And how much energy does it take to produce a single square foot. There is a basic falicy that a lot of folks seem to miss.
This is a good point.
At the same time, though, solar cells last up to about 30 years. So in a way, a solar cell is like a 30 year battery. There may be situations in which bying cheap energy now and "storing" it in a solar cell for 30 years might by less expensive in the long run. They would in effect grabbing more cheap energy early while others have to buy more expensive energy later.
Of course, it probably would mean a net loss of energy as you suggest. So globally, more energy gets wasted with solar cells.
Interestingly, people that don't buy solar cells now save energy for the future, while people that buy them now act in their self-interest, but waste energy overall.
Is anyone surpised that hardware gets cheaper over time?
What really is surprising is that it continues to happen. There is nothing about the universe that guarantees cheaper and better products will be produced over time. It is only human cleverness that sustains this progress. That applies to most products.
Yes, govenment employees should be held responsible as we are paying the tab. But, that thing that produces nothing? It may seem that the government produces nothing, until you start thinking about roads and police and fire fighters and the court system, not to mention the military and missiles and covert operations and other really expensive things.
Hah.
You really think those things take up a significant part of the budget?
Seriously. Most of the money a companies makes goes to paying people for their work. Even corporate "profits" are usually dumped right back into the corp and not given to shareholders. Those profits go to pay someone else. Sure, CEOs use the corps as their personal piggy banks, but the shareholders tend to make very little.
As long as it is "free" and "market". Having bunch of huge corporations buying politicians from left and right in order to stop competition and preserve the status quo can only hinder any innovation, progress etc.
It's usually corporations buyling LOCAL politicians.
The more I learn about local government, the more I realize how much more power they have over our lives than the federal government.
They tell you what and where and how you can conduct business. They can take away your property in the name of eminent domain to put in a Walmart.
They determine where roads will go. They controll zoning. The police that come to help you or come for you answer to local government. You get on the wrong side of the mayor or police chief and you're screwed.
And they limit who can provide high speed communications to you. Many local governments limit competition in the cable industry, for example.
I'm not sure how that was flamebait, but I'll try to rephrase the question more politely:
Since gasoline prices are determined largely by OPEC, a centralized, price-setting organization-- how does the consumer have any input into what the price ends up being? As evidenced by the recent significant price increases for gasoline in the US, people do not buy less fuel, even when the price is up significantly.
If you are poor, you do use less gas. I've been there. I grew up poor. The decrease in consumption with higher prices is real. You really do put off driving. You make 1 trip to the supermarket every month instead of every week, for example.
It also doesn't make sense when you look at the issue abstractly. Consider this: if consumption doesn't change, why bother with the lower prices at all? Why not just keep raising them indefinately if people will be fored to keep buying?
So, demand DOES change and this actually helps keep prices in line.
Sellers of gas are looking to maximize price*quantity, but the quantity sold also varies with price. So as a seller of gas, you might end up trying to maximize something like:
p*(25-p^2) = -p^3 +25p
where the demand for gas is 25-p^2 gallons with p as the price (a simple model of demand).
The max profit is at 5sqrt(3)/3 = $2.89/gallon
In this case, raising prices above $2.89/gallon LOWERS profit.
This is a bit like tax rates. Raising taxes to 100% for example is likely to yield 0 in tax revenue. Same thing with a tax rate of 0%. Somewhere in the middle you maximize the value.
As far as OPEC goes, remember that countries only stay in OPEC so long as it serves their needs. If oil prices go too high, there is a strong incentive to "cheat". Oil at $40/barrel may not cause defections, but at $100 or $200, you can bet it would be every country for itself and the cartel would come apart. There would be just too much money to be made.
So, even "price fixing" schemes tend to regulate themselves. As soon as prices get too high, there is a huge economic incentive to break the deal. The cartel tries to find the price that keeps profits up, but also keeps everyone loyal.
And you also have to watch out for competitors. Again, higher prices attract the sharks. Your cartel may be losing business because prices are too high. New businesses might spring up just to get a piece of that bigger pie. Capital flows so freely around the globe that this is a real concern today.
That concept pisses me off, whether it's the basis of a pure capitalism or not.
The basis of pure capitalism is private property.
Who knows? I still don't like it. Why *can't* we all pay the same reasonable price? Why is artificial price differentiation and illusory competition through rebranding and repackaging of identical products a good thing for anyone but the companies succeeding in the gouging end of the spectrum?
