Mr. Brown, since becoming a vegetarian, I've become aware that most chefs tend to have a strong anti-vegetarian bent. I understand that the majority of the population eat animals so it is most likely in the chef's best interest to serve meals that most people will recognize and be willing to eat (ie: a meal built around a main course of meat with vegetables in a supporting role). That's all well and good, but what about vegetarians. It seems that a lot of chefs are either outright anti-vegetarian (Ann Cashion or the guy that wrote the book about what happens in restaurant kitchens, Jacobson?) or think a plate of sides is all they can come up with for the non-meat eaters in the house. Do you perceive an anti-veg trend in professional chefs? My personal feeling is that they feel they can't make any money on vegetables, so they don't try. Why not take a frozen piece of seafood, call it the "special" of the day, mark it way up and make some easy money when you might actually have to sit down and think about a rounded meal for a vegetarian? What are your thoughts?
Great post. One comment though. The 8 hour work day was a creation of Henry Ford to get a third shift in a 24 hour day. I kind of became the defacto standard after that.
oh, but you're so missing the point. you haven't bought sufficiently into the hype yet. Look, microsoft and intel and all the big players are behind this, so fall in line mister. If people don't buy into the hyperbole, how are they ever going to foist these kinds of half-baked, marginal ideas on us? you're just too rational for your own good.
i could see apple announcing they've "upgraded" their video system before the ship date and include the radeon after all. they did that with the original i-mac when they upgraded the modem between the announcement date and the ship date. This way, ATI loses the macworld spotlight and jobs gets to say he's giving the customer a "better" value with the new card. could happen.
wow, I can't believe I'm reading this on/. This is one of the last bastions of libertarianism. Who woulda thought you could still read a poster advocating for government regulation?
Remember the/. mantra - less government, less government, less government, less government, less government, less government. . . . . .
House Republicans intend on bringing this bill back up for a vote before the end of the current congressional session. When you consider it was rushed to the floor and missed being approved by only 4 votes (where did that "about 1/2 of what would be needed to pass" come from?) you can understand their optimism in trying again. This time, instead of bringing it up on the suspension calendar (with the required a 2/3rds vote) they will try to run it through the rules committee and get a "closed rule" on the bill, meaning no amendments to it on the floor. That way they only need a simple majority to pass it.
If the House is going to go down this route, look for it to happen by Friday. But with Lott saying the target adjournment date is Nov. 10, you can be fairly certain this bill will expire with the session (unless they manage to get it appended to a year-ending omnibus appropriation bill, then anything goes . . . ).
um, not quite cowboy. The managers of the bill brought it to the floor under suspension of the (House) rules, meaning it didn't go through the rules committee, which is a normal course of action. Bills that are brought up under suspension of the rules require 2/3rds majority to pass. Because of this, it will never make it to Clinton for him to veto. The fact that Clinton said he would veto it is irrelevant and shouldn't be taken as a given (he said he'd veto the welfare reform act a few years ago and then signed it). Clinton's lackeys in the Commerce department were close to saying okay to this bill, and most likely could have gotten what they wanted in a conference committee, leading to a presidential signature.
This can get out of hand. Soon kids start competing over who has the coolest laptop, then parents end up spending too much money on customization panels, then some kid gets killed when somebody jacks his Timberland® panel, then the school orders uniform laptops in a smart blue tartan plaid.
Wow! Too stupid to live, can't be sold for food. Okay, for the slower memebers of the class . . .
In the context of your first paragraph, your second one is idiotic.
You got that 100% backwards. The first one is idiotic; the second one is the context. The whole point is to say that presidents tend to be bystanders as the economy passes them by. They get praise or the shaft depending on what happens while in office.
As to the rasing [sic.] taxes BS, it was congress than [sic.] re-ordered the budget
Exactly the point. The US government isn't run exclusively by the executive. The executive implements congress's spending plans (money makes the govt. go 'round after all). Sometimes the executive sets the agenda and gets what he wants, and sometimes congress gives him some serious boostafazo. My point was that the original poster in this thread was giving the executive way too many daps (and that has nothing to do with the revisionist Reagan-sainthood theology or doing the same for slick willie).
Sometimes it just doesn't work to post sarcasm on/. because a lot of the people are just too thick to get it.
And don't forget the ad LBJ dropped on Goldwater. The one where the little girl is picking flowers and an atom bomb goes off. Scared the hell out of people. Now that was effective TV!
To win a spending war with the Soviets is not much of an accomplishment. The original poster was correct in that the Soviet economic system was doomed and they were losing their empire when Reagan was elected. It was only a matter of time.
