I know that conceding the Koch brothers AREN'T modern-day Satans might spell the end of your whole worldview, but why then would they support in any way a study that they couldn't control/manipulate/predict?
I suppose one could claim that they stupidly didn't realize this, but considering that for the last 10 years they've been pilloried as the Gray Eminence behind all things dark and malign, suggesting that suddenly they're dopey doesn't quite fit with the script.
I didn't even mention that bit, and that's the most hilarious - companies' stock performance is no longer even about how they perform, it's almost like a derivative market: you're performing against what the analysts THINK you should be doing.
So if the analysts say you should see a +5% quarterly growth, and you "only" see 4.8%, your results are 'disappointing'.
Absolutely insane. I can see looking to the markets to try to raise needed capital, but I would never put my own company out there if I had any choice.
First he assumes that whatever shows you watch, you NEED to watch, and you need to watch them NOW.
For example, his wife likes Amazing Race, and (apparently) none of the streaming premium services carry it, so it would "have to be written off"...well, except for the fact that in about a 5 second search, I found it at least 3 places. Certainly, it wasn't current-broadcast, but it's still there.
And of course, he talks about the 'broadband internet cost' - as if most people considering this don't ALREADY pay for that.
So really, not much of a comparison, or analysis. Save yourself the read.
"....can't escape the discipline of the capital markets..."
Discipline. That's a funny word to use with a market that: - turns trades of tens of millions of shares in literally seconds - acts like a flock of frightened sheep at the slightest whiff of trouble - punishes companies who accept short-term sacrifices in favor of long-term growth/gains.
Our company "went public" and I am hard-pressed to understand who - other than the execs, who get fat options and big share-piles - benefits?
The company CERTAINLY doesn't.
Where previously you had a private firm whose only real measure was year-on-year viability as a company, now we have a giant firm whose sole strategic goal seems to be "hit the monthly numbers". Foolishness, chicanery, and outright lying seem to all be acceptable tactics, and the business now has a 30-day outlook, instead of the previous generation(s) of CEOs who looked at what it would take to develop markets and commercial potentials in decade-long or even (for a family company) generational-length timelines.
I think that was sort of the goal behind Titan, to innovate while they still had customers locked into the Blizz-does-it-right mindset.
I'm not sure what happened to Titan, because it sure has hell has completely fallen off the radar. Now whatever new property Blizz comes up with not only DOESN'T have the blizz-fanboi carryover, it'll have an extra hurdle in terms of "what, does this have pandas too?" sort of silliness.
Considering that... a) Titan has been in dev for what, 5 years now (allegedly) since 2007, and b) Diablo3 - after 7+ years of dev - launched to a frenzied (and entirely justified) 'ho hum'...I can't imagine Blizzard is in a happy place right now. After having a game that people played almost religiously for 5, 6, even 7 years of cash-cowdom, Diablo3 came out and I already have several fanboi friends that haven't touched it in weeks, because it's flipping BORING.
I get your actual point, but the opposite is EQUALLY true: there's *always* something going wrong. There's always a drought, somewhere. There's always whackos killing people, somewhere. There's always epidemics, somewhere.
The fact is that there are always bad things happening, and with our modern media we can hear about it more quickly and more persistently than ever.
Crying that the sky is CONSTANTLY falling becomes part of the problem; instead of well-reasoned discussions about serious solutions to problems we CAN fix, you get either: - people figuratively curling into the foetal position, terrified of everything (well, at least there's something to read on facebook, right?) - people stop listening entirely, and end up apathetic to the problems completely - exploitative people (often politicians) exploiting the fear for personal gain, and/or directing available resources away from carefully-considered, reasonably-justified things to kneejerk quick-fixes which are generally the LEAST successful, most expensive choices.
You believe Al Gore as a credible spokesman (and it was people like you that gave him an Oscar AND a Nobel), yet you dismiss people like Reid Bryson as an economist, a trickster, or "Pentacostal inspired merchant" (whatever the fuck that is)?
Sure, THAT's credible.
