The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.
Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.
Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.
For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."
Let's recall that his nomination was Feb 1, 2009...he'd been US President less than TWO WEEKS.
Regarding the original article: good, it should die, it's a shitty agreement. Is it really an environmental policy agreement? Then any state that has or will have measurable amounts of industry should be constrained by it. Or is it a state-actor-level welfare bill, where the 'haves' are expected to either constrain their actions or spend money to help the have-nots? If so, then let's call a spade a spade and argue honestly about whether China really deserves "poor little developing country" status.
In regards to this OP: welcome to geopolitics. The fact is that there is no overarching government for the world, as much as some would like there to be one. Therefore all actors in the system are more or less peers, and not nearly equal. So there are two ways to get the system to act together: persuade them, which has patently failed, or compel them, which (as far as I know) nobody's willing to do.
Given humans' historical performance regarding any shared resource among self-interested peers, yep, it's never going to be "worked out" until it's pretty much too late (cf. whales).
Fortunately, humans are the most adaptable creatures ever on the face of the Earth, and adapt more quickly to stimuli than any of even the most pessimistic sky-is-falling eco predictions of disaster. Assuming the worst: seas rise, a bunch of coastal cities are wiped out, people move inland or die, and learn to cope with the new normal (temps, etc.) or die. Meh, the earth has flourished despite multiple previous die-offs of 90% of everything or more, it'll survive this. So will we, to some degree.
It bears repeating - although I'm astonished that people still don't seem to recognize this - the CUSTOMER in the "free television" transaction is not the viewer, it's the advertiser.
YOU (more accurately, your attention) are what is being sold.
The shows are ostensibly only the bait, engineered to keep you in your seat until the next commercials.
So this survey is merely measuring how many people have the intellectual equivalent to a barbed hook in their home. All the comments here are (accurately) commenting just that the "worm" is too small and the hook far, far too evident.
Personally, we had a very early HD set from the late '90s that didn't have an integral HD tuner, and don't have cable (we do roku-netflix instead) - so I'd gone the route of OTA HD with a set-top tuner. The first tuner died after about a year, but when the second tuner died and (as far as I can tell) was dead for more than 3 months before anyone actually noticed, and another 2 months before anyone told me about it - I never bothered to replace it, and we're just fine. Any show we want to watch - Castle, Bones, Big Bang - we just wait until it's on Netflix and watch it uninterrupted in 3-4 episode doses. We can't really stand watching normal TV with the 3 mins of commercials every 10-12 mins.
This subject has been hashed over many times on/. itself by people smarter and more experienced in publishing than me, and we came to ebook cost-of-production nowhere NEAR 90% of paper books.
90% sounds pretty much like a number pulled from one's butt, frankly, particularly when he talks about thing like "formatting and typesetting for ebook format" being actually a significant cost. (Seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if there's someone with this job, considering how hidebound publishing is as a business...)
Let's review his "a manuscript is not a book" stages for costs?
The author writes a manuscript - no costs, except advances which are supposed to be based on expected revenue anyway. The author or their agent send the commissioned manuscript to their editor - cost for an etext, zero. The editor reads the MS. labor cost, probably $100/hour, say 10 hours for a thorough editing, and lets say 5 sessions of 10 hours. $5000 in labor? Scheduling. essentially zero Copy editing. included in editing, above. Seriously, if a book takes more than 50 man-hours of proofing, wtf is the AUTHOR doing? The author reviews the CEM. - zero Advance Reading Copies - zero Book design, cover design, front and back flap copy, and cover artwork - as much as you want to spend, from $0 - whatever. Marketing copy - zero Review page proofs - say another 10 hours of review, $1000. Collate advance orders and order the print run. - say another 10 hours of bureaucracy $1000 The print run - zero for an ebook The printing process - zero, for an ebook. Invoicing and accounting. - hahahahah.
So, $7000 in costs for a novel-length book, generously. Typical hardcover price, $20. Sell 100,000 copies = $2 million. Profit to be shared between publisher, agent, and author $1,993,000. So where's the 90% number, or ANYTHING close to it?
So sorry, I call BS on the "90% of a book's cost isn't in the physical printing and distribution of a book".
He's a CEO. He deals with what he wants, when he wants - and believe me, in a European firm this is backed up by a legion of drones (secretarys, CSMs, etc) who actually DO ALL THE WORK, so that he can 'browse' his way through the "important decisions" he has to make.
In short, a CEO does perform a critically important role in a company. It has very little similarity with the actual 'work' performed by the bulk of the people at that firm.