The US economy is booming, first federal budget surplus in years (projected anyway, not going to happen this year). The country seems to be doing pretty well. You gonna give Clinton his props? I mean, he pulled us out of the Geo. Bush malaise and recession of the early 90s. He had to raise taxes when he came into office to pay for that big tax cut Reagan begat but it didn't kill the economy.
Now, doesn't sound silly to give a president that much credit for things that happen on his watch?
That gives Sony some time to make changes to the PS2 specs. What they need to do is dump the firewire port. Get out of that dead-end technology and get on the USB2 bandwagon. Everybody's doing it, so why get left behind in the dust with proprietary gear, even if it is better. I mean, didn't Sony learn anything from betamax?
You're on to something. Like the clueless poster who claims people are poor because they're born poor, it's all about what you think and believe. If you think you can't do something (whatever, cook, drive, work, succeed) because you've been told all your life you can't, you start to believe it. You can't make it in whitey's world ® so don't try. That's the message a lot of kids get today. A lot of women are told they can't do math. (remember Barbie ® "math is hard") When I was teaching a statistical methods course, a lot of the women in the class were handicapped by years of math is hard (this was a grad level class - not yer typical underachievers). It's all in what you believe you can do, and getting off yer butt and doing it.
I agree that something more than eliminating prejudice is needed (though I'd like to hear some suggestions on how to achieve this) but I really find your overgeneralization of minority populations to be very disturbing. You are displaying your prejudice in assuming minorities tend to lead such desperate/hopeless lives. Instead of a life of victimization that will ensure the continuance of this cycle of poverty, people in such situations should be shown the rewards of hard work and perseverance. Technology should be used as a tool to help break this cycle. There are numerous examples of people (minority or not) who have refused to accept their victim status and have prospered.
I think the goal of society is both of these issues; they are not exclusive. That is the purpose of society to accomplish things collectively, as it tends to be much more efficient than billions of individuals acting as their own island society.
These "local issues" were federalized for a reason. States and localities were (are?) doing a terrible job on health and welfare issues for their citizens. It was only a few years ago that local governments in southern states only served the majority populations, neglecting their minority populations. And it wasn't a begin neglect. Equal protection under the law and the Constitutional rights of neglected populations are a legit reason for the federalization of what were traditionally local issues. I work for the National Governors' Association, and they argue that governors should be the implementers of many of these programs currently administered by the federal government. I would be in trouble with my bosses if they heard this, but the sorry way they treated their citizens is why the feds took over many of these programs. I'm sure the U.S. Conference of Mayors feel they are the ones who should be running these programs instead of the feds, but their record is worse than the governors. It's all a question of who gets to spend the money, and while governors have made great strides in working for all of their citizens, I'm not ready to hand them over all the decision making power and money.
Of course, some say the only true function of the federal government is to run the military and protect the country from invasion. The federal government organizing the marketplace is a scary idea. If you think the feds inefficiency at running social programs is a problem, wait until you see them determining and implementing what they feel advances society. Funding for programs like NASA or NIH should be re-thought. What's the point? Should the government be involved in funding science and research? I think so, but it will have to compete for funding with all the other programs citizens want the feds to run. The little libertarian in me says it will be the machinations of the free market that will determine advances in society as a whole, and if the market can't bear space programs or scientific research, it won't happen until conditions are right. But he's very little.
But, back to the point, I don't think it is a binary situation. Advances in our society can lead to more comfortable lives, but advances for advancement's sake shouldn't be the only goal for society. There are a lot of people who would be quite content and really happy in a society where we all lived healthy and comfortably, because that's more than they have now.
what was i thinking, you're right. Environmental programs don't help society. Ditch 'em. Let's spend the money shooting some old geezer ex-astronaut into space. That helps society as a whole, even though said society doesn't live in space. We live on earth, but a clean environment is not sexy and high tech. Let's cut off veterans' programs. Old war vets don't help society. Let's shoot up some telecom satellites because more live coverage of the next celebrity death is the only thing worth funding. Let's whack funding for community development. That sure doesn't advance society. Communities are a thing of the past, what with space aged communications and all. I say, do away with mental health programs. Helping mentally ill people can't benefit society as a whole. Maybe we can shoot them and the elderly who rely on Medicare to Mars because spending money on them surely can't benefit society as a whole. Maybe we can do what the National Institutes of Health does, and use federal tax receipts to invent new life-saving procedures and techniques and then give them to the private sector to subsidize their R&D and maximize their profits on the federal dime. That way, we can socialize the risk and privatize the profits. Oh wait, NASA already does that.
