"Fact 1. There were two people on the plane headed to Europe. You don't go to Europe via China."
You certainly can, particularly if you're just looking for the cheapest fare. The travel agency in Thailand which booked the tickets said that they got a request for the cheapest tickets. Not for a specific carrier, or even a specific flight.
Just for shits and giggles, I pulled up a Kayak search, one-way, KL to Amsterdam (which is the route they were both booked on), on May 14th. Lo and behold, the second cheapest option is China Southern via Beijing or Shanghai. It's ENTIRELY possible that, for that particular day, it was the cheapest option, particularly if you're talking Asian travel agent with consolidator fare options.
PS - If you're going to rely on Occam's Razor, you should probably learn how to spell Occam.
There is ZERO evidence that the two Iranians on the plane, traveling under stolen passports, were anything but two Iranians trying to claim asylum in the EU and join family there.
That might not be a bad thing. I live in a city that went from 300,000 people to over two million in about 10 years,
No, you don't. Assuming you're talking about Austin (given the Zilker Park reference), the Austin Metro Statistical Area was 1.83 million in 2012. In 2000, it was 1.25 million. That's some serious growth, but it's nowhere near 300k to 2 million. The MSA had 300k people in 1960, but I guess "300k to 2 million in 50 years" doesn't have the same ring to it.
If we want to get top-quality people for a job like FCC Commissioner, which doesn't last that long and doesn't pay well, but don't want them to take industry jobs when they leave, we need to pay them more. Pay the Commissioners $2 million a year each, plus $1 million per year for the ten years after they leave the FCC, but make a condition of taking the job that they can't take outside employment in the industry during that ten year period. The incremental cost to the budget would be trivial, and it would remove the revolving door.
You want right and wrong? Talk to a priest/rabbi/pastachef. The law, and the courts, are all about rules, and the interpretation of them, and they should be. Otherwise, we'd be making decisions like "yeah, he was illegally wiretapped, but he was a bad man, so we're going to convict him anyway."
Really, there's one. Arcosanti is very cool, but it's been "in progress" since the early 1970s. At this point, they're barely keeping up with the wear and tear on what's already there.
Are you serious? The relevant PA law is referred to in the code as "WIRETAPPING AND ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE," and it explicitly covers this scenario. There doesn't need to be a wire involved.
"Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, a person is guilty of a felony of the third degree if he: (1) intentionally intercepts, endeavors to intercept, or procures any other person to intercept or endeavor to intercept any wire, electronic or oral communication;"
You're absolutely right, my bad, misread the table. Overall food prices were up 0.9% from 12/13 to 3/14 (index went from 238.14 to 240.23). Meat prices were up 2.8% over the same period.
Who would mod this nonsense up? Inflation was 1.8% or so in 2013.
Where have you been? Food prices are up more than 10% since January...
In what country? Certainly not this one. They're up 3.3% since December, and only 1.7% since March of 2013. Meat's up a lot (11.5% since December, 5.1% since March of 2013), but that's only part of the story.
I needed an extension this year. Some tardy 1099s, an erroneous 1099-R, a K-1 (that MLP just wasn't worth the hassle), a bunch of self-employment income, and it all just snowballed. Last couple of years I've used an accountant, but done them myself as a check, and to make sure I understand what's going on. Our results have never differed by more than a couple hundred $.
"Tax returns and their computations are merely a simple mathematical puzzle, which I easily solve."
None of the operations are very complex (add, subtract, multiply, divide), but knowing which numbers to perform those computations on, is sometimes far from simple. Get some K-1 income at some point, and see if you think taxes are still a "simple" puzzle.
Bad example on my part, then. Point I was trying to get across is that, if there's a procedural reason to overturn a ruling, judges will always go that route rather than getting into the substance of the case, since the substance doesn't matter.
"Oddly, the reason for the ruling was not based on the merits of the case, but on the venue in which he was tried (PDF)."
This isn't odd at all. If the venue was incorrect, then all the issues raised in the trial become irrelevant.