It isn't artificial price differentiation. There are real differences in how people value things. That's just a fact.
And what do you think of lowering prices over time? Are those people that buy early at the higher price getting gouged?
And suppose the market is structured in such a way that that selling some of an item BELOW cost makes a profit? Don't think it can happen? It can.
Lets say a manufacturer builds 1000 items at $10 a piece. He tries to sell them at $20 a piece, but only manages to sell 400. He lowers his price on the remaining 600 to $10 a piece but gets no buyer. It looks like he just lost $10,000 - $8,000 = $2,000.
Except now he lowers the price to $5 a piece and sells the 600 for $3000.
$8,000 + $3,000 - $10,000 = $1,000 profit.
This sort of thing HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. It's very difficult to judge just how much demand there is for a new product, yet manufactures usually must build thousands of items in a single run.
So, should the first buyer at $20 a piece go back to the manufacturer and demand his order be repriced at $5 a piece? Remember, it costs the manufacturer $10 a piece to make.
For all we know, the very items mentioned in the article are an example of this.
People like to think there exists "out there" some "objectively correct" price.
That's a complete myth. The "correct price" is what the seller is willing to take and the buyer is willing to give. Everyone is different.
Some people value a product more than others and are willing to pay more. By creating different versions of essentially the same product, the maker can get appropriate compensation for those differences in value.
The parent posters' view is that it is HIS mony that is being spent on the charities but Gates is getting the kudos.
All this money that Gates has represents promises from people to do things for Bill Gates or to give things to Bill Gates in the future.
When he gives the money away, he is in effect redirecting that promised effort towards someone else.
Bill Gates could collect on those promises by spending the money on himself, but by giving it away means someone else gets the benefit of those promises.
So in an odd way, the poster is right about the mis-placed kudos. In effect, when Bill gives the money away, he's getting the public to perform charity work in exchange for getting Microsoft Software.
Still, if you accept the above, you must also accept the idea that, in a way, Bill Gates is giving software away for free since he personally is getting nothing in return.
Is a Millionaire "Next Door" who lives in a $100K house, with a rusting 20 year old car, drinks generic Diet Cola and wears clothes from the Biway extricating any advantage whatsoever from being a millionaire? What's the point of dying with a million bucks if you lived like a po' man your whole life and never enjoyed any of it? Doesn't make any sense. There is more to life than saving to be rich when you die.
The advantage is not having to work at walmart for 20 years from age 60 to 80.
And they don't live like a "po' man". They live within their means. That's a big difference.
Walmart is full of people over 60 that lived beyond their means.
You think avoiding 20 years of "thank you for shopping at Walmart" ISN'T taking advantage of being a millionaire?
You couldn't be more wrong. I live near a large paper mill that produces products for news paper companies. I've lived here all my life. I've seen first hand how they rape the forests, the mountains, etc. Sure, they plant yellow pine because yellow pine grows fast and fits their purposes, but where they plant the yellow pine was once a lush hardware forest of oaks, maples, etc.
I didn't say all pulp comes from managed forests, but much of it does.
And those new tree fields will provide trees that WON'T be taken from old forests. This conversion to all pine means that some forest somewhere doesn't have to get mowed down. And the field will continue to produce the pulp and other products for years to come.
The problem for you, of course, is that it wasn't your forest that was spared and you wish it had been and I can sympathize with that, but even your own house probably occupied land once covered in trees. Whose view have you ruined?
The nice thing is that your house will probably provide shelter for years to come to many different people and trading a bit of forest for that is probably worth it. The same idea applies to managed forests that supply paper.
Actually that's not quite true. The big paper companies do have large forests that they try to manage but they cut trees much faster then they are being replenished. This is why there is relentless pressure to log the national forests. If the harvest from private acreage was sustainable they would never need to log the national forests.
I don't think that follows. It's possible that harvesting from private acreage is sustainable, just more expensive than the option of logging in national forests.
Also keep in mind how much is spent fighting fires. A reasonable amount of logging might limit the spread of fires. And those trees that are burned in these large fires might have actually helped provide someone with a home instead of turning to smoke.
Rock on! Kind of makes you proud to be a Westerner, doesn't it?
What's really bizzare about all of this?
