Aldrin grew up in a lower-Middle class family; his father was career military. In those days unless one had very high rank or married into society, working in the military was generally looked down upon. There was some temporary cachet accorded to members during WWII. So, no, not privileged.
He was not a test pilot, but he was of the Caucasian persuasion. (Usage from Hill Street Blues; you don't like, go look it up.) He had fairly extensive flight experience and taught flying. Scratch autistic.
He flew 66 combat missions in Korea where he shot down two Migs. Hmm. Well, according to some, anyone in the military qualifies as a sociopath. So that's your call. Just out of curiosity, tho, when was the last time you put your life on the line or got shot at for anything? Or honored an oath you swore?
I don't understand how he got an entire country to build rockets and such for him; perhaps you'd care to explain that a bit. Also, looked to me he was being more inclusive than exclusive, but again, that's your call.
It's even more funny that you're modded funny. It doesn't take a conspiracy, not even collusion. Folks up at the top of the heap like the status quo - it's making money for them. Measures which improve the existing structure are good. Measures which might change it in any appreciable way to interfere with the current system are bad.
One doesn't have to buy and sell all the politicians, only influence enough of them to keep things running your way. Things such as who's delivering the goods and who isn't, what policies are working and which aren't, which bills might change things.... well, you get the idea. These things are talked about informally in informal conversations at the country club, fund-raiser, art museum opening, what ever. General agreement happens, it doesn't need to be directed.
Finally, once one reaches CEO at a 500, you're made and you've got it made. You could retire anytime if your needs are not extravagant, but if you want to spend a mil on a painting and only have 50 in the bank, then you gotta stick around for a bit. There are no job worries; with golden parachutes, even if you tank a company, you just fall back on directorships for a while.
Everything else is noise, if you happen to notice it at all.
And that's why nothing will happen to appreciably change anything, according to whatever it is you think something could or should be changed. Things such as ACA, which some seem to think changes things, for instance, is of no concern to TPTB; it's beneath their notice. It does make a nice diversion for the hoi polloi, though. The government defaulting might affect some investments, but there are their people to manage such things, along with the costs of a season at Gstaad or the Riviera or where ever it is they like to go for R&R.
(Years ago by happenstance I got a glimpse of a very minor bit of this - it was an eye opener and made a lasting impression. The world in which those at the top of the food chain live is not the same one many of us live in - it's not a matter of degree, like some people being rich; it's a matter of kind, even alien, when it comes to world-view. They may eat some of the same foods, drive some of the same cars, some even like Levi jeans, but the real differences are staggering, and boggling.)
Here's one thing that's long bugged me, the lack on the part of many to differentiate 'twixt rich and wealthy. Best definition I've come across operationally is that the rich have more money, the wealthy own the means by which the rich make that money. At the low end that means owning say-so stakes in a variety of corporations and banks, as an example. For the high end I can't even usefully speculate.
So when the question arises, such as "Why isn't there more outrage over....?", I sometimes wonder, "Why do you ask?"
As a few have pointed out, democracy carries the seed of its destruction. Republics or monarchy/republics in are maybe more durable, mostly; the Swiss, for instance, seem to be doing OK so far, and the Brits have managed since Cromwell. I think so far the families comprising a fair sampling of shadow plutocracies and the like are probably longer lasting. It seems that wealth after sufficient concentration finds enough custodians to maintain itself, whatever the public faces of it may be, and doesn't need to concern itself with government per se, and something like the October revolution is not going to happen again. What little countries might do, here and there, does not matter.
"The outrage might be stronger here on slashdot, but most of us haven't heard a single new revelation, only confirmations."
I don't see where more revelations are needed for someone to be outraged or even concerned. What I do see are many who somehow knew most all this beforehand and weren't concerned - among other things they figure since they're making good money and their skills are in sufficient demand, that they have nothing to worry about so long as their personal habits don't draw too much attention, because they're "in tight" with the status quo, so why rock the boat. It's somebody else's problem, and anyway, what can anyone do?
As for the general public, TV tells them what's important and what to feel about it - not much thought needed, Citizen.
Never underestimate the willingness and ability of programmers to spend time making up nifty new stuff just for grins (or shits and giggles), or LOLs/lulz, as you young'uns say.
LOLCODE. Interpreters and compilers, too. Wow, man, just wow. I tip my hat in amazement and respect.
Oh, wow, kiddo, that is some beautiful, evil stuff. I was laughing hard enough by the second page I had to stop. That's a demolition derby of coding practice. (Sorry 'bout the car ref.)
Agreed, re service structure matching to service need. Further, that properly designed and administered service provided by government, where applicable, can cost less in overhead, other factors being equal. I have no ideological bias about this stuff; again, it's matching need to good solution.
