No libertarian is saying that "corporations can do whatever they want." But feel free to keep lying about this. Oh I'm sorry, it was just an exaggeration, right? Cowards hide behind exaggerations when they can't make real arguments.
"Bribery: Bribery is an act of implying money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient."
How is this marked +5 insightful? Wikipedia is blatantly wrong here. If this were a correct definition of bribery, then buying groceries would be bribery.
Bribery is the offering of value in order to persuade someone to do something illegal, or something that is considered should be illegal, or something against a policy such as a workplace policy. Giving a cashier money so you can leave with groceries isn't bribery because no one thinks buying groceries should be illegal. Giving a cop money to get you out of a speeding ticket is bribery, because a police officers job is to give out tickets.
Giving congressmen money in order to vote a certain way might be considered bribery because you can say "well they aren't voting their conscience." But that ignores the fact that people will support congressmen because the congressman voted in a way the contributor agreed with. Example: Financing a congressman who supports SOPA? People called that bribery. Financing a congressman who was against SOPA? That was considered respectable.
If you want to start with fixing campaign financing, start here: http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/contriblimits.shtml Individuals are allowed to give $2,500 per election to a candidate. But they are allowed to give $30,800 to a political party every year. And political parties are allowed to give $5,000 to candidates per election. Political parties have made it illegal for anyone to financially compete with them. You want to give $5,000 to a candidate that you like? Well to hell with you, you have to give it to the Republican Campaign Corporation or the Democratic Campaign Corporation and hope that they give it to who you like.
Lobbyists aren't the problem, they are the solution. I'd rather see a list of which lobbyists support someone on a ballot than simply an R or D after a candidate's name. We have to take away the financial immunity that the major parties have given themselves.
The next step of course would be to just simply have everyone's DNA on file just in case they ever needed it.
And the next step after that...cop calls a girl he knew in high school: "Hey, I noticed that your son doesn't have a DNA that matches his father's. So...what are you doing Friday?"
Government databases are so open to abuses so sick that most people would rather deny it than face how disgusting they are.
Because the police suck at their job just and much as you and everyone else sucks at their job.
BOSS'S BOSS: Hey have you got any results on X? BOSS: Hey, we need to start making progress on X EMPLOYEE 1: That's really stupid. There's no way to do that at this point. EMPLOYEE 2: Hey we can do Y which will make it look like we are making progress with X. (proposed solution Y actually won't do anything to help) BOSS: Good job employee 2. Write up a plan now. That's the attitude we're looking for. Have a promotion. BOSS'S BOSS: Hey good job making progress on X. Have a promotion.
Do you really think police jobs are any different?
Benjamin Franklin didn't live in a time when everyone expected the government to protect them from crime.
Your approach assumes that the purpose of his statement was to minimize the amount of total harm. Not everyone wants to do that. Some us are fine with people having to pay for their own choices, and just don't want to have to pay for everyone else's mistakes.
Nobody is forced at gunpoint to invest in any given business
And the same is said of government. You are free to leave the country and go find another.
There is a finite amount of space on Earth. Unless you actually 100% support amnesty and free borders in your own country, then you are a hypocrite for suggesting that people leave to another country.
Actually, we are free to leave to other states within the US. So if only these wasteful programs were done at a state level, then we could actually leave and go somewhere better. Damn, if only the people who created our country had intended for most programs to be done at a state level and leave individuals with the freedom to live where they please...
Oh wait, they did intent that. So you are the one screwing things up. Quit trying to pass everything at the Federal level. It takes away our freedom to leave your dumb ideas behind.
Actually the one you quoted is legally correct. The law at the time BHOII was born would not have allowed his mother to confer citizenship to him because of her age, and the fact that the other parent wasn't a US citizen. Look up the law for the time Obama was born, then go to the case for a child with only 1 parent with a US citizen. Then look up the mother's age. Be prepared for some arithmetic and Boolean logic.