Think of it this way: if he'd been charged with "being a Mets fan," and the appeal was based on (a) there's no law against being a Mets fan, and (b) the evidence that he was a Mets fan (a cap) was obtained through an illegal search, then whether or not the search was illegal would be irrelevant - he had broken no law, so the "conviction" would be tossed out.
OK, so if you want to be specific, landlords are threatening to evict tenants as a result of the fines being imposed on the landlords as a result of the tenants' behavior.
"'Unfortunately, we can't provide individual legal assistance or review lease agreements for our 500,000 hosts, but we do try to help inform people about these issues,'
Bullcrap. If they wanted to actually ensure that their rentals were legal, they could do vastly more to ensure that. In NYC, for example, any whole unit rental (where the lessor isn't going to be there as well) of 30 days is illegal if the unit isn't a licensed hotel. If you try to post a property for a non-roommate rental in NYC, they could have the site simply say "Is this unit a licensed hotel? If not, then the rental would violate NYC law. Please confirm that the unit is a licensed hotel unit. Yes/No"
They don't even bother with this level of fig leaf.
If NYC turns around and deregulates the taxi turfs then they are facing a ~$30 billion dollar class action law suit from those owners. It would be great to transition to a less regulated market; but the current stakeholders (a lot of them individual drivers with medallions that can't be rented out to others and who have all of their savings plus a monster loan tied into their cab) will not be going quietly into bankruptcy.
While I agree that any attempt to deregulate would result in the current medallion owners screaming bloody murder, they wouldn't have a leg to stand on, legally. The city has never made any commitments as to the number of medallions it will issue. It could have another auction tomorrow with a minimum bid of $0.01 and 1 billion medallions up for sale. Of course, it's not going to, particularly since the Mayor De Blasio is 100% in the pocket of the taxi companies, who have been major campaign contributors.
Usual benchmark for $/life saved is about $6 million, although might be higher in this case, since the lives saved are likely to be disproportionately children, so more years of life saved/lost, so more $/life. So, the saved lives are around $100 million. Depending on the severity of the injuries, $800k each doesn't seem that absurd. Still, does seem like a bit of a stretch to say that it's the best way to do this.
I'm as big a fan of actual medicine, and opponent of woo, as you're going to find, and there's a reason I'm making the point that I'm making.
If you classify alternative medicine as "stuff that's been proven not to work," then you open yourself up for the "hey, here's a case where it did work/appeared to work, so you're wrong, I love me some woo!" attack. By positioning the argument as "real medicine, proven to work, "alternative" medicine, no evidence it does work, so go away and come back with some if you can," you close off that avenue of attack for the woo crowd, and also remove the "evil medicine is trying to shut us down and won't even listen to our evidence" argument.
This isn't quite right. In reality, alternative medicine has not been proven TO work. That's very different from proven NOT to work. In fact, it's essentially impossible to prove that something doesn't work - any study has a margin of error. You CAN, however, say that there's no evidence that something DOES work, and hence we shouldn't be spending time and money on it (and possibly displacing treatments that HAVE been shown to work).
There's a famous HBS case study on Dewalt. Black & Decker bought the brand (which was at that point restricted to woodworking tools), and used it to rebrand their Black & Decker professional line. They chose yellow/black as a color scheme since it was familar both from the "safety sign/tape" schema and because blue was Makita and red was Skil or Hilti or probably a few others as well, so the black/yellow would stand out. They didn't change the actual tools (which got good ratings when people didn't see the B&D branding on them, but construction pros didn't want to bring something to the job site that was the same brand as their popcorn popper), just change the color and name. Market share went up about 8-fold in a year.
Slashdot Mirror
I have human-sized shirt pockets, and my Galaxy S4 fits perfectly, as would any of the iPhones.
"Fact 1. There were two people on the plane headed to Europe. You don't go to Europe via China."
You certainly can, particularly if you're just looking for the cheapest fare. The travel agency in Thailand which booked the tickets said that they got a request for the cheapest tickets. Not for a specific carrier, or even a specific flight.