Problems in any organization are mission creep and empire building. There's a third one: give a person in a cubicle more power than they actually need to do their job and they will use it to create more regulations than are needed to get the job done; it's a form of tyranny.
My view viz. government is two-fold: there are the functions set out by the constitution, and there are the functions where government can better provide that which people cannot do as well by themselves. Examples abound and are open for discussion. Usually government is in a better position to do much in the way of infrastructure - roads, waterway management, apportioning electromagnetic spectrum, some utilities (at least insofar as oversight), and in ensuring some kind of level playing field for producers and consumers in several areas as problems arise - standards for foods, public health, and the like. Sometimes government can do better and more affordably what private providers cannot, or where they otherwise would use their position to screw people over.
There are always going to be areas of contention, and one of the things lacking has been public involvement; often the people most affected will be those who don't or won't participate in discussion, or involve themselves in self-governing. Historically we collectively turn matters over to those we happen to elect, trusting in them to use their intellects and integrity to do for us. We now see in many areas how well this hasn't turned out. I have no magic wand or good ideas on how to change this.
That's one of the things, it's come up in other discussions - one on drug laws and related issues: when reasonable people, even from a variety of diverging views, cast aside any ideological biases, arriving at potential good solutions is possible, simply because, IMO, it becomes more of an engineering and cost/benefit thing - thus straightforward problem solving. As you may know, getting people to that point is not always a trivial exercise. [grin]
Single-payer, once ideology is removed - usually the straw-man bugaboo of "socialized" - it's generally simple. The "devil is [not] in the details", it's in design: fitting the shapes and mechanics to a given populace with it's unique social, economic, and political structure. Even here, it's often more of matter of flavor than structure.
SP doesn't, or wouldn't, given good design, preclude or punish alternate personal choice. There are plenty of examples showing what works and what needs improvement. Let history guide rather than provide red-flag examples for demagogues. Edge cases usually show hidden ideology or design flaws. Put the rest to fair arbitration with bias to helping the human get treatment w/o breaking him. All the arguments against of which I'm aware fall away when clearly examined. But being nothing more than a 'concerned citizen' means I may have missed something. That's why we [need to] have good people doing fair, open, problem-solving, mindsets.
We don't have to agree, a priori; we need only seek making sure that we don't screw people trying to see a doctor and get treatment. Again, prevention beats crisis. It may sound stupid as all get out, but take a handful, a dozen people dedicated to real fix, given 'em research runners, stick 'em in a room for a couple of weeks with all the pizza and beer they need, problem solved. And for output, if nothing else try a few different things, region to region, demographic to demographic - in engineering there's room for experiment and prototyping. Whatever came out of that room would be a long sight better than the mess we have now.
But, as others have pointed out, getting to the point of being able to even have a real discussion (drugs, security, immigration, voting rights, national ID, surveillance, secret courts, budget, wars, neutral Internet, intellectual property, patents, prescription medicines, genetic research, TSA, trade agreements, outsourcing and offshoring, fracking, strip mining, etc.) has been... problematic. What I fear most now is that in many areas unless (was it John Brunner, "The Sheep Look Up") "the public" wakes up and presses for discussion, if they even see the need for it, we're screwed.
We've turned ourselves into a nation in economic thrall to a group of multi-nationals, a handful of banks, the interests of a few hundred who own half the country, and get all our commercial media - including news - through six companies.
But, anyway: cheers, and thank you; good luck to us all.
Holy... wow. This and a handful of other posts were eye-openers for me. Thanks, all. Sheesh, I gotta get out more. I mean, I can sort of forgive my ignorance because of not having need for exposure in this area, but to be that ignorant of it...
My limit was wood working. People who do stuff in metals have always amazed me. Even straight-forward mill work is neat; then add in 'tuned' forging, heat treating, all that, it's half-magic to me, let alone the ways to forecast and arrive at particular crystalline structures. Reminds me of some of the stuff my p-chem prof showed us about the X-ray crystallography he was doing in the Sixties. Cold-spray, flame spray, wonderful stuff. We do all these neat things and can't have a budget or privacy - amazing again.
I swear, this life-extension and brain-transplant or transfer into clones or androids has gotta come through soon and be affordable on Medicare, 'cuz I've already got a lifetime or two backlog of reading to do just from the last year from/. alone. That, or become comfortably adept at Buddhist simplification.
Or someone recognizing that coffee is the vehicle of a drug delivery system and that that someone needs some WD-40 for the brain NOW, not in however long it takes to make a new cuppa.
When I creak and groan and hobble out of bed if there's a half-mug of coffee from last night I don't even bother nuking it. THEN I can proceed to combine nicely-roasted beans and filtered water into something more palatable. If there's no coffee when I awake do not approach unless maybe the house is burning - and even then I might check to see how fast it's spreading to see if there's enough time to make a pot.
