As to your abridged history of the world, no I'm afraid 'Western Civilisation' (you mean Greece and Rome?) did not create the modern world; the number system we use came from India, and Christianity came from the Middle East, just to bring up two examples.
Modern is the key word here, buddy. And since you, and everyone else taking your line in similar threads under this article can name no recent contributions to modern society from Arab/middle east/western asian/theocratic muslim ruled cultures & countries, I will assume my 'abridged history of the world' stands.
Should you want to even make me reconsider it, you'll drop the 'arrogant' name calling (something I personally won't deny, but besides the point of this argument) and come up with something useful the aforementioned countries has added to the world body of knowledge within the last 10, even 100 years.
Come on, I'm waiting. Don't let your kumbyya hate america first view of the world get in the way of coming up with some facts. Anything, really. The standards are pretty low in these insignificant internet arguments.
Because I agree with you. I was describing a failed culture that rules much of the middle east. That the inept, brutal theocracies & dictatorships are the norm over there says something about the culture that produced and continues to live under such a system. I'm don't want to sound like I'm blaming the victim, as it's rather complex, but their rulers are nonetheless a product of their cultures.
Your pointing out that their brightest have fled to the United States only reinforces my point.
Wether a person is of arab descent means nothing to me. How they live their lives means everything. Sadly, the middle east is mired in despotism right now, and many parts harbor a horribly failed muslim/arab culture that produces our terrorist enemies.
the parent of this post seems to think Arab culture stifles creativity. That, to me, seems like racist sentiment.
Culture is a set of learned behavior and ideals. It's not racist, it's a behavior, unless you think that Arabs (and their sympathetic formerly taliban ruled neighbors) cannot behave in a way other than what is considered 'arab culture.'
And then that would make you the racist, because you'd be saying genetic heritage determines behavior more than anything else.
The parent post is correct. The diseased arab culture that is the source of our enemies does stifle creativity.
Why do you think that folks like you can only point to 500 year old contributions to math when someone implies that Arab Culture is a failure? Practitioners of western civilization- an identifiable set of attitudes and behaviors- have created the modern world.
Asian cultures certainly contribute greatly to the modern world, but their cultures have a lot more going for them than Arab cultures, and over the past 100 years, Asian countries have shown a great eagerness to adapt the practices of people who were better than them in many areas. That's why japan, with no natural resources to speak of, is an economic powerhouse, and became so only in the past century.
Many muslim/arab countries wallowing in poverty and despotism have a lot to learn. They simply refuse to do so.
I wasn't the parent poster, but although the numbers are great, Arab culture hasn't contributed shit to the world for the past several centuries.
Why? Because the middle east has largely been ruled by dogmatic, corrupt and brutal dictors or otherwise severly backwards regimes for the past several centuries.
Even this 'inventor', admirable as his tinkering is, creates crude versions of things we've had here for decades, with leftover pieces of western origin.
That folks in afgahnistan now have the freedom that is a prerequisite to becoming a country that contributes more than raw materials to the world is fantastic.
Certainly, if Ghulam Sediq Wardak's curiosity and methodology is allowed to proser and spread, we can expect good things from Afgahnistant.
My point then is that the parent poster wasn't too far off in implying that Arab culture has added little to the world besides some (admittedly very useful) math hundreds of years ago.
They couldn't even get their own oil out of the ground if it wasn't for western engineers and equipment.
Much of middle east/arab culture is clearly diseased. Only by shedding it and adopting lessons from people more advanced then them in science, organization or particular skills can they hope to once again contribute to civilization.
Don't call me racist, either, because I'm talking about culture, which is a learned set of behaviors and attitudes. And spare me any notions of cultural equivalancy, as such talk seems more geared to keeping the world a quaint tourist attraction for the western world instead of a functioning society.
Some cultures are better than others. Western civilization is clearly superior to the Arabic/Islamic subcultures that supply anti-US terrorists. Don't believe me? Think I'm prejudice? Go ahead and come up with something that the Arab world does better than the western world in modern history.
500 year old contributions were great... 500 years ago.
I'm no civil engineer, but I'm pretty sure that water pressure forces water up the pipes to the toilets on high floors. There isn't a pump there that feeds your faucet.
Well, there are pumps at the water source, unless it's high above the median elevation of the city. As for the buildings themselves.....
City water pressure is usually about 50 Psi. At 44.5 psi per 100 feet of water column height, that's enough pressure to get a trickle of water 10 stories up (from the elevation of the pumps) Any higher than that, or if you want decent water pressure on higher floors, and the building needs a water tower on top and a pump at the bottom.
Look at sattelite pictures of cities. You'll see small water towers on every roof.
The one and only functional purpose of firearms is to put holes in things. Firearms & ammunition differ in their ability to make holes exactly where aimed, make holes of different sizes, make holes at different ranges, and differ in their ability to make so many holes in a given amount of time.
Now, if you want to get into philisophical discussions on if and when putting a hole in a person is a justifiable course of action at times, well, several other posters are going into that.
But do not confuse 'function' with the more emotional notion of killing someone, or however the device is used.
A gun is a machine, an inanimate object with no will or purpose of it's own.
Incidentally, I'm all for the distributed ability to make holes easily when the situation calls for it. A situation that calls for making holes in another purpose might be when someone poses a grave threat to the safety of myself or people I care for.
Like i said, you need to watch the movie rather than look like a retard like you are right now.