BTW Reid Bryson is Emeritus Professor of Meteorology, of Geography and of Environmental Studies. Senior Scientist, Center for Climatic Research, The Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies (Founding Director), the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Many climatologists regard him as the father of climatology. Professor Bryson calls manmade global warming absurd. http://www.uncommondescent.com/off-topic/father-of-climatology-calls-manmade-global-warming-absurd/
Happy to answer - my initial reaction to ebooks was predicated on the early conception of ebook readers, predating the kindle and amazon's re-download concept.
"... unlike the print world, internet ads lose value over time...." Um, I'm not sure what 'print world' you live in, but print advertising has ALWAYS been exceptionally sensitive to time - in my early days in the trucking business, we had a whole division that dealt with NOTHING but the transport of time-critical printed ads and flyers for magazines, newspapers, and other print media. Miss your delivery and that truckload of $40,000 of printed paper was VALUELESS.
Bite it, all you Apple zealots. Buy *another* proprietary cord for you stupid oh-so-trendy device, and throw the old one away because it's no longer 'cool' enough.
Yes, to me the Apple(tm) logo says "I'm a giant douche with too much money".
Adam Smith explained it in Wealth of Nations. The making of pins is (was) about 18 steps. In a factory, 10 specialized employees can perform these 18 steps to make 48000 pins/day or 4800 pins/day/man, far in excess of the perhaps 200 pins/day possible to a single employee performing all stages.
Yes, this means necessarily that the 'straightener' eventually forgets how to do the other tasks, and yes, if the whole system collapses, the straightener is going to have to either learn how to do the other 17 steps or die for want of pins. But in fact the utility gained over his lifetime of specialization is CLEARLY in excess of the marginal chance that the whole system collapses, and the extra work/risk at that point.
We benefit so broadly, generally, and regularly from specialization, that the individual cost/risk of NOT having those skills is infinitesimal.
While I agree with the OP and bemoan the loss of basic skills, I suspect that part of this comes from my youth during the Cold War - we always 'kept in mind' the consequence of trying not to be totally reliant on our civilization, as sometimes we might not be able to rely on it. Partly, I've learned to let this go. For years, I resisted a kindle, mainly because I didn't want to own books that would vanish when the battery died. Then it occurred to me - if I'm somehow UNABLE to get electricity for the month or more it would take my kindle to die...I'm so severely fucked, I don't really care about losing some novels. (Even writing that feels like some sort of confession...).
Personally, I LIKE knowing how to "do things". But I recognize that without practice, I truly suck in practical terms. Having the knowledge generally is the best I can 'afford' time- or resource-wise.
This doesn't mean that we should accept COMPLETELY losing our skills, but honestly, I can't get terribly worked up that I don't know how to perform some basic construction skills. If we're so screwed that I can't either a) buy a prefab, or b) find someone that can, well, we're in a rough situation and I'm not going to be TOO concerned about that windowframe, not so concerned I won't just board it over.
(The comedic scanning of a *dead* salmon with fMRI, showing that - without careful correction - fMRI can give you data from absolutely nothing. In this case, "...the salmon was shown a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations. The salmon was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing...". "Studies" like this - purporting to explain some sort of human behavior - always remind me of this result.)
Reaction bias. In the US, political conservatives have always been the minority. This has regularly molded the Right into a more organized group, who tend to hold their noses and vote for a candidate who "mostly" represents their views, even if there are specific issues where they strongly disagree. The left side of the political spectrum has been far more fractious, far more regularly divided, and far more prone to fringe candidates (all of which contribute to why a smaller political faction is able to hold its own).
In this system, it's easy to see that people who are on the right are more likely to follow the 'party line' on an issue. They have to, to survive politically.
One note, your post makes it sound like you rate 'climate change' as the gold-standard of scientific truth, denied just by 'crazies'. As one of those 'crazies' who has significant SCIENTIFIC objections to ANTHROPOGENIC climate change theories, I would suggest that's not entirely valid.
NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION - #1 Contributors to state-level campaigns, political parties, and ballot measure committees in 2007 and 2008 - donated 2:1 to Democrats over Republicans in state races. - donated 25:1 Dems:Repubs in national races since 1990 (the charted dates, but it's been a mainstay of DNC contributors for much, much longer)
Your question may be rhetorical, but in case people don't know - it's purely an intent by one party to get more voters.
