Etc. etc. I have no doubt there are plenty of smart, healthy, wealthy, open-minded folks there; however the statistics tend to suggest that overall AL (like much of the deep south) has a pretty unhealthy, uneducated and poor population.
Cordless tools are VERY gutless. You could probably get at least 2X as much work done in the same time with an equivalent corded tool thanks to faster speeds and higher horsepower. That depends entirely on what you are doing. I build furniture (or did until I moved to an apartment last year), and can promise you that the the benefit of cordlessness more than outweighed the gutlessness. My 18V makita has plenty of torque for the screwing & drilling (heh) I would do.
Most all batteries have high internal discharge, which means if you don't have a routine of recharging your batteries every week, they'll be dead when you need them, and you'll be waiting a few hours before you can do anything.
If you do use your tools regularly, the battery capacity quickly decreases, and you really need to replace the batteries every 6 months or more. Clearly YMMV depending on the brand/battery type/usage patterns etc, but these have not been my experience at all. Of course I buy good tools, not the cheap MegaToolStore specials. Also, having spare batteries that you keep charged makes all the difference.
I know first hand exactly how very, very little hassle it is to use an extension cord. And I know first hand exactly how much of a pain in the ass an extension cord can be. I've pulled my routers off the table more than a few times 'cuz I yanked the extension cord with my foot. I've almost tripped countless times due to cords/powerstrips/etc on the floor. You can't deny there is a tremendous benefit to cordlessness. You appear to not be willing to accept the sacrifices, while I am (in many situations at least), but there is a pretty big upside.
No professional would be caught dead with cordless tools, with the exception of a drill for light work, and even there, they sure as hell also have a corded drill with them at all times, anyhow. Well I happen to know a number of professionals who would disagree with that statement. I would submit you wouldn't find a professional who doesn't have a cordless drill that gets a hell of a lot of use. Yes, they do have corded ones for tasks that require it, but there are plenty of times when it just isn't necessary.
That's exactly how the pros do it. That is very much beside the point. *I* as a non-professional, but serious hobbyist don't need my tools to run 8 hours a day. I need a tool that suits my situations, and for many of them, cordless tools work just fine power-wise and work significantly better portability-wise.
The (absolutely baffling) popularity of cordless tools makes this partially moot as well. What is so baffling about not wanting to be tethered in place? or having a tripping hazard when ever you lay your drill down? or being able to work outside away from an outlet?
Sure cordless tools can be pretty gutless compared to corded stuff, but for many (most?) common tasks the de-tethering is well worth it.
My guess? Now that Iraq is starting to look better, they need something new to hammer Bush with, lest he actually start to make gains in his approval ratings. First of all, wtf are you smoking that's making iraq look better? Whatever it is, the majority of the country sure doesn't have any. Second, Bush has net disapproval ratings in the -30s for the past year, I don't think anything is new is needed (though he continues to provide them with SCHIP, DOJ and FISA shenanigans, and an Iran war drumbeat). Third, hammering Bush on environmental issues is a perfectly legitimate avenue, given that the League of Conservation Voters has labeled him as the most anti-environmental president in the country's history.
Most Americans think Oswald didn't assasinate JFK. Almost half of Americans think UFO's visited the earth. And the vast majority of Americans beleive in God, Heaven, Angels, Miracles, Hell, and the Devil, and not in a figurative sense. And nearly half of the republicans running for president don't believe in evolution, at least one democratic hopeful believes he had an alien encounter. Our president thinks god talks to him (and apparently god thought we should preemptively invade a country who posed no threat to us). What is your point? Oh, right: You know what? Most people are fucking stupid. Since politicians are people too, aren't they mostly fucking stupid to?
There's a reason why "most Americans" don't get to make policy. Yeah, they are too poor.
One of the purposes of the Attorney General's office is to protect the rights of the consumer. I think the rights of citizens are supposed to come before rights of consumers.
The federal government sets the national standard, and now you don't have the purchasing power of 4 million Oregonians determining that the rest of us have to pay a premium for a super-efficient hybrid car we can't afford. Yup, but the federal government hasn't changed CAFE standards substantially in more than two decades. And as noted in TFA: If implemented, the measure would first affect 2009 models; automakers have said it would make it harder to sell the largest and least fuel-efficient sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks in states that adopt the rules. So the 8 mpg H2s would take a sales hit in New York and California. Bummer.