I'm talking about one scene. And should I watch the one scene, what will I find out?
That Bush sat around looking stupified for seven minutes and Michael Moore had some smart ass comments about it?
As for the rest of the film, why should I watch the film, when it's so full of Crap?
I've certainly read enough about it. Do you disagree that the above linked list accurately describes the scenes mentioned, even if you disagree with the link's response to them?
You love the film because it feeds the paranoid, hateful, delusional fantasies you already possess, and affirms them. This, of course, was Michael Moore's intention, so that he could get folks like you to shell out money for it.
Not that there's anything wrong, in general, with producing a product that people want, but it sits poorly with me to make a propaganda film full of lies, distortions and fabrication and call it a 'documentary.'
Gwendolyn Tose'-Rigell, the principal of Emma E. Booker Elementary School, praised Bush's action: "I don't think anyone could have handled it better." "What would it have served if he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?"
Really, jackass, what good would it have been? Do you have a better idea as to what to do when no one knows what the fuck is going on?
Cheap potshot, and you'd know it if you weren't so fucking busy pointing out the president's possible misteps. Hindsight sure is twenty-twenty, isn't it?
She said the video doesn't convey all that was going on in the classroom, but Bush's presence had a calming effect and "helped us get through a very difficult day."
You know what disgusts me? Monday morning quarterbacks who think they're smarter than most of the population and the president of the united states. Smug son of a bitch. If I looked at your life for the past 4 years, I could tell you 5000 things you could have done better, and you think you're breaking ground by pointing out something Bush could have done differently, not neccesarily any better?
Damn fool, yet you have conceit in your folly.
Politics isn't an exact science, and Bush has been working through the greatest challenge the United States has been faced with in decades. At least he's doing something, instead of pushing the problem off on future presidents.
Considering every year they build and rearrange whole assembly lines to crank out thousands of vehicles no one has ever seen before, I'd say retooling is rather a minor issue here.
On the other hand, with the myriad of computers involved in DMV systems, parts management, etc, I can see how the programming part of the matter would be very difficult.
The reason why console games are so vigourously play tested is because once you make a playable disc or cartridge on a system, there's no such thing as a do over.
This will probably only encourage laziness on the part of some x-box designers.
I don't understand why they don't simply fit these destroyers with Nuclear Power Plants instead of Gas Turbines.
We have. I know a couple of men who served on nuclear destroyers. I don't know how many of them we have, and I don't think we're building any new ones.
Would it be more accurate to say we have the technology to kill the majority of the world's population within hours? I don't think many ICBM's take more than a half hour or so to do their work.
I went over the methodology summary used in creating this survey, and I hardly see a scientific basis for it. There's plenty of room for interpretation and statistical horseplay.
Quite frankly, the academic and journalist types who gather to write this sort of crap are from proffessions known to be generally of a 'hate/blame america first, europe is so fucking sophisticated' attitude
The fact that they run this little report out of New York tells you just how much they actually fear repression in the united states, and I'm pretty sure their placing The USA behind countries with 'hate-speech' laws is just partisan politics.
Anytime any organization comes out of the woodwork to start handing out something resembling a 'report card' I usually smell bullshit right quick. A small amount of investigation usually confirms this theory.
Demonstrate that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Demonstrate this is to the detriment of the 'poor' if it is true.
I won't deny kids basic health care, but I don't want to be forced at gunpoint to give it to them. Don't have kids you can't care for. It's an out of date concept called 'responsibility.' Sure, people fall on hard times, and that's what your neighbors, friends, family & church used to be for.
I work in a de-regulated, competitive market. My plant sells electricity because we can make it & sell it cheaper than anyone else. If someone else comes along and is able to make juice cheaper, then we lose money or go out of business. Tell me how that's like the soviet union.
Moreover, I've worked in the retail industry, I've worked in the service industry, and I've worked in the academic sector before coming to the power sector. In academia alone I saw tremendous innefficiences that were only permitted because it was publically funded. There's always less accountability and cost-cutting when you don't have to convince people to give you money- when you can make them give it to you as a branch of the government.
Shut the door behind me? Make sure that people fail? Because I don't think you should take what you haven't earned by force?
You don't know what oppurtunities I did and didn't have, and you don't know which ones I passed up. Nothing I've proposed so far would prohibit people oppurtunities I had. My point is that an ever growing, taxing, regulating & redistributing federal government, in clear violation of the very constitution that permits it's existence, will do great harm.
And that makes me a monster?
Moreover, I personally couldn't stand to live off the largess of others if I had any capability at all to earn my own. Sure, I could help the poor by tossing them a few bucks once in a while, and I do contribute to charities from time to time.
But what kind of existince is it to simply live off of other's efforts? Have you no pride? Do you feel no shame, have no self-respect? Do you think whom you consider the poor should have none of these things?
Ok, I want to take your 7-times-higher than college salary and put it to far more productive use. Today we are going to settle ownership issues once and for good using my simple, nomadic bow, arrows and a scalping knife. You may start by handing over the key to your 911. Thanks you!:-)
Cute.
However, those naughty indian displacers also brought the weapons which allowed them to dominate the indian's bows and scalping knives- firearms.
You may not have being paying attention, but technology has progressed such that I can carry a firearm small enough that you can't tell I have it- and it packs far more lethality than a bow as well.