There is one political party in the US that gets an overwhelming majority of the uneducated* and unemployed voters and thus benefits almost exclusively from any expansion of the voting franchise (such as to felons, etc.). In fact, Mr Obama gained election by winning a dominant share of the under$30k income population (the candidates were exactly the same or within 1% among all higher income brackets).
*ironically, this same party gets a majority of the highest intelligentsia, people with high academic credentials. One might say this party is simultaneously one of people who know nothing, and people who think they know everything.
"Hi, I'm a dude wearing several thousand dollars' worth of electronics on my body, see, everyone, see?"
I don't know the circumstances of this assault, but I know that in the last several weeks I've heard about several construction sites broken into and robbed of as little as a couple hundred dollars' worth of copper. This morning was $20,000 in damage to the site, for $2000 in copper (new light rail construction vandalized).
Personally, I think it would be very...trusting... to advertise to the public at-large that you have valuable electronics in your pockets. Particularly if you are distracted looking at online porn while you're standing there.
FWIW, I'd suspect that "the rich" won't really care much what speed they drive, if they get to do all their "rich people" stuff instead of driving.
Plus, they'll be able to afford such cars long before the poor wankers like the OP, so there they get to flaunt their "richyness" as I'm sure he expects.
If you can't tell the fundamental difference between one rule (in a footrace, people actually have to be running and can't, for example, fly a rocket) and another (runners cannot take a certain type of drug before a race), you've got bigger problems, chum.
Slashdot Mirror
I know that conceding the Koch brothers AREN'T modern-day Satans might spell the end of your whole worldview, but why then would they support in any way a study that they couldn't control/manipulate/predict?
I suppose one could claim that they stupidly didn't realize this, but considering that for the last 10 years they've been pilloried as the Gray Eminence behind all things dark and malign, suggesting that suddenly they're dopey doesn't quite fit with the script.
I didn't even mention that bit, and that's the most hilarious - companies' stock performance is no longer even about how they perform, it's almost like a derivative market: you're performing against what the analysts THINK you should be doing.
So if the analysts say you should see a +5% quarterly growth, and you "only" see 4.8%, your results are 'disappointing'.
Absolutely insane. I can see looking to the markets to try to raise needed capital, but I would never put my own company out there if I had any choice.
First he assumes that whatever shows you watch, you NEED to watch, and you need to watch them NOW.
For example, his wife likes Amazing Race, and (apparently) none of the streaming premium services carry it, so it would "have to be written off"...well, except for the fact that in about a 5 second search, I found it at least 3 places. Certainly, it wasn't current-broadcast, but it's still there.
And of course, he talks about the 'broadband internet cost' - as if most people considering this don't ALREADY pay for that.
So really, not much of a comparison, or analysis. Save yourself the read.
"....can't escape the discipline of the capital markets..."
Discipline.
That's a funny word to use with a market that:
- turns trades of tens of millions of shares in literally seconds
- acts like a flock of frightened sheep at the slightest whiff of trouble
- punishes companies who accept short-term sacrifices in favor of long-term growth/gains.
Our company "went public" and I am hard-pressed to understand who - other than the execs, who get fat options and big share-piles - benefits?
The company CERTAINLY doesn't.
Where previously you had a private firm whose only real measure was year-on-year viability as a company, now we have a giant firm whose sole strategic goal seems to be "hit the monthly numbers". Foolishness, chicanery, and outright lying seem to all be acceptable tactics, and the business now has a 30-day outlook, instead of the previous generation(s) of CEOs who looked at what it would take to develop markets and commercial potentials in decade-long or even (for a family company) generational-length timelines.
I think that was sort of the goal behind Titan, to innovate while they still had customers locked into the Blizz-does-it-right mindset.
I'm not sure what happened to Titan, because it sure has hell has completely fallen off the radar. Now whatever new property Blizz comes up with not only DOESN'T have the blizz-fanboi carryover, it'll have an extra hurdle in terms of "what, does this have pandas too?" sort of silliness.
Considering that ... ...I can't imagine Blizzard is in a happy place right now. After having a game that people played almost religiously for 5, 6, even 7 years of cash-cowdom, Diablo3 came out and I already have several fanboi friends that haven't touched it in weeks, because it's flipping BORING.
a) Titan has been in dev for what, 5 years now (allegedly) since 2007, and
b) Diablo3 - after 7+ years of dev - launched to a frenzied (and entirely justified) 'ho hum'
Good luck Blizz, hope you're not the next RIM.
