All of the things you write are true, except for the fact that government - lacking any sort of competitive pressure - is usually about the most INefficient way to deliver any service.
Post office vs. Fedex?
Nationalized Health Care Systems vs. Private Health Care Systems
Nationalized industry (any) vs Private industry (any)
You're right, there are some "commons" products that don't directly generate their own revenue, and 'float all boats higher'. Sadly, while government has a valid and intrinsic role in this arena, it seems to be the natural tendency of government to agglomerate to itself sole authority over everything...
I'd say it's more functionally accurate to say that the male human brain maps out at a function amazingly similar to Eva Longoria. At least, most of her.
As long as there's no actual risk in offshoring, then economically it makes sense, setting aside such fuzzy, non-PHB things as morality, etc.
The US and the world in general has enjoyed a 66-year span of great power peace, unprecedented in the modern era. I'd say that most people have no sense at how abnormal this is.
When there is a great power conflict, and suddenly manufacturing becomes strategically important and longer supply lines mean vulnerability - once again domestic manufacturing will matter...for a while.
Then again, in the next great power war, it may be over in about 2 hours, and whatever people are left over will be too busy dodging giant radioactive cockroaches, to care about the mistakes we made, nor any industry left to reorganize.
...aren't "wedding rings" the bands that 2 people EXCHANGE to signify their bond to each other? This is just two interlocking loops of DNA that someone made...now if he'd made them out of his and hers DNA contributions, then there would be SOME tie to the relationship.
I mean, if I'm about to get married, and I draw two circles in the beer-foam on the table, can I claim "they're the world's first beer wedding rings!".
Or even better, if I can afford to have to gymnastic hookers form interlocking naked circles, could that be the world's first "hooker wedding rings"?
That's absurd. People can communicate with their local government. The national organization that we accept is that subsequent levels of government are more remote.
By your logic, ultimately, at its most basic level of communication, the government needs to subsidize bus/train/plane transport from anywhere to Washington DC?
Guy who (effectively) invents something believes it's essential. News at 11.
All praise due to TBL for his actual accomplishments, but seriously?
"Human Rights" are an enlightened concept of the modern age, by which some (generally) well-paid white guy in a comfortable office somewhere who has never suffered a hardship more severe than getting the wrong coffee order at Starbucks, tries to define the things that he doesn't think he could live without.
Pardon me if I don't take him seriously any longer.
I'm not sure it's quite as dogmatic as the RPS article makes it.
"Genre" descriptions are just that, generalizations that give you SOME idea of what you can expect in the package. If someone designs, say, a "racing" game, then yes, it's going to follow some of the genre tropes of racing. If it doesn't, then it self-evidently wouldn't be called a 'racing' game, no matter how much you wanted it to be so.
If you design a racing game that's in a persistent world, where you level up your toon by participating in races, and you get more abilities the more experience your character gained, that would be a 'racing mmo'. If the 'racing' bit was taken out - and you just raced by clicking into a race event and it was resolved for you - then it would simply be a 'race-themed mmo'.
To suggest that describing a game by genre is somehow lazy is just silly. It's one of the essential characteristics of things and humans' approach to identifying them that they are classified in sets, general to specific. No, not every game is unique, many (if not most) share gameplay elements with other earlier games, and this is useful to a consumer who is looking to drop $50 on a new title. Ooh, I hated the way Game X handled combat, if this is described as like game X or genre X, I don't waste my time on it. Did I give the game a fair shake? No, but my resources (including time) are finite, and one has to draw the line somewhere.
One would have hoped that the internet age would have meant that we could at least get raw information, to make our own informed decisions. The unfortunate truth is that while ample 'raw' information is available, source credibility is impaired, leaving us (perhaps) worse off than before.
Either you try to plow through raw data and draw your own conclusions, with little to no ability to confirm that the raw data you're reviewing is actually unbiased or that you even have the knowledge to evaluate it properly, or... you rely on 'experts' with their unknown biases and motivations (or worse, experts whose political leanings agree with your own - a sure sign of trouble).