It would be a lethal error to presume you can easily take by force what I have earned. Should you decide to hold my life to be less valuable than my possession, and attempt to ransom my life to me for my posessions (or try to kill me to take them), I would have no reason to value your life at all.
Umm...if you don't know about other people, let me fill you in. Other people have spent a whole lot of money on their own education, only to be earning nearly nothing as their jobs were shipped overseas. Other people have been working damn hard their entire lives only to die with nothing.
Life isn't fair, and it isn't easy. I have no answer for this other than to suck it up and look to some other endevour where you can earn money. If I lost my powerplant job, there's at least two or three ways I know I can make as much money. Of course, I'm willing to bust ass and be creative instead of whining about my misfortune.
You were asking where Bill Gates's and your money came from? That's where the fuck you stole it from, you fucking leech.
You still don't get it. A tremendous amount of wealth had to be created for us to live like we do today in so many numbers. That wealth creation continues today.
As for medical insurance being the rule since great depression, this is true enough. Medical insurance incidentally got it's start because of government meddling in wages. The more government gets involved in the way medical care is payed for, the more it fouls it up. Right now in the US it's still largely a private enterprise, and you can get medical care, though it's expensive. Better than not getting it all for free until it's too late (witness the months long waiting lists in socialized medicince countries.
Yes, the world would be hundreds of billions of dollars poorer if no one did what Bill Gates did. I don't worship him, just use him as an example. His software makes people more productive. True enough, if he didn't do it, someone else would have (and would have become just as wealthy), but if no one did it, the world would be measurably poorer for it. It's rather simple- the Office suites and the like allow people to do more work- ie, create more wealth- in a shorter time period. Is that such a hard concept to grasp?
If someone else did my work- and I have about 40 peers at my plant who do the same thing I do- they would be paid just as well. I am admittedly part of a large enterprise.
Likewise, if no one did my work then there would be less electricity to go around, which would raise it's price, which would leave less money for profit. And wether the owners or the workers would profit less, either of them would eventually spend the money, so the more expensive electricity would mean that much less money circulating freely in our economy. These aren't hard concepts to grasp, why do you struggle with them so?
As for communists not being welcome in the United States- it might have been better put that your ideal is the antithesis of what made the United States what it is today, and should your ideal triumph, it would mean your precious mayflower ancestors and the framers of our nation put in all that effort for naught. So if you really believe what you say, then emmigrate to Europe where that kind of thought is welcome and commonplace. We certainly don't need any more of it fouling things up here.
Incidentally, I don't give a shit about your ancestors. Your ideals, implement, are causing the economic ruin of Europe, and would do the same here.
You can work for the American Dream. But the keywords are YOU and WORK. You are not to steal it from people who work smarter, harder, or otherwise more productively than you. You are not to steal it from people who expertly manage the efforts of others to gain wealth for themselves while paying their employees.
As for FDR- how's that war on poverty he started going along?
And for feudalism and nepotism- some people are indeed born into advantagous positions. Those who weren't, such as myself, had to work to put themselves in an advantegous position.
Having come from a very modest background, I have no sympathy for those who would use their less than perfect birth circumstances as an alibi for their failure. Success is hard, and you must prove your worth every day. Bein
Yes, the rights to believe what one will and to speak one's mind are inalienable human rights. My point was that the communism that the original poster proposed is antithetical to the entire conception of the United States and it's two-century rise to complete dominance. Perhaps I was a bit overwrought, but communism means nothing but the end of the prosperity we enjoy. We're also clearly creeping up with a similar socialistic system, and that isn't doing us much good either.
As for the US becoming what it is through stealing- well, the labor of slaves was important in building the southern economy, true, but it could hardly be called something the US as a whole was dependent on for it's rise to dominance. The industrial north was doing quite well without slaves, for example.
As for stealing land from natives, I won't argue that occured from time to time, but our concept of land possession was evidently a new concept to them- and the right to private property is also a fundamental building block of our wildly succesful capitalistic ways. The simple nomadic lifestyle lived by the native americans was incompatible with western civilization. I'm not going to try to justify everything done to the Indians, but once the ownership issues were established for good, the land was put to far more productive use.
No, the presence of a progressive tax hasn't prevented Gates from becoming wildly successful, but the parent poster advocated making the system even more extreme, such as you'll find all over europe. If I recall correctly, there hasn't been any companies of even remotely Microsoft's scope started in Europe in the past several decades, or if not, very few. In addition, the progressive (to the point of confiscatory) taxes you'll find all over Europe have made things more equal, but their equality is below our median & mean income and lifestyle levels.
There's only so much taxation & wealth redistribution an economic system can bear before it stops growing, and perhaps even starts to collapse. People like the parent poster want to pull us ever closer to that perilous edge, and I feel they need to be fought.
The stagnant economies of Europe is what is in store for us should we continue punishing productive people with ever increasing taxes. (Both in terms of rising tax rates over the years, and rising tax rates as your income increases) My effort is towards stopping that expansion, and hopefully reversing it some.
So yes, no system is perfect, but the folks advocating increasing communism ignore the many historic and current examples of the ideologie's utter failure, whereas the harsh capitilism I propose is exactly what lead the US to global dominance, and it's citizens to mostly very comfortable lifestyles. There have certainly been abuses of the system throughout the years, and I'm not averse to their correction. But there comes a point when enough is enough.
After all, the problem isn't that wages are falling, the problem is that people are losing jobs.