Email's value is in allowing people to time-shift. I can triage my daily work as long as the bulk of it is on email, and know that there's always a papertrail.
I can't wait until Thierry needs a contract "immediately". If I were his secretary, I'd have someone fax it over onto one of those thermal-paper-roll fax machines.
Aren't corals one of the oldest lifeforms on the planet? As far as I recall, they've survived at least a couple of the 'great extinctions' - so as a widespread species they're at least 200 million years old. I know they're found abundantly in fossils at least 100 million years old.
And within that last 200 million years, the earth has been (both) substantially warmer and colder for long periods of time, as well as strikingly quick changes of several degrees in both directions (fast enough to appear as 'instant' in a climatological scale - otherwise comparable to the current shift). So clearly they can survive both large and quick changes.
So how is it that they're so desperately endangered? Is it that "corals" are at risk (as the news stories say) or is it that THESE corals are at risk but there are other places that were formerly unfavorable to corals that are now optimal?
I am not a coral scientist, so if someone could explain, that would be great.
Didn't we just spend the last 20 years designing laptop/lcd flatscreens so that they didn't have the damn single-point-of-viewing issue? I seem to recall the original, dim LCD screens being an enormous pain in the butt because if you moved your head about 3" to either side, you couldn't see anything.
No question, but as a response to the architectural concept of the arcology, I'm not sure that this is such a bad answer - certainly, the engineering challenges are massive but I think this is a fairly brilliant answer.
Plus hey, whenever I try a megaproject like this in Dwarf Fortress, it inevitably results in fun (http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Fun).
What do you do with the millions of tons of dirt? Send them to the coast, and build more land?
The point is that they ARE afraid of death because they believe that they are going to be measured by an omniscient God, and there are few people who don't admit (at least to themselves) that they have done some bad things.
Personally, no, I don't believe it to the extent that I "know" a bullet to the head will kill me, either. And even if I did, I'd be a little repelled by the idea of living my life in abject fear of some impending near-eternal torment.
But I'd like to believe that somehow, at the end, we're measured against what sort of a person we have been in life, and that the true d-bags get what they deserve....which also neatly explains why religion is largely most popular amongst the desperate, the weak, and the helpless.
It's existed since the first caveman traded for something with another caveman.
There are always going to be people who recognize that cheating in a system based on trust will gain them short-term advantage.
We've tasked government to pass laws that can be applied against these people, but the sheer volume of commercial transactions going on means that the huge bulk of cases will never be prosecuted formally. Ever.
Therefore it's incumbent on a buyer to be as knowledgeable as possible about the things they are spending their money on, to the degree of financial risk they care to assume. Otherwise, one method is to shop at companies that earn your trust (either directly, or by trusted word-of-mouth).
It's really not terribly complicated, people just have to stop expecting that the nanny state will or can protect them from all bad things, and accept that they are largely on their own.
The major parts of the budget are: -debt service -medicare -medicaid -social security -defense
Every one of these needs cuts. The only one that probably can't sustain them is debt service, if we ever want to get out from under this debt, period. I entirely agree that defense can sustain major cuts. Personally, I'd like it if our military were a little less 'available' to be thrown at whatever cause celebre happens to occupy the pigeon-like brains of whoever is the current administration. I'd agree with your military cutting.
Medicare and medicaid are badly in need of belt tightening. End the prescription drug benefit, and let people buy cross border as much as they like.
Social security is NOT self-funded; it's self-evidently a ponzi arrangement where the workers today pay for the retirees of yesterday. The only way that it's going to stay solvent is if it floats with lifespan, such that it's only available for the final 6 years of life (as it was originally intended).
By the way, your example is badly flawed: the budget was balanced in the 90s on the surging tax revenues of a false dot-com boom. It's much easier to balance a budget in a boom than a recession.
I spent about 3 hours reading through the raw emails.
What I saw (and I'll at the very front-end say that my bias is I'm a "denier") was: - lots and lots of crap, like you'd see in anyone's emails. - some very smart guys discussing nuances of details in their particular field, so the discussions were very narrow and detailed. - the predictable 'scorn' for the unwashed masses (ie anyone outside their field) who didn't "get it" - a distinct defensiveness in any case where the data was being questioned, and a tendency to reach for the tinfoil hat about some sort of conspiracy of people working to discredit them
In short, I didn't see any 'smoking gun' of collusion or hiding anything. I doubt these will have that either.
What I saw was people very firmly convinced not simply that they were RIGHT, but that what they were doing was righteous and anyone who dared question it was either evil or a complete fool...which isn't precisely the mindset one would expect of a scientist for whom the data (alone) drives their decisions - or should. Generally, they sounded very much like Slashdotters.