This applies BOTH to the right (with Fox News and their whole attending swarm of tame experts) and the left (with NPR, CNN, (MS)NBC, etc. and their equally-domesticated fellow-travelers), although both insistently assert that "they" are objective and "those other guys" are hopelessly biased.
My own preference is to educate myself as best possible, and to try to evaluate the rawest possible data myself. I know I'll make mistakes, but if the choice is an error based on my own intellectual failing, or an error based on the intended bias of someone trying to manipulate me - I'll live with my own failings, thanks.
A corollary in support of your point: the ability to manually work through the basics of math are essential if only because the reliance on more and more complex systems REQUIRES that the humans doing so have some 'common sense' ability to interpret the results, and double check them in a basic sense.
True story: I bought something for a few bucks. I handed the teller a $10. She punches it into the register, and hands be $14 back in change. Patently impossible. So I said "I'm not sure this is my right change, I gave you a ten" - and she says yes, I gave her a ten but this is what the register says I should get as change. (Clearly, she'd put in $20, not $10.)
If you write complex formulas in code or excel, etc. - you HAVE to be able to hypothesize about the result, if only to make sure that the result is within the realm of possibility, to ensure that you didn't misplace a parenthesis or decimal somewhere.
I have nothing against GM crops to some degree, but I have to wonder if this is a great idea.
Every facet of a species' evolution is toward making it more successful in its environment. Clearly, these species have settled on a 5% efficiency as 'good enough' - not (Darwinistically) willing to trade-off higher efficiencies to lose some other feature.
Are there other grasses that run at higher efficiencies? (Is sugar cane a grass?)
Anyone know what the photosynthesis efficiencies are for the ORIGINAL versions of these food-grasses? I know that what we look at as wheat is significantly different than it originally evolved.
Further, last time I checked, there is no shortage of FOOD on this planet. The issue about global food shortages is a matter of politics and distribution, NOT the ability to grow enough food.
Finally, and I know this is controversial, but in terms of the poorest regions - are we really helping them if we provide them more sources of cheap food? Haven't they already demonstrated that they'll promptly just breed past the point of sustainability when they can? How do we believe that the next generations will behave differently? Won't higher-food-content grains just lower the price of food in the developed world further, making it even harder to be anything but a giant industrialized corporate farm?
You do understand the tactic of "when people want to cut the budget, make sure that the cuts come from police, firemen, and other universally-agreed programs so that it generates as much political cost for the cutters as possible" right?
By the way, perhaps you didn't realize - this "war" that bankrupted us? Cost $20 billion LESS than that spent on education in the same period, and less than 1/4 that spend on Medicaid.
The wars were pocket change compared to the ongoing SOCIAL spending - which gives us NOTHING but more dependence - hell, at least we're USING the weapons.
An anonymous reader writes "Awesome software code which demonstrates how easily code can be created using the Arduino software environment." A very nice little project based on the (generic code project). Reminds me of the software my Dad used to work on with me many years ago. "Great fun for young and old," you might say.
Is that a useful summary of Hello World? No, because it DOESN'T SUMMARIZE ANYTHING. "There's some code, it does some stuff, and reminds me of my dad" isn't a summary, it's just blathering.