Do you really think you can keep everyone believing that lie until the election? That's hardly the only headline like that, and the Kerry campaign has to comeup with some awfully convaluted metrics to portray otherwise.
If we are going to have fiscal and monetary policies that force the worst-off Americans to sacrifice to help the rest of the world, then we need redistribute incomes in this country. Otherwise, your complaints about the selfishness of American workers are very deceitful.
Who's interested in having American workers sacrifice anything? See the article I linked to above. There's plenty of good work that can't be shipped overseas because foreign workforces simply aren't up to the task, skills or education wise.
And how will it help a damn thing to redistribute income in this country, at least anymore than it already has? I don't know about other people, but I work hard so I'm rewarded. If I don't get the fruits of my labor, why should I work hard at all? If the government took more and more of my money as my paycheck increased, that would greatly lessen my motivation to increase it. Work twice as hard for only 1/4 more pay after your wealth redistribution scheme takes the rest?
I don't think so. Self interest is a rather simple instinct, and making the most of that drive is how America got to be top dog in the first place. You propose to kill the goose that keeps laying golden eggs.
Or subsidize health care and education like Europe and Canada. Their socialized health care systems are swirling down the drains of decay since they implemented the system you think is so wonderful. When you seperate the decision to pay for services so far from the decision to seek services, you raise demand while restricting supply, and everything goes to shit. Really, look into it. Socialized health care is an abject failure.
As for education, we already subsidize education here, and you know how that's working out. We've got HS kids who can't do trig, and college kids who waste all their time studying failed ideologies and advocating silly political causes instead of studying a worthwhile subject that will make them more valuable to the workforce.
Or eliminate regressive Social Security taxes. How about just elimanating social security over the next few decades before the system implodes? The financial future of SS is grim.
Or make regular income taxes more progressive. Back to my previous point. If the government takes all or most of the increase people get from working harder, they won't have any reason to do so.
The only selfishness I see are those at the top of the American pyramid stealing the last few scraps of bread from those at the bottom. Spoken like someone who's never taken an economics class, or even put the slightest bit of thought into the matter.
Have you ever stopped to consider how even those who rate as 'poor' in the united states typically have a TV, plenty to eat (obesity is the number one health problem of the poor), and a car? How the 100+ million people today who qualify as middle class live in comfort royalty didn't have 150 years ago, even though there was but the tiniest fraction of them?
If the rich must steal from the poor to get richer, WHERE THE FUCK DID WE STEAL all that money from? Who do I steal money from, now that I've graduated college and earn 7 times what I did while in college? Who does Bill Gates steal money from, because even though he's the richest man in the US, the poor haven't gotten worse at all in the decades since microsoft started- and he's made plenty of millionares with him at said company.
Answer: I create wealth, I don't steal it. Bill Gates created a tremendous amount of wealth, and he kept a good portion of it. I make electricity so factories can use it to make
or a "'fair' dividend from the fruits of collectively-owned AUTOMATED production", or just a $25G stipend.
Tell me, why should someone be rewarded for simply existing? What do you propose, that just because two people decide to get it on and happen to create a child, that everyone else has to come up with $25k a year for this kid?
Why should anyone who's capable be relieved of the simple burden of providing for their own existence?
And communism- hey, communism has only killed 100 million people so far, so let's give it another shot. Must not have been the right people in charge, eh?
Something I didn't reveal in my original post: I'm a non-licensed operator at a nuclear power plant.
You are correct in that human error is the biggest risk, in fact the only risk, if you realize that all systems were designed and built by humans.
In the nuclear industry, there's a huge focus on reducing human errors, and it's a constant topic of discussion.
On my ID badge, for example, I have a list of error precursors- conditions that make fucking up more likely- things such as: 1. Overconfidence 2. Fatique 3. First time performing 4. 1/2 hour after a meal
etc, etc.
We also have a number of human performance tools which we are constantly harped on to use (and use them we do) such as STAR: STOP, THINK (about what you're going to do), ACT, and REVIEW (Make sure the results of your actions are what you expected).
There's a number of techniques we use, and they work. For example, our capacity factor (the percentage of time in a year we're online generating electricity, as an industry) has risen from the low 60%'s to the low to mid 90%'s. This is significant for safety, because many fuck ups result in a reactor trip, and if we're tripping offline less often, we're also fucking up in general a lot less often.
We track human errors, and it's not unusual that in a plant of over 600 employees, we'll go over 100 days without an error. (There are restrictions as to what constitutes a human error, but more often then not these errors result in no percievable threat to nuclear safety.)
My operating crew (11 people) is about to cross over the one year mark without a human error.
So yes, human error is the number one problem, but like all problems there are solutions.
I don't see how this qualifies as a news piece, even by slashdot standards.
Somebody writes a piece in support of nuclear power. Some blogger fisks it, with as poor or lesser quality than the original article was written. No hard science, lots of hyperbole, and random conjectures.
Juvenile activity all around.
What the hell was timothy thinking? If he's trying to advance his political views- and I'm not so sure this is the proper forum for him to do so- this is the least subtle and least effective way to do so.
Re:Start by banning plastics for useless crap
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Out of Gas
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Oh, and we could ban auto-racing, truck pulls, the robosaurus that shoots flame and eats cars...
Go to Europe. That totalitarian, government-runs-every thing attitude is much better recieved over there.
Tell us how it's working out, m'kay?