Residents of these states who support this: the proper way to get the EPA to change its guidelines is to have your federal legislators introduce legislation to change those guidelines. Actually the Supreme Court said the EPA is *supposed* to regulate greenhouse gases, and the states in question are trying to get the EPA to allow them to enact greenhouse gas standards. The EPA has been dragging its feet since the ruling 6 months ago, so the lawsuit is to try and force the EPA to do, or allow states to do, what the Supreme Court said the EPA should do.
If you're so worried about the environment why don't you simply put your efforts into "cleaning up" your particular state instead of (more easily ofcourse) blaming it all on one man and start the (to me:) typical selfish American approach of sueing? The problem with this logic is that even if I manage to make my state pristine in terms of energy use/pollution control/etc, the state next door can still spew all the pollutants it wants into the air I will be breathing. This was a classic issue for the acid rain issue a couple decades ago, where the polluting states were not the ones reaping the negative environmental consequences. But even more to the point in this case, the issue is that certain states want to require lower limits on allowable emissions, but the federal gov't is not allowing them to. In this case, the states are *trying* to clean up themselves, but are being circumvented by the federal govt. It is these kinds of impasses that are actually very appropriate for legal venues, and using the 'lawsuits are bad' heuristic is often inappropriate, as in this case.
To me this looks like the classic example of "I wasn't hired to do that" and so you also don't take any responsibility for your own actions and instead start blaming others over it. I don't think that is the case here. This is a "we're trying to do something, but are being blocked from doing it" situation.
Like that woman in the McDonalds; appearantly she wasn't aware that coffee should be hot and as such McDonalds was responsible when the stupid -censored- spilled her coffee. How was she supposed to know coffee would be hot? I wish everyone who cites that case as an example would actually look into the details of it. McD's coffee is not just hot, it is kept hot enough (190F) to cause 3rd degree burns in 2-7 seconds. It is 20-30 degrees hotter than most other restaurants serve. During the years prior to that case there had been 700 complaints to McD's about the coffee causing burns (which McD's settled for $500,000). The company testified that they were aware of the danger and chose not to change, nor warn about the risks associated even though most customers are unaware of how serious and how quickly burns would occur. The woman tried to settle for $800 for medical bills (she was in the hospital for 7 days with third degree burns on her inner thighs, groin, and butt) but McD's refused. This case is not nearly as clear cut tort as everyone seems to believe. There are plenty of outrageous and unreasonable cases in our litigious country, but this is not a very good example of one.
To me this is the worst president the US has ever got and it saddens me that so many people don't even seem to realize this (yet?) His approval rating is somewhere in the low 30s to mid 20s...I think people have finally figured out that he is a disaster. He might very well achieve the lowest rating ever, eclipsing even Nixon. The problem is that in our system of govt, the only time the populace could've done anything about it happened 3 years ago. Normally the lame duck president still has some need for public approval, either to support his party, or set up his VP for the nomination. Bush doesn't seem to care about the party, and Cheney isn't running for jack, so we get to see what an executive with nothing to lose who thinks he's doing god's will can accomplish in a presidential republic for the next 15 months. I fear for this country.
Um, the Laffer curve is not an economic model. It is a tax-rate vs tax-revenue model. Even so, it is not the simplest. The simplest is the model you and other Democrats use, which is a straight line. It's the impression that the more you tax, the more you make, which is false.
Fine, the Laffer curve is about the most simplistic rate vs revenue model you can imagine. Reality is not that simple, that's why economists are able to have a discipline. Using the Laffer curve as the basis for your argument would make an economist cringe. As for the snide comment about a straight line model, you are just being snotty. I never suggested a relationship, and there are very few people who buy into such a model. I, and many others, do believe that our tax rate is lower that optimal (particularly at higher income levels, captial gains, and generally on income based on investment rather than labor).
If you are currently on the left side of the curve, then raising taxes will raise revenue. If you are on the right side of the curve, lowering taxes will actually raise revenue. Seeing that Bush lowered taxes and revenue went up, is a strong indicator that we were on the right side of the curve.
With that kind of ironclad reasoning, I can't see how anyone can argue against it. We changed one part of an extremely complex system, and on the other end something happened, so it must be that one part that mattered. I once made a birthday wish that came true...so by your logic, that's a strong indicator that my act of wishing caused the outcome. You are clearly not an economist, a scientist, or even some very familiar with logic.
Easy, there are more people in the USA then ever before. You're kidding, right? And you claim that the Laffer curve is too simple?