Sorry, to be clear: - the only case where someone who lost something would still be required to contribute is in the case where there's actually damage to the ship. That said, in my 21 years in seafreight, I can't think of a time when containers went overboard (either on purpose or no) when there *wasn't* significant damage to the ship. It's not like the captain would do such a thing lightly or arbitrarily, nor is it "easy" to knock these things free - they're pretty well pegged in there, not unlike a stack of legos. - there's no pricing differential for a number of reasons, mainly (I'd guess) because 1) the chance of this happening to your given container is so vanishingly unlikely individually, it doesn't really have economic merit; 2) if the steamship lines COULD charge you more for a 'better seat' they certainly would. That they don't, suggests to me that they probably either don't WANT to even raise the subject OR they already have a complicated enough time loading a vessel (simultaneously) for balance, keeping certain cargo segregated (don't want the explosives shipping next to the spontaneously combustibles), port rotations (load cargo so that the vessel can stop in port A, unload all the cargo for port A in 8 hours, load in all the cargo from port A in 8 hours, without blocking the cargo still sitting on the ship for ports B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J). Adding the ability for shippers to pick their spot would probably not bring enough revenue to justify the additional level of planning nightmare.
Yes, freight insurance is available (but pricey, on the order of 3-6% of value), and people are ignorant, thinking 'default' insurance will protect them, when in fact that's typically capped at some absurdly low number, like $50/shipping unit (pallet, etc.)
Here's an even more unpleasant truth about international ocean shipping: essentially the shipping company is not liable for the 'disposed' containers, either. If the shipping company has enough losses on a vessel to declare a "General Average", then the compensation for the losses (including vessel damage, if any) are assessed against the other *customers* with cargo on that vessel.
Basically, the vessel is carrying the cargo as a courtesy; any risk of loss belongs to the owners of the cargo(es) collectively, NOT to the carrier.
So as a forwarding agent, not only do you get the pleasure of telling someone that their container of goods has been lost, you get to tell them that a) they still have to pay freight shipping costs, AND b) they're going to be legally liable for their 'share' of whatever the general average costs work out to be
...in families with parents who don't pay attention to their kids, the kids generally turn out badly. Really, how shocking.
Look, I know a fair number of neighborhood kids.
Some of them play a lot of GTAx and Black Ops and are horrible kids. The horrible ones would be good examples for anyone looking to "prove" that videogames have a negative effect. Of course, for the previous 12+ years, I've seen these same kids wandering around the neighborhood at 11pm or later, as little kids they were typically carrying a bag of candy, sucking down Mountain Dew (at age 4), their lunches on field trips would be snackables and a Coke, they never participated in sports, music, or community activities, etc. etc.etc. These kids probably play videogames at all hours, whatever they want, whenever they want. Their parents laugh "scandalized" when they see 9-yr-old Johnny jacking a hooker in GTA and killing her for his cash back.
However, some kids play a lot of GTAx and Black Ops and are great kids. They've generally done lots of things with their parents, had fairly regular and reasonable boundaries on their behavior (curfew, etc), participated in sports, drama, etc. These kids play GTA and Black Ops, but do their homework first, have other commitments that take priority, and play video games simply as part of a suite of entertainments.
So, do we REALLY think videogames are the causal difference here?
"...Now, it is true that the tallest bird that ever lived (the Giant Moa) was 13' tall, rather taller than a T Rex...."?
I'm guessing you've never seen an assembled T.Rex in person? They're MUCH larger than a Moa ever was.
Er, the T.Rex was typically 13' tall...AT THE HIP. Adult T.Rex would have stood (depending on stance, but assuming they stood like a Moa) roughly 20-22' tall.
The Giant Moa was as much as 12'-13' tall to the top of the head. Its hip was perhaps 5'.
This of course ignores that the T.Rex was around 5.5 tons, and the Moa around 0.6., but we're not comparing "size" only height.
I understand your point, but not sure you understand WoW. WoW pushes out patches WHILE you're playing, in the background - if you're running through empty spaces that your system already has loaded and there's little or no update needed from the server, they take that moment to push packets of that giant 500-meg (or whatever) update. It runs in the background.
They do this so that when that 500meg update does go live, there aren't 12 million people trying to suck down 500 megs each all simultaneously...they all mostly have the bulk of the patch already stored locally.
So while you can disable it, it's not straightforward nor is it really attractive. So basically having bittorrent running while you play the game IS THE DEFAULT.