And don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Slashdot Mirror
As to your abridged history of the world, no I'm afraid 'Western Civilisation' (you mean Greece and Rome?) did not create the modern world; the number system we use came from India, and Christianity came from the Middle East, just to bring up two examples.
Modern is the key word here, buddy. And since you, and everyone else taking your line in similar threads under this article can name no recent contributions to modern society from Arab/middle east/western asian/theocratic muslim ruled cultures & countries, I will assume my 'abridged history of the world' stands.
Should you want to even make me reconsider it, you'll drop the 'arrogant' name calling (something I personally won't deny, but besides the point of this argument) and come up with something useful the aforementioned countries has added to the world body of knowledge within the last 10, even 100 years.
Come on, I'm waiting. Don't let your kumbyya hate america first view of the world get in the way of coming up with some facts. Anything, really. The standards are pretty low in these insignificant internet arguments.
Because I agree with you. I was describing a failed culture that rules much of the middle east. That the inept, brutal theocracies & dictatorships are the norm over there says something about the culture that produced and continues to live under such a system. I'm don't want to sound like I'm blaming the victim, as it's rather complex, but their rulers are nonetheless a product of their cultures.
Your pointing out that their brightest have fled to the United States only reinforces my point.
Wether a person is of arab descent means nothing to me. How they live their lives means everything. Sadly, the middle east is mired in despotism right now, and many parts harbor a horribly failed muslim/arab culture that produces our terrorist enemies.
the parent of this post seems to think Arab culture stifles creativity. That, to me, seems like racist sentiment.
Culture is a set of learned behavior and ideals. It's not racist, it's a behavior, unless you think that Arabs (and their sympathetic formerly taliban ruled neighbors) cannot behave in a way other than what is considered 'arab culture.'
And then that would make you the racist, because you'd be saying genetic heritage determines behavior more than anything else.
The parent post is correct. The diseased arab culture that is the source of our enemies does stifle creativity.
Why do you think that folks like you can only point to 500 year old contributions to math when someone implies that Arab Culture is a failure? Practitioners of western civilization- an identifiable set of attitudes and behaviors- have created the modern world.
Asian cultures certainly contribute greatly to the modern world, but their cultures have a lot more going for them than Arab cultures, and over the past 100 years, Asian countries have shown a great eagerness to adapt the practices of people who were better than them in many areas. That's why japan, with no natural resources to speak of, is an economic powerhouse, and became so only in the past century.
Many muslim/arab countries wallowing in poverty and despotism have a lot to learn. They simply refuse to do so.
I wasn't the parent poster, but although the numbers are great, Arab culture hasn't contributed shit to the world for the past several centuries.
Why? Because the middle east has largely been ruled by dogmatic, corrupt and brutal dictors or otherwise severly backwards regimes for the past several centuries.
Even this 'inventor', admirable as his tinkering is, creates crude versions of things we've had here for decades, with leftover pieces of western origin.
That folks in afgahnistan now have the freedom that is a prerequisite to becoming a country that contributes more than raw materials to the world is fantastic.
Certainly, if Ghulam Sediq Wardak's curiosity and methodology is allowed to proser and spread, we can expect good things from Afgahnistant.
My point then is that the parent poster wasn't too far off in implying that Arab culture has added little to the world besides some (admittedly very useful) math hundreds of years ago.
They couldn't even get their own oil out of the ground if it wasn't for western engineers and equipment.
Much of middle east/arab culture is clearly diseased. Only by shedding it and adopting lessons from people more advanced then them in science, organization or particular skills can they hope to once again contribute to civilization.
Don't call me racist, either, because I'm talking about culture, which is a learned set of behaviors and attitudes. And spare me any notions of cultural equivalancy, as such talk seems more geared to keeping the world a quaint tourist attraction for the western world instead of a functioning society.
Some cultures are better than others. Western civilization is clearly superior to the Arabic/Islamic subcultures that supply anti-US terrorists. Don't believe me? Think I'm prejudice? Go ahead and come up with something that the Arab world does better than the western world in modern history.
500 year old contributions were great... 500 years ago.
I'm no civil engineer, but I'm pretty sure that water pressure forces water up the pipes to the toilets on high floors. There isn't a pump there that feeds your faucet.
Well, there are pumps at the water source, unless it's high above the median elevation of the city. As for the buildings themselves.....
City water pressure is usually about 50 Psi. At 44.5 psi per 100 feet of water column height, that's enough pressure to get a trickle of water 10 stories up (from the elevation of the pumps) Any higher than that, or if you want decent water pressure on higher floors, and the building needs a water tower on top and a pump at the bottom.
Look at sattelite pictures of cities. You'll see small water towers on every roof.
The one and only functional purpose of firearms is to put holes in things. Firearms & ammunition differ in their ability to make holes exactly where aimed, make holes of different sizes, make holes at different ranges, and differ in their ability to make so many holes in a given amount of time.
Now, if you want to get into philisophical discussions on if and when putting a hole in a person is a justifiable course of action at times, well, several other posters are going into that.
But do not confuse 'function' with the more emotional notion of killing someone, or however the device is used.
A gun is a machine, an inanimate object with no will or purpose of it's own.
Incidentally, I'm all for the distributed ability to make holes easily when the situation calls for it. A situation that calls for making holes in another purpose might be when someone poses a grave threat to the safety of myself or people I care for.
Like i said, you need to watch the movie rather than look like a retard like you are right now.
I'm talking about one scene. And should I watch the one scene, what will I find out?