Just for shits and giggles, I pulled up a Kayak search, one-way, KL to Amsterdam (which is the route they were both booked on), on May 14th. Lo and behold, the second cheapest option is China Southern via Beijing or Shanghai. It's ENTIRELY possible that, for that particular day, it was the cheapest option, particularly if you're talking Asian travel agent with consolidator fare options.
PS - If you're going to rely on Occam's Razor, you should probably learn how to spell Occam.
There is ZERO evidence that the two Iranians on the plane, traveling under stolen passports, were anything but two Iranians trying to claim asylum in the EU and join family there.
That might not be a bad thing. I live in a city that went from 300,000 people to over two million in about 10 years,
No, you don't. Assuming you're talking about Austin (given the Zilker Park reference), the Austin Metro Statistical Area was 1.83 million in 2012. In 2000, it was 1.25 million. That's some serious growth, but it's nowhere near 300k to 2 million. The MSA had 300k people in 1960, but I guess "300k to 2 million in 50 years" doesn't have the same ring to it.
If we want to get top-quality people for a job like FCC Commissioner, which doesn't last that long and doesn't pay well, but don't want them to take industry jobs when they leave, we need to pay them more. Pay the Commissioners $2 million a year each, plus $1 million per year for the ten years after they leave the FCC, but make a condition of taking the job that they can't take outside employment in the industry during that ten year period. The incremental cost to the budget would be trivial, and it would remove the revolving door.
Iridium's largest customer (by far) is the US DoD.
You want right and wrong? Talk to a priest/rabbi/pastachef. The law, and the courts, are all about rules, and the interpretation of them, and they should be. Otherwise, we'd be making decisions like "yeah, he was illegally wiretapped, but he was a bad man, so we're going to convict him anyway."
Really, there's one. Arcosanti is very cool, but it's been "in progress" since the early 1970s. At this point, they're barely keeping up with the wear and tear on what's already there.
Are you serious? The relevant PA law is referred to in the code as "WIRETAPPING AND ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE," and it explicitly covers this scenario. There doesn't need to be a wire involved.
"Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, a person is guilty of a felony of the third degree if he: (1) intentionally intercepts, endeavors to intercept, or procures any other person to intercept or endeavor to intercept any wire, electronic or oral communication;"
http://weblinks.westlaw.com/re...
You're absolutely right, my bad, misread the table. Overall food prices were up 0.9% from 12/13 to 3/14 (index went from 238.14 to 240.23). Meat prices were up 2.8% over the same period.
Who would mod this nonsense up? Inflation was 1.8% or so in 2013.
Where have you been? Food prices are up more than 10% since January...
In what country? Certainly not this one. They're up 3.3% since December, and only 1.7% since March of 2013. Meat's up a lot (11.5% since December, 5.1% since March of 2013), but that's only part of the story.
See table 2: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpid140...
Anyway, food's less than 15% of the average household's spending.
I needed an extension this year. Some tardy 1099s, an erroneous 1099-R, a K-1 (that MLP just wasn't worth the hassle), a bunch of self-employment income, and it all just snowballed. Last couple of years I've used an accountant, but done them myself as a check, and to make sure I understand what's going on. Our results have never differed by more than a couple hundred $.
"Tax returns and their computations are merely a simple mathematical puzzle, which I easily solve."
None of the operations are very complex (add, subtract, multiply, divide), but knowing which numbers to perform those computations on, is sometimes far from simple. Get some K-1 income at some point, and see if you think taxes are still a "simple" puzzle.
Works very well for me.
Bad example on my part, then. Point I was trying to get across is that, if there's a procedural reason to overturn a ruling, judges will always go that route rather than getting into the substance of the case, since the substance doesn't matter.
"Oddly, the reason for the ruling was not based on the merits of the case, but on the venue in which he was tried (PDF)."
This isn't odd at all. If the venue was incorrect, then all the issues raised in the trial become irrelevant.