This is what poses as +5 insightful on/., an AC screed against conservatives? Does Soros own/. now, too?
You DO realize that it was conservative, deeply religious people that BUILT this country - the industry, the infrastructure, the economy? It was their hard work, their dollars, their effort that has produced anything of value. The effete intellectuals pretty much just sat around and whined about how bad everything is/was.
No, I think when the US is a downtrodden 3rd-rate country, people are going to wonder why the Left built a massive, overwhelming government that stole from the productive and handed it all to the non-productive. Self-evidently an economically suicidal plan.
Perhaps if scientific research is worthwhile, someone will INVEST in it, rather than needing to steal tax dollars to fund the study of the mating strategies of violets?
Perhaps tax dollars taken from the public should be put to positive use beyond funding giant government agencies that perform little to no useful function? (Dept of Energy, Dept of Education)
Perhaps not everyone needs to go to college? And if you want to go, rather than making Joe and Joanne Public help pay for your lazy ass you could SAVE UP YOUR OWN MONEY and pay your own way. If you don't have enough, perhaps you could work hard and save enough for your kids to go? It's amusingly naive that you think it's strange that people are reluctant to give their dollars to you, so you can go to school.
Slashdot Mirror
All of the things you write are true, except for the fact that government - lacking any sort of competitive pressure - is usually about the most INefficient way to deliver any service.
Post office vs. Fedex?
Nationalized Health Care Systems vs. Private Health Care Systems
Nationalized industry (any) vs Private industry (any)
You're right, there are some "commons" products that don't directly generate their own revenue, and 'float all boats higher'. Sadly, while government has a valid and intrinsic role in this arena, it seems to be the natural tendency of government to agglomerate to itself sole authority over everything...
I'd say it's more functionally accurate to say that the male human brain maps out at a function amazingly similar to Eva Longoria. At least, most of her.
As long as there's no actual risk in offshoring, then economically it makes sense, setting aside such fuzzy, non-PHB things as morality, etc.
The US and the world in general has enjoyed a 66-year span of great power peace, unprecedented in the modern era. I'd say that most people have no sense at how abnormal this is.
When there is a great power conflict, and suddenly manufacturing becomes strategically important and longer supply lines mean vulnerability - once again domestic manufacturing will matter...for a while.
Then again, in the next great power war, it may be over in about 2 hours, and whatever people are left over will be too busy dodging giant radioactive cockroaches, to care about the mistakes we made, nor any industry left to reorganize.
...aren't "wedding rings" the bands that 2 people EXCHANGE to signify their bond to each other? This is just two interlocking loops of DNA that someone made...now if he'd made them out of his and hers DNA contributions, then there would be SOME tie to the relationship.
I mean, if I'm about to get married, and I draw two circles in the beer-foam on the table, can I claim "they're the world's first beer wedding rings!".
Or even better, if I can afford to have to gymnastic hookers form interlocking naked circles, could that be the world's first "hooker wedding rings"?
That's absurd.
People can communicate with their local government.
The national organization that we accept is that subsequent levels of government are more remote.
By your logic, ultimately, at its most basic level of communication, the government needs to subsidize bus/train/plane transport from anywhere to Washington DC?
Guy who (effectively) invents something believes it's essential. News at 11.
All praise due to TBL for his actual accomplishments, but seriously?
"Human Rights" are an enlightened concept of the modern age, by which some (generally) well-paid white guy in a comfortable office somewhere who has never suffered a hardship more severe than getting the wrong coffee order at Starbucks, tries to define the things that he doesn't think he could live without.
Pardon me if I don't take him seriously any longer.
I'm not sure it's quite as dogmatic as the RPS article makes it.
"Genre" descriptions are just that, generalizations that give you SOME idea of what you can expect in the package. If someone designs, say, a "racing" game, then yes, it's going to follow some of the genre tropes of racing. If it doesn't, then it self-evidently wouldn't be called a 'racing' game, no matter how much you wanted it to be so.