That being said, I despise the fact that citizenship is conferred by birth. I hate the existence of the concept of citizenship, and I hate that it is a requirement for president (and for many other things). It is a holdover from the old "divine right" way of thinking, the idea of superiority from birth. If a man wants to get a job and an employer wants to hire him, it's no one's business where he was born or where he came from.
Faramir was never tempted by the ring, even though he knew what it was and could have had it with no effort at all. His entire character in the book was basically that of a man who likes the finer things (poetry, gardening, etc) and was forced into a war. He wasn't some little weasel like they made him out to be in the movie.
In the book, the hobbits were dealing with the tricks of Gollum, the betrayal of Boromir, the splitting up of their company due to the influence of their burden, and the bleak walk further and further into Mordor, keeping an eye out for spies everywhere. To meet someone like Faramir in the middle of all of that, someone who would not take the ring "if it lay by the highway", and saved the lives and the journey of the helpless hobbits even against the law of his own land...the movie did him wrong. It's just one of those unforgivable moments when a great character is slandered by a movie director trying to make a dollar of off someone else's better work.
Apparently the wisdom of Faramir wasn't cool enough for Peter Jackson, so he decided to add "tension" to the movie. Peter Jackson should have made a movie out of a book that he actually liked.
Don't forget the complete libelous defamation done to Faramir's character, who was possibly the most amazing example of a human in the books.
“If you took this thing on yourself, unwilling, at others' asking, then you have pity and honour from me. And I marvel at you: to keep it hid and not to use it. You are a new people and a new world to me. Are all your kin of like sort? Your land must be a realm of peace and content, and there must gardners be in high hounour.”
“But fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo.”
Now if they would just get rid of the "but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right" part, it might actually mean something.
Yes it is scary having a true right to speech. That's what "land of the brave" meant. They should just make the unqualified right: "No power of government may ever designate any information to be punishable to communicate."
I suspect that with the last phrase they were trying to say was "but the coincidental fact that someone is offering opinion may not be used to protect them from correlating crimes that they may be committing." So that if a person screams their opinion into your ear and breaks your eardrum, they can't claim that it was protected. Unfortunately, legal minds haven't yet realized that a right to prevent one action from being illegal doesn't necessarily abjure a person of legal responsibility for simultaneous actions.
The last phrase in the above section 8 will be used as an excuse to find exceptions to freedom of speech.
I don't know about this. I mean, like the parent poster I pay a chunk of my health insurance, and the company pays the other half.
I would however still see as myself being taxed as 20%, because the rest of it is not taken from my income. The company has it taken it out of their income.
Your income is taken out of the company income. It doesn't come from nothing. People buy company products, the company gets an income, it pays workers. It uses it's income to decide hiring, firing, starting wages, raises, expansions, all of which determine your income. "The law of supply and demand is not to be conned."
Suppose you agree to sell me a bottle of wine for $10. I'm not willing to pay any more, that's all it's worth to me. The government says "hold on, there's now going to be a $2 tax on that wine." Do you really think I'm going to pay $12 for that wine? No way. I'll pay you $8, the government $2, or it's no deal. It's the exact same for income. Sure you could say that I'm paying the $2 tax on the wine, not you. I won't try to argue terms, I try to use terms that other people prefer (if used consistently). But what's the point of saying the I'm paying the tax instead of you? You are now $2 poorer. Or maybe $10 poorer with only a bottle of wine to show for it.
Your income is whatever it costs the company to employ you. Defining it any other way requires going back to this definition in a roundabout way every time an employer tries to decide hiring, firing, raises, etc, anyway.
Taxes are at least whatever is taken out of your income that goes to the government. It is the measure of how much of your time is taken and given to whoever your government is choosing to pay out of that treasury. Even if you desire the service returned to you by this transaction, it is still a tax.
The argument I've heard for your point of view is that if the company did not have to match your tax, then they would pass on the extra money to you. In my experience it doesn't work that way. I am paid the "going market rate" for my skills, and if they stopped paying a their share of my health tax, the money would not go to me. I would get less benefit, they would make more profit, but more profit for them would not automatically result in my own betterment.
