like these are in many of our cities now, and it always bothers me that more people do not jump in with these projects. If I found myself staring up the wrong end of the economic ladder, that's what I would do in a heartbeat.
We have vast numbers of unemployed (20%? 30%? Who knows?), and simultaneously a vast need for localized community agriculture and food sovereignty. Why do these not combine?
After all, food stamps can buy seeds.
Humans are perpetrating the 6th great mass extinction event. They are not common, but we are causing one of them.
> Secondly: consumerism isn't about people buying assets. It's about them buying disposable, consumable items, as the norm i the economy.
My bad, but you are arguing a very fine point of definition. Most people consider cars and houses to be "assets," but the present forms of them are clear examples of the kind of consumerism that is destroying the planet.
> Thirdly: consumerism is not linked to climate change.
Bullshit. Show me some science that even begins to prove this point. It is obvious on the face of it. Where do greenhouse gases come from? The 15 biggest polluting ships in the world put out more greenhouse gases than every car in the world. Greenhouse gases come from us transporting ourselves and our goods to market, where we can consume them at our leisure. Or, in some cases, us using the terrible firepower of modern "civilization" to ensure continuing flow of energy and goods to market.
> There is absolutely nothing implicit in the idea of consumerism which is associated with climate change.
True, but the way we have implemented consumerism is directly precipitating climate change. You can argue the philosophical definition all you want, but the reality is quite clear.
> And on top of that, you can have perpetual economic growth on a finite resource base easily - since industry is essentially asymptotic towards 100% efficiency.
This is true, and is the only future in which we have a chance at surviving. However, we must stop fueling our growth on nonrenewable carbon, or we will return the earth to the stage in which it existed when all the carbon locked up in oil and coal was part of the atmosphere. It is very simple math. Carbon went from the air into the ground. We are taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the air. QED.
I wasn't just talking about climate change. I was also talking about mass extinction. Even if we solve the carbon problem, we are still systematically destroying trophic webs across the planet. Destroy enough and the whole thing collapses like an overpoisoned salt marsh or the great dead zones off so many of our formerly-healthy coastlines. However, if we can manage to stop buying so much shit, then there is greatly less pressure to extract ever more raw material from the earth. Furthermore, fewer purchases means a reduced waste stream.
Deflation == the end of an age of excess. Many see it as a nightmare, but it is the only thing I have seen that has a prayer of saving us. Feel free to disagree; I don't have to convince you. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about this, and am simply stating what I perceive as the truth.
So let me get this straight...you never buy things based on other people's reviews?
Please. I trust random internet strangers vastly more than my elected politicians.
> it has a much better track record than Bitcoin.
Funny, I would argue the exact opposite. That is purely a matter of perspective ... and a pretty limited perspective at that.
Bitcoin does not suffer from weaknesses inherent in a centralized-control system. It is global. Think about that; the first truely global currency with universal appeal in every counry, and all you can do is sit there and bash it.
As for stability, your concern is misplaced. I use it for daily transactions, and find the volatility to be an attractive feature rather than a hindrance. Volatility is bad if it goes in one direction for a long time. These crazy swings? Not so bad.
> Deflation makes an item worth $1000, worth $990 later. It hurts people with assets. However, if you have cash, that same amount of cash will buy more as deflation continues. Deflation is bad because SMART people stop buying things that will be cheaper tomorrow and inventory in shops is a bad thing because you pay interest on holding it while it reduces in value.
You are correct in every point. What you miss, however, is the elephant in the room. If people stop buying assets, that means the end of consumerism. From an ecological perspective, this is the only way to stop the climate catastrophe and mass extinction events that are becoming increasingly serious.
This is true. At that point, I'll be the hobbyist building his own car. Fuck 'em.
> Yeah, but OnStar is a service with a monthly payment. If you don't want it, don't pay it. They're not going to waste bandwidth on you if you're not paying.
Bullshit. Police can have your car turned off regardless of whether you are a subscriber. They clearly have access to it whenever they want. You think they won't waste bandwidth on you, but the fact is the data is quite valuable.
At that point, I'll just vote with my wallet and buy something else.
If it's an option, sure. GM started including OnStar by default a while back.
Works for me. I turn the phone off when I'm travelling, but I am lucky enough to have a good sense of direction.