If you design a racing game that's in a persistent world, where you level up your toon by participating in races, and you get more abilities the more experience your character gained, that would be a 'racing mmo'. If the 'racing' bit was taken out - and you just raced by clicking into a race event and it was resolved for you - then it would simply be a 'race-themed mmo'.
To suggest that describing a game by genre is somehow lazy is just silly. It's one of the essential characteristics of things and humans' approach to identifying them that they are classified in sets, general to specific. No, not every game is unique, many (if not most) share gameplay elements with other earlier games, and this is useful to a consumer who is looking to drop $50 on a new title. Ooh, I hated the way Game X handled combat, if this is described as like game X or genre X, I don't waste my time on it. Did I give the game a fair shake? No, but my resources (including time) are finite, and one has to draw the line somewhere.
From TFA:
"...At about a cubic millimeter in size, this camera is right at the size limit that the human eye can see unaided...."
AFAIK the smallest thing viewable by the unaided human eye is 0.1-0.2 mm (100-200 microns).
I would hardly say that an order of magnitude is "right at the limit"?
How bad would your vision have to be to have trouble seeing this camera?
One would have hoped that the internet age would have meant that we could at least get raw information, to make our own informed decisions. The unfortunate truth is that while ample 'raw' information is available, source credibility is impaired, leaving us (perhaps) worse off than before.
Either you try to plow through raw data and draw your own conclusions, with little to no ability to confirm that the raw data you're reviewing is actually unbiased or that you even have the knowledge to evaluate it properly, or...
you rely on 'experts' with their unknown biases and motivations (or worse, experts whose political leanings agree with your own - a sure sign of trouble).
This applies BOTH to the right (with Fox News and their whole attending swarm of tame experts) and the left (with NPR, CNN, (MS)NBC, etc. and their equally-domesticated fellow-travelers), although both insistently assert that "they" are objective and "those other guys" are hopelessly biased.
My own preference is to educate myself as best possible, and to try to evaluate the rawest possible data myself. I know I'll make mistakes, but if the choice is an error based on my own intellectual failing, or an error based on the intended bias of someone trying to manipulate me - I'll live with my own failings, thanks.
A corollary in support of your point: the ability to manually work through the basics of math are essential if only because the reliance on more and more complex systems REQUIRES that the humans doing so have some 'common sense' ability to interpret the results, and double check them in a basic sense.
True story: I bought something for a few bucks. I handed the teller a $10. She punches it into the register, and hands be $14 back in change. Patently impossible. So I said "I'm not sure this is my right change, I gave you a ten" - and she says yes, I gave her a ten but this is what the register says I should get as change. (Clearly, she'd put in $20, not $10.)
If you write complex formulas in code or excel, etc. - you HAVE to be able to hypothesize about the result, if only to make sure that the result is within the realm of possibility, to ensure that you didn't misplace a parenthesis or decimal somewhere.
I have nothing against GM crops to some degree, but I have to wonder if this is a great idea.
Every facet of a species' evolution is toward making it more successful in its environment. Clearly, these species have settled on a 5% efficiency as 'good enough' - not (Darwinistically) willing to trade-off higher efficiencies to lose some other feature.
Are there other grasses that run at higher efficiencies? (Is sugar cane a grass?)
Anyone know what the photosynthesis efficiencies are for the ORIGINAL versions of these food-grasses? I know that what we look at as wheat is significantly different than it originally evolved.
Further, last time I checked, there is no shortage of FOOD on this planet. The issue about global food shortages is a matter of politics and distribution, NOT the ability to grow enough food.
Finally, and I know this is controversial, but in terms of the poorest regions - are we really helping them if we provide them more sources of cheap food? Haven't they already demonstrated that they'll promptly just breed past the point of sustainability when they can? How do we believe that the next generations will behave differently? Won't higher-food-content grains just lower the price of food in the developed world further, making it even harder to be anything but a giant industrialized corporate farm?