The bathos of it becomes apparent when you realize the OWS protesters live in $300,000 homes or $1500/month apartments, have been oversupplied with everything they could possibly want (quick- count how many $400 cell phones are in that picture, $100 pieces of clothing, or people with $3000 laptops. Hell, how many of those POOR kids are drinking $5 cups of coffee?) or are raging because, having accumulated massive amounts of debt getting educations of little actual value, they now suddenly realize that they actually might be held responsible for their shitty self-choices or a basic heedlessness that "good times don't go on forever"?
My goodness, the tears- how they flow!
Sure, compare a bunch of spoiled, whiny hypocritical narcissists to civil rights people standing up for basic human rights, or some guy standing alone against a TANK.
The liberal left will come in here saying that categorically taking tax increases off the table was uncompromising and stupid. The conservative right will come in here and point out that tax increases are always the answer for the left, who have no concept of fiscal responsibility and never met a government program that they didn't love.
I'm a conservative, but I'll be as objective as I can be: BOTH sides are arrogant, petulant, moronic, asinine, worthless bunglers that should all be fired. If the postal worker walks down the street and doesn't deliver the mail - she gets fired. If the paramedic looks great in his uniform and loves tooting his siren but never actually saves anyone, he gets fired. Congress's JOB is the control of the pursestrings. Period. They haven't done their job, yet we continue to re-elect them.
Let's be clear - to claim that Republicans are solely to blame is already tendentious. The 111th Congress (2009; you know, the one with the democratic majority in both houses, and a democratic president) DIDN'T pass a budget for 2010. To suggest that was somehow purely Republican fault is staggering mendacity.
I have already complained to my Republican congressman that they suck as negotiators - that the military (20% of federal spending) gets hit by 50% of the sequestration automatic cuts - was an idiotic agreement, and is essentially giving the Democrats who are typically anti-defense no reason to come to any agreement. No agreement = they already win. Thus I'm unsurprised that they've found no result to date.
Personally (and I know this is my politics speaking) I'm sick of the infinite expansion of government programs, seemingly no incentive by government to limit their spending, and their constantly assuming I as the tax payer am an endless font of more money.
Before the leftist strawmen attack: of course I understand that some government is necessary, and that as a member of a society, I'm willing to cheerfully contribute a share of the costs. HOWEVER I don't agree with the $trillions spent on bailing out investment firms and banks, and protecting them from their bad choices. Yes, letting them collapse would have been disastrous for the US economy, but here's how I see it: we've already built a society that's trying to be capitalist on the up side, (so people can reap the benefits), and socialist on the down side (so people are protected from the results of their choices). This is logically unsustainable. The resulting economic collapse is nothing more than the resolution of this unsustainability....pretty much just like forest fires. The more we try to resist the natural forces of capitalism, the more cataclysmic are the ultimate results when these forces DO eventually succeed in breaking the levees.
I don't agree with $billions being spent to bail people out of homes that they bought and couldn't afford. Caveat emptor shouldn't be MY problem. As a homeowner that DID moderate my desires, who DID buy a home within my means (INCLUDING planning for rainy-day money, and working/saving at a level that isn't predicated on boundless optimism, an eternally-growing economy, and permanent employment), I'm the schmuck; as a homeowner that makes his payments, I'm going to be (again) the one charged to cover the losses by the banks AND taxed by the gov't to cover the giveaways by the Fed too.
I'm disappointed by the $billions (or more) apparently lost in Iraq and Afghanistan without our government apparently caring very much?
In my adult lifetime, I've heard repeatedly at the federal and state levels that whenever there's a budget problem (and let's face it, need is infinite and resources never are), elected representatives like to increase taxes today and promise to cut spending tomorrow (liberals) or cut taxes today and promise to cut spending tomorrow (conservatives). Tomorrow never seems to come.
I agree that to dig out of this hole, we WILL have to raise taxes. I complained to the Republican National committee that as a Republican I w
"alien life" can come up in at least a couple of significantly different contexts.
Were you talking solely about the possibility of life other than Earth? I'd say that according to our most middle-of-the-road estimates, it seems like it would be a near-certainty.
Or was the discussion about UFO's and aliens landing and probing peoples' rectums? That would pretty much deserve derisive laughter.
For what it's worth, considering that we're at the every early stages of spaceflight ourselves, any entities we meet in space (or coming to visit here) are going to be our tech or higher. Considering the age of the universe, and that fact that it only took about 7-8 billion years to go from dust-to-sentient life, there are strong odds that anyone we meet will in fact be 000's, if not millions or even BILLIONS of years more advanced than us....could we even conceptually recognize if they were here? They certainly won't show up with anal probes.