This argument "if my company does better it won't help me" is something I can hardly even respond to. It's not even really an argument, but moreso a manifestation of everyone's frustration of having to work and not getting paid as much as they think they deserve. It's so easy to say. It plays on the emotional resentment employees feel towards employers.
Well one part of that is true. If you are working a regular honest job, one that isn't a government job or isn't for a company that gets most of it's income from taxes (like military suppliers) or from special privileges (like ISPs or airports), then you are getting seriously shafted. But it isn't by your employer. When you include all the taxes:
your company has to pay for existing,
your employer pays for having you around,
you pay for working,
you pay for buying anything,
and you effectively pay for existing due to deliberate inflation,...then it's a much larger percentage than what is reported on your paycheck. And a great deal of that money goes to overpaid CEOs at ISPs, and to "soldiers" sitting in air conditioned rooms accomplishing nothing in on of our hundreds and hundreds of military bases, to many companies that exist at the mercy of the income they get from government contracts (well they do return the favor with their votes), and to many personal interests instead of public interests (such as courts, police, etc).
Overspending is a problem that can't be fixed in any short amount of time. But a huge step in curbing the carefree favors is to get people to see how much of their time and work is lost due to taxes by honestly reporting it. It doesn't raise your income to pretend that a tax is being paid by your employer, it merely hides the truth.
For example, health insurance in Germany is mandatory and 1/2 of the costs are deducted from your salary (employer pays the other half).
I always cringe when I hear people pretend that employers paying taxes on their behalf is somehow different than them directly paying the tax. You are paying the tax, not your employer, even if the government is forcing your employer to report to you that you are paying less in taxes.
Suppose you make $10 and hour, pay $2 an hour in taxes, and your employer matches that $2 an hour in taxes. How much are you paying in taxes? Anyone who says 20% is a FUCKING IDIOT. The correct answer $4/$12 or 33% for just this tax. Most statistics reporting tax rates are wrong for no less than this mistake alone.
Everything in the universe "is math". Do you think that levers and springs aren't math? They can be defined in terms of the axioms of physics and analyzed mathematically. A rotary engine is just as much "is math" as a software program. Can you not create a software simulator to predict the behavior of a rotary engine? The only difference is that software is easier mathematics in terms of current human capabilities.
If you tried to exclude things that were mathematically definable from the patent system, you'd have to exclude everything in the known universe. Judges who point out that excluding software from patents is inappropriate are actually correct.
If you want to have a patent system (and that's a significant condition), then you have to decide what it's purpose is. Patents are a poor tool for the purpose of subsidizing and promoting research. But if the purpose is to actually promote disclosure of ideas, then the patent system needs to be changed in no small way. To prevent obvious ideas from being patented, you'd have to have a system where working models of the invention are created, and only those that can't be figured out in a timely fashion are given patents. The patent office would have to apply for a patent with the inventor, rather than the inventor applying for a patent with the office.
This would also fix the issue of duration of patents. The duration becomes a function of the negotiation between the patent office and the inventor based on when the model is likely to be figured out.
Software is actually one of the few things that should be patentable. An algorithm with a network interface can be very difficult to figure out. Software is one of the few things that can actually be shown to work, and yet not disclose how they work. Drugs can be chemically analyzed and engines can be taken apart. But google and watson can exist for years without anyone figuring out how they work.
I would propose that the dollar be backed by not having any more being printed, except for damaged currency, and exchanging for other units (10 cents printed to exchange for 1 dime returned, etc). Thus the value of the dollar increases over time instead of being trimmed off of by Special Friends of the Federal Reserve, often called "over seas investors".
Gold has the advantage of not being printable or destroyable, so it would be better than today's system in many ways. Unfortunately, arbitrarily choosing 1 commodity, or a set of commodities, to represent currency is still going to be a variation of the government "picking winners and losers" (forgive my use of such a political phrase). The real issue is removing the special treatment that our federal reserve system gives some parties over others, and a currency of fixed amount is the first step in that.