Now then, this 3-D metal printing sounds interesting; seems like there are some nifty possibilities - a multi-stage, multi-route valve for hydraulics, regulators, cooling loops or fractional distilling (and really almost a logic gate of sorts), maybe; rocket engines of course; submersibles; mechanical locks; a novel clamp or fastener; obviously for prototyping, just-in-time spare parts, one-off manufacturing; artists ought to be able to have some fun with it; and maybe even a slick coffee maker in the offing.
With the richness of inputs, being able to seamlessly place everywhere in a piece the optimum alloy for its characteristics rather boggles, and that very seamlessness might ease constraints from the various mechanical co-efficients of this and that. I'd imagine one could build in some interesting electrical properties as well. I don't suppose one could make a solid metal transistor, though, and even if, who'd want a forty-pound CPU?
Not that it means all that much or is terribly pertinent, but Igor Sikorsky has been one of my lifelong heroes, going back to the Fifties. Everything I've learned of him since sustains that opinion. The man was inventive, persistent, dedicated, hard-working, and humble besides. (My only claim to private fame is that at the age of eight I managed to independently work out a linkage needed to control rotor pitch - the same linkage he arrived at. However stupid it sounds, I felt a certain kinship in that. "Engineering will out." and so forth.)
Thanks for that. I'd found it once, years back, lost my copy.
Just musing, mind, but I wonder which of various businesses would be opposed to what would in all likelihood become a source of plentiful and thus very cheap electricity.... and which of those businesses routinely is among the largest lobbying efforts in Congress both in terms of dollars and people, and which routinely makes consistently very large campaign contributions at national and state levels to members of both main political parties.
The numbers have improved. The economy has not, nor has the reality for most people. Follow the money. Most of it has gone upward into the hands of fewer and fewer people. It hasn't come back out.
The facts are freely and honestly available, mostly sourced from government stats - and I haven't seen many accusing, for instance, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of cooking the books. Unlike the big banks, who, if you will recall, played a big hand in causing a planetary depression and where, again, a few people made a lot of money and skated.
Last I looked (and going by memory only) real income for lower 2/3 of populace has not equaled what it was in '74. Boomers' grandchildren are the first generation in the history of the nation where their collective aspirations to become better off than their parents comes a cropper. All discernible trends of which I'm aware show no prospect of that changing, nor for their offspring. The proceeds of productivity and increases in same increasingly are concentrated in fewer hands - and contrary to all fervent assertions, little of it is used to invest back into the economy. Again, follow the money. See where it goes, and see what comes out, and where and how.
But yeah, Wall Street is doing OK. Bully for them, and, I'm guessing, bully for you, too. Cheers.
All I know is the past three times I've been to Social Security things have gone well, although once the wait time was a shade over a half hour; in all cases the people working there were courteous, pleasant, and very helpful.
I went to DMV to get an ID card for voting several months ago. (My last visit, in '91, was over two hours standing in line, although the people themselves were decent enough.) I went in, was in a short line for five minutes. Got 'processed' and had pic taken in less than three minutes and all pleasantly done, then sat in a padded chair [!] for 18 of the forecast 21 minutes. Got to window, had beaucoup papers ready, all she asked for was last ID, looked at it, tinked in some stuff, said "that's all I need" and 90 seconds later I had a certified piece of paper temporary ID and was good to go. Blew me away, man. Best DMV experience by far I've had in past fifty years, and better than most any I've heard of.
After reading his piece on Wired I found it in the main to be reasonable and balanced; it lays out sensible policies that can be for the most part readily done, and restore to coverage of law that which has been done out-law. It specifies what can be collected, how it's done, and how it can be used. It provides for proper police procedure and as close as possible precludes a police state - which I think most of us can agree with.
Whatever his views on other things, whatever his opinions on others things, as found on his personal site, and what one might thing of all that, I have no trouble differentiating public RMS from private RMS. When he makes sense (which IMO is more often than many give him credit for) I think it's worth paying attention to.
In short, his proposals on Wired make sense. They can be done, can work, and restore privacy and rule of law.
I'm retired and receive OASDI. Because that amount is so low, I also get a small SSI check. Lastly, because my income is so low, my state pays my Medicaid premium. Given how my life has worked out thus far, I know it was a close-run thing and I'm fortunate for what I do have. So thankfully I don't have to go through what I see other people having to deal with.
Point is that for grins I used the calculator at Kaiser - http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/ - and got a shock. Using my income, it turned out that my total premium was essentially equal to said income. I was too poor for subsidy. (Results are posted in my journal.)
WTF?