I get your actual point, but the opposite is EQUALLY true: there's *always* something going wrong.
There's always a drought, somewhere.
There's always whackos killing people, somewhere.
There's always epidemics, somewhere.
The fact is that there are always bad things happening, and with our modern media we can hear about it more quickly and more persistently than ever.
Crying that the sky is CONSTANTLY falling becomes part of the problem; instead of well-reasoned discussions about serious solutions to problems we CAN fix, you get either:
- people figuratively curling into the foetal position, terrified of everything (well, at least there's something to read on facebook, right?)
- people stop listening entirely, and end up apathetic to the problems completely
- exploitative people (often politicians) exploiting the fear for personal gain, and/or directing available resources away from carefully-considered, reasonably-justified things to kneejerk quick-fixes which are generally the LEAST successful, most expensive choices.
Histrionics are NEVER the solution.
I have an fMRI of a Salmon that PROVES he's in agreement with the idea that fMRI is pseudoscience.
You believe Al Gore as a credible spokesman (and it was people like you that gave him an Oscar AND a Nobel), yet you dismiss people like Reid Bryson as an economist, a trickster, or "Pentacostal inspired merchant" (whatever the fuck that is)?
Sure, THAT's credible.
BTW Reid Bryson is Emeritus Professor of Meteorology, of Geography and of Environmental Studies. Senior Scientist, Center for Climatic Research, The Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies (Founding Director), the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Many climatologists regard him as the father of climatology. Professor Bryson calls manmade global warming absurd.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/off-topic/father-of-climatology-calls-manmade-global-warming-absurd/
Happy to answer - my initial reaction to ebooks was predicated on the early conception of ebook readers, predating the kindle and amazon's re-download concept.
"... unlike the print world, internet ads lose value over time...."
Um, I'm not sure what 'print world' you live in, but print advertising has ALWAYS been exceptionally sensitive to time - in my early days in the trucking business, we had a whole division that dealt with NOTHING but the transport of time-critical printed ads and flyers for magazines, newspapers, and other print media. Miss your delivery and that truckload of $40,000 of printed paper was VALUELESS.
Bite it, all you Apple zealots. Buy *another* proprietary cord for you stupid oh-so-trendy device, and throw the old one away because it's no longer 'cool' enough.
Yes, to me the Apple(tm) logo says "I'm a giant douche with too much money".
Specialization benefits all of us.
Adam Smith explained it in Wealth of Nations.
The making of pins is (was) about 18 steps.
In a factory, 10 specialized employees can perform these 18 steps to make 48000 pins/day or 4800 pins/day/man, far in excess of the perhaps 200 pins/day possible to a single employee performing all stages.
Yes, this means necessarily that the 'straightener' eventually forgets how to do the other tasks, and yes, if the whole system collapses, the straightener is going to have to either learn how to do the other 17 steps or die for want of pins.
But in fact the utility gained over his lifetime of specialization is CLEARLY in excess of the marginal chance that the whole system collapses, and the extra work/risk at that point.
We benefit so broadly, generally, and regularly from specialization, that the individual cost/risk of NOT having those skills is infinitesimal.
While I agree with the OP and bemoan the loss of basic skills, I suspect that part of this comes from my youth during the Cold War - we always 'kept in mind' the consequence of trying not to be totally reliant on our civilization, as sometimes we might not be able to rely on it. Partly, I've learned to let this go. For years, I resisted a kindle, mainly because I didn't want to own books that would vanish when the battery died. Then it occurred to me - if I'm somehow UNABLE to get electricity for the month or more it would take my kindle to die...I'm so severely fucked, I don't really care about losing some novels. (Even writing that feels like some sort of confession...).
Personally, I LIKE knowing how to "do things". But I recognize that without practice, I truly suck in practical terms. Having the knowledge generally is the best I can 'afford' time- or resource-wise.
This doesn't mean that we should accept COMPLETELY losing our skills, but honestly, I can't get terribly worked up that I don't know how to perform some basic construction skills. If we're so screwed that I can't either a) buy a prefab, or b) find someone that can, well, we're in a rough situation and I'm not going to be TOO concerned about that windowframe, not so concerned I won't just board it over.