1. Bush says "they hate us for our freedoms" but he doesn't believe it. 2. It's actually true, so he is accidentally right about something. 3. The Osamas of the world think America is morally too socially liberal. 4. so do conservatives in the US. 5. The US conservatives are fighting people they can somewhat agree with to protect the freedom of people they disagree with. 6. The political right doesn't realize it. 7. The political left doesn't realize it.
In his essay "Between Yesterday and Today," Banna [founder of the Muslim Brotherhood] wrote that the colonialist Europeans had expropriated the resources of the Islamic lands and corrupted them with "their murderous germs":
"They imported their half-naked women into these regions, together with their liquors, their theaters, their dance halls, their amusements, their stories, their newspapers, their novels, their whims, their silly games, and their vices. . . . The day must come when the castles of this materialistic civilization will be laid low upon the heads of their inhabitants. "
The Brotherhood's slogan was, and remains, "God is our objective; the Koran is our constitution; the prophet is our leader; struggle is our way; and death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations."
(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.
(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.
[snip]
(iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object.
[snip]
Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?
If culture couldn't be outsourced, terrorists would have must less to be angry about.
How does rap music and def jam suddenly equal thug?
Urban maybe, if you want to call it Urban culture go ahead, but thug is definately the wrong word and makes the person who posted the article sound like a closet racist.
There is nothing wrong with criticizing behavior, even if that behavior happens to correlate with a particular race. That's not racism.
Racism would be claiming that those behaviors are determined by race. That's a very different thing.
But notice how that idea is implicit in YOUR comment. The only way your comment would make sense is if you really think people of a certain race behave that way BECAUSE of their race and that it somehow "innate". That's just one step away from racism. The only difference being that you are witholding moral judgement.
You really make two mistakes: you refrain from being critical of anti-social behavior and you seem to believe that "those people can't help it." Race doesn't determine behavior. This isn't Star Trek.
Main Entry: racism Pronunciation: 'rA-"si-z&m also -"shi- Function: noun 1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race 2 : racial prejudice or discrimination - racist/-sist also -shist/ noun or adjective
When politicians ignore scientific data because it does not fit their political agenda, the populous suffers, and this is not an issue of the bias of UCS. When scientific reports indicate low lead levels harm children, and the government raises acceptable lead levels, this harms the populous. This is not some wishy-washy subjective business. Scientific data is being suppressed. This data relates to our health, or environment, and our future. Selectively ignoring this data translates directly into lower quality of life.
There are no costs or down sides to the lower standard at all? It comes for free? Of course not. So where do you strike the balance? That requires a judgement that goes beyond scientific judgements.
And "lower quality of life" obviously means many different things for many people. There is no single standard, yet you would make your standard the measure for all.
"Subjective values that extend beyond those of science"? What the hell is this?
Consider the set of all possible values. Now take a self-consistant subset. Next remove those values considered scientific. i.e. experimental results, Occam's razor, logical reasoning. What you have left are things like "the thrill gotten from risking life jumping out of a plane with parachute". Parachuting is dangerous, yet fun for some. I don't want to do it, yet I know others value the thrill of jumping more than the feeling of security they get from staying on the ground. Does a parachutest have a lower quality of life because he regularly risks his life for this thrill? So, what does valuing that thrill more than safety have to do with the values of science? It is a value that "extends beyond those of science".
You use the same sort of values to make judgements all the time. Many don't depend on scientific values at all.
It's okay to pollute, increase asthma rates, increase cancer rates, cause brain damage in children, because your "subjective values" are better than science?
Do you drive? Over 40,000 are killed every year in the US in auto accidents. Okay, so should driving be banned? It's obviously dangerous. I suppose you're going to ignore the facts and drive anyway. How unscientific of you!
And I never said "subjective values" are better than scientific values. Scientific values are a subset of all possible subjective values. We need those extra values to make that same sort of decisions the parachutest makes. They are neither better nor worse than the values of science and they vary from person to person. Just because some scientists my have very conservative values in terms of risk/reward doesn't make those preferences universal or scientific.
That was my point. The UCS includes these extra values in making it's judgements. They are extrascientific. Hence the organization is not acting as a scientific body.
This is driving me nuts! WHY is there a tacit assumption that before accepting facts one must evaluate the political bias of the messenger? These are scientific issues being presented by scientists. Why should their political bias matter? If there is a question on fact that is disagreed upon, say so!
