One of the lesser talked about justifications for state welfare is basically paying people to not commit crime, so that harsh law enforcement isn't necessary and everybody can life in a more free society.
I am equally confused as to why this is rarely brought up. I have some sympathy for those down on their luck sure, but I'm strongly pro-welfare for mostly selfish reasons. If somebody has hit rock bottom, and doesn't have enough money to feed themselves or their kids, they will get desperate. A person trying to find food for their children will go to incredible lengths. They might try to mug me, they might rob my house, they might rob my business. Some people are going to be criminals anyways, but at least with welfare you are giving people a choice, and a legitimate way to take care of their family without restorting to crime. I'd rather pay a small amount of tax towards taking care of the very poor than dealing with the increased crime rate that would happen if they have no alternative.
It is considered a trade secret, so I won't disclose the exact figures, but theaters keep considerably more than 20%. The percentage gets higher every week the movie stays in theaters.
People forget one of the reasons Avatar made so much money is it sat in many theaters for 36 weeks
Yes and no... It stayed in theaters 36 weeks because it kept making money. There was plenty of other content that studios were requesting be played instead, but Avatar wasn't declining in sales very quickly. The most important part of decision making whether a movie will stay, is the percentage of decline in sales from week to week. If the Hobbit makes money, it will stay. If it drops 75% after the first weekend, it will go away in 3 weeks.
Well, the first couple generations of digital cinema projectors can't display at 48fps. But, many of the models from the past year or two are capable out of the box. So for instance, my theater chain was one of the first in the nation to be all-digital... which means that most of our auditoriums can't display it, except for the locations we built in the past year, and the projectors that have been replaced. The gamble is whether it will be worth it to invest sooner in newer equipment, or hang on to the aging equipment a bit longer. If the hobbit is successfull (and it will be), then expect to see most new movies being filmed in 48.
It does produce a better picture, despite the mixed reviews. Some people prefer vinyl over cd, which is at least arguable. And other people prefer DVD over Blu-Ray, for reasons that don't make a lot of sense. Some people don't like 120hz TV's, and others can't tell a difference. This industry has a lot of purists who prefer 35mm over digital, so a better digital to them still isn't "good enough", even though it is visbly better to the majority of people.
Eating pesticide IS bad for your health.
But, eating some pesticide with food, is better than not eating any food at all.
Eating LESS pesticide while having MORE food available is even better.
The simple fact is that organic non-genetically modified crops produce less food. Yields are smaller, and insects damage more of it. Organic methods produce so much less food in fact, that if all of the worlds farmers switched to organic, a huge percentage of the world would die from starvation.
It is great that people care about their food sources, and want to provide their family with the best, safest, and most delicious food available. It is terrible when people think GM foods & pesticide mean cancer and death, and demand laws that would condemn half the planet to starvation.
But oh noes! Then you can't watch it right now! Really? Is your life so devoid of anything with meaning and direction that you can't pull yourself away from yet another mindless TV show?
If you are having dinner with your friends, and they want to talk about the ending of Avengers, are you the guy who puts his fingers in his ears saying 'la la la la' don't tell me anything, and shutting down the conversation your friends are having? Or do you simply not care about any fictional stories so don't care if the plots are spoiled?
Some people participate in pop culture shows, books & movies, and the conversations surrounding that pop culture is very time sensitive. If your friends are into something and keep talking about it, and encouraging you to watch, it drives you to stay current rather than wait for DVD's.
Whatever happened to self reliance? How many people can be reliant on others before it breaks the collective back of society?
I'm all for personal responsibility, and self reliance, but lets be realistic. Humans aren't like bears that wander their territory completely alone, and then once a year meet up with other bears to mate and then go their seperate ways. Humans are tribal, and live in a collective relying on each other. It is the very foundation of our species. There are several cliche'd phrases that apply such as- "no man is an island", "we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately" and so on.
You might call it "voting with your feet".
Others might call it being driven from your home by a system they have little to no power to influence.
Are people in refugee camps merely voting with their feet? Sure I'm exagerrating to make a point, but whether you a fleeing a murderous warlord, or fleeing from tax laws you don't like, a lot of people do certainly object to being forced from their homes.
He has the unfortunate position of being the highest profile case in the past several years. Making an example out of his attempt to dodge taxes might discourage others from doing the same.