Nope, I'm not kidding. Population growth is a great way to increase your tax base. This country has to *create* 150,000 or so jobs every quarter just to keep the unemployment rate the same. That is 150,000 more taxpayers every quarter. On top of this, the economy of the country grows, GDP goes up, pretty much constantly somewhere between 2-8% annually, in manner not correlated with tax increases or cuts (again, complex system). This strongly effects tax revenue. And in fact, if you use a more relevant measure, tax revenue as a function of GDP, Bush's tax cuts have had a slightly negative, if any at all.
To claim your revenue will actually go up is something so brazen that even the very conservative proponents did not (and honest ones still don't) make. Um... tax revenue DID go up.
...
No real data? Bush cut taxes and now tax revenues are at record highs. That IS data and real world evidence. It would appear that REAL WORLD evidence supports me.
1. Only in total terms (not scaled per capita or as a function of GDP, nor in real dollars). If you are going to base your argument on absolute numbers, you are either ignorant of accepted practices, or you are intentionally trying to deceive. 2. There isn't a single non-hack economist who argues this anymore. Lowering taxes *DOES NOT* raise tax revenue. As I mentioned and linked to before, the only claim economists make is that tax cuts might increase the economy enough that the loss in revenue from a lower rate is partially offset by increased economic output.
Granted, tax cuts are not the only reason why revenue is up, but taking less out of the GDP causes the GDP to grow.
So even right here you acknowledge that revenue is up for reasons beyond tax cuts. As for tax cuts causing GDP expansion, the data is slim. The GDP has grown through tax cuts, tax increases, and static tax rates. The point, again, is that this is an extremely complex system that has tons of inputs, only one of which is the
1. The Laffer curve is about as simplistic a economic model as can exist. 2. The Laffer curve does not say that lowering tax rates increases tax revenue. 3. The Laffer curve says nothing about where optimal tax rates should be.
Now, we all know that Bush cut taxes after taking office. We also know that the government has been breaking records with tax receipts. The US government has brought in more money than at any point in history. How can this be? Easy, there are more people in the USA then ever before.
How does lowering taxes man more revenue? Well, as you can see from the Laffer curve, if you are on the right side of the peak, lowering taxes means more revenue. So, higher tax receipts prove we were on the right side of that curve. We have no idea where we are on the curve, nor what the curve actually looks like, nor whether any rate short of 100% will actually produce the effect. But even beyond that, you are parroting the old trickle-down econometric view (though I think the other moniker, voodoo economics is a better fit). If you go back and look at the original arguments made in this vein back a few decades ago, it was never the simplistic "lower taxes mean more tax revenue." Rather the argument was that if you lower taxes by x%, your revenue will go down by some factor less than x% due to economic stimulation. To claim your revenue will actually go up is something so brazen that even the very conservative proponents did not (and honest ones still don't) make. As noted in the link, even the most optimistic estimates say that tax cuts can lead to a revenue replacement of perhaps 20-30%, a far, far cry from the 100+% you are claiming.
So, because of what I've stated here, I think it is safe to assume that raising taxes will actually decrease the amount of money the government pulls in, NOT increase it. So based your kiddie version of economics and no real data whatsoever, you think it is safe to assume that complex models built by Econ PhDs and real-world evidence is wrong?
This is why we have deficits, not because or lower taxes Spending more than you take in is the cause of deficits. Raising spending and lowering revenue at the same time is the worst of all worlds, and the one this administration has chosen. Perhaps it is a political attempt to starve the beast, but it is not sound economic policy.
What I find odd, is that of the small sample I just checked on, there are lots of songs that Amazon has DRM-free that iTMS has, but not DRM-free. Lots of small labels seem to not have their catalogs DRM-free on iTunes...I wonder why that is?
Hm, you're modded as 'Funny' right now. I don't think you were trying to be funny, or else your subtle humor (or trolling) eludes my crass American sense of humor.
If a company intentionally destroys your property and thus denies you the rightful use of your property, how is that *ANY* different than a DDOS? 1. You don't *have* to upgrade the firmware. 2. You have to be rather cynical to think that apple is going out of their way to brick you phone. Updating a firmware that has been modified leads to unknown and potentially damaging situations...that's just simple reasoning.