That's some crazy shit, man, number ten thousand. Whether the Prez intended to sell out to the oligarchs or has no balls I dunno; at this late stage it really doesn't matter, I suppose. I think he should have pushed for single-payer right from the start. Alternatives would have been to expand Medicare for all and fold in Medicaid via a method like the exchanges (w/o the craziness, of course) or to have said that what the House gets, all get, or vice versa.
And if this hidden no-privacy shit is so, then the ACA sucks beyond belief. Thing is, there are some likeable provisions - no turn-down for pre-existing conditions, emphasis on results - outcome based, with an eye towards prevention rather than crisis, publicly posted rates for procedures and tests from all providers, and the attempt at rational fee structure. One key fuckup was folding to Pharma.
And yes, for all that's right, ER for E stuff, clinics for the rest. Kicker is ensuring that clinics are available - I do note that some companies, Walgreen's for example, are getting into that and that should help. I've lived in too many places where you either could afford to go to a doctor or you went without. That situation leads to what are effectively a lot of walking wounded. Healthy (and happy) workers work better. Too many in power can't seem to get that simple thought into their heads - that, or they get their jollies from the pain of others.
Case in point: all those crying about "socialized" this and that the past forty years should take note of the study done by the GAO (or maybe it was OMB, my memory sucks) back during Nixon. It showed that the economic loss due to simple illness alone was more than three times the cost of the most expansive national plan ever proposed. If memory serves it's one of the arguments Nixon used in his effort to get a national health plan.
There's a lot of good people out there, living on a pretty decent planet despite all its dangers; it never ceases to amaze me that we spend our lives with so many getting fucked over by so few. From my own life and what I know of others' I know that life can be hard enough all by itself. We don't need assholes making it worse. (I apologize for all the profanity. It's no excuse, I'm just really browned off by all this... stuff. Selah.)
There is a type of bureaucratic mindset pervading the national scene based on zero-sum-game rice bowls. It's mostly mid-level but greatly aggravated and abetted by every agency head who's been an empire builder, as you observe viz. NASA from the Apollo days. I've long had to keep separate in my mind the management-NASA and what I consider the real NASA where the work gets done. It's unfortunate for all concerned that the former tends to overshadow the latter, in the public's eye and in reality.
Bureaucracy from its Chinese and Turkish roots has been a great way to screen for capable people to administer to the concerns of the commonweal; given human nature and ways of gaming the system (that originally were structurally mitigated) it's also been a haven for small-minded weasels to wield power far in excess of their talents.
I rather like the idea of crowd-funded, subscribed (thus, invested) commercial efforts for specific projects.
"There's not even the appearance of logic or reason in our public debate, it is completely fueled by emotion and political dogma."
Bingo.
I'd add: and those debates are variously framed, distorted, and steered, by the six companies that own all the big media companies, and many of the smaller ones as well. The six essentially can have control over what the public sees and how they see it. (As but an example, have you noticed the coverage of the efforts of the several intelligence and security agencies lately? From what I see on the networks' news, it's more important to know where "the traitor Snowden" is hiding than to discuss the issues he brought to the fore. That is, when it's not competing with the latest dismissal from DWTS or somesuch.)
From my forty-plus years of adult life I'm hard-pressed to recall any public debate couched in reasonable terms.
NASA has been given manned missions from time to time by Congress. They also have manned missions they'd like to do. However, going back to their NACA roots, NASA has always been about research, first and foremost; and only some of that requires manned craft.
If you look at the totality of NASA's projects only a small portion involves manned flight, now and historically. In that regard, the whole Apollo-era was an anomaly, albeit with the sustained role for manned testbeds going all the way back to Langley Field and now at Edwards and a few other sites.
The "obsession" is mis-perception, not reality. ISS, for instance, is an international outgrowth of various research efforts but reflective also of political diktat, and but a relatively small part of NASA's overall work. Such manned flight as it is now is helping to expand our knowledge in a variety of useful areas. You'd know that if you looked into to things a bit.
Follow links, dig, think. All that you command is out there and for the most part easily found.
The burden is not upon the site's maker to do your bidding. Rather, it is upon you, to get your mind off its couch and do something to help - and you know you could, if you wanted to. It's up to you, to carp from the sidelines or to put your efforts to something.
You may have reason to know that it's easy to sneer and harder to build.
I'd add only that a significant portion of the eventual cost is to be laid directly at the feet of Congress due to the stop-and-re-start costs - it's costing a lot of time, money, and effort to get everything back up to speed and proper condition; further, the dollar cost is higher due inflation since '96.
Slashdot Mirror
Aldrin grew up in a lower-Middle class family; his father was career military. In those days unless one had very high rank or married into society, working in the military was generally looked down upon. There was some temporary cachet accorded to members during WWII. So, no, not privileged.