Quote: "They applied for the right to state that âoeregular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydrationâ as well as preventing a decrease in performance."
Unless you're asserting the Telegraph is LYING and misrepresenting the statement the professors were seeking to have approved? Note the bit in quotes: âoeregular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydrationâ
They aren't saying BOTTLED water. They aren't saying THIS water. They're saying WATER. Period. Any water. Tap water. Rain water.
So, you need to be honest with yourself if anyone: how can you possibly assert that âoeregular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydrationâ is factually untrue?
I'm pleased that they're paying attention to this; unfortunately I bought a 2011 edge without the fancy screen, so I'm in the-hell-of-1974-bad-stereo-control, to the power of many-more-features-shoehorned-in.
I *am* curious why that touchscreen - which is approximately the size of 2 smartphones - was a $1611 upgrade from the basic controls.
Right now I (apparently) have the software and most of the systems in my car, but imagine trying to run an mp3 player, navigation system, bluetooth phone, etc with THIS (http://image.motortrend.com/f/2008_ford_edge/2308898196140957893+ppromo_mt_large/center_console.jpg) set of controls?
I seriously can't wait until all cars have at least a USB port so I can save/store/communicate things like radio stations, seat preferences, etc all just by uploading my own user config. It'd be even nicer to get diagnostic data from the car that way that's a little more comprehensive than "oh, the red light is on".
Well, of course you wouldn't actually OWN the nukes. You'd be buying a license to access the nukes for your use. Maybe this would be an answer not only to piracy but non-proliferation concerns?
Granted what you say may be true. However, an alternate explanation would be that only peripheral media outlets - not being in the tank for the current administration - would carry such a story.
Remember, nobody believed the Monica Lewinsky story at first, because it was on this stupid blog called the Drudge Report.
While I appreciate your pragmatic geopolitical viewpoint, I hope you will equally appreciate that it's EQUALLY logical that the powers with nukes do whatever they have to, to prevent the spread of the franchise. I mean, if we're just talking about geopolitical reality, right?
And it's worth mentioning that it's not a binary "have nukes = safe" situation.
Building nukes is not a mass-production thing, particularly in the early stages - each one is essentially a crafted item. Further, the reliability of the early products make their deterrent value extraordinarily questionable.
Having a small handful of nukes is arguably MORE dangerous than having none....it's a strong signal to the 'nuke club' that you're pushing your way in the door, and if they want to exclude you, they need to act quickly.
And let's be clear too that there are gradations of membership in that club. There are nuclear powers, and there are superpowers. All having nukes does for the "powers" is simply raise the cost of invasion to prohibitive levels, ie purely defensive.
Superpowers, on the other hand, have the ability to literally annihilate a target country (at potential cost of nuclear winter, and end of the human race if the exchange is large enough) without really even a great deal of effort/risk to themselves. It's an entirely different position. Angered enough to use this level of force - ie the target of a nuclear attack themselves - they can pose an EXISTENTIAL risk to a target.
This is the subtlety that I hope the Tehranian mullahs understand. It's one thing to develop a nuke to prevent external power meddling, sure. It's entirely a different thing to build a nuke in the belief that you can use the resulting leverage to push your political goals or (worst case) share with your buddies to detonate in Tel Aviv.
The latter are a course that arguably could result in the extermination of Iran as a state. I sincerely hope that a) get that, and b) care.
You seem not to understand what the "full force of the government" really means.
If the police/government(s) involved were really the jackbooted thugs that they're caricatured to be, none of the protesters would be going back to their (average $300,000) homes or (average $1500/month) apartments; they'd have been either incarcerated, disappeared, or simply killed.
"...camping and squatting in public parks is expressly forbidden..."
Ah, but there's the rub?
The previous poster liked to point out that it was public land required to be accessible 24/7 (ie, the law that the rest of us/society need to follow), but wants to conveniently ignore the OTHER laws that say you can't squat/camp there.
Ie. "I'm a special snowflake, you need to follow the rules but I don't because I'm doing it for a reason"
Slashdot Mirror
That's about as substantial as Obama's Nobel.
Let's recall that his nomination was Feb 1, 2009...he'd been US President less than TWO WEEKS.
You know, it's too bad there's not a nearby ocean that could be their "downrange" backstop...
Regarding the original article: good, it should die, it's a shitty agreement.