I am sick of U.S. companies treating customers like shit. Damn it! Make a good product, sell a million of them, and support your customers. What the hell is so difficult about that formula? Right, so I think a fair number of people consider the iPhone a good product. Apple sold a million of them. They are now pushing out a firmware upgrade that adds at least the iTunes WiFi Store, likely a double-tap home button shortcut, video out capabilities, and presumably stability enhancements and bug fixes. How is that a *bad* way to support customers? I think you forget to add "guarantee that no matter what I do to my phone, release all-knowing firmware update that will deal with an infinite number of possible basecases" to your formula.
no local phone line, so no TiVo... has that changed lately? Yup. It'll use your wifi. Series 3 will do everything over wifi, even the initial setup. Take the plunge, you'll be happy you did.
Some Epidemiological Claims of Sex Differences for Genetic Effects Not Replicated.
This is a *very* small number of claims from a subsection of a single field of one small bit of science. Tarring all of science based on some potentially dubious epidemiology is badly out of line. It would be like claiming that since some spinach has made people sick, all food is unsafe to eat. Absurd.
Epidemiology itself has a bit of a reputation of having a hard time finding really solid effects, partly because the effects that are measured are frequently multi-variate with lots on confounding effects, partly because you need huge numbers to have very much analysis power, partly because such studies are generally more observational then experimental. This guy has published a bunch of papers in the past arguing (and presenting models for) exactly this kind of problem. He comes up with the logical (if rather obvious) suggestions that amongst others: 1. Smaller studies are less likely to be true. 2. Smaller observed effects are less likely to be true. 3. The greater the financial interests there are in the study, the less likely it is to be true. 4. The "hotter" a topic is, the less likely a study is to be true. Largely these are no shit, sherlock kinds of things.
So, to sum up, there are lots of epidemiological claims in published articles out there that might not be right. This represents neither a new idea, nor a meaningful comment on anything but epidemiology.
Whatever other personality issues are in play, this is exactly the kind of problem that RMS is concerned with: Linus was prepared to let a control freak like McVoy try use the Linux kernel project as a strategic wedge to block the development of Open Source SCM software and promote his own proprietary solution, simply because it was convenient for Linus and he was friends with McVoy So, how'd that whole blocking Open Source SCM software development thing end up working out?
It all boils down to basic economics. People will do what they want and live how they want ... It is the height of hubris and arrogance to presume that you can change other people's lives and preferences through mandates, laws, and enforcement actions. What utter baloney. Of course gov't can alter aggregate behavior, to argue otherwise is to ignore the world around you. Laws work, taxes work, mandates work. Not for 100% of people or 100% of the time, but in aggregate they certainly do. It *is* basic economics, where individuals factor in their preferred behavior (I want to ride my motorcycle through north carolina without wearing my helmet), the risks associated with it (getting pulled over & getting a $100 ticket) and decide whether or not to do it. Helmet laws work, changing "other people's lives" very effectively. You can argue that land use planning does work very well, and in many cases that is true (though not in all). But to jump from there to claiming that a government can't change behavior is long, incorrect leap.
if you were in a hurry would you be happy about having to slow down to navigate an obstacle course in your vehicle? Would that make you calmer once you exited the course or would you romp on the gas in anger and frustration to make up for lost time as you entered the freeway or the main traffic corridor?
Well, actually if it were me, I would get pissed off the first few times and then try to find a different way to get where I was going. In fact, I've done exactly that in response to traffic calming additions where I live. This is the rationale behind such things...people are adaptable and will act to minimize the aggravation caused by external factors beyond their control (like speed bumps every quarter mile). In fact, you say the same thing: "If people cannot work within the system then they find ways around it."
Didn't they link mad cow disease to a protein as well? Yes, it is PrP. Prions are a rather strange phenomenon (a nobel worthy one) where you have an infectious agent that nothing more than a protein. Generally infectious agents are living things (parasites, bacteria, viruses (if you can call those live)), but prions are simply a normal protein we all have in our bodies that has acquired a different structure. This structure is extremely stable, and when ingested or inserted into other animals is able to initiate the transformation of normal PrP to misfolded, infectious PrP. Fortunately, it seems there is a pretty strong species barrier between most animals, so not just any animals' prions are able to infect humans.