Even in the tropics the plants don't produce food year round and people need to adapt their diets based on the season. There are wet/dry seasons, and in the tropcis they have a "hungry season" for part of the year. But, fat stores are useful because hunter gatherers can face a food shortage at any time of the year.
While a hunter-gatherer diet is more "natural" and slightly healthier, surely you realize that the staple crops you listed are responsible for the population growth of the civilized world. Ignoring Wheat, Corn, Rice, Oats, Potatoes, would lead to mass starvation for 90% of the planet. Surely there must be some medium ground between fat or dead, with a healthy balance of cereal grains.
But i interact with $400,000 worth of stuff most people don't have to do it.
Show me an apartment anywhere that doesn't have a fridge and stovetop or oven or microwave. If you have $400k worth of kitchen equipment you are better off than most commercial kitchens that feed 1000+ people a day.
By disagree with evolution, I mean they refute the scientific evidence, and often manufacture their own pseudoscience.
By disagree with stem cell research, I am referring to their moral disagreement to the research as being interpreted as an "anti-science" stance by much of the mainstream scientific community.
Birth control is related because it represents man's mastery of our own body, by regulating reproductive functions through the use of science. Many religious conservatives think it is wrong to use birth control because it interferes with "God's will". A much much smaller percentage of religious people refuse any and all medicine. Personally, I think anyone who refuses to use chemistry and science to manage their life specifically because they think it will make an invisible diety mad, is anti-science. Though I realize some might find that a broad interpretation, it does represent my perspective of why I think some conservatives hate science.
Religious conservatives tend to disagree with Evolution, stem cell research, cloning research, birth control, carbon dating, geology, the fossil record, etc
Business conservatives tend to deny Climate change, hate the EPA, and often deride the "green" movement
I think these anti-science stances among some (not all) conservatives explains why people think they hate science.
The scanner is less invasive. It is easier for you, it is easier for the TSA. Getting a pat-down is inconvenient for everyone involved. It causes small delays for the entire line. From the 20+ times that I've been patted down, I'm pretty darn sure that most TSA agents do not like doing them.
Only a small percentage of people opt for the pat-down. If 100% of travellers chose the pat-down, so many people would miss flights and have to be rebooked there would be chaos, and airports would cease to function properly.
At this point, there would have to be either new rules saying that you MUST be nude-scanned, or the metal detectors and old security would return.
Because the icons are huge, and the whole interface hinders multitasking by having one program be the main focus, which is better suited to a low-power tablet than a desktop. Previously, with a single click, you could switch between different running programs, whether minimized or not. Now there are more actions involved. Previously, you had equal control of any visible program. With unity, you need to gain focus first,and then can use the toolbars. There are just small handicaps that add up to a clear direction of not caring about multitasking usability.
Your honesty is appreciated, but a simple google search reveals a new baggage handler theft ring busted at some airport every few months. So yes, it does happen, and has happened to both me and a friend. It is why I will never check bags again and always carry-on, and in turn directly leads to TSA rage because they take stuff out of my bag and throw it away and berate me for not paying attention to the size of my toiletries.
NASA has more than a dozen satellites studying the earths climate, more than any other group in the world.
NASA spends more money studying climate science than all other federal agencies combined.
Those two facts seem to put them at the forefront of scientific research into the earth's climate. Who exactly do you propose would be better suited to launching the satellites and doing the research? Or is this problem better left to "private industry" to solve?
It seems their goal is to get NASA to refrain from talking about science because it is too political and damages their reputation among people who don't like science.
Unfortunately the demand is greater than the supply, so IWSBs are something of a luxury good, like antique furniture or corporate jets: boasted of by upper-class whites and wealthy organizations, coveted by the less prosperous. To be an IWSB in present-day US society is a height of felicity rarely before attained by any group of human beings in history.
IWSB is his acronym for intelligent, well-socialized black. He believes that only a tiny percentage of black people can even control themselves enough to fit into normal society, and thus are the same as luxury goods. Basically he thinks that most black people are animals, and the rest are equivalent to personal property / chattel. Its actually fairly shocking how completely de-humanizing everything he says is and clearly intentional.
I'm fortunate that my company (a privately held corporation) is led by executives and a board of directors who aren't evil or shortsighted. As a company, it donates hundreds of thousands of dollars to various charities every year, with an emphasis on the communities it does business in. We don't do it for tax breaks. We do it because its the right thing to do, and it brings genuine happiness to the employees to help sick children smile, and help those that are less fortunate. Employees are freely allowed and even encouraged to donate their time to charity while on company time, which happens at least weekly, and we host charity events a few times a year. Surely my company isn't the only one where participation in the community helps our bottom line.