I notice they're on version 10 since March 27...does that mean this is included in their latest build?
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_download.php
You do understand the tactic of "when people want to cut the budget, make sure that the cuts come from police, firemen, and other universally-agreed programs so that it generates as much political cost for the cutters as possible" right?
By the way, perhaps you didn't realize - this "war" that bankrupted us?
Cost $20 billion LESS than that spent on education in the same period, and less than 1/4 that spend on Medicaid.
(http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/iraq_the_war_that_broke_us_not.html)
The wars were pocket change compared to the ongoing SOCIAL spending - which gives us NOTHING but more dependence - hell, at least we're USING the weapons.
An anonymous reader writes
"Awesome software code which demonstrates how easily code can be created using the Arduino software environment."
A very nice little project based on the (generic code project). Reminds me of the software my Dad used to work on with me many years ago. "Great fun for young and old," you might say.
Is that a useful summary of Hello World? No, because it DOESN'T SUMMARIZE ANYTHING. "There's some code, it does some stuff, and reminds me of my dad" isn't a summary, it's just blathering.
I believe that was the OP's point.
Sorry, to be clear:
- the only case where someone who lost something would still be required to contribute is in the case where there's actually damage to the ship. That said, in my 21 years in seafreight, I can't think of a time when containers went overboard (either on purpose or no) when there *wasn't* significant damage to the ship. It's not like the captain would do such a thing lightly or arbitrarily, nor is it "easy" to knock these things free - they're pretty well pegged in there, not unlike a stack of legos.
- there's no pricing differential for a number of reasons, mainly (I'd guess) because
1) the chance of this happening to your given container is so vanishingly unlikely individually, it doesn't really have economic merit;
2) if the steamship lines COULD charge you more for a 'better seat' they certainly would. That they don't, suggests to me that they probably either don't WANT to even raise the subject OR they already have a complicated enough time loading a vessel (simultaneously) for balance, keeping certain cargo segregated (don't want the explosives shipping next to the spontaneously combustibles), port rotations (load cargo so that the vessel can stop in port A, unload all the cargo for port A in 8 hours, load in all the cargo from port A in 8 hours, without blocking the cargo still sitting on the ship for ports B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J). Adding the ability for shippers to pick their spot would probably not bring enough revenue to justify the additional level of planning nightmare.
Yes, freight insurance is available (but pricey, on the order of 3-6% of value), and people are ignorant, thinking 'default' insurance will protect them, when in fact that's typically capped at some absurdly low number, like $50/shipping unit (pallet, etc.)
Really, is this what we're calling everything where people can't exercise a little self-discipline?
Our culture seriously needs a giant cup of "Grow the Fuck Up".
Here's an even more unpleasant truth about international ocean shipping: essentially the shipping company is not liable for the 'disposed' containers, either. If the shipping company has enough losses on a vessel to declare a "General Average", then the compensation for the losses (including vessel damage, if any) are assessed against the other *customers* with cargo on that vessel.
Basically, the vessel is carrying the cargo as a courtesy; any risk of loss belongs to the owners of the cargo(es) collectively, NOT to the carrier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_average
So as a forwarding agent, not only do you get the pleasure of telling someone that their container of goods has been lost, you get to tell them that
a) they still have to pay freight shipping costs, AND
b) they're going to be legally liable for their 'share' of whatever the general average costs work out to be
Oh it's great fun.
...in families with parents who don't pay attention to their kids, the kids generally turn out badly. Really, how shocking.
Look, I know a fair number of neighborhood kids.
Some of them play a lot of GTAx and Black Ops and are horrible kids.