It isn't a question of facts. The disagreements that exist are mostly over values, tolerance of risk, and personal preference. These are plainly subjective and can't be resolved by appealing to experiment. They express themselves politically.
Scientists may make many predictions, but the desirability or undesirability of those predicted outcomes varies from person to person. When many are weighed together people often come to very different conclusions.
You ask, "am I a liberal or a conservative, or perhaps just a scientist? "
Calling yourself "scientist" implies some very basic collection of values. You strongly value experiment. You probably appreciate parsimonious descriptions of reality over those that are ad hoc and overly complicated - Occam's razor.
But don't pretend that your feelings concerning the preservation of certain species over mining for coal in West Virginia, for example, are scientific values or that because you are a scientist they are somehow objective scientific facts. These judgements have their origins in values and preferences beyond those called "scientific".
When someone ignores the predictions of some branch of science because they think they aren't important, that's not an example of being anti-science. It is an example of employing subjective values that extend beyond those of science. The science may simply be considered unimportant.
So, are you "just" a scientist? No. Calling yourself scientist only implies that you hold some small set of values we might call scientific values, but these are a small subset of all those things that guide your judgement. Your politics probably says alot about those other subjective values.
The problem I have with the UCS is that they seem to believe these values and preferences are made scientific simply because a group of scientists hold them. That's wrong of course and it's why I claim they are a political organization that includes scientists rather than a scientific body. A scientific body in my judgement should restrict itself to exercising that small subset of all values that are scientific. When they go beyond that they are acting in an extrascientific way. That makes them political.
When the original article came out the conservative media tried to paint the Union of Concerned Scientists as a partisan organization, you seem to have fallen into that trap hook, line, and sinker. Do you honestly think that statements from a scientific body are more partisan than those from a political body?
And like most, you believe one must actually be a scientist to belong to this "scientific body".
From their become a member page:
If you care about clean energy, clean vehicles, global security, food and the environment, and global issues such as climate change, the Union of Concerned Scientists offers a singular opportunity to make a lasting difference.
We combine sound scientific research with effective citizen advocacy. We leverage the commitment of thousands of Americans to foster realistic and credible solutions to problems affecting your community and the world. We care, and we get results.
We are people from all walks of life: parents and businesspeople, biologists and physicists, teachers and students. We are showing that thoughtful action based on the best available science can help safeguard our future.
Please join us.
This is obviously a political organization that happens to include scientists.
Hell, Super Mario Bros 2 came out in 1985. "Western life" wasn't that advanced.
Yeah, but I bet you had soap powder, toothpaste, and pantyhose.
MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, General Secretary, Communist Party, 1985-1991: There was a government commission to examine the problem of women's pantyhose. Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can't resolve the problem of women's pantyhose. There's no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was preposterous and embarrassing to work in such a government.
Slashdot Mirror
And how much energy does it take to produce a single square foot. There is a basic falicy that a lot of folks seem to miss.
This is a good point.
At the same time, though, solar cells last up to about 30 years. So in a way, a solar cell is like a 30 year battery. There may be situations in which bying cheap energy now and "storing" it in a solar cell for 30 years might by less expensive in the long run. They would in effect grabbing more cheap energy early while others have to buy more expensive energy later.
Of course, it probably would mean a net loss of energy as you suggest. So globally, more energy gets wasted with solar cells.
Interestingly, people that don't buy solar cells now save energy for the future, while people that buy them now act in their self-interest, but waste energy overall.
Is anyone surpised that hardware gets cheaper over time?
What really is surprising is that it continues to happen. There is nothing about the universe that guarantees cheaper and better products will be produced over time. It is only human cleverness that sustains this progress. That applies to most products.
Yes, govenment employees should be held responsible as we are paying the tab. But, that thing that produces nothing? It may seem that the government produces nothing, until you start thinking about roads and police and fire fighters and the court system, not to mention the military and missiles and covert operations and other really expensive things.
Hah.
You really think those things take up a significant part of the budget?
They are a drop in a $2 trillion sea of cash.
I'd love it if that were all the government did.
Total budget 2003, $2158 billion.
Defense: $365.3 billion
Homeland security: $22 billion
Justice: $19 billion
Transportation: $13.5 billion
Judicial: $14.6 billion
Thats about 26% of the budget.