You are correct on most counts, but there is actually one potential substitute. However it hasn't been scaled up yet on a working energy positive model: fusion.
Without fusion or some other undiscovered energy technology, there will be a catastrophic energy crisis sometime in the next 10-40 years, causing most of the worlds population to die. Even with fusion, there will be a food production crisis as petrochemical farming becomes extremely expensive. Food production can theoretically be shifted to labor intensive indoor farms given enough electricity.
Then, frankly, you don't belong in a democratic society.
Let me get this straight... You think he doesn't deserve to be in this society because he isn't willing to give up his house, family, career and future, to protect the rights of kids to read a particular book in class. (They aren't even his kids)
I don't like censorship either, but there is a reason that revolutions are started by the young. If this book got banned nationwide because of these dumb complaints, are you willing to go to jail over it? If speech alone isn't enough, are you willing to kill to keep this book uncensored? I know you aren't talking about violence and don't mean to imply that. I'm just bringing it up for examples of how far people are willing to go to protect something.
It is impossible for a person to fight every injustice on the planet. Most people settle for the things that matter to them the most, like their own family and kids and house.
3. They don't make that much profit. I don't see Bayer in the top 100.
You must've missed Pfizer at 31, and Johnson & Johnson at 40. Those two make more than Target, Kraft Foods, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Dow Chemical, and obviously most other companies on the planet.
They can take a 97% decrease in price and still remain profitable? What other industry can possibly have that level of markup and keep customers? It is only possible because of patent restrictions, and a "captive market" where people die or have horrible illnesses when they don't take your product.
I think that is the point. Mint is almost Ubuntu, but based on Gnome3 instead of Unity. The guys behind Mint care about making Gnome3 work, and Canonical doesn't.
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One of the lesser talked about justifications for state welfare is basically paying people to not commit crime, so that harsh law enforcement isn't necessary and everybody can life in a more free society.
I am equally confused as to why this is rarely brought up. I have some sympathy for those down on their luck sure, but I'm strongly pro-welfare for mostly selfish reasons. If somebody has hit rock bottom, and doesn't have enough money to feed themselves or their kids, they will get desperate. A person trying to find food for their children will go to incredible lengths. They might try to mug me, they might rob my house, they might rob my business. Some people are going to be criminals anyways, but at least with welfare you are giving people a choice, and a legitimate way to take care of their family without restorting to crime. I'd rather pay a small amount of tax towards taking care of the very poor than dealing with the increased crime rate that would happen if they have no alternative.
theaters keep roughly 15-20% of a ticket sale
It is considered a trade secret, so I won't disclose the exact figures, but theaters keep considerably more than 20%. The percentage gets higher every week the movie stays in theaters.
People forget one of the reasons Avatar made so much money is it sat in many theaters for 36 weeks
Yes and no... It stayed in theaters 36 weeks because it kept making money. There was plenty of other content that studios were requesting be played instead, but Avatar wasn't declining in sales very quickly. The most important part of decision making whether a movie will stay, is the percentage of decline in sales from week to week. If the Hobbit makes money, it will stay. If it drops 75% after the first weekend, it will go away in 3 weeks.
Well, the first couple generations of digital cinema projectors can't display at 48fps. But, many of the models from the past year or two are capable out of the box. So for instance, my theater chain was one of the first in the nation to be all-digital... which means that most of our auditoriums can't display it, except for the locations we built in the past year, and the projectors that have been replaced. The gamble is whether it will be worth it to invest sooner in newer equipment, or hang on to the aging equipment a bit longer. If the hobbit is successfull (and it will be), then expect to see most new movies being filmed in 48.
It does produce a better picture, despite the mixed reviews. Some people prefer vinyl over cd, which is at least arguable. And other people prefer DVD over Blu-Ray, for reasons that don't make a lot of sense. Some people don't like 120hz TV's, and others can't tell a difference. This industry has a lot of purists who prefer 35mm over digital, so a better digital to them still isn't "good enough", even though it is visbly better to the majority of people.
Eating pesticide IS bad for your health.
But, eating some pesticide with food, is better than not eating any food at all.