But what does the SALMON think of violent video games?
http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2009/09/fmri-gets-slap-in-face-with-dead-fish.html
(The comedic scanning of a *dead* salmon with fMRI, showing that - without careful correction - fMRI can give you data from absolutely nothing. In this case, "...the salmon was shown a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations. The salmon was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing...". "Studies" like this - purporting to explain some sort of human behavior - always remind me of this result.)
I hear he's a longtime poster on Slashdot. Probably the karma king, in fact.
Does that count as "change" or "hope"?
Reaction bias.
In the US, political conservatives have always been the minority.
This has regularly molded the Right into a more organized group, who tend to hold their noses and vote for a candidate who "mostly" represents their views, even if there are specific issues where they strongly disagree. The left side of the political spectrum has been far more fractious, far more regularly divided, and far more prone to fringe candidates (all of which contribute to why a smaller political faction is able to hold its own).
In this system, it's easy to see that people who are on the right are more likely to follow the 'party line' on an issue. They have to, to survive politically.
One note, your post makes it sound like you rate 'climate change' as the gold-standard of scientific truth, denied just by 'crazies'. As one of those 'crazies' who has significant SCIENTIFIC objections to ANTHROPOGENIC climate change theories, I would suggest that's not entirely valid.
It's a good thing no law-abiding citizen was armed there, someone might have been hurt.
Let me guess, the theater bans conceal-carry guns, I'd guess?
People with a vested interest in the sky falling, notice something that could at the wildest extrapolation mean the sky is falling.
People without such interest, disregard such signs.
Or it could be that some are pantywaists that get in a twist over trivia, and some aren't.
I'll point out that the left likes to conflate evangelical Christians with "all Republicans". I get it, they're a pretty easy target.
However, logically, that makes as much sense as calling all Democrats pedophiles, since NAMBLA is wholeheartedly made up of Democrats.
So that's fine, you can assert Republicans are all "right wing religious nuts" if you accept the other proposition as well.
...that one of the most reliably-Democratic demographics is teachers?
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000064
http://www.followthemoney.org/database/top10000.phtml?topl=1&topnum=10000
NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
- #1 Contributors to state-level campaigns, political parties, and ballot measure committees in 2007 and 2008
- donated 2:1 to Democrats over Republicans in state races.
- donated 25:1 Dems:Repubs in national races since 1990 (the charted dates, but it's been a mainstay of DNC contributors for much, much longer)
Your question may be rhetorical, but in case people don't know - it's purely an intent by one party to get more voters.
There is one political party in the US that gets an overwhelming majority of the uneducated* and unemployed voters and thus benefits almost exclusively from any expansion of the voting franchise (such as to felons, etc.). In fact, Mr Obama gained election by winning a dominant share of the under$30k income population (the candidates were exactly the same or within 1% among all higher income brackets).
*ironically, this same party gets a majority of the highest intelligentsia, people with high academic credentials. One might say this party is simultaneously one of people who know nothing, and people who think they know everything.
"Hi, I'm a dude wearing several thousand dollars' worth of electronics on my body, see, everyone, see?"
I don't know the circumstances of this assault, but I know that in the last several weeks I've heard about several construction sites broken into and robbed of as little as a couple hundred dollars' worth of copper. This morning was $20,000 in damage to the site, for $2000 in copper (new light rail construction vandalized).
Personally, I think it would be very...trusting... to advertise to the public at-large that you have valuable electronics in your pockets. Particularly if you are distracted looking at online porn while you're standing there.
"He practices what he preaches. I don't agree with him fully, but there are few espousing ideals that can claim the same."
So did Stalin, and a few others but I don't want to invoke Godwin's Law.
Let's just say that enthusiasm and failure to be a hypocrite really aren't signs of any intrinsic morality in one's position.
FWIW, I'd suspect that "the rich" won't really care much what speed they drive, if they get to do all their "rich people" stuff instead of driving.
Plus, they'll be able to afford such cars long before the poor wankers like the OP, so there they get to flaunt their "richyness" as I'm sure he expects.
If you can't tell the fundamental difference between one rule (in a footrace, people actually have to be running and can't, for example, fly a rocket) and another (runners cannot take a certain type of drug before a race), you've got bigger problems, chum.