Social Security/medicare/medicare/etc. takes about 55%.
The rest goes to things like Agriculture or Health and human services.
All those things you spoke of barely make up 26% of the budget.
And even then, are you sure we're not being made to pay too much for these services?
An organization that has time to spend play solitair all day is a waste of our money and we aren't getting anything in return for that money.
Seriously. Most of the money a companies makes goes to paying people for their work. Even corporate "profits" are usually dumped right back into the corp and not given to shareholders. Those profits go to pay someone else. Sure, CEOs use the corps as their personal piggy banks, but the shareholders tend to make very little.
Take a look at the graph here.
Shareholder dividends dropped like a rock from 1981 at 6% to 1.5% in 2002.
Most corp revenue goes to for materials and employees. Most corp "profits" are never given to shareholders (the owners).
So, I say again, businesses in general are close to profitless anyway.
What I think this article REALLY implies is that decreasing REVENUES are making impossible for some businesses to even stay afloat.
No revenue means no employees.
"What's that?" came right after "How do you calculate distance between two points?" And that was followed by "Of course I graduated high school!"
This came from a developer I worked with. He didn't know how to compute the distance between two points and he didn't know what square root was.
Is it any surprise work is going to countries where their people actually know basic math?
Thank you public school system.
As long as it is "free" and "market". Having bunch of huge corporations buying politicians from left and right in order to stop competition and preserve the status quo can only hinder any innovation, progress etc.
It's usually corporations buyling LOCAL politicians.
The more I learn about local government, the more I realize how much more power they have over our lives than the federal government.
They tell you what and where and how you can conduct business. They can take away your property in the name of eminent domain to put in a Walmart.
They determine where roads will go. They controll zoning. The police that come to help you or come for you answer to local government. You get on the wrong side of the mayor or police chief and you're screwed.
And they limit who can provide high speed communications to you. Many local governments limit competition in the cable industry, for example.
I'm not sure how that was flamebait, but I'll try to rephrase the question more politely:
Since gasoline prices are determined largely by OPEC, a centralized, price-setting organization-- how does the consumer have any input into what the price ends up being? As evidenced by the recent significant price increases for gasoline in the US, people do not buy less fuel, even when the price is up significantly.
If you are poor, you do use less gas. I've been there. I grew up poor. The decrease in consumption with higher prices is real. You really do put off driving. You make 1 trip to the supermarket every month instead of every week, for example.
It also doesn't make sense when you look at the issue abstractly. Consider this: if consumption doesn't change, why bother with the lower prices at all? Why not just keep raising them indefinately if people will be fored to keep buying?
So, demand DOES change and this actually helps keep prices in line.
Sellers of gas are looking to maximize price*quantity, but the quantity sold also varies with price. So as a seller of gas, you might end up trying to maximize something like:
p*(25-p^2) = -p^3 +25p
where the demand for gas is 25-p^2 gallons with p as the price (a simple model of demand).
The max profit is at 5sqrt(3)/3 = $2.89/gallon
In this case, raising prices above $2.89/gallon LOWERS profit.
This is a bit like tax rates. Raising taxes to 100% for example is likely to yield 0 in tax revenue. Same thing with a tax rate of 0%. Somewhere in the middle you maximize the value.
As far as OPEC goes, remember that countries only stay in OPEC so long as it serves their needs. If oil prices go too high, there is a strong incentive to "cheat". Oil at $40/barrel may not cause defections, but at $100 or $200, you can bet it would be every country for itself and the cartel would come apart. There would be just too much money to be made.
So, even "price fixing" schemes tend to regulate themselves. As soon as prices get too high, there is a huge economic incentive to break the deal. The cartel tries to find the price that keeps profits up, but also keeps everyone loyal.
And you also have to watch out for competitors. Again, higher prices attract the sharks. Your cartel may be losing business because prices are too high. New businesses might spring up just to get a piece of that bigger pie. Capital flows so freely around the globe that this is a real concern today.
That concept pisses me off, whether it's the basis of a pure capitalism or not.
The basis of pure capitalism is private property.
Who knows? I still don't like it. Why *can't* we all pay the same reasonable price? Why is artificial price differentiation and illusory competition through rebranding and repackaging of identical products a good thing for anyone but the companies succeeding in the gouging end of the spectrum?
It isn't artificial price differentiation. There are real differences in how people value things. That's just a fact.