So, if the common post symptomatic link is protein deposits, then what are some of those possible precursors leading to them? The protein deposits are a specific structure called amyloid that appears to be accessible to any proteins if you treat it with conditions severe enough. That only a handful (20 or so) proteins actually cause amyloid-related disease is both fortunate and interesting. What is common to all of them, though, is that a normal protein is somehow forced to adopt a non-normal structure through either chopping up the protein, producing an incorrect version of it, or being subjected to conditions the protein is not intended to be in. When this happens, individual protein molecules adopt aberrant structures that can then interact with each other to form macroscopic deposits, these being the amyloid fibers people talk about. There is evidence to suggest that those initial few misfolded molecules, before large-scale aggregation takes place are the actual dangerous species. What exactly causes abeta (the peptide that forms amyloid in alzheimers) to aggregate in people is still very poorly understood. Lots and lots of things are correlated (brain trauma, inflammation), and many different genes and gene products (proteases, chaperones) seem to play a part, various environmental factors are also thought to be involved, but it is certainly a multi-factorial process. As for aluminum, I don't think there have been any conclusive studies that link it to alzheimers (the hypothesis was started in the 60s based on direct injection of aluminum into rabbit brains, but there are lots of reasons to question those original studies).
First off, here's the actual article, which was published in PLoS Medicine (meaning free access for everyone, yay).
Whether this accomplishment (and it is a pretty cool accomplishment) will be meaningful for people is very uncertain. First of all, Alzheimer's is not a positive diagnosis, that is you diagnose it by the absence of other explanations for observed behavior. So you don't actually have a way of confirming that the mental defects of a patient are *really* due to a-beta deposits. Unlike many diseases, we can't (yet) test blood or tissue or do imaging studies to confirm a-beta deposits (though there is tons of effort being spent on developing such tests). So you'd have to decide to do a pretty serious procedure on (generally) elderly people in less than ideal health on the basis of a flimsy diagnosis. It might well be worth it, but it is a big question.
Moreover, though, we don't really know what causes the neurodegeneration associated with amyloid diseases. We know that deposits or a-beta or tau tangles (or light-chain or huntingtin, or SOD or transthyretin (which was the topic of my thesis work) or whatever amyloidogenic protein you like) correlate well with neurodegeneration. But whether those are the cause or not is still a very open question. In fact there is plenty of research around that suggests that amyloid deposits themselves are not damaging, but the precursors in the aggregation pathway are the real culprits. Some have even suggested that amyloid is a more or less inert structure that can be used to segregate potentially dangerously unstable proteins away from the rest of the cell.
So, supposing this treatment does everything perfectly, chops up a-beta and disintegrates plaques, *and* we can deliver it to correctly diagnosed patients, we still might not even be hitting the right target.
Not to be too down on this topic, but we are still quite a long way from a treatment, much less a cure.
Indeed. And that's a very GOOD thing, everyone building upon the work of others.
Pity that the west isn't into that. Instead we're into branding./sigh Right, it's too bad that Apple didn't decide to build upon an existing operating system, improving it and making it better. Instead they just branded.
Apple merely defines the specs, controls the integration Yeah, that piddling little part of releasing a new product...designing a truly novel, industry-changing piece of equipment. The kind of thing Linus or RMS would bang out in an afternoon.
Kudos to China and to all those focussed on making things instead of on branding. I think you meant, copying and developing.
Of necessity, the two parties differ only minorly on a few of their positions I'm not sure I buy the Nader complaint here. There are substantial differences in positions and priorities, though I would agree that 'maintaining my power, once i have it' cuts across all political parties.
Gerrymandering has successfully been used to turn the overwhelming majority of legislative positions into "safe seats". While it is clear that most elections are non-competitive, laying it solely at the feet of gerrymandering is probably too simplistic. The default power of incumbency is likely to be at least as a large a problem, especially given the lack of public funding of elections. Also, just as a theoretical question, what should districts *ideally* look like? Are we striving for geographically appealing districts (boxes like in Iowa)?, continually competitive districts?, districts the represent certain groups better or worse?, districts that represent statewide opinion variance? It's not a simple question, and given the nature of the beast, i'm not sure it really matters as a fix is likely not coming anytime soon.
Legislation that passes with 50%+1 of congressional support is exactly as much a law as legislation that passes with 100% support. Well, given the current situation where the R's are threatening to filibuster everything, it's actually more like 60 votes (At least in the senate) rather than 50%+1. Also, this Roveian strategy is somewhat new...and hopefully will last not much longer than its main architect.
Hopefully they'll be more serviceable, too.