He was not a test pilot, but he was of the Caucasian persuasion. (Usage from Hill Street Blues; you don't like, go look it up.) He had fairly extensive flight experience and taught flying. Scratch autistic.
He flew 66 combat missions in Korea where he shot down two Migs. Hmm. Well, according to some, anyone in the military qualifies as a sociopath. So that's your call. Just out of curiosity, tho, when was the last time you put your life on the line or got shot at for anything? Or honored an oath you swore?
I don't understand how he got an entire country to build rockets and such for him; perhaps you'd care to explain that a bit. Also, looked to me he was being more inclusive than exclusive, but again, that's your call.
Source: Wikipedia, et al.
It's even more funny that you're modded funny. It doesn't take a conspiracy, not even collusion. Folks up at the top of the heap like the status quo - it's making money for them. Measures which improve the existing structure are good. Measures which might change it in any appreciable way to interfere with the current system are bad.
One doesn't have to buy and sell all the politicians, only influence enough of them to keep things running your way. Things such as who's delivering the goods and who isn't, what policies are working and which aren't, which bills might change things.... well, you get the idea. These things are talked about informally in informal conversations at the country club, fund-raiser, art museum opening, what ever. General agreement happens, it doesn't need to be directed.
Finally, once one reaches CEO at a 500, you're made and you've got it made. You could retire anytime if your needs are not extravagant, but if you want to spend a mil on a painting and only have 50 in the bank, then you gotta stick around for a bit. There are no job worries; with golden parachutes, even if you tank a company, you just fall back on directorships for a while.
Everything else is noise, if you happen to notice it at all.
And that's why nothing will happen to appreciably change anything, according to whatever it is you think something could or should be changed. Things such as ACA, which some seem to think changes things, for instance, is of no concern to TPTB; it's beneath their notice. It does make a nice diversion for the hoi polloi, though. The government defaulting might affect some investments, but there are their people to manage such things, along with the costs of a season at Gstaad or the Riviera or where ever it is they like to go for R&R.
(Years ago by happenstance I got a glimpse of a very minor bit of this - it was an eye opener and made a lasting impression. The world in which those at the top of the food chain live is not the same one many of us live in - it's not a matter of degree, like some people being rich; it's a matter of kind, even alien, when it comes to world-view. They may eat some of the same foods, drive some of the same cars, some even like Levi jeans, but the real differences are staggering, and boggling.)
Here's one thing that's long bugged me, the lack on the part of many to differentiate 'twixt rich and wealthy. Best definition I've come across operationally is that the rich have more money, the wealthy own the means by which the rich make that money. At the low end that means owning say-so stakes in a variety of corporations and banks, as an example. For the high end I can't even usefully speculate.
So when the question arises, such as "Why isn't there more outrage over....?", I sometimes wonder, "Why do you ask?"
As a few have pointed out, democracy carries the seed of its destruction. Republics or monarchy/republics in are maybe more durable, mostly; the Swiss, for instance, seem to be doing OK so far, and the Brits have managed since Cromwell. I think so far the families comprising a fair sampling of shadow plutocracies and the like are probably longer lasting. It seems that wealth after sufficient concentration finds enough custodians to maintain itself, whatever the public faces of it may be, and doesn't need to concern itself with government per se, and something like the October revolution is not going to happen again. What little countries might do, here and there, does not matter.
"The outrage might be stronger here on slashdot, but most of us haven't heard a single new revelation, only confirmations."
I don't see where more revelations are needed for someone to be outraged or even concerned. What I do see are many who somehow knew most all this beforehand and weren't concerned - among other things they figure since they're making good money and their skills are in sufficient demand, that they have nothing to worry about so long as their personal habits don't draw too much attention, because they're "in tight" with the status quo, so why rock the boat. It's somebody else's problem, and anyway, what can anyone do?
As for the general public, TV tells them what's important and what to feel about it - not much thought needed, Citizen.
" until two members of the terroristic group committed suicide and the third one blew up their headquarters."
Caught that. Lovely.
Never underestimate the willingness and ability of programmers to spend time making up nifty new stuff just for grins (or shits and giggles), or LOLs/lulz, as you young'uns say.
LOLCODE. Interpreters and compilers, too. Wow, man, just wow. I tip my hat in amazement and respect.
Oh, wow, kiddo, that is some beautiful, evil stuff. I was laughing hard enough by the second page I had to stop. That's a demolition derby of coding practice. (Sorry 'bout the car ref.)
Agreed, re service structure matching to service need. Further, that properly designed and administered service provided by government, where applicable, can cost less in overhead, other factors being equal. I have no ideological bias about this stuff; again, it's matching need to good solution.
Problems in any organization are mission creep and empire building. There's a third one: give a person in a cubicle more power than they actually need to do their job and they will use it to create more regulations than are needed to get the job done; it's a form of tyranny.