And what do you think of lowering prices over time? Are those people that buy early at the higher price getting gouged?
And suppose the market is structured in such a way that that selling some of an item BELOW cost makes a profit? Don't think it can happen? It can.
Lets say a manufacturer builds 1000 items at $10 a piece. He tries to sell them at $20 a piece, but only manages to sell 400. He lowers his price on the remaining 600 to $10 a piece but gets no buyer. It looks like he just lost $10,000 - $8,000 = $2,000.
Except now he lowers the price to $5 a piece and sells the 600 for $3000.
$8,000 + $3,000 - $10,000 = $1,000 profit.
This sort of thing HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. It's very difficult to judge just how much demand there is for a new product, yet manufactures usually must build thousands of items in a single run.
So, should the first buyer at $20 a piece go back to the manufacturer and demand his order be repriced at $5 a piece? Remember, it costs the manufacturer $10 a piece to make.
For all we know, the very items mentioned in the article are an example of this.
People like to think there exists "out there" some "objectively correct" price.
That's a complete myth. The "correct price" is what the seller is willing to take and the buyer is willing to give. Everyone is different.
Some people value a product more than others and are willing to pay more. By creating different versions of essentially the same product, the maker can get appropriate compensation for those differences in value.
You probably were modded down because people still confuse race and culture. They misinterpret cultural criticism as racial criticism.
Remember, a lot of the people around here watch Star Trek, where race == culture.
The parent posters' view is that it is HIS mony that is being spent on the charities but Gates is getting the kudos.
All this money that Gates has represents promises from people to do things for Bill Gates or to give things to Bill Gates in the future.
When he gives the money away, he is in effect redirecting that promised effort towards someone else.
Bill Gates could collect on those promises by spending the money on himself, but by giving it away means someone else gets the benefit of those promises.
So in an odd way, the poster is right about the mis-placed kudos. In effect, when Bill gives the money away, he's getting the public to perform charity work in exchange for getting Microsoft Software.
Still, if you accept the above, you must also accept the idea that, in a way, Bill Gates is giving software away for free since he personally is getting nothing in return.
You haven't done much video editing, have you? Or rendered a large picture in Photoshop?
:)
I have an in-law that does photo restoration/editing.
The biggest bottleneck for her isn't the CPU or ram - it's i/o to/from disk.
Hey, I told her to go SCSI, but she didn't listen
CPUs stopped being responsible for delays a long time ago. Most of the time people spend waiting is on disk or network i/o.
Is a Millionaire "Next Door" who lives in a $100K house, with a rusting 20 year old car, drinks generic Diet Cola and wears clothes from the Biway extricating any advantage whatsoever from being a millionaire? What's the point of dying with a million bucks if you lived like a po' man your whole life and never enjoyed any of it? Doesn't make any sense. There is more to life than saving to be rich when you die.
The advantage is not having to work at walmart for 20 years from age 60 to 80.
And they don't live like a "po' man". They live within their means. That's a big difference.
Walmart is full of people over 60 that lived beyond their means.
You think avoiding 20 years of "thank you for shopping at Walmart" ISN'T taking advantage of being a millionaire?
You couldn't be more wrong. I live near a large paper mill that produces products for news paper companies. I've lived here all my life. I've seen first hand how they rape the forests, the mountains, etc. Sure, they plant yellow pine because yellow pine grows fast and fits their purposes, but where they plant the yellow pine was once a lush hardware forest of oaks, maples, etc.
I didn't say all pulp comes from managed forests, but much of it does.
And those new tree fields will provide trees that WON'T be taken from old forests. This conversion to all pine means that some forest somewhere doesn't have to get mowed down. And the field will continue to produce the pulp and other products for years to come.
The problem for you, of course, is that it wasn't your forest that was spared and you wish it had been and I can sympathize with that, but even your own house probably occupied land once covered in trees. Whose view have you ruined?
The nice thing is that your house will probably provide shelter for years to come to many different people and trading a bit of forest for that is probably worth it. The same idea applies to managed forests that supply paper.
Actually that's not quite true. The big paper companies do have large forests that they try to manage but they cut trees much faster then they are being replenished. This is why there is relentless pressure to log the national forests. If the harvest from private acreage was sustainable they would never need to log the national forests.