With IBM/Lenovo and Dell laptops (and probably many others), the drive can be accessed with one or two screws and they slide out of the chassis, even on their smallest+thinnest models. You're right, the iBooks are a bitch, but check out the macbook. On my macbook core duo it took 5 minutes, one screwdriver (3 screws) and a penny (to take out the battery) to replace the hard drive.
Slashdot Mirror
Etc. etc. I have no doubt there are plenty of smart, healthy, wealthy, open-minded folks there; however the statistics tend to suggest that overall AL (like much of the deep south) has a pretty unhealthy, uneducated and poor population.
-Ted
There was a spat in Reason years ago about exactly this.
-Ted
Made one out of 3/4" PVC, 8 elbows and 4 tees. Cheap, easy, adjustable to your specific chair/couch/lap/computer circumstances.
-Ted
If you do use your tools regularly, the battery capacity quickly decreases, and you really need to replace the batteries every 6 months or more. Clearly YMMV depending on the brand/battery type/usage patterns etc, but these have not been my experience at all. Of course I buy good tools, not the cheap MegaToolStore specials. Also, having spare batteries that you keep charged makes all the difference. I know first hand exactly how very, very little hassle it is to use an extension cord. And I know first hand exactly how much of a pain in the ass an extension cord can be. I've pulled my routers off the table more than a few times 'cuz I yanked the extension cord with my foot. I've almost tripped countless times due to cords/powerstrips/etc on the floor. You can't deny there is a tremendous benefit to cordlessness. You appear to not be willing to accept the sacrifices, while I am (in many situations at least), but there is a pretty big upside. No professional would be caught dead with cordless tools, with the exception of a drill for light work, and even there, they sure as hell also have a corded drill with them at all times, anyhow. Well I happen to know a number of professionals who would disagree with that statement. I would submit you wouldn't find a professional who doesn't have a cordless drill that gets a hell of a lot of use. Yes, they do have corded ones for tasks that require it, but there are plenty of times when it just isn't necessary. That's exactly how the pros do it. That is very much beside the point. *I* as a non-professional, but serious hobbyist don't need my tools to run 8 hours a day. I need a tool that suits my situations, and for many of them, cordless tools work just fine power-wise and work significantly better portability-wise.
-Ted
Sure cordless tools can be pretty gutless compared to corded stuff, but for many (most?) common tasks the de-tethering is well worth it.
-Ted
-Ted
-Ted
-Ted
Um, the Laffer curve is not an economic model. It is a tax-rate vs tax-revenue model. Even so, it is not the simplest. The simplest is the model you and other Democrats use, which is a straight line. It's the impression that the more you tax, the more you make, which is false.
Fine, the Laffer curve is about the most simplistic rate vs revenue model you can imagine. Reality is not that simple, that's why economists are able to have a discipline. Using the Laffer curve as the basis for your argument would make an economist cringe. As for the snide comment about a straight line model, you are just being snotty. I never suggested a relationship, and there are very few people who buy into such a model. I, and many others, do believe that our tax rate is lower that optimal (particularly at higher income levels, captial gains, and generally on income based on investment rather than labor).
If you are currently on the left side of the curve, then raising taxes will raise revenue. If you are on the right side of the curve, lowering taxes will actually raise revenue. Seeing that Bush lowered taxes and revenue went up, is a strong indicator that we were on the right side of the curve.
With that kind of ironclad reasoning, I can't see how anyone can argue against it. We changed one part of an extremely complex system, and on the other end something happened, so it must be that one part that mattered. I once made a birthday wish that came true...so by your logic, that's a strong indicator that my act of wishing caused the outcome. You are clearly not an economist, a scientist, or even some very familiar with logic.
Easy, there are more people in the USA then ever before.
You're kidding, right? And you claim that the Laffer curve is too simple?
Nope, I'm not kidding. Population growth is a great way to increase your tax base. This country has to *create* 150,000 or so jobs every quarter just to keep the unemployment rate the same. That is 150,000 more taxpayers every quarter. On top of this, the economy of the country grows, GDP goes up, pretty much constantly somewhere between 2-8% annually, in manner not correlated with tax increases or cuts (again, complex system). This strongly effects tax revenue. And in fact, if you use a more relevant measure, tax revenue as a function of GDP, Bush's tax cuts have had a slightly negative, if any at all.
To claim your revenue will actually go up is something so brazen that even the very conservative proponents did not (and honest ones still don't) make.
Um... tax revenue DID go up.