Is it really an environmental policy agreement? Then any state that has or will have measurable amounts of industry should be constrained by it.
Or is it a state-actor-level welfare bill, where the 'haves' are expected to either constrain their actions or spend money to help the have-nots? If so, then let's call a spade a spade and argue honestly about whether China really deserves "poor little developing country" status.
In regards to this OP: welcome to geopolitics.
The fact is that there is no overarching government for the world, as much as some would like there to be one. Therefore all actors in the system are more or less peers, and not nearly equal. So there are two ways to get the system to act together: persuade them, which has patently failed, or compel them, which (as far as I know) nobody's willing to do.
Given humans' historical performance regarding any shared resource among self-interested peers, yep, it's never going to be "worked out" until it's pretty much too late (cf. whales).
Fortunately, humans are the most adaptable creatures ever on the face of the Earth, and adapt more quickly to stimuli than any of even the most pessimistic sky-is-falling eco predictions of disaster. Assuming the worst: seas rise, a bunch of coastal cities are wiped out, people move inland or die, and learn to cope with the new normal (temps, etc.) or die. Meh, the earth has flourished despite multiple previous die-offs of 90% of everything or more, it'll survive this. So will we, to some degree.
It bears repeating - although I'm astonished that people still don't seem to recognize this - the CUSTOMER in the "free television" transaction is not the viewer, it's the advertiser.
YOU (more accurately, your attention) are what is being sold.
The shows are ostensibly only the bait, engineered to keep you in your seat until the next commercials.
So this survey is merely measuring how many people have the intellectual equivalent to a barbed hook in their home. All the comments here are (accurately) commenting just that the "worm" is too small and the hook far, far too evident.
Personally, we had a very early HD set from the late '90s that didn't have an integral HD tuner, and don't have cable (we do roku-netflix instead) - so I'd gone the route of OTA HD with a set-top tuner. The first tuner died after about a year, but when the second tuner died and (as far as I can tell) was dead for more than 3 months before anyone actually noticed, and another 2 months before anyone told me about it - I never bothered to replace it, and we're just fine. Any show we want to watch - Castle, Bones, Big Bang - we just wait until it's on Netflix and watch it uninterrupted in 3-4 episode doses. We can't really stand watching normal TV with the 3 mins of commercials every 10-12 mins.
Except I don't believe the quote.
This subject has been hashed over many times on /. itself by people smarter and more experienced in publishing than me, and we came to ebook cost-of-production nowhere NEAR 90% of paper books.
90% sounds pretty much like a number pulled from one's butt, frankly, particularly when he talks about thing like "formatting and typesetting for ebook format" being actually a significant cost. (Seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if there's someone with this job, considering how hidebound publishing is as a business...)
Let's review his "a manuscript is not a book" stages for costs?
The author writes a manuscript - no costs, except advances which are supposed to be based on expected revenue anyway.
The author or their agent send the commissioned manuscript to their editor - cost for an etext, zero.
The editor reads the MS. labor cost, probably $100/hour, say 10 hours for a thorough editing, and lets say 5 sessions of 10 hours. $5000 in labor?
Scheduling. essentially zero
Copy editing. included in editing, above. Seriously, if a book takes more than 50 man-hours of proofing, wtf is the AUTHOR doing?
The author reviews the CEM. - zero
Advance Reading Copies - zero
Book design, cover design, front and back flap copy, and cover artwork - as much as you want to spend, from $0 - whatever.
Marketing copy - zero
Review page proofs - say another 10 hours of review, $1000.
Collate advance orders and order the print run. - say another 10 hours of bureaucracy $1000
The print run - zero for an ebook
The printing process - zero, for an ebook.
Invoicing and accounting. - hahahahah.
So, $7000 in costs for a novel-length book, generously.
Typical hardcover price, $20.
Sell 100,000 copies = $2 million. Profit to be shared between publisher, agent, and author $1,993,000.
So where's the 90% number, or ANYTHING close to it?
So sorry, I call BS on the "90% of a book's cost isn't in the physical printing and distribution of a book".
He's a CEO. He deals with what he wants, when he wants - and believe me, in a European firm this is backed up by a legion of drones (secretarys, CSMs, etc) who actually DO ALL THE WORK, so that he can 'browse' his way through the "important decisions" he has to make.
In short, a CEO does perform a critically important role in a company. It has very little similarity with the actual 'work' performed by the bulk of the people at that firm.
Email's value is in allowing people to time-shift. I can triage my daily work as long as the bulk of it is on email, and know that there's always a papertrail.