I don't think that follows. It's possible that harvesting from private acreage is sustainable, just more expensive than the option of logging in national forests.
Also keep in mind how much is spent fighting fires. A reasonable amount of logging might limit the spread of fires. And those trees that are burned in these large fires might have actually helped provide someone with a home instead of turning to smoke.
Bad news: We missed printing half of our papers.
Good news: Rainforest saved.
Actually, most of the wood pulp comes from trees grown in managed forests where trees are replanted to replace the old ones.
So it's a bit like growing corn or wheat to eat.
Strangely, we don't see many people shouting "save the corn!".
Rock on! Kind of makes you proud to be a Westerner, doesn't it?
What's really bizzare about all of this?
1. Bush says "they hate us for our freedoms" but he doesn't believe it.
2. It's actually true, so he is accidentally right about something.
3. The Osamas of the world think America is morally too socially liberal.
4. so do conservatives in the US.
5. The US conservatives are fighting people they can somewhat agree with to protect the freedom of people they disagree with.
6. The political right doesn't realize it.
7. The political left doesn't realize it.
There is one thing that can't be outsourced. Culture.
Don't be so sure. People are surprisingly quick to adopt the cultures of others.
That happens to be one of Radical Islams greatest fears: cultural imperialism. Our ideas about freedom have been called "Murderous Germs".
From an article about the origins of fundamentalist Islam:
In his essay "Between Yesterday and Today," Banna [founder of the Muslim Brotherhood] wrote that the colonialist Europeans had expropriated the resources of the Islamic lands and corrupted them with "their murderous germs":
"They imported their half-naked women into these regions, together with
their liquors, their theaters, their dance halls, their amusements, their
stories, their newspapers, their novels, their whims, their silly games, and
their vices. . . . The day must come when the castles of this materialistic
civilization will be laid low upon the heads of their inhabitants. "
The Brotherhood's slogan was, and remains, "God is our objective; the Koran
is our constitution; the prophet is our leader; struggle is our way; and
death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations."
Or how about Osama's Letter to America:
(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.
(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.
[snip]
(iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object.
[snip]
Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?
If culture couldn't be outsourced, terrorists would have must less to be angry about.
Interestingly enough, the Ashkenazi Jews from around Germany and Poland have the highest IQ of any ethnicity: about 115.
It's ironic that Hitler could have won the war through superior technology had he not tried to rid the country of it's best and brightest.
That's a much bigger deal than just outsourcing. It says alot about how clever Oracle thinks those from the US are.
Perhaps too many grow up thinking they ought to be playing tennis or being musicians. Those are the most important people, right?
Those are the images the media gives them, so it must be true.
How does rap music and def jam suddenly equal thug?
/-sist also -shist/ noun or adjective
Urban maybe, if you want to call it Urban culture go ahead, but thug is definately the wrong word and makes the person who posted the article sound like a closet racist.
There is nothing wrong with criticizing behavior, even if that behavior happens to correlate with a particular race. That's not racism.
Racism would be claiming that those behaviors are determined by race. That's a very different thing.
But notice how that idea is implicit in YOUR comment. The only way your comment would make sense is if you really think people of a certain race behave that way BECAUSE of their race and that it somehow "innate". That's just one step away from racism. The only difference being that you are witholding moral judgement.
You really make two mistakes: you refrain from being critical of anti-social behavior and you seem to believe that "those people can't help it." Race doesn't determine behavior. This isn't Star Trek.
Main Entry: racism
Pronunciation: 'rA-"si-z&m also -"shi-
Function: noun
1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 : racial prejudice or discrimination
- racist
When politicians ignore scientific data because it does not fit their political agenda, the populous suffers, and this is not an issue of the bias of UCS. When scientific reports indicate low lead levels harm children, and the government raises acceptable lead levels, this harms the populous. This is not some wishy-washy subjective business. Scientific data is being suppressed. This data relates to our health, or environment, and our future. Selectively ignoring this data translates directly into lower quality of life.
There are no costs or down sides to the lower standard at all? It comes for free? Of course not. So where do you strike the balance? That requires a judgement that goes beyond scientific judgements.
And "lower quality of life" obviously means many different things for many people. There is no single standard, yet you would make your standard the measure for all.
"Subjective values that extend beyond those of science"? What the hell is this?