Hey, I live in DC so I can't write a Congressperson, even though I'm only 4 blocks from the capitol. I gots yer taxation w/o representation right here, but seriously . . .
I think they should cut NASA's budget. The appropriations bill in which it's funded is facing a huge cut in its allocation this year from fy 1999 funding levels, down 12.9 percent in the House 302(b) allocation. That bill also funds labor, Veterans, housing and community development programs as well as the EPA and other independent agencies. These programs shouldn't carry the load of the cuts so NASA can keep showboating. I mean, NASA has it down with gimmicky space shots (first female commander, big deal, first teacher in space, oops, that one didn't work) timed to launch during the appropriations process. And wasteful space shots as well; we don't need to send a manned mission to launch a satellite. That's a waste of resources. Plus, like any good defense contractor, they've spread their facilities and suppliers across the country so darn near every congresstool can vote for saving jobs in her/his community.
One of the reasons we have a budget surplus is discretionary spending was placed under spending limits in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and those caps get tight this year. In a show of political impotence last year, Congress crumbled under the weight of having to enforce the caps and lost in a last minute spending frenzy label "emergency spending." It will happen again this year and the needed rethinking of NASA's mission will be postponed yet another year. Face it, when it comes down to big roads, shinny guns and tanks, and super dooper spaceships, we have essentially 535 little boys on Capitol Hill who will bend over backwards to buy the latest prettiest toy while needed programs in other parts of the federal government go wanting, but don't get me started on that . . . . .
Well, the usps just ended their fiscal year in the black in a big way so I think the pronouncement of its death is a little premature. I prefer other shipping methods because the they can be tracked and because the postal service in DC is just soooo bad. This is the place they found multiple trailers stuffed with undelivered mail parked behind some of the branches.
But, on a brighter note, US Postal team member lance armstrong is on the verge of winning the tour de france. While not the first american to win, the previous US winner (you know, that greg guy) was on a french (I think) team.
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Mr. Brown, since becoming a vegetarian, I've become aware that most chefs tend to have a strong anti-vegetarian bent. I understand that the majority of the population eat animals so it is most likely in the chef's best interest to serve meals that most people will recognize and be willing to eat (ie: a meal built around a main course of meat with vegetables in a supporting role). That's all well and good, but what about vegetarians. It seems that a lot of chefs are either outright anti-vegetarian (Ann Cashion or the guy that wrote the book about what happens in restaurant kitchens, Jacobson?) or think a plate of sides is all they can come up with for the non-meat eaters in the house. Do you perceive an anti-veg trend in professional chefs? My personal feeling is that they feel they can't make any money on vegetables, so they don't try. Why not take a frozen piece of seafood, call it the "special" of the day, mark it way up and make some easy money when you might actually have to sit down and think about a rounded meal for a vegetarian? What are your thoughts?
Great post. One comment though. The 8 hour work day was a creation of Henry Ford to get a third shift in a 24 hour day. I kind of became the defacto standard after that.
that's not a perfect solution. Nothing, ever, beats a Guiness. Ever.
oh, but you're so missing the point. you haven't bought sufficiently into the hype yet. Look, microsoft and intel and all the big players are behind this, so fall in line mister. If people don't buy into the hyperbole, how are they ever going to foist these kinds of half-baked, marginal ideas on us? you're just too rational for your own good.
fellow slashbots, which censorware product will block this wack job? plz hlp tks.
Or why Motorola uses Intel processors instead of the ones they make.
i could see apple announcing they've "upgraded" their video system before the ship date and include the radeon after all. they did that with the original i-mac when they upgraded the modem between the announcement date and the ship date. This way, ATI loses the macworld spotlight and jobs gets to say he's giving the customer a "better" value with the new card. could happen.
That's what Celera said this morning. No month but "by the end of this year."
I was at the hearing today at the House of Reps this morning on this topic and Dr. Venter of Calera said they use 64 bit alphas. No specifics though.
wow, I can't believe I'm reading this on
Remember the
House Republicans intend on bringing this bill back up for a vote before the end of the current congressional session. When you consider it was rushed to the floor and missed being approved by only 4 votes (where did that "about 1/2 of what would be needed to pass" come from?) you can understand their optimism in trying again. This time, instead of bringing it up on the suspension calendar (with the required a 2/3rds vote) they will try to run it through the rules committee and get a "closed rule" on the bill, meaning no amendments to it on the floor. That way they only need a simple majority to pass it.