I can't wait until Thierry needs a contract "immediately". If I were his secretary, I'd have someone fax it over onto one of those thermal-paper-roll fax machines.
Aren't corals one of the oldest lifeforms on the planet? As far as I recall, they've survived at least a couple of the 'great extinctions' - so as a widespread species they're at least 200 million years old. I know they're found abundantly in fossils at least 100 million years old.
And within that last 200 million years, the earth has been (both) substantially warmer and colder for long periods of time, as well as strikingly quick changes of several degrees in both directions (fast enough to appear as 'instant' in a climatological scale - otherwise comparable to the current shift). So clearly they can survive both large and quick changes.
So how is it that they're so desperately endangered? Is it that "corals" are at risk (as the news stories say) or is it that THESE corals are at risk but there are other places that were formerly unfavorable to corals that are now optimal?
I am not a coral scientist, so if someone could explain, that would be great.
Didn't we just spend the last 20 years designing laptop/lcd flatscreens so that they didn't have the damn single-point-of-viewing issue? I seem to recall the original, dim LCD screens being an enormous pain in the butt because if you moved your head about 3" to either side, you couldn't see anything.
No question, but as a response to the architectural concept of the arcology, I'm not sure that this is such a bad answer - certainly, the engineering challenges are massive but I think this is a fairly brilliant answer.
Plus hey, whenever I try a megaproject like this in Dwarf Fortress, it inevitably results in fun (http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Fun).
What do you do with the millions of tons of dirt? Send them to the coast, and build more land?
No, the cognitive difficulty is only yours.
The point is that they ARE afraid of death because they believe that they are going to be measured by an omniscient God, and there are few people who don't admit (at least to themselves) that they have done some bad things.
Personally, no, I don't believe it to the extent that I "know" a bullet to the head will kill me, either. And even if I did, I'd be a little repelled by the idea of living my life in abject fear of some impending near-eternal torment.
But I'd like to believe that somehow, at the end, we're measured against what sort of a person we have been in life, and that the true d-bags get what they deserve....which also neatly explains why religion is largely most popular amongst the desperate, the weak, and the helpless.
"Caveat Emptor"
It's existed since the first caveman traded for something with another caveman.
There are always going to be people who recognize that cheating in a system based on trust will gain them short-term advantage.
We've tasked government to pass laws that can be applied against these people, but the sheer volume of commercial transactions going on means that the huge bulk of cases will never be prosecuted formally. Ever.
Therefore it's incumbent on a buyer to be as knowledgeable as possible about the things they are spending their money on, to the degree of financial risk they care to assume. Otherwise, one method is to shop at companies that earn your trust (either directly, or by trusted word-of-mouth).
It's really not terribly complicated, people just have to stop expecting that the nanny state will or can protect them from all bad things, and accept that they are largely on their own.
You're no more objective.
The major parts of the budget are:
-debt service
-medicare
-medicaid
-social security
-defense
Every one of these needs cuts. The only one that probably can't sustain them is debt service, if we ever want to get out from under this debt, period.
I entirely agree that defense can sustain major cuts. Personally, I'd like it if our military were a little less 'available' to be thrown at whatever cause celebre happens to occupy the pigeon-like brains of whoever is the current administration.
I'd agree with your military cutting.
Medicare and medicaid are badly in need of belt tightening. End the prescription drug benefit, and let people buy cross border as much as they like.
Social security is NOT self-funded; it's self-evidently a ponzi arrangement where the workers today pay for the retirees of yesterday. The only way that it's going to stay solvent is if it floats with lifespan, such that it's only available for the final 6 years of life (as it was originally intended).
By the way, your example is badly flawed: the budget was balanced in the 90s on the surging tax revenues of a false dot-com boom. It's much easier to balance a budget in a boom than a recession.
Not really.
I spent about 3 hours reading through the raw emails.
What I saw (and I'll at the very front-end say that my bias is I'm a "denier") was:
- lots and lots of crap, like you'd see in anyone's emails.
- some very smart guys discussing nuances of details in their particular field, so the discussions were very narrow and detailed.
- the predictable 'scorn' for the unwashed masses (ie anyone outside their field) who didn't "get it"
- a distinct defensiveness in any case where the data was being questioned, and a tendency to reach for the tinfoil hat about some sort of conspiracy of people working to discredit them
In short, I didn't see any 'smoking gun' of collusion or hiding anything. I doubt these will have that either.
What I saw was people very firmly convinced not simply that they were RIGHT, but that what they were doing was righteous and anyone who dared question it was either evil or a complete fool...which isn't precisely the mindset one would expect of a scientist for whom the data (alone) drives their decisions - or should.