That Bush sat around looking stupified for seven minutes and Michael Moore had some smart ass comments about it?
As for the rest of the film, why should I watch the film, when it's so full of Crap?
I've certainly read enough about it. Do you disagree that the above linked list accurately describes the scenes mentioned, even if you disagree with the link's response to them?
You love the film because it feeds the paranoid, hateful, delusional fantasies you already possess, and affirms them. This, of course, was Michael Moore's intention, so that he could get folks like you to shell out money for it.
Not that there's anything wrong, in general, with producing a product that people want, but it sits poorly with me to make a propaganda film full of lies, distortions and fabrication and call it a 'documentary.'
Really, jackass, what good would it have been? Do you have a better idea as to what to do when no one knows what the fuck is going on?
Cheap potshot, and you'd know it if you weren't so fucking busy pointing out the president's possible misteps. Hindsight sure is twenty-twenty, isn't it?
She said the video doesn't convey all that was going on in the classroom, but Bush's presence had a calming effect and "helped us get through a very difficult day."
Sarasota principal defends Bush from Fahrenheit 9/11 portrayal
You know what disgusts me? Monday morning quarterbacks who think they're smarter than most of the population and the president of the united states. Smug son of a bitch. If I looked at your life for the past 4 years, I could tell you 5000 things you could have done better, and you think you're breaking ground by pointing out something Bush could have done differently, not neccesarily any better?
Damn fool, yet you have conceit in your folly.
Politics isn't an exact science, and Bush has been working through the greatest challenge the United States has been faced with in decades. At least he's doing something, instead of pushing the problem off on future presidents.
Considering every year they build and rearrange whole assembly lines to crank out thousands of vehicles no one has ever seen before, I'd say retooling is rather a minor issue here.
On the other hand, with the myriad of computers involved in DMV systems, parts management, etc, I can see how the programming part of the matter would be very difficult.
The reason why console games are so vigourously play tested is because once you make a playable disc or cartridge on a system, there's no such thing as a do over.
This will probably only encourage laziness on the part of some x-box designers.
I don't understand why they don't simply fit these destroyers with Nuclear Power Plants instead of Gas Turbines.
We have. I know a couple of men who served on nuclear destroyers. I don't know how many of them we have, and I don't think we're building any new ones.
Would it be more accurate to say we have the technology to kill the majority of the world's population within hours? I don't think many ICBM's take more than a half hour or so to do their work.
And you're implying those pricks at reporters without borders are any better than the morons who wrote the original report I derided?
I went over the methodology summary used in creating this survey, and I hardly see a scientific basis for it. There's plenty of room for interpretation and statistical horseplay.
Quite frankly, the academic and journalist types who gather to write this sort of crap are from proffessions known to be generally of a 'hate/blame america first, europe is so fucking sophisticated' attitude
The fact that they run this little report out of New York tells you just how much they actually fear repression in the united states, and I'm pretty sure their placing The USA behind countries with 'hate-speech' laws is just partisan politics.
Anytime any organization comes out of the woodwork to start handing out something resembling a 'report card' I usually smell bullshit right quick. A small amount of investigation usually confirms this theory.
Enough of this.
You think of as me cruel and heartless.
I think of you as weak and irresponsible, who would rob me given the chance to make up for his own or other's misfortune or outright failure.
The meek will inherit the earth. What's left of it anyway.
Demonstrate that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Demonstrate this is to the detriment of the 'poor' if it is true.
I won't deny kids basic health care, but I don't want to be forced at gunpoint to give it to them. Don't have kids you can't care for. It's an out of date concept called 'responsibility.' Sure, people fall on hard times, and that's what your neighbors, friends, family & church used to be for.
I work in a de-regulated, competitive market. My plant sells electricity because we can make it & sell it cheaper than anyone else. If someone else comes along and is able to make juice cheaper, then we lose money or go out of business. Tell me how that's like the soviet union.
Moreover, I've worked in the retail industry, I've worked in the service industry, and I've worked in the academic sector before coming to the power sector. In academia alone I saw tremendous innefficiences that were only permitted because it was publically funded. There's always less accountability and cost-cutting when you don't have to convince people to give you money- when you can make them give it to you as a branch of the government.
Shut the door behind me? Make sure that people fail? Because I don't think you should take what you haven't earned by force?
You don't know what oppurtunities I did and didn't have, and you don't know which ones I passed up. Nothing I've proposed so far would prohibit people oppurtunities I had. My point is that an ever growing, taxing, regulating & redistributing federal government, in clear violation of the very constitution that permits it's existence, will do great harm.
And that makes me a monster?
Moreover, I personally couldn't stand to live off the largess of others if I had any capability at all to earn my own. Sure, I could help the poor by tossing them a few bucks once in a while, and I do contribute to charities from time to time.
But what kind of existince is it to simply live off of other's efforts? Have you no pride? Do you feel no shame, have no self-respect? Do you think whom you consider the poor should have none of these things?
Ok, I want to take your 7-times-higher than college salary and put it to far more productive use. Today we are going to settle ownership issues once and for good using my simple, nomadic bow, arrows and a scalping knife. You may start by handing over the key to your 911. Thanks you! :-)
Cute.
However, those naughty indian displacers also brought the weapons which allowed them to dominate the indian's bows and scalping knives- firearms.
You may not have being paying attention, but technology has progressed such that I can carry a firearm small enough that you can't tell I have it- and it packs far more lethality than a bow as well.