Eating LESS pesticide while having MORE food available is even better.
The simple fact is that organic non-genetically modified crops produce less food. Yields are smaller, and insects damage more of it. Organic methods produce so much less food in fact, that if all of the worlds farmers switched to organic, a huge percentage of the world would die from starvation.
It is great that people care about their food sources, and want to provide their family with the best, safest, and most delicious food available. It is terrible when people think GM foods & pesticide mean cancer and death, and demand laws that would condemn half the planet to starvation.
But oh noes! Then you can't watch it right now! Really? Is your life so devoid of anything with meaning and direction that you can't pull yourself away from yet another mindless TV show?
If you are having dinner with your friends, and they want to talk about the ending of Avengers, are you the guy who puts his fingers in his ears saying 'la la la la' don't tell me anything, and shutting down the conversation your friends are having? Or do you simply not care about any fictional stories so don't care if the plots are spoiled?
Some people participate in pop culture shows, books & movies, and the conversations surrounding that pop culture is very time sensitive. If your friends are into something and keep talking about it, and encouraging you to watch, it drives you to stay current rather than wait for DVD's.
Whatever happened to self reliance? How many people can be reliant on others before it breaks the collective back of society?
I'm all for personal responsibility, and self reliance, but lets be realistic. Humans aren't like bears that wander their territory completely alone, and then once a year meet up with other bears to mate and then go their seperate ways. Humans are tribal, and live in a collective relying on each other. It is the very foundation of our species. There are several cliche'd phrases that apply such as- "no man is an island", "we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately" and so on.
You might call it "voting with your feet".
Others might call it being driven from your home by a system they have little to no power to influence.
Are people in refugee camps merely voting with their feet? Sure I'm exagerrating to make a point, but whether you a fleeing a murderous warlord, or fleeing from tax laws you don't like, a lot of people do certainly object to being forced from their homes.
He has the unfortunate position of being the highest profile case in the past several years. Making an example out of his attempt to dodge taxes might discourage others from doing the same.
Even in the tropics the plants don't produce food year round and people need to adapt their diets based on the season. There are wet/dry seasons, and in the tropcis they have a "hungry season" for part of the year. But, fat stores are useful because hunter gatherers can face a food shortage at any time of the year.
While a hunter-gatherer diet is more "natural" and slightly healthier, surely you realize that the staple crops you listed are responsible for the population growth of the civilized world. Ignoring Wheat, Corn, Rice, Oats, Potatoes, would lead to mass starvation for 90% of the planet. Surely there must be some medium ground between fat or dead, with a healthy balance of cereal grains.
But i interact with $400,000 worth of stuff most people don't have to do it.
Show me an apartment anywhere that doesn't have a fridge and stovetop or oven or microwave. If you have $400k worth of kitchen equipment you are better off than most commercial kitchens that feed 1000+ people a day.
By disagree with evolution, I mean they refute the scientific evidence, and often manufacture their own pseudoscience.
By disagree with stem cell research, I am referring to their moral disagreement to the research as being interpreted as an "anti-science" stance by much of the mainstream scientific community.
Birth control is related because it represents man's mastery of our own body, by regulating reproductive functions through the use of science. Many religious conservatives think it is wrong to use birth control because it interferes with "God's will". A much much smaller percentage of religious people refuse any and all medicine. Personally, I think anyone who refuses to use chemistry and science to manage their life specifically because they think it will make an invisible diety mad, is anti-science. Though I realize some might find that a broad interpretation, it does represent my perspective of why I think some conservatives hate science.
Religious conservatives tend to disagree with Evolution, stem cell research, cloning research, birth control, carbon dating, geology, the fossil record, etc
Business conservatives tend to deny Climate change, hate the EPA, and often deride the "green" movement
I think these anti-science stances among some (not all) conservatives explains why people think they hate science.
The scanner is less invasive. It is easier for you, it is easier for the TSA. Getting a pat-down is inconvenient for everyone involved. It causes small delays for the entire line. From the 20+ times that I've been patted down, I'm pretty darn sure that most TSA agents do not like doing them.
Only a small percentage of people opt for the pat-down. If 100% of travellers chose the pat-down, so many people would miss flights and have to be rebooked there would be chaos, and airports would cease to function properly.
At this point, there would have to be either new rules saying that you MUST be nude-scanned, or the metal detectors and old security would return.