Generally, they sounded very much like Slashdotters.
The bathos of it becomes apparent when you realize the OWS protesters live in $300,000 homes or $1500/month apartments, have been oversupplied with everything they could possibly want (quick- count how many $400 cell phones are in that picture, $100 pieces of clothing, or people with $3000 laptops. Hell, how many of those POOR kids are drinking $5 cups of coffee?) or are raging because, having accumulated massive amounts of debt getting educations of little actual value, they now suddenly realize that they actually might be held responsible for their shitty self-choices or a basic heedlessness that "good times don't go on forever"?
My goodness, the tears- how they flow!
Sure, compare a bunch of spoiled, whiny hypocritical narcissists to civil rights people standing up for basic human rights, or some guy standing alone against a TANK.
Yeah, we're pretty much in the end days.
...perhaps she should hire a BUSINESS partner, since she may be a terrific baker but crappy businessperson?
Doesn't take a PhD to say "let's say we offer a 75% discount....what sort of hit might we take?"
The liberal left will come in here saying that categorically taking tax increases off the table was uncompromising and stupid.
The conservative right will come in here and point out that tax increases are always the answer for the left, who have no concept of fiscal responsibility and never met a government program that they didn't love.
I'm a conservative, but I'll be as objective as I can be: BOTH sides are arrogant, petulant, moronic, asinine, worthless bunglers that should all be fired. If the postal worker walks down the street and doesn't deliver the mail - she gets fired. If the paramedic looks great in his uniform and loves tooting his siren but never actually saves anyone, he gets fired. Congress's JOB is the control of the pursestrings. Period. They haven't done their job, yet we continue to re-elect them.
Let's be clear - to claim that Republicans are solely to blame is already tendentious. The 111th Congress (2009; you know, the one with the democratic majority in both houses, and a democratic president) DIDN'T pass a budget for 2010. To suggest that was somehow purely Republican fault is staggering mendacity.
I have already complained to my Republican congressman that they suck as negotiators - that the military (20% of federal spending) gets hit by 50% of the sequestration automatic cuts - was an idiotic agreement, and is essentially giving the Democrats who are typically anti-defense no reason to come to any agreement. No agreement = they already win. Thus I'm unsurprised that they've found no result to date.
Personally (and I know this is my politics speaking) I'm sick of the infinite expansion of government programs, seemingly no incentive by government to limit their spending, and their constantly assuming I as the tax payer am an endless font of more money.
Before the leftist strawmen attack: of course I understand that some government is necessary, and that as a member of a society, I'm willing to cheerfully contribute a share of the costs. HOWEVER I don't agree with the $trillions spent on bailing out investment firms and banks, and protecting them from their bad choices. Yes, letting them collapse would have been disastrous for the US economy, but here's how I see it: we've already built a society that's trying to be capitalist on the up side, (so people can reap the benefits), and socialist on the down side (so people are protected from the results of their choices). This is logically unsustainable. The resulting economic collapse is nothing more than the resolution of this unsustainability....pretty much just like forest fires. The more we try to resist the natural forces of capitalism, the more cataclysmic are the ultimate results when these forces DO eventually succeed in breaking the levees.
I don't agree with $billions being spent to bail people out of homes that they bought and couldn't afford. Caveat emptor shouldn't be MY problem. As a homeowner that DID moderate my desires, who DID buy a home within my means (INCLUDING planning for rainy-day money, and working/saving at a level that isn't predicated on boundless optimism, an eternally-growing economy, and permanent employment), I'm the schmuck; as a homeowner that makes his payments, I'm going to be (again) the one charged to cover the losses by the banks AND taxed by the gov't to cover the giveaways by the Fed too.
I'm disappointed by the $billions (or more) apparently lost in Iraq and Afghanistan without our government apparently caring very much?
In my adult lifetime, I've heard repeatedly at the federal and state levels that whenever there's a budget problem (and let's face it, need is infinite and resources never are), elected representatives like to increase taxes today and promise to cut spending tomorrow (liberals) or cut taxes today and promise to cut spending tomorrow (conservatives). Tomorrow never seems to come.
I agree that to dig out of this hole, we WILL have to raise taxes. I complained to the Republican National committee that as a Republican I w
"alien life" can come up in at least a couple of significantly different contexts.
Were you talking solely about the possibility of life other than Earth? I'd say that according to our most middle-of-the-road estimates, it seems like it would be a near-certainty.
Or was the discussion about UFO's and aliens landing and probing peoples' rectums? That would pretty much deserve derisive laughter.