No real data? Bush cut taxes and now tax revenues are at record highs. That IS data and real world evidence. It would appear that REAL WORLD evidence supports me.
1. Only in total terms (not scaled per capita or as a function of GDP, nor in real dollars). If you are going to base your argument on absolute numbers, you are either ignorant of accepted practices, or you are intentionally trying to deceive.
2. There isn't a single non-hack economist who argues this anymore. Lowering taxes *DOES NOT* raise tax revenue. As I mentioned and linked to before, the only claim economists make is that tax cuts might increase the economy enough that the loss in revenue from a lower rate is partially offset by increased economic output.
Granted, tax cuts are not the only reason why revenue is up, but taking less out of the GDP causes the GDP to grow.
So even right here you acknowledge that revenue is up for reasons beyond tax cuts. As for tax cuts causing GDP expansion, the data is slim. The GDP has grown through tax cuts, tax increases, and static tax rates. The point, again, is that this is an extremely complex system that has tons of inputs, only one of which is the
2. The Laffer curve does not say that lowering tax rates increases tax revenue.
3. The Laffer curve says nothing about where optimal tax rates should be. Now, we all know that Bush cut taxes after taking office. We also know that the government has been breaking records with tax receipts. The US government has brought in more money than at any point in history. How can this be? Easy, there are more people in the USA then ever before. How does lowering taxes man more revenue? Well, as you can see from the Laffer curve, if you are on the right side of the peak, lowering taxes means more revenue. So, higher tax receipts prove we were on the right side of that curve. We have no idea where we are on the curve, nor what the curve actually looks like, nor whether any rate short of 100% will actually produce the effect. But even beyond that, you are parroting the old trickle-down econometric view (though I think the other moniker, voodoo economics is a better fit). If you go back and look at the original arguments made in this vein back a few decades ago, it was never the simplistic "lower taxes mean more tax revenue." Rather the argument was that if you lower taxes by x%, your revenue will go down by some factor less than x% due to economic stimulation. To claim your revenue will actually go up is something so brazen that even the very conservative proponents did not (and honest ones still don't) make. As noted in the link, even the most optimistic estimates say that tax cuts can lead to a revenue replacement of perhaps 20-30%, a far, far cry from the 100+% you are claiming. So, because of what I've stated here, I think it is safe to assume that raising taxes will actually decrease the amount of money the government pulls in, NOT increase it. So based your kiddie version of economics and no real data whatsoever, you think it is safe to assume that complex models built by Econ PhDs and real-world evidence is wrong? This is why we have deficits, not because or lower taxes Spending more than you take in is the cause of deficits. Raising spending and lowering revenue at the same time is the worst of all worlds, and the one this administration has chosen. Perhaps it is a political attempt to starve the beast, but it is not sound economic policy.
-Ted
What I find odd, is that of the small sample I just checked on, there are lots of songs that Amazon has DRM-free that iTMS has, but not DRM-free. Lots of small labels seem to not have their catalogs DRM-free on iTunes...I wonder why that is?
-Ted
If a company intentionally destroys your property and thus denies you the rightful use of your property, how is that *ANY* different than a DDOS? 1. You don't *have* to upgrade the firmware.
2. You have to be rather cynical to think that apple is going out of their way to brick you phone. Updating a firmware that has been modified leads to unknown and potentially damaging situations...that's just simple reasoning.
I am sick of U.S. companies treating customers like shit. Damn it! Make a good product, sell a million of them, and support your customers. What the hell is so difficult about that formula? Right, so I think a fair number of people consider the iPhone a good product. Apple sold a million of them. They are now pushing out a firmware upgrade that adds at least the iTunes WiFi Store, likely a double-tap home button shortcut, video out capabilities, and presumably stability enhancements and bug fixes. How is that a *bad* way to support customers? I think you forget to add "guarantee that no matter what I do to my phone, release all-knowing firmware update that will deal with an infinite number of possible basecases" to your formula.
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Some Epidemiological Claims of Sex Differences for Genetic Effects Not Replicated.
This is a *very* small number of claims from a subsection of a single field of one small bit of science. Tarring all of science based on some potentially dubious epidemiology is badly out of line. It would be like claiming that since some spinach has made people sick, all food is unsafe to eat. Absurd.