It would be a lethal error to presume you can easily take by force what I have earned. Should you decide to hold my life to be less valuable than my possession, and attempt to ransom my life to me for my posessions (or try to kill me to take them), I would have no reason to value your life at all.
'nuff said.
Umm...if you don't know about other people, let me fill you in. Other people have spent a whole lot of money on their own education, only to be earning nearly nothing as their jobs were shipped overseas. Other people have been working damn hard their entire lives only to die with nothing.
Life isn't fair, and it isn't easy. I have no answer for this other than to suck it up and look to some other endevour where you can earn money. If I lost my powerplant job, there's at least two or three ways I know I can make as much money. Of course, I'm willing to bust ass and be creative instead of whining about my misfortune.
You were asking where Bill Gates's and your money came from? That's where the fuck you stole it from, you fucking leech.
You still don't get it. A tremendous amount of wealth had to be created for us to live like we do today in so many numbers. That wealth creation continues today.
As for medical insurance being the rule since great depression, this is true enough. Medical insurance incidentally got it's start because of government meddling in wages. The more government gets involved in the way medical care is payed for, the more it fouls it up. Right now in the US it's still largely a private enterprise, and you can get medical care, though it's expensive. Better than not getting it all for free until it's too late (witness the months long waiting lists in socialized medicince countries.
Yes, the world would be hundreds of billions of dollars poorer if no one did what Bill Gates did. I don't worship him, just use him as an example. His software makes people more productive. True enough, if he didn't do it, someone else would have (and would have become just as wealthy), but if no one did it, the world would be measurably poorer for it. It's rather simple- the Office suites and the like allow people to do more work- ie, create more wealth- in a shorter time period. Is that such a hard concept to grasp?
If someone else did my work- and I have about 40 peers at my plant who do the same thing I do- they would be paid just as well. I am admittedly part of a large enterprise.
Likewise, if no one did my work then there would be less electricity to go around, which would raise it's price, which would leave less money for profit. And wether the owners or the workers would profit less, either of them would eventually spend the money, so the more expensive electricity would mean that much less money circulating freely in our economy. These aren't hard concepts to grasp, why do you struggle with them so?
As for communists not being welcome in the United States- it might have been better put that your ideal is the antithesis of what made the United States what it is today, and should your ideal triumph, it would mean your precious mayflower ancestors and the framers of our nation put in all that effort for naught. So if you really believe what you say, then emmigrate to Europe where that kind of thought is welcome and commonplace. We certainly don't need any more of it fouling things up here.
Incidentally, I don't give a shit about your ancestors. Your ideals, implement, are causing the economic ruin of Europe, and would do the same here.
You can work for the American Dream. But the keywords are YOU and WORK. You are not to steal it from people who work smarter, harder, or otherwise more productively than you. You are not to steal it from people who expertly manage the efforts of others to gain wealth for themselves while paying their employees.
As for FDR- how's that war on poverty he started going along?
And for feudalism and nepotism- some people are indeed born into advantagous positions. Those who weren't, such as myself, had to work to put themselves in an advantegous position.
Having come from a very modest background, I have no sympathy for those who would use their less than perfect birth circumstances as an alibi for their failure. Success is hard, and you must prove your worth every day. Bein
Yes, the rights to believe what one will and to speak one's mind are inalienable human rights. My point was that the communism that the original poster proposed is antithetical to the entire conception of the United States and it's two-century rise to complete dominance. Perhaps I was a bit overwrought, but communism means nothing but the end of the prosperity we enjoy. We're also clearly creeping up with a similar socialistic system, and that isn't doing us much good either.
As for the US becoming what it is through stealing- well, the labor of slaves was important in building the southern economy, true, but it could hardly be called something the US as a whole was dependent on for it's rise to dominance. The industrial north was doing quite well without slaves, for example.
As for stealing land from natives, I won't argue that occured from time to time, but our concept of land possession was evidently a new concept to them- and the right to private property is also a fundamental building block of our wildly succesful capitalistic ways. The simple nomadic lifestyle lived by the native americans was incompatible with western civilization. I'm not going to try to justify everything done to the Indians, but once the ownership issues were established for good, the land was put to far more productive use.
No, the presence of a progressive tax hasn't prevented Gates from becoming wildly successful, but the parent poster advocated making the system even more extreme, such as you'll find all over europe. If I recall correctly, there hasn't been any companies of even remotely Microsoft's scope started in Europe in the past several decades, or if not, very few. In addition, the progressive (to the point of confiscatory) taxes you'll find all over Europe have made things more equal, but their equality is below our median & mean income and lifestyle levels.
There's only so much taxation & wealth redistribution an economic system can bear before it stops growing, and perhaps even starts to collapse. People like the parent poster want to pull us ever closer to that perilous edge, and I feel they need to be fought.
The stagnant economies of Europe is what is in store for us should we continue punishing productive people with ever increasing taxes. (Both in terms of rising tax rates over the years, and rising tax rates as your income increases) My effort is towards stopping that expansion, and hopefully reversing it some.
So yes, no system is perfect, but the folks advocating increasing communism ignore the many historic and current examples of the ideologie's utter failure, whereas the harsh capitilism I propose is exactly what lead the US to global dominance, and it's citizens to mostly very comfortable lifestyles. There have certainly been abuses of the system throughout the years, and I'm not averse to their correction. But there comes a point when enough is enough.