Think of it this way: if he'd been charged with "being a Mets fan," and the appeal was based on (a) there's no law against being a Mets fan, and (b) the evidence that he was a Mets fan (a cap) was obtained through an illegal search, then whether or not the search was illegal would be irrelevant - he had broken no law, so the "conviction" would be tossed out.
OK, so if you want to be specific, landlords are threatening to evict tenants as a result of the fines being imposed on the landlords as a result of the tenants' behavior.
Granted, it's probably not going to be the most gentile landing
So I should look to land on a nice cushy Rabbi?
"'Unfortunately, we can't provide individual legal assistance or review lease agreements for our 500,000 hosts, but we do try to help inform people about these issues,'
Bullcrap. If they wanted to actually ensure that their rentals were legal, they could do vastly more to ensure that. In NYC, for example, any whole unit rental (where the lessor isn't going to be there as well) of 30 days is illegal if the unit isn't a licensed hotel. If you try to post a property for a non-roommate rental in NYC, they could have the site simply say "Is this unit a licensed hotel? If not, then the rental would violate NYC law. Please confirm that the unit is a licensed hotel unit. Yes/No"
They don't even bother with this level of fig leaf.
If NYC turns around and deregulates the taxi turfs then they are facing a ~$30 billion dollar class action law suit from those owners. It would be great to transition to a less regulated market; but the current stakeholders (a lot of them individual drivers with medallions that can't be rented out to others and who have all of their savings plus a monster loan tied into their cab) will not be going quietly into bankruptcy.
While I agree that any attempt to deregulate would result in the current medallion owners screaming bloody murder, they wouldn't have a leg to stand on, legally. The city has never made any commitments as to the number of medallions it will issue. It could have another auction tomorrow with a minimum bid of $0.01 and 1 billion medallions up for sale. Of course, it's not going to, particularly since the Mayor De Blasio is 100% in the pocket of the taxi companies, who have been major campaign contributors.
This isn't an unreasonable position. Don't know why you're getting all the negs.
Usual benchmark for $/life saved is about $6 million, although might be higher in this case, since the lives saved are likely to be disproportionately children, so more years of life saved/lost, so more $/life. So, the saved lives are around $100 million. Depending on the severity of the injuries, $800k each doesn't seem that absurd. Still, does seem like a bit of a stretch to say that it's the best way to do this.
I'm as big a fan of actual medicine, and opponent of woo, as you're going to find, and there's a reason I'm making the point that I'm making.
If you classify alternative medicine as "stuff that's been proven not to work," then you open yourself up for the "hey, here's a case where it did work/appeared to work, so you're wrong, I love me some woo!" attack. By positioning the argument as "real medicine, proven to work, "alternative" medicine, no evidence it does work, so go away and come back with some if you can," you close off that avenue of attack for the woo crowd, and also remove the "evil medicine is trying to shut us down and won't even listen to our evidence" argument.
This isn't quite right. In reality, alternative medicine has not been proven TO work. That's very different from proven NOT to work. In fact, it's essentially impossible to prove that something doesn't work - any study has a margin of error. You CAN, however, say that there's no evidence that something DOES work, and hence we shouldn't be spending time and money on it (and possibly displacing treatments that HAVE been shown to work).
It's a nuance, but an important one.
$100M over the past 30 years is about 0.00016% of total federal spending over that period. It's really pretty trivial.
There's a famous HBS case study on Dewalt. Black & Decker bought the brand (which was at that point restricted to woodworking tools), and used it to rebrand their Black & Decker professional line. They chose yellow/black as a color scheme since it was familar both from the "safety sign/tape" schema and because blue was Makita and red was Skil or Hilti or probably a few others as well, so the black/yellow would stand out. They didn't change the actual tools (which got good ratings when people didn't see the B&D branding on them, but construction pros didn't want to bring something to the job site that was the same brand as their popcorn popper), just change the color and name. Market share went up about 8-fold in a year.