My view viz. government is two-fold: there are the functions set out by the constitution, and there are the functions where government can better provide that which people cannot do as well by themselves. Examples abound and are open for discussion. Usually government is in a better position to do much in the way of infrastructure - roads, waterway management, apportioning electromagnetic spectrum, some utilities (at least insofar as oversight), and in ensuring some kind of level playing field for producers and consumers in several areas as problems arise - standards for foods, public health, and the like. Sometimes government can do better and more affordably what private providers cannot, or where they otherwise would use their position to screw people over.
There are always going to be areas of contention, and one of the things lacking has been public involvement; often the people most affected will be those who don't or won't participate in discussion, or involve themselves in self-governing. Historically we collectively turn matters over to those we happen to elect, trusting in them to use their intellects and integrity to do for us. We now see in many areas how well this hasn't turned out. I have no magic wand or good ideas on how to change this.
That's one of the things, it's come up in other discussions - one on drug laws and related issues: when reasonable people, even from a variety of diverging views, cast aside any ideological biases, arriving at potential good solutions is possible, simply because, IMO, it becomes more of an engineering and cost/benefit thing - thus straightforward problem solving. As you may know, getting people to that point is not always a trivial exercise. [grin]
Single-payer, once ideology is removed - usually the straw-man bugaboo of "socialized" - it's generally simple. The "devil is [not] in the details", it's in design: fitting the shapes and mechanics to a given populace with it's unique social, economic, and political structure. Even here, it's often more of matter of flavor than structure.
SP doesn't, or wouldn't, given good design, preclude or punish alternate personal choice. There are plenty of examples showing what works and what needs improvement. Let history guide rather than provide red-flag examples for demagogues.
Edge cases usually show hidden ideology or design flaws. Put the rest to fair arbitration with bias to helping the human get treatment w/o breaking him.
All the arguments against of which I'm aware fall away when clearly examined. But being nothing more than a 'concerned citizen' means I may have missed something. That's why we [need to] have good people doing fair, open, problem-solving, mindsets.
We don't have to agree, a priori; we need only seek making sure that we don't screw people trying to see a doctor and get treatment. Again, prevention beats crisis. It may sound stupid as all get out, but take a handful, a dozen people dedicated to real fix, given 'em research runners, stick 'em in a room for a couple of weeks with all the pizza and beer they need, problem solved. And for output, if nothing else try a few different things, region to region, demographic to demographic - in engineering there's room for experiment and prototyping. Whatever came out of that room would be a long sight better than the mess we have now.
But, as others have pointed out, getting to the point of being able to even have a real discussion (drugs, security, immigration, voting rights, national ID, surveillance, secret courts, budget, wars, neutral Internet, intellectual property, patents, prescription medicines, genetic research, TSA, trade agreements, outsourcing and offshoring, fracking, strip mining, etc.) has been... problematic. What I fear most now is that in many areas unless (was it John Brunner, "The Sheep Look Up") "the public" wakes up and presses for discussion, if they even see the need for it, we're screwed.
We've turned ourselves into a nation in economic thrall to a group of multi-nationals, a handful of banks, the interests of a few hundred who own half the country, and get all our commercial media - including news - through six companies.
But, anyway: cheers, and thank you; good luck to us all.
Holy... wow. This and a handful of other posts were eye-openers for me. Thanks, all. Sheesh, I gotta get out more. I mean, I can sort of forgive my ignorance because of not having need for exposure in this area, but to be that ignorant of it...
My limit was wood working. People who do stuff in metals have always amazed me. Even straight-forward mill work is neat; then add in 'tuned' forging, heat treating, all that, it's half-magic to me, let alone the ways to forecast and arrive at particular crystalline structures. Reminds me of some of the stuff my p-chem prof showed us about the X-ray crystallography he was doing in the Sixties. Cold-spray, flame spray, wonderful stuff. We do all these neat things and can't have a budget or privacy - amazing again.
I swear, this life-extension and brain-transplant or transfer into clones or androids has gotta come through soon and be affordable on Medicare, 'cuz I've already got a lifetime or two backlog of reading to do just from the last year from /. alone. That, or become comfortably adept at Buddhist simplification.
Or someone recognizing that coffee is the vehicle of a drug delivery system and that that someone needs some WD-40 for the brain NOW, not in however long it takes to make a new cuppa.
When I creak and groan and hobble out of bed if there's a half-mug of coffee from last night I don't even bother nuking it. THEN I can proceed to combine nicely-roasted beans and filtered water into something more palatable. If there's no coffee when I awake do not approach unless maybe the house is burning - and even then I might check to see how fast it's spreading to see if there's enough time to make a pot.