Because the icons are huge, and the whole interface hinders multitasking by having one program be the main focus, which is better suited to a low-power tablet than a desktop. Previously, with a single click, you could switch between different running programs, whether minimized or not. Now there are more actions involved. Previously, you had equal control of any visible program. With unity, you need to gain focus first,and then can use the toolbars. There are just small handicaps that add up to a clear direction of not caring about multitasking usability.
Your honesty is appreciated, but a simple google search reveals a new baggage handler theft ring busted at some airport every few months. So yes, it does happen, and has happened to both me and a friend. It is why I will never check bags again and always carry-on, and in turn directly leads to TSA rage because they take stuff out of my bag and throw it away and berate me for not paying attention to the size of my toiletries.
NASA has more than a dozen satellites studying the earths climate, more than any other group in the world.
NASA spends more money studying climate science than all other federal agencies combined.
Those two facts seem to put them at the forefront of scientific research into the earth's climate. Who exactly do you propose would be better suited to launching the satellites and doing the research? Or is this problem better left to "private industry" to solve?
It seems their goal is to get NASA to refrain from talking about science because it is too political and damages their reputation among people who don't like science.
I think the worst part is the end:
Unfortunately the demand is greater than the supply, so IWSBs are something of a luxury good, like antique furniture or corporate jets: boasted of by upper-class whites and wealthy organizations, coveted by the less prosperous. To be an IWSB in present-day US society is a height of felicity rarely before attained by any group of human beings in history.
IWSB is his acronym for intelligent, well-socialized black. He believes that only a tiny percentage of black people can even control themselves enough to fit into normal society, and thus are the same as luxury goods. Basically he thinks that most black people are animals, and the rest are equivalent to personal property / chattel. Its actually fairly shocking how completely de-humanizing everything he says is and clearly intentional.
I'm fortunate that my company (a privately held corporation) is led by executives and a board of directors who aren't evil or shortsighted. As a company, it donates hundreds of thousands of dollars to various charities every year, with an emphasis on the communities it does business in. We don't do it for tax breaks. We do it because its the right thing to do, and it brings genuine happiness to the employees to help sick children smile, and help those that are less fortunate. Employees are freely allowed and even encouraged to donate their time to charity while on company time, which happens at least weekly, and we host charity events a few times a year. Surely my company isn't the only one where participation in the community helps our bottom line.
Well, if indeed it is legal, then there's nothing wrong with it.
Legally ok may still be morally wrong. Personally I think making over $3 billion, and doging all taxes falls into the morally wrong category.
Legally speaking, companies only have an obligation to their shareholders. Morally speaking, companies have an obligation to their communities.
You are correct on most counts, but there is actually one potential substitute. However it hasn't been scaled up yet on a working energy positive model: fusion.
Without fusion or some other undiscovered energy technology, there will be a catastrophic energy crisis sometime in the next 10-40 years, causing most of the worlds population to die. Even with fusion, there will be a food production crisis as petrochemical farming becomes extremely expensive. Food production can theoretically be shifted to labor intensive indoor farms given enough electricity.
Then, frankly, you don't belong in a democratic society.
Let me get this straight... You think he doesn't deserve to be in this society because he isn't willing to give up his house, family, career and future, to protect the rights of kids to read a particular book in class. (They aren't even his kids)
I don't like censorship either, but there is a reason that revolutions are started by the young. If this book got banned nationwide because of these dumb complaints, are you willing to go to jail over it? If speech alone isn't enough, are you willing to kill to keep this book uncensored? I know you aren't talking about violence and don't mean to imply that. I'm just bringing it up for examples of how far people are willing to go to protect something.
It is impossible for a person to fight every injustice on the planet. Most people settle for the things that matter to them the most, like their own family and kids and house.
3. They don't make that much profit. I don't see Bayer in the top 100.
You must've missed Pfizer at 31, and Johnson & Johnson at 40. Those two make more than Target, Kraft Foods, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Dow Chemical, and obviously most other companies on the planet.
They can take a 97% decrease in price and still remain profitable? What other industry can possibly have that level of markup and keep customers? It is only possible because of patent restrictions, and a "captive market" where people die or have horrible illnesses when they don't take your product.
I think that is the point. Mint is almost Ubuntu, but based on Gnome3 instead of Unity. The guys behind Mint care about making Gnome3 work, and Canonical doesn't.