If the House is going to go down this route, look for it to happen by Friday. But with Lott saying the target adjournment date is Nov. 10, you can be fairly certain this bill will expire with the session (unless they manage to get it appended to a year-ending omnibus appropriation bill, then anything goes . . . ).
um, not quite cowboy. The managers of the bill brought it to the floor under suspension of the (House) rules, meaning it didn't go through the rules committee, which is a normal course of action. Bills that are brought up under suspension of the rules require 2/3rds majority to pass. Because of this, it will never make it to Clinton for him to veto. The fact that Clinton said he would veto it is irrelevant and shouldn't be taken as a given (he said he'd veto the welfare reform act a few years ago and then signed it). Clinton's lackeys in the Commerce department were close to saying okay to this bill, and most likely could have gotten what they wanted in a conference committee, leading to a presidential signature.
how come the polish translator gets a score of 2 and the swedish translator gets a 1? Some kind of bias?
This can get out of hand. Soon kids start competing over who has the coolest laptop, then parents end up spending too much money on customization panels, then some kid gets killed when somebody jacks his Timberland® panel, then the school orders uniform laptops in a smart blue tartan plaid.
I can see it now . . .
Wow! Too stupid to live, can't be sold for food. Okay, for the slower memebers of the class . . .
/. because a lot of the people are just too thick to get it.
In the context of your first paragraph, your second one is idiotic.
You got that 100% backwards. The first one is idiotic; the second one is the context. The whole point is to say that presidents tend to be bystanders as the economy passes them by. They get praise or the shaft depending on what happens while in office.
As to the rasing [sic.] taxes BS, it was congress than [sic.] re-ordered the budget
Exactly the point. The US government isn't run exclusively by the executive. The executive implements congress's spending plans (money makes the govt. go 'round after all). Sometimes the executive sets the agenda and gets what he wants, and sometimes congress gives him some serious boostafazo. My point was that the original poster in this thread was giving the executive way too many daps (and that has nothing to do with the revisionist Reagan-sainthood theology or doing the same for slick willie).
Sometimes it just doesn't work to post sarcasm on
And don't forget the ad LBJ dropped on Goldwater. The one where the little girl is picking flowers and an atom bomb goes off. Scared the hell out of people. Now that was effective TV!
To win a spending war with the Soviets is not much of an accomplishment. The original poster was correct in that the Soviet economic system was doomed and they were losing their empire when Reagan was elected. It was only a matter of time.
The arms build up did cost a lot of money though.
The US economy is booming, first federal budget surplus in years (projected anyway, not going to happen this year). The country seems to be doing pretty well. You gonna give Clinton his props? I mean, he pulled us out of the Geo. Bush malaise and recession of the early 90s. He had to raise taxes when he came into office to pay for that big tax cut Reagan begat but it didn't kill the economy.
Now, doesn't sound silly to give a president that much credit for things that happen on his watch?
That gives Sony some time to make changes to the PS2 specs. What they need to do is dump the firewire port. Get out of that dead-end technology and get on the USB2 bandwagon. Everybody's doing it, so why get left behind in the dust with proprietary gear, even if it is better. I mean, didn't Sony learn anything from betamax?
You're on to something. Like the clueless poster who claims people are poor because they're born poor, it's all about what you think and believe. If you think you can't do something (whatever, cook, drive, work, succeed) because you've been told all your life you can't, you start to believe it. You can't make it in whitey's world ® so don't try. That's the message a lot of kids get today. A lot of women are told they can't do math. (remember Barbie ® "math is hard") When I was teaching a statistical methods course, a lot of the women in the class were handicapped by years of math is hard (this was a grad level class - not yer typical underachievers). It's all in what you believe you can do, and getting off yer butt and doing it.
I agree that something more than eliminating prejudice is needed (though I'd like to hear some suggestions on how to achieve this) but I really find your overgeneralization of minority populations to be very disturbing. You are displaying your prejudice in assuming minorities tend to lead such desperate/hopeless lives. Instead of a life of victimization that will ensure the continuance of this cycle of poverty, people in such situations should be shown the rewards of hard work and perseverance. Technology should be used as a tool to help break this cycle. There are numerous examples of people (minority or not) who have refused to accept their victim status and have prospered.
I think the goal of society is both of these issues; they are not exclusive. That is the purpose of society to accomplish things collectively, as it tends to be much more efficient than billions of individuals acting as their own island society.