Now then, this 3-D metal printing sounds interesting; seems like there are some nifty possibilities - a multi-stage, multi-route valve for hydraulics, regulators, cooling loops or fractional distilling (and really almost a logic gate of sorts), maybe; rocket engines of course; submersibles; mechanical locks; a novel clamp or fastener; obviously for prototyping, just-in-time spare parts, one-off manufacturing; artists ought to be able to have some fun with it; and maybe even a slick coffee maker in the offing.
With the richness of inputs, being able to seamlessly place everywhere in a piece the optimum alloy for its characteristics rather boggles, and that very seamlessness might ease constraints from the various mechanical co-efficients of this and that. I'd imagine one could build in some interesting electrical properties as well. I don't suppose one could make a solid metal transistor, though, and even if, who'd want a forty-pound CPU?
Not that it means all that much or is terribly pertinent, but Igor Sikorsky has been one of my lifelong heroes, going back to the Fifties. Everything I've learned of him since sustains that opinion. The man was inventive, persistent, dedicated, hard-working, and humble besides. (My only claim to private fame is that at the age of eight I managed to independently work out a linkage needed to control rotor pitch - the same linkage he arrived at. However stupid it sounds, I felt a certain kinship in that. "Engineering will out." and so forth.)
Thanks for that. I'd found it once, years back, lost my copy.
Just musing, mind, but I wonder which of various businesses would be opposed to what would in all likelihood become a source of plentiful and thus very cheap electricity.... and which of those businesses routinely is among the largest lobbying efforts in Congress both in terms of dollars and people, and which routinely makes consistently very large campaign contributions at national and state levels to members of both main political parties.
Populous: an interesting and fun God game from '89 by Peter Molyneux.
Hear, hear.
The numbers have improved. The economy has not, nor has the reality for most people. Follow the money. Most of it has gone upward into the hands of fewer and fewer people. It hasn't come back out.
The facts are freely and honestly available, mostly sourced from government stats - and I haven't seen many accusing, for instance, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of cooking the books. Unlike the big banks, who, if you will recall, played a big hand in causing a planetary depression and where, again, a few people made a lot of money and skated.
Last I looked (and going by memory only) real income for lower 2/3 of populace has not equaled what it was in '74. Boomers' grandchildren are the first generation in the history of the nation where their collective aspirations to become better off than their parents comes a cropper. All discernible trends of which I'm aware show no prospect of that changing, nor for their offspring. The proceeds of productivity and increases in same increasingly are concentrated in fewer hands - and contrary to all fervent assertions, little of it is used to invest back into the economy. Again, follow the money. See where it goes, and see what comes out, and where and how.
But yeah, Wall Street is doing OK. Bully for them, and, I'm guessing, bully for you, too. Cheers.
Yeah, I follow most of that, and the foregoing.
All I know is the past three times I've been to Social Security things have gone well, although once the wait time was a shade over a half hour; in all cases the people working there were courteous, pleasant, and very helpful.
I went to DMV to get an ID card for voting several months ago. (My last visit, in '91, was over two hours standing in line, although the people themselves were decent enough.) I went in, was in a short line for five minutes. Got 'processed' and had pic taken in less than three minutes and all pleasantly done, then sat in a padded chair [!] for 18 of the forecast 21 minutes. Got to window, had beaucoup papers ready, all she asked for was last ID, looked at it, tinked in some stuff, said "that's all I need" and 90 seconds later I had a certified piece of paper temporary ID and was good to go. Blew me away, man. Best DMV experience by far I've had in past fifty years, and better than most any I've heard of.
After reading his piece on Wired I found it in the main to be reasonable and balanced; it lays out sensible policies that can be for the most part readily done, and restore to coverage of law that which has been done out-law. It specifies what can be collected, how it's done, and how it can be used. It provides for proper police procedure and as close as possible precludes a police state - which I think most of us can agree with.
Whatever his views on other things, whatever his opinions on others things, as found on his personal site, and what one might thing of all that, I have no trouble differentiating public RMS from private RMS. When he makes sense (which IMO is more often than many give him credit for) I think it's worth paying attention to.
In short, his proposals on Wired make sense. They can be done, can work, and restore privacy and rule of law.
I'm retired and receive OASDI. Because that amount is so low, I also get a small SSI check. Lastly, because my income is so low, my state pays my Medicaid premium. Given how my life has worked out thus far, I know it was a close-run thing and I'm fortunate for what I do have. So thankfully I don't have to go through what I see other people having to deal with.
Point is that for grins I used the calculator at Kaiser - http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/ - and got a shock. Using my income, it turned out that my total premium was essentially equal to said income. I was too poor for subsidy. (Results are posted in my journal.)
WTF?