I've also heard Tao say in lecture that he doesn't even like using computer assistance when he's working out theory. I found some of his lectures to be great for getting the scope of ideas, but unless you really know the subject of number theory he can be hard to follow.
How's this for a reason? Law shouldn't be ambiguous. If it takes a judge more than 2 seconds to figure out if something is illegal, then it shouldn't be illegal. If figuring out the legality of google's use of the API is so damn difficult that a judge would go so far as to try to avoid ruling on it altogether, then it shouldn't be illegal. It's not very different from ex post facto legislation when judges have to "decide" things like this.
It is such a fact, that no one on the entire forum has given one argument in favor of it.
Here's a better idea. Screw Evolution, don't teach it in high school, teach math instead. Having a student who can put "yes evolution is a fact" on a test does not make him any less of a moron. Force them to learn the things that would make them somewhat capable of defending a position on evolution.
Chemistry. Combinatorial counting. Statistics and Probability. Anatomy.
Teach these in high school and save the more advanced topics for college. Most high school students couldn't even handle this much. Furthermore, if the students learned these things, they'd be smarter than everyone on this forum. Then instead of shouting "oh god evolution is a fact" they'd be capable of human reasoning.
This will never happen though. The reason is because there are a hell of a lot of people who want to pretend that they are scientists but can handle basic mathematical rigor. So instead of going into physics and chemistry, they go into a field that will coddle them: biology. There are no teachers who can teach the subject correctly because our standards are just too damn low.
Slashdot Mirror
He's not high, but you are a liar.
No libertarian is saying that "corporations can do whatever they want." But feel free to keep lying about this. Oh I'm sorry, it was just an exaggeration, right? Cowards hide behind exaggerations when they can't make real arguments.
Going further off topic...
Wikipedia:
"Bribery: Bribery is an act of implying money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient."
How is this marked +5 insightful? Wikipedia is blatantly wrong here. If this were a correct definition of bribery, then buying groceries would be bribery.
Bribery is the offering of value in order to persuade someone to do something illegal, or something that is considered should be illegal, or something against a policy such as a workplace policy. Giving a cashier money so you can leave with groceries isn't bribery because no one thinks buying groceries should be illegal. Giving a cop money to get you out of a speeding ticket is bribery, because a police officers job is to give out tickets.
Giving congressmen money in order to vote a certain way might be considered bribery because you can say "well they aren't voting their conscience." But that ignores the fact that people will support congressmen because the congressman voted in a way the contributor agreed with. Example:
Financing a congressman who supports SOPA? People called that bribery.
Financing a congressman who was against SOPA? That was considered respectable.
If you want to start with fixing campaign financing, start here:
http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/contriblimits.shtml
Individuals are allowed to give $2,500 per election to a candidate. But they are allowed to give $30,800 to a political party every year. And political parties are allowed to give $5,000 to candidates per election. Political parties have made it illegal for anyone to financially compete with them. You want to give $5,000 to a candidate that you like? Well to hell with you, you have to give it to the Republican Campaign Corporation or the Democratic Campaign Corporation and hope that they give it to who you like.
Lobbyists aren't the problem, they are the solution. I'd rather see a list of which lobbyists support someone on a ballot than simply an R or D after a candidate's name. We have to take away the financial immunity that the major parties have given themselves.
The next step of course would be to just simply have everyone's DNA on file just in case they ever needed it.
And the next step after that...cop calls a girl he knew in high school:
"Hey, I noticed that your son doesn't have a DNA that matches his father's. So...what are you doing Friday?"
Government databases are so open to abuses so sick that most people would rather deny it than face how disgusting they are.
Actually, I can think of many situations where the DNA won't be kept.
"Oh sorry, you needed that for your defense? We lost it."
Because the police suck at their job just and much as you and everyone else sucks at their job.
BOSS'S BOSS: Hey have you got any results on X?