The horrible ones would be good examples for anyone looking to "prove" that videogames have a negative effect. Of course, for the previous 12+ years, I've seen these same kids wandering around the neighborhood at 11pm or later, as little kids they were typically carrying a bag of candy, sucking down Mountain Dew (at age 4), their lunches on field trips would be snackables and a Coke, they never participated in sports, music, or community activities, etc. etc.etc. These kids probably play videogames at all hours, whatever they want, whenever they want. Their parents laugh "scandalized" when they see 9-yr-old Johnny jacking a hooker in GTA and killing her for his cash back.
However, some kids play a lot of GTAx and Black Ops and are great kids.
They've generally done lots of things with their parents, had fairly regular and reasonable boundaries on their behavior (curfew, etc), participated in sports, drama, etc. These kids play GTA and Black Ops, but do their homework first, have other commitments that take priority, and play video games simply as part of a suite of entertainments.
So, do we REALLY think videogames are the causal difference here?
"...Now, it is true that the tallest bird that ever lived (the Giant Moa) was 13' tall, rather taller than a T Rex...."?
I'm guessing you've never seen an assembled T.Rex in person? They're MUCH larger than a Moa ever was.
Er, the T.Rex was typically 13' tall...AT THE HIP. Adult T.Rex would have stood (depending on stance, but assuming they stood like a Moa) roughly 20-22' tall.
The Giant Moa was as much as 12'-13' tall to the top of the head. Its hip was perhaps 5'.
This of course ignores that the T.Rex was around 5.5 tons, and the Moa around 0.6., but we're not comparing "size" only height.
I *so* hate April Fools' day on the internet.
Really the "fake news story" thing stopped being funny about 1992...except for The Onion, they still do a good job at it.
Let's remember that the Blue Ray Disk Association exists for one purpose: to further the commercial success of its members. Period.
I'm curious, why the cleansuit smocks?
I mean, it's not like it has to be sterile-clean to sit in a hangar in Poughkeepsie.
I understand your point, but not sure you understand WoW.
WoW pushes out patches WHILE you're playing, in the background - if you're running through empty spaces that your system already has loaded and there's little or no update needed from the server, they take that moment to push packets of that giant 500-meg (or whatever) update. It runs in the background.
They do this so that when that 500meg update does go live, there aren't 12 million people trying to suck down 500 megs each all simultaneously...they all mostly have the bulk of the patch already stored locally.
So while you can disable it, it's not straightforward nor is it really attractive. So basically having bittorrent running while you play the game IS THE DEFAULT.
This is what poses as +5 insightful on /., an AC screed against conservatives? Does Soros own /. now, too?
You DO realize that it was conservative, deeply religious people that BUILT this country - the industry, the infrastructure, the economy? It was their hard work, their dollars, their effort that has produced anything of value. The effete intellectuals pretty much just sat around and whined about how bad everything is/was.
No, I think when the US is a downtrodden 3rd-rate country, people are going to wonder why the Left built a massive, overwhelming government that stole from the productive and handed it all to the non-productive. Self-evidently an economically suicidal plan.
Perhaps if scientific research is worthwhile, someone will INVEST in it, rather than needing to steal tax dollars to fund the study of the mating strategies of violets?
Perhaps tax dollars taken from the public should be put to positive use beyond funding giant government agencies that perform little to no useful function? (Dept of Energy, Dept of Education)
Perhaps not everyone needs to go to college? And if you want to go, rather than making Joe and Joanne Public help pay for your lazy ass you could SAVE UP YOUR OWN MONEY and pay your own way. If you don't have enough, perhaps you could work hard and save enough for your kids to go? It's amusingly naive that you think it's strange that people are reluctant to give their dollars to you, so you can go to school.
And insofar as politicians contradicting scientists? I'm glad the Left doesn't do that!...oh wait: http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/11/10/10greenwire-white-house-changed-report-implying-experts-su-96097.html
On the face of it, I can't imagine that firemen would be really pleased at this.
Let's see we have fire, smoke, water, (and in the examples they gave) all-metal vehicles. Let's toss in some high-voltage electricity?