Regards,
Mike
After all, the problem isn't that wages are falling, the problem is that people are losing jobs.
Do you really think you can keep everyone believing that lie until the election? That's hardly the only headline like that, and the Kerry campaign has to comeup with some awfully convaluted metrics to portray otherwise.
If we are going to have fiscal and monetary policies that force the worst-off Americans to sacrifice to help the rest of the world, then we need redistribute incomes in this country. Otherwise, your complaints about the selfishness of American workers are very deceitful.
Who's interested in having American workers sacrifice anything? See the article I linked to above. There's plenty of good work that can't be shipped overseas because foreign workforces simply aren't up to the task, skills or education wise.
And how will it help a damn thing to redistribute income in this country, at least anymore than it already has? I don't know about other people, but I work hard so I'm rewarded. If I don't get the fruits of my labor, why should I work hard at all? If the government took more and more of my money as my paycheck increased, that would greatly lessen my motivation to increase it. Work twice as hard for only 1/4 more pay after your wealth redistribution scheme takes the rest?
I don't think so. Self interest is a rather simple instinct, and making the most of that drive is how America got to be top dog in the first place. You propose to kill the goose that keeps laying golden eggs.
Or subsidize health care and education like Europe and Canada.
Their socialized health care systems are swirling down the drains of decay since they implemented the system you think is so wonderful. When you seperate the decision to pay for services so far from the decision to seek services, you raise demand while restricting supply, and everything goes to shit. Really, look into it. Socialized health care is an abject failure.
As for education, we already subsidize education here, and you know how that's working out. We've got HS kids who can't do trig, and college kids who waste all their time studying failed ideologies and advocating silly political causes instead of studying a worthwhile subject that will make them more valuable to the workforce.
Or eliminate regressive Social Security taxes. How about just elimanating social security over the next few decades before the system implodes? The financial future of SS is grim.
Or make regular income taxes more progressive. Back to my previous point. If the government takes all or most of the increase people get from working harder, they won't have any reason to do so.
The only selfishness I see are those at the top of the American pyramid stealing the last few scraps of bread from those at the bottom. Spoken like someone who's never taken an economics class, or even put the slightest bit of thought into the matter.
Have you ever stopped to consider how even those who rate as 'poor' in the united states typically have a TV, plenty to eat (obesity is the number one health problem of the poor), and a car? How the 100+ million people today who qualify as middle class live in comfort royalty didn't have 150 years ago, even though there was but the tiniest fraction of them?
If the rich must steal from the poor to get richer, WHERE THE FUCK DID WE STEAL all that money from? Who do I steal money from, now that I've graduated college and earn 7 times what I did while in college? Who does Bill Gates steal money from, because even though he's the richest man in the US, the poor haven't gotten worse at all in the decades since microsoft started- and he's made plenty of millionares with him at said company.
Answer: I create wealth, I don't steal it. Bill Gates created a tremendous amount of wealth, and he kept a good portion of it. I make electricity so factories can use it to make
or a "'fair' dividend from the fruits of collectively-owned AUTOMATED production", or just a $25G stipend.
Tell me, why should someone be rewarded for simply existing? What do you propose, that just because two people decide to get it on and happen to create a child, that everyone else has to come up with $25k a year for this kid?
Why should anyone who's capable be relieved of the simple burden of providing for their own existence?
And communism- hey, communism has only killed 100 million people so far, so let's give it another shot. Must not have been the right people in charge, eh?
Something I didn't reveal in my original post: I'm a non-licensed operator at a nuclear power plant.
You are correct in that human error is the biggest risk, in fact the only risk, if you realize that all systems were designed and built by humans.
In the nuclear industry, there's a huge focus on reducing human errors, and it's a constant topic of discussion.
On my ID badge, for example, I have a list of error precursors- conditions that make fucking up more likely- things such as:
1. Overconfidence
2. Fatique
3. First time performing
4. 1/2 hour after a meal
etc, etc.
We also have a number of human performance tools which we are constantly harped on to use (and use them we do) such as STAR: STOP, THINK (about what you're going to do), ACT, and REVIEW (Make sure the results of your actions are what you expected).
There's a number of techniques we use, and they work. For example, our capacity factor (the percentage of time in a year we're online generating electricity, as an industry) has risen from the low 60%'s to the low to mid 90%'s. This is significant for safety, because many fuck ups result in a reactor trip, and if we're tripping offline less often, we're also fucking up in general a lot less often.
We track human errors, and it's not unusual that in a plant of over 600 employees, we'll go over 100 days without an error. (There are restrictions as to what constitutes a human error, but more often then not these errors result in no percievable threat to nuclear safety.)
My operating crew (11 people) is about to cross over the one year mark without a human error.
So yes, human error is the number one problem, but like all problems there are solutions.
I don't see how this qualifies as a news piece, even by slashdot standards.
Somebody writes a piece in support of nuclear power. Some blogger fisks it, with as poor or lesser quality than the original article was written. No hard science, lots of hyperbole, and random conjectures.
Juvenile activity all around.
What the hell was timothy thinking?
If he's trying to advance his political views- and I'm not so sure this is the proper forum for him to do so- this is the least subtle and least effective way to do so.
Oh, and we could ban auto-racing, truck pulls, the robosaurus that shoots flame and eats cars...
Go to Europe. That totalitarian, government-runs-every thing attitude is much better recieved over there.
Tell us how it's working out, m'kay?
And don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.