BOSS: Hey, we need to start making progress on X
EMPLOYEE 1: That's really stupid. There's no way to do that at this point.
EMPLOYEE 2: Hey we can do Y which will make it look like we are making progress with X.
(proposed solution Y actually won't do anything to help)
BOSS: Good job employee 2. Write up a plan now. That's the attitude we're looking for. Have a promotion.
BOSS'S BOSS: Hey good job making progress on X. Have a promotion.
Do you really think police jobs are any different?
Benjamin Franklin didn't live in a time when everyone expected the government to protect them from crime.
Your approach assumes that the purpose of his statement was to minimize the amount of total harm. Not everyone wants to do that. Some us are fine with people having to pay for their own choices, and just don't want to have to pay for everyone else's mistakes.
Just don't start singing Happy Birthday. That's copyright infringement.
Nobody is forced at gunpoint to invest in any given business
And the same is said of government. You are free to leave the country and go find another.
There is a finite amount of space on Earth. Unless you actually 100% support amnesty and free borders in your own country, then you are a hypocrite for suggesting that people leave to another country.
Actually, we are free to leave to other states within the US. So if only these wasteful programs were done at a state level, then we could actually leave and go somewhere better. Damn, if only the people who created our country had intended for most programs to be done at a state level and leave individuals with the freedom to live where they please...
Oh wait, they did intent that. So you are the one screwing things up. Quit trying to pass everything at the Federal level. It takes away our freedom to leave your dumb ideas behind.
Actually the one you quoted is legally correct. The law at the time BHOII was born would not have allowed his mother to confer citizenship to him because of her age, and the fact that the other parent wasn't a US citizen. Look up the law for the time Obama was born, then go to the case for a child with only 1 parent with a US citizen. Then look up the mother's age. Be prepared for some arithmetic and Boolean logic.
That being said, I despise the fact that citizenship is conferred by birth. I hate the existence of the concept of citizenship, and I hate that it is a requirement for president (and for many other things). It is a holdover from the old "divine right" way of thinking, the idea of superiority from birth. If a man wants to get a job and an employer wants to hire him, it's no one's business where he was born or where he came from.
If you have to be motivated to learn, then you are a bad student.
I would mod you to +infinity and move your post to be first if I could.
Faramir was never tempted by the ring, even though he knew what it was and could have had it with no effort at all. His entire character in the book was basically that of a man who likes the finer things (poetry, gardening, etc) and was forced into a war. He wasn't some little weasel like they made him out to be in the movie.
In the book, the hobbits were dealing with the tricks of Gollum, the betrayal of Boromir, the splitting up of their company due to the influence of their burden, and the bleak walk further and further into Mordor, keeping an eye out for spies everywhere. To meet someone like Faramir in the middle of all of that, someone who would not take the ring "if it lay by the highway", and saved the lives and the journey of the helpless hobbits even against the law of his own land...the movie did him wrong. It's just one of those unforgivable moments when a great character is slandered by a movie director trying to make a dollar of off someone else's better work.
Apparently the wisdom of Faramir wasn't cool enough for Peter Jackson, so he decided to add "tension" to the movie. Peter Jackson should have made a movie out of a book that he actually liked.
If it takes 5 million lines of code to do one's taxes, then there is still something very wrong with the process.
Don't forget the complete libelous defamation done to Faramir's character, who was possibly the most amazing example of a human in the books.
“If you took this thing on yourself, unwilling, at others' asking, then you have pity and honour from me. And I marvel at you: to keep it hid and not to use it. You are a new people and a new world to me. Are all your kin of like sort? Your land must be a realm of peace and content, and there must gardners be in high hounour.”
“But fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo.”
Now if they would just get rid of the "but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right" part, it might actually mean something.
Yes it is scary having a true right to speech. That's what "land of the brave" meant. They should just make the unqualified right:
"No power of government may ever designate any information to be punishable to communicate."