Consider the set of all possible values. Now take a self-consistant subset. Next remove those values considered scientific. i.e. experimental results, Occam's razor, logical reasoning. What you have left are things like "the thrill gotten from risking life jumping out of a plane with parachute". Parachuting is dangerous, yet fun for some. I don't want to do it, yet I know others value the thrill of jumping more than the feeling of security they get from staying on the ground. Does a parachutest have a lower quality of life because he regularly risks his life for this thrill? So, what does valuing that thrill more than safety have to do with the values of science? It is a value that "extends beyond those of science".
You use the same sort of values to make judgements all the time. Many don't depend on scientific values at all.
It's okay to pollute, increase asthma rates, increase cancer rates, cause brain damage in children, because your "subjective values" are better than science?
Do you drive? Over 40,000 are killed every year in the US in auto accidents. Okay, so should driving be banned? It's obviously dangerous. I suppose you're going to ignore the facts and drive anyway. How unscientific of you!
And I never said "subjective values" are better than scientific values. Scientific values are a subset of all possible subjective values. We need those extra values to make that same sort of decisions the parachutest makes. They are neither better nor worse than the values of science and they vary from person to person. Just because some scientists my have very conservative values in terms of risk/reward doesn't make those preferences universal or scientific.
That was my point. The UCS includes these extra values in making it's judgements. They are extrascientific. Hence the organization is not acting as a scientific body.
This is driving me nuts! WHY is there a tacit assumption that before accepting facts one must evaluate the political bias of the messenger? These are scientific issues being presented by scientists. Why should their political bias matter? If there is a question on fact that is disagreed upon, say so!
It isn't a question of facts. The disagreements that exist are mostly over values, tolerance of risk, and personal preference. These are plainly subjective and can't be resolved by appealing to experiment. They express themselves politically.
Scientists may make many predictions, but the desirability or undesirability of those predicted outcomes varies from person to person. When many are weighed together people often come to very different conclusions.
You ask,
"am I a liberal or a conservative, or perhaps just a scientist? "
Calling yourself "scientist" implies some very basic collection of values. You strongly value experiment. You probably appreciate parsimonious descriptions of reality over those that are ad hoc and overly complicated - Occam's razor.
But don't pretend that your feelings concerning the preservation of certain species over mining for coal in West Virginia, for example, are scientific values or that because you are a scientist they are somehow objective scientific facts. These judgements have their origins in values and preferences beyond those called "scientific".
When someone ignores the predictions of some branch of science because they think they aren't important, that's not an example of being anti-science. It is an example of employing subjective values that extend beyond those of science. The science may simply be considered unimportant.
So, are you "just" a scientist? No. Calling yourself scientist only implies that you hold some small set of values we might call scientific values, but these are a small subset of all those things that guide your judgement. Your politics probably says alot about those other subjective values.
The problem I have with the UCS is that they seem to believe these values and preferences are made scientific simply because a group of scientists hold them. That's wrong of course and it's why I claim they are a political organization that includes scientists rather than a scientific body. A scientific body in my judgement should restrict itself to exercising that small subset of all values that are scientific. When they go beyond that they are acting in an extrascientific way. That makes them political.
When the original article came out the conservative media tried to paint the Union of Concerned Scientists as a partisan organization, you seem to have fallen into that trap hook, line, and sinker.
Do you honestly think that statements from a scientific body are more partisan than those from a political body?
And like most, you believe one must actually be a scientist to belong to this "scientific body".
From their become a member page:
If you care about clean energy, clean vehicles, global security, food and the environment, and global issues such as climate change, the Union of Concerned Scientists offers a singular opportunity to make a lasting difference.
We combine sound scientific research with effective citizen advocacy. We leverage the commitment of thousands of Americans to foster realistic and credible solutions to problems affecting your community and the world. We care, and we get results.
We are people from all walks of life: parents and businesspeople, biologists and physicists, teachers and students. We are showing that thoughtful action based on the best available science can help safeguard our future.
Please join us.
This is obviously a political organization that happens to include scientists.
Hell, Super Mario Bros 2 came out in 1985. "Western life" wasn't that advanced.
Yeah, but I bet you had soap powder, toothpaste, and pantyhose.
MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, General Secretary, Communist Party, 1985-1991: There was a government commission to examine the problem of women's pantyhose. Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can't resolve the problem of women's pantyhose. There's no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was preposterous and embarrassing to work in such a government.