That's some crazy shit, man, number ten thousand. Whether the Prez intended to sell out to the oligarchs or has no balls I dunno; at this late stage it really doesn't matter, I suppose. I think he should have pushed for single-payer right from the start. Alternatives would have been to expand Medicare for all and fold in Medicaid via a method like the exchanges (w/o the craziness, of course) or to have said that what the House gets, all get, or vice versa.
And if this hidden no-privacy shit is so, then the ACA sucks beyond belief. Thing is, there are some likeable provisions - no turn-down for pre-existing conditions, emphasis on results - outcome based, with an eye towards prevention rather than crisis, publicly posted rates for procedures and tests from all providers, and the attempt at rational fee structure. One key fuckup was folding to Pharma.
And yes, for all that's right, ER for E stuff, clinics for the rest. Kicker is ensuring that clinics are available - I do note that some companies, Walgreen's for example, are getting into that and that should help. I've lived in too many places where you either could afford to go to a doctor or you went without. That situation leads to what are effectively a lot of walking wounded. Healthy (and happy) workers work better. Too many in power can't seem to get that simple thought into their heads - that, or they get their jollies from the pain of others.
Case in point: all those crying about "socialized" this and that the past forty years should take note of the study done by the GAO (or maybe it was OMB, my memory sucks) back during Nixon. It showed that the economic loss due to simple illness alone was more than three times the cost of the most expansive national plan ever proposed. If memory serves it's one of the arguments Nixon used in his effort to get a national health plan.
There's a lot of good people out there, living on a pretty decent planet despite all its dangers; it never ceases to amaze me that we spend our lives with so many getting fucked over by so few. From my own life and what I know of others' I know that life can be hard enough all by itself. We don't need assholes making it worse. (I apologize for all the profanity. It's no excuse, I'm just really browned off by all this... stuff. Selah.)
There is a type of bureaucratic mindset pervading the national scene based on zero-sum-game rice bowls. It's mostly mid-level but greatly aggravated and abetted by every agency head who's been an empire builder, as you observe viz. NASA from the Apollo days. I've long had to keep separate in my mind the management-NASA and what I consider the real NASA where the work gets done. It's unfortunate for all concerned that the former tends to overshadow the latter, in the public's eye and in reality.
Bureaucracy from its Chinese and Turkish roots has been a great way to screen for capable people to administer to the concerns of the commonweal; given human nature and ways of gaming the system (that originally were structurally mitigated) it's also been a haven for small-minded weasels to wield power far in excess of their talents.
I rather like the idea of crowd-funded, subscribed (thus, invested) commercial efforts for specific projects.
"There's not even the appearance of logic or reason in our public debate, it is completely fueled by emotion and political dogma."
Bingo.
I'd add: and those debates are variously framed, distorted, and steered, by the six companies that own all the big media companies, and many of the smaller ones as well. The six essentially can have control over what the public sees and how they see it. (As but an example, have you noticed the coverage of the efforts of the several intelligence and security agencies lately? From what I see on the networks' news, it's more important to know where "the traitor Snowden" is hiding than to discuss the issues he brought to the fore. That is, when it's not competing with the latest dismissal from DWTS or somesuch.)
From my forty-plus years of adult life I'm hard-pressed to recall any public debate couched in reasonable terms.
NASA has been given manned missions from time to time by Congress. They also have manned missions they'd like to do. However, going back to their NACA roots, NASA has always been about research, first and foremost; and only some of that requires manned craft.
If you look at the totality of NASA's projects only a small portion involves manned flight, now and historically. In that regard, the whole Apollo-era was an anomaly, albeit with the sustained role for manned testbeds going all the way back to Langley Field and now at Edwards and a few other sites.
The "obsession" is mis-perception, not reality. ISS, for instance, is an international outgrowth of various research efforts but reflective also of political diktat, and but a relatively small part of NASA's overall work. Such manned flight as it is now is helping to expand our knowledge in a variety of useful areas. You'd know that if you looked into to things a bit.
Because the populace prefers lies that conform to their comfortable prejudices rather than truth that confronts them.
Outstanding chart from the link. Thank you! Hypocrisy indeed - those guys exemplify Goebbels's credo about the big lie.
Bullshit.
Follow links, dig, think. All that you command is out there and for the most part easily found.
The burden is not upon the site's maker to do your bidding. Rather, it is upon you, to get your mind off its couch and do something to help - and you know you could, if you wanted to. It's up to you, to carp from the sidelines or to put your efforts to something.
You may have reason to know that it's easy to sneer and harder to build.
Excellent exposition and summation, kudos.
I'd add only that a significant portion of the eventual cost is to be laid directly at the feet of Congress due to the stop-and-re-start costs - it's costing a lot of time, money, and effort to get everything back up to speed and proper condition; further, the dollar cost is higher due inflation since '96.