I suspect that with the last phrase they were trying to say was "but the coincidental fact that someone is offering opinion may not be used to protect them from correlating crimes that they may be committing." So that if a person screams their opinion into your ear and breaks your eardrum, they can't claim that it was protected. Unfortunately, legal minds haven't yet realized that a right to prevent one action from being illegal doesn't necessarily abjure a person of legal responsibility for simultaneous actions.
The last phrase in the above section 8 will be used as an excuse to find exceptions to freedom of speech.
I don't know about this. I mean, like the parent poster I pay a chunk of my health insurance, and the company pays the other half.
I would however still see as myself being taxed as 20%, because the rest of it is not taken from my income. The company has it taken it out of their income.
Your income is taken out of the company income. It doesn't come from nothing. People buy company products, the company gets an income, it pays workers. It uses it's income to decide hiring, firing, starting wages, raises, expansions, all of which determine your income. "The law of supply and demand is not to be conned."
Suppose you agree to sell me a bottle of wine for $10. I'm not willing to pay any more, that's all it's worth to me. The government says "hold on, there's now going to be a $2 tax on that wine." Do you really think I'm going to pay $12 for that wine? No way. I'll pay you $8, the government $2, or it's no deal. It's the exact same for income. Sure you could say that I'm paying the $2 tax on the wine, not you. I won't try to argue terms, I try to use terms that other people prefer (if used consistently). But what's the point of saying the I'm paying the tax instead of you? You are now $2 poorer. Or maybe $10 poorer with only a bottle of wine to show for it.
Your income is whatever it costs the company to employ you. Defining it any other way requires going back to this definition in a roundabout way every time an employer tries to decide hiring, firing, raises, etc, anyway.
Taxes are at least whatever is taken out of your income that goes to the government. It is the measure of how much of your time is taken and given to whoever your government is choosing to pay out of that treasury. Even if you desire the service returned to you by this transaction, it is still a tax.
The argument I've heard for your point of view is that if the company did not have to match your tax, then they would pass on the extra money to you. In my experience it doesn't work that way. I am paid the "going market rate" for my skills, and if they stopped paying a their share of my health tax, the money would not go to me. I would get less benefit, they would make more profit, but more profit for them would not automatically result in my own betterment.
This argument "if my company does better it won't help me" is something I can hardly even respond to. It's not even really an argument, but moreso a manifestation of everyone's frustration of having to work and not getting paid as much as they think they deserve. It's so easy to say. It plays on the emotional resentment employees feel towards employers.
Well one part of that is true. If you are working a regular honest job, one that isn't a government job or isn't for a company that gets most of it's income from taxes (like military suppliers) or from special privileges (like ISPs or airports), then you are getting seriously shafted. But it isn't by your employer. When you include all the taxes: ...then it's a much larger percentage than what is reported on your paycheck. And a great deal of that money goes to overpaid CEOs at ISPs, and to "soldiers" sitting in air conditioned rooms accomplishing nothing in on of our hundreds and hundreds of military bases, to many companies that exist at the mercy of the income they get from government contracts (well they do return the favor with their votes), and to many personal interests instead of public interests (such as courts, police, etc).
your company has to pay for existing,
your employer pays for having you around,
you pay for working,
you pay for buying anything,
and you effectively pay for existing due to deliberate inflation,
Overspending is a problem that can't be fixed in any short amount of time. But a huge step in curbing the carefree favors is to get people to see how much of their time and work is lost due to taxes by honestly reporting it. It doesn't raise your income to pretend that a tax is being paid by your employer, it merely hides the truth.
For example, health insurance in Germany is mandatory and 1/2 of the costs are deducted from your salary (employer pays the other half).
I always cringe when I hear people pretend that employers paying taxes on their behalf is somehow different than them directly paying the tax. You are paying the tax, not your employer, even if the government is forcing your employer to report to you that you are paying less in taxes.
Suppose you make $10 and hour, pay $2 an hour in taxes, and your employer matches that $2 an hour in taxes. How much are you paying in taxes? Anyone who says 20% is a FUCKING IDIOT. The correct answer $4/$12 or 33% for just this tax. Most statistics reporting tax rates are wrong for no less than this mistake alone.