Epidemiology itself has a bit of a reputation of having a hard time finding really solid effects, partly because the effects that are measured are frequently multi-variate with lots on confounding effects, partly because you need huge numbers to have very much analysis power, partly because such studies are generally more observational then experimental. This guy has published a bunch of papers in the past arguing (and presenting models for) exactly this kind of problem. He comes up with the logical (if rather obvious) suggestions that amongst others: 1. Smaller studies are less likely to be true. 2. Smaller observed effects are less likely to be true. 3. The greater the financial interests there are in the study, the less likely it is to be true. 4. The "hotter" a topic is, the less likely a study is to be true. Largely these are no shit, sherlock kinds of things.
So, to sum up, there are lots of epidemiological claims in published articles out there that might not be right. This represents neither a new idea, nor a meaningful comment on anything but epidemiology.
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It is the height of hubris and arrogance to presume that you can change other people's lives and preferences through mandates, laws, and enforcement actions. What utter baloney. Of course gov't can alter aggregate behavior, to argue otherwise is to ignore the world around you. Laws work, taxes work, mandates work. Not for 100% of people or 100% of the time, but in aggregate they certainly do. It *is* basic economics, where individuals factor in their preferred behavior (I want to ride my motorcycle through north carolina without wearing my helmet), the risks associated with it (getting pulled over & getting a $100 ticket) and decide whether or not to do it. Helmet laws work, changing "other people's lives" very effectively. You can argue that land use planning does work very well, and in many cases that is true (though not in all). But to jump from there to claiming that a government can't change behavior is long, incorrect leap. if you were in a hurry would you be happy about having to slow down to navigate an obstacle course in your vehicle? Would that make you calmer once you exited the course or would you romp on the gas in anger and frustration to make up for lost time as you entered the freeway or the main traffic corridor?
Well, actually if it were me, I would get pissed off the first few times and then try to find a different way to get where I was going. In fact, I've done exactly that in response to traffic calming additions where I live. This is the rationale behind such things...people are adaptable and will act to minimize the aggravation caused by external factors beyond their control (like speed bumps every quarter mile). In fact, you say the same thing: "If people cannot work within the system then they find ways around it."
-Ted
As for aluminum, I don't think there have been any conclusive studies that link it to alzheimers (the hypothesis was started in the 60s based on direct injection of aluminum into rabbit brains, but there are lots of reasons to question those original studies).
-Ted
First off, here's the actual article, which was published in PLoS Medicine (meaning free access for everyone, yay).
Whether this accomplishment (and it is a pretty cool accomplishment) will be meaningful for people is very uncertain. First of all, Alzheimer's is not a positive diagnosis, that is you diagnose it by the absence of other explanations for observed behavior. So you don't actually have a way of confirming that the mental defects of a patient are *really* due to a-beta deposits. Unlike many diseases, we can't (yet) test blood or tissue or do imaging studies to confirm a-beta deposits (though there is tons of effort being spent on developing such tests). So you'd have to decide to do a pretty serious procedure on (generally) elderly people in less than ideal health on the basis of a flimsy diagnosis. It might well be worth it, but it is a big question.
Moreover, though, we don't really know what causes the neurodegeneration associated with amyloid diseases. We know that deposits or a-beta or tau tangles (or light-chain or huntingtin, or SOD or transthyretin (which was the topic of my thesis work) or whatever amyloidogenic protein you like) correlate well with neurodegeneration. But whether those are the cause or not is still a very open question. In fact there is plenty of research around that suggests that amyloid deposits themselves are not damaging, but the precursors in the aggregation pathway are the real culprits. Some have even suggested that amyloid is a more or less inert structure that can be used to segregate potentially dangerously unstable proteins away from the rest of the cell.
So, supposing this treatment does everything perfectly, chops up a-beta and disintegrates plaques, *and* we can deliver it to correctly diagnosed patients, we still might not even be hitting the right target.
Not to be too down on this topic, but we are still quite a long way from a treatment, much less a cure.
-Ted
No, it's a moot point.
-Ted
Pity that the west isn't into that. Instead we're into branding.
Right, it's too bad that Apple didn't decide to build upon an existing operating system, improving it and making it better. Instead they just branded.
Apple merely defines the specs, controls the integration
Yeah, that piddling little part of releasing a new product...designing a truly novel, industry-changing piece of equipment. The kind of thing Linus or RMS would bang out in an afternoon.
Kudos to China and to all those focussed on making things instead of on branding.
I think you meant, copying and developing.
-Ted
that the people who make this aren't idiots, but....sunglasses?
-Ted
That's not the half of it.
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