For what it's worth, considering that we're at the every early stages of spaceflight ourselves, any entities we meet in space (or coming to visit here) are going to be our tech or higher. Considering the age of the universe, and that fact that it only took about 7-8 billion years to go from dust-to-sentient life, there are strong odds that anyone we meet will in fact be 000's, if not millions or even BILLIONS of years more advanced than us....could we even conceptually recognize if they were here? They certainly won't show up with anal probes.
Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/638/
Except, that's a lie. It's simply disingenuous.
Quote:
"They applied for the right to state that âoeregular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydrationâ as well as preventing a decrease in performance."
Unless you're asserting the Telegraph is LYING and misrepresenting the statement the professors were seeking to have approved? Note the bit in quotes: âoeregular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydrationâ
They aren't saying BOTTLED water. They aren't saying THIS water. They're saying WATER. Period. Any water. Tap water. Rain water.
So, you need to be honest with yourself if anyone: how can you possibly assert that âoeregular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydrationâ is factually untrue?
I'm pleased that they're paying attention to this; unfortunately I bought a 2011 edge without the fancy screen, so I'm in the-hell-of-1974-bad-stereo-control, to the power of many-more-features-shoehorned-in.
I *am* curious why that touchscreen - which is approximately the size of 2 smartphones - was a $1611 upgrade from the basic controls.
Right now I (apparently) have the software and most of the systems in my car, but imagine trying to run an mp3 player, navigation system, bluetooth phone, etc with THIS (http://image.motortrend.com/f/2008_ford_edge/2308898196140957893+ppromo_mt_large/center_console.jpg) set of controls?
I seriously can't wait until all cars have at least a USB port so I can save/store/communicate things like radio stations, seat preferences, etc all just by uploading my own user config. It'd be even nicer to get diagnostic data from the car that way that's a little more comprehensive than "oh, the red light is on".
Well, of course you wouldn't actually OWN the nukes. You'd be buying a license to access the nukes for your use. Maybe this would be an answer not only to piracy but non-proliferation concerns?
.... "CHANGE".
Feeling it yet?
Granted what you say may be true.
However, an alternate explanation would be that only peripheral media outlets - not being in the tank for the current administration - would carry such a story.
Remember, nobody believed the Monica Lewinsky story at first, because it was on this stupid blog called the Drudge Report.
While I appreciate your pragmatic geopolitical viewpoint, I hope you will equally appreciate that it's EQUALLY logical that the powers with nukes do whatever they have to, to prevent the spread of the franchise. I mean, if we're just talking about geopolitical reality, right?
And it's worth mentioning that it's not a binary "have nukes = safe" situation.
Building nukes is not a mass-production thing, particularly in the early stages - each one is essentially a crafted item. Further, the reliability of the early products make their deterrent value extraordinarily questionable.
Having a small handful of nukes is arguably MORE dangerous than having none....it's a strong signal to the 'nuke club' that you're pushing your way in the door, and if they want to exclude you, they need to act quickly.
And let's be clear too that there are gradations of membership in that club.
There are nuclear powers, and there are superpowers. All having nukes does for the "powers" is simply raise the cost of invasion to prohibitive levels, ie purely defensive.
Superpowers, on the other hand, have the ability to literally annihilate a target country (at potential cost of nuclear winter, and end of the human race if the exchange is large enough) without really even a great deal of effort/risk to themselves. It's an entirely different position. Angered enough to use this level of force - ie the target of a nuclear attack themselves - they can pose an EXISTENTIAL risk to a target.
This is the subtlety that I hope the Tehranian mullahs understand. It's one thing to develop a nuke to prevent external power meddling, sure. It's entirely a different thing to build a nuke in the belief that you can use the resulting leverage to push your political goals or (worst case) share with your buddies to detonate in Tel Aviv.
The latter are a course that arguably could result in the extermination of Iran as a state. I sincerely hope that a) get that, and b) care.
You seem not to understand what the "full force of the government" really means.
If the police/government(s) involved were really the jackbooted thugs that they're caricatured to be, none of the protesters would be going back to their (average $300,000) homes or (average $1500/month) apartments; they'd have been either incarcerated, disappeared, or simply killed.
"...camping and squatting in public parks is expressly forbidden..."
Ah, but there's the rub?
The previous poster liked to point out that it was public land required to be accessible 24/7 (ie, the law that the rest of us/society need to follow), but wants to conveniently ignore the OTHER laws that say you can't squat/camp there.
Ie. "I'm a special snowflake, you need to follow the rules but I don't because I'm doing it for a reason"