Everything in the universe "is math". Do you think that levers and springs aren't math? They can be defined in terms of the axioms of physics and analyzed mathematically. A rotary engine is just as much "is math" as a software program. Can you not create a software simulator to predict the behavior of a rotary engine? The only difference is that software is easier mathematics in terms of current human capabilities.
If you tried to exclude things that were mathematically definable from the patent system, you'd have to exclude everything in the known universe. Judges who point out that excluding software from patents is inappropriate are actually correct.
If you want to have a patent system (and that's a significant condition), then you have to decide what it's purpose is. Patents are a poor tool for the purpose of subsidizing and promoting research. But if the purpose is to actually promote disclosure of ideas, then the patent system needs to be changed in no small way. To prevent obvious ideas from being patented, you'd have to have a system where working models of the invention are created, and only those that can't be figured out in a timely fashion are given patents. The patent office would have to apply for a patent with the inventor, rather than the inventor applying for a patent with the office.
This would also fix the issue of duration of patents. The duration becomes a function of the negotiation between the patent office and the inventor based on when the model is likely to be figured out.
Software is actually one of the few things that should be patentable. An algorithm with a network interface can be very difficult to figure out. Software is one of the few things that can actually be shown to work, and yet not disclose how they work. Drugs can be chemically analyzed and engines can be taken apart. But google and watson can exist for years without anyone figuring out how they work.
I would propose that the dollar be backed by not having any more being printed, except for damaged currency, and exchanging for other units (10 cents printed to exchange for 1 dime returned, etc). Thus the value of the dollar increases over time instead of being trimmed off of by Special Friends of the Federal Reserve, often called "over seas investors".
Gold has the advantage of not being printable or destroyable, so it would be better than today's system in many ways. Unfortunately, arbitrarily choosing 1 commodity, or a set of commodities, to represent currency is still going to be a variation of the government "picking winners and losers" (forgive my use of such a political phrase). The real issue is removing the special treatment that our federal reserve system gives some parties over others, and a currency of fixed amount is the first step in that.
Sorry I mean 11 can't be, because one of the terms would have to be 9 which isn't prime.
I've also heard Tao say in lecture that he doesn't even like using computer assistance when he's working out theory. I found some of his lectures to be great for getting the scope of ideas, but unless you really know the subject of number theory he can be hard to follow.
Parent probably isn't a troll. The summary should say every even integer greater than 2. For example, 9 can't be expressed as the sum of 2 primes.
How's this for a reason? Law shouldn't be ambiguous. If it takes a judge more than 2 seconds to figure out if something is illegal, then it shouldn't be illegal. If figuring out the legality of google's use of the API is so damn difficult that a judge would go so far as to try to avoid ruling on it altogether, then it shouldn't be illegal. It's not very different from ex post facto legislation when judges have to "decide" things like this.
It is such a fact, that no one on the entire forum has given one argument in favor of it.
Here's a better idea. Screw Evolution, don't teach it in high school, teach math instead. Having a student who can put "yes evolution is a fact" on a test does not make him any less of a moron. Force them to learn the things that would make them somewhat capable of defending a position on evolution.
Chemistry. Combinatorial counting. Statistics and Probability. Anatomy.
Teach these in high school and save the more advanced topics for college. Most high school students couldn't even handle this much. Furthermore, if the students learned these things, they'd be smarter than everyone on this forum. Then instead of shouting "oh god evolution is a fact" they'd be capable of human reasoning.
This will never happen though. The reason is because there are a hell of a lot of people who want to pretend that they are scientists but can handle basic mathematical rigor. So instead of going into physics and chemistry, they go into a field that will coddle them: biology. There are no teachers who can teach the subject correctly because our standards are just too damn low.
Funny how much criticism he gets, since Kepler we've known the sun isn't the center, it's off at one focus of elliptical orbits.
But maybe there is a sun at the center of the galaxy. Maybe he meant that one.