These "local issues" were federalized for a reason. States and localities were (are?) doing a terrible job on health and welfare issues for their citizens. It was only a few years ago that local governments in southern states only served the majority populations, neglecting their minority populations. And it wasn't a begin neglect. Equal protection under the law and the Constitutional rights of neglected populations are a legit reason for the federalization of what were traditionally local issues. I work for the National Governors' Association, and they argue that governors should be the implementers of many of these programs currently administered by the federal government. I would be in trouble with my bosses if they heard this, but the sorry way they treated their citizens is why the feds took over many of these programs. I'm sure the U.S. Conference of Mayors feel they are the ones who should be running these programs instead of the feds, but their record is worse than the governors. It's all a question of who gets to spend the money, and while governors have made great strides in working for all of their citizens, I'm not ready to hand them over all the decision making power and money.
Of course, some say the only true function of the federal government is to run the military and protect the country from invasion. The federal government organizing the marketplace is a scary idea. If you think the feds inefficiency at running social programs is a problem, wait until you see them determining and implementing what they feel advances society. Funding for programs like NASA or NIH should be re-thought. What's the point? Should the government be involved in funding science and research? I think so, but it will have to compete for funding with all the other programs citizens want the feds to run. The little libertarian in me says it will be the machinations of the free market that will determine advances in society as a whole, and if the market can't bear space programs or scientific research, it won't happen until conditions are right. But he's very little.
But, back to the point, I don't think it is a binary situation. Advances in our society can lead to more comfortable lives, but advances for advancement's sake shouldn't be the only goal for society. There are a lot of people who would be quite content and really happy in a society where we all lived healthy and comfortably, because that's more than they have now.
what was i thinking, you're right. Environmental programs don't help society. Ditch 'em. Let's spend the money shooting some old geezer ex-astronaut into space. That helps society as a whole, even though said society doesn't live in space. We live on earth, but a clean environment is not sexy and high tech. Let's cut off veterans' programs. Old war vets don't help society. Let's shoot up some telecom satellites because more live coverage of the next celebrity death is the only thing worth funding. Let's whack funding for community development. That sure doesn't advance society. Communities are a thing of the past, what with space aged communications and all. I say, do away with mental health programs. Helping mentally ill people can't benefit society as a whole. Maybe we can shoot them and the elderly who rely on Medicare to Mars because spending money on them surely can't benefit society as a whole. Maybe we can do what the National Institutes of Health does, and use federal tax receipts to invent new life-saving procedures and techniques and then give them to the private sector to subsidize their R&D and maximize their profits on the federal dime. That way, we can socialize the risk and privatize the profits. Oh wait, NASA already does that.
Hey, I live in DC so I can't write a Congressperson, even though I'm only 4 blocks from the capitol. I gots yer taxation w/o representation right here, but seriously . . .
I think they should cut NASA's budget. The appropriations bill in which it's funded is facing a huge cut in its allocation this year from fy 1999 funding levels, down 12.9 percent in the House 302(b) allocation. That bill also funds labor, Veterans, housing and community development programs as well as the EPA and other independent agencies. These programs shouldn't carry the load of the cuts so NASA can keep showboating. I mean, NASA has it down with gimmicky space shots (first female commander, big deal, first teacher in space, oops, that one didn't work) timed to launch during the appropriations process. And wasteful space shots as well; we don't need to send a manned mission to launch a satellite. That's a waste of resources. Plus, like any good defense contractor, they've spread their facilities and suppliers across the country so darn near every congresstool can vote for saving jobs in her/his community.
One of the reasons we have a budget surplus is discretionary spending was placed under spending limits in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and those caps get tight this year. In a show of political impotence last year, Congress crumbled under the weight of having to enforce the caps and lost in a last minute spending frenzy label "emergency spending." It will happen again this year and the needed rethinking of NASA's mission will be postponed yet another year. Face it, when it comes down to big roads, shinny guns and tanks, and super dooper spaceships, we have essentially 535 little boys on Capitol Hill who will bend over backwards to buy the latest prettiest toy while needed programs in other parts of the federal government go wanting, but don't get me started on that . . . . .
Well, the usps just ended their fiscal year in the black in a big way so I think the pronouncement of its death is a little premature. I prefer other shipping methods because the they can be tracked and because the postal service in DC is just soooo bad. This is the place they found multiple trailers stuffed with undelivered mail parked behind some of the branches.
But, on a brighter note, US Postal team member lance armstrong is on the verge of winning the tour de france. While not the first american to win, the previous US winner (you know, that greg guy) was on a french (I think) team.