This is ridiculous. First, the expansion/contraction of plastics is generally MUCH much higher than concrete/pavement. Second, the "prefab road sections" are absurd; nobody builds roads like this already (of any material) because they would be ruinously expensive (not because of the raw material costs), nothing has come close to the level of durability needed to handle 50-ton trucks repeatedly for decades, and extremely hard to deploy. Third, the overwhelming majority of plastic in the ocean is 0.1mm or smaller (http://theconversation.com/in-the-ocean-the-most-harmful-plastic-is-too-small-to-see-35336) - the cost/magnitude of scale to sieve this from the oceans is mind-boggling.
Seriously, Dutch, I love you - but that's a mind-blowingly dumb idea.
You're missing the point more essentially: What's "GMO"?
Is selective breeding "GMO"? Is splicing a branch onto a tree "GMO"? Hell, if you deliberately select one cow to breed with that bull, you're 'managing' natural selection, and thus is that GMO? Is using that bull's semen in another artificially inseminated cow "GMO"?
Every piece of corn you eat - from the cob at KFC to something grown entirely organically by the hippies next door, is "genetically modified' because they are not even *close* to the original strain of corn. Same with wheat, apples, oranges, everything of food value has been 'managed', bred, cross pollinated, or selected for traits - is that GMO?
Does it have to be done with a microscope? If I develop a new herbicide, spray it on a field of grain, and then pull out the plants that survive, use their seeds to grow a new crop, and do the same things a few times to develop herbicide-resistant seeds, are those "GMO"?
I just find the entire subject farcical because you can't get two activists to agree even on what "GMO" means - just that it's evil, whatever the definition.
...in other news, Google Engineers are new developing the next capability for the driverless car, the so called GOASSATODFBADFSPOSTRIYAWHITBTPTHOOTAASFSATPOIAW system, which stand for "Get out and start swearing at the other driver for being a dumb fuck stupid piece of shit that ran into you and wouldn't have if they bothered to pull their head out of their ass and stop fucking staring at their phone once in a while." heuristic engine, which will immediately assign blame and begin a confrontation with the other driver, simultaneously calling a lawyer and filming everything at the scene. The next stage is expected to be the UYIWMGFYSITMOTFRYFTMIYWSYFYCTALATIOIAW "Oh yeah? It wasn't my goddamned fault you stopped in the middle of the fucking road you fat turd maybe if you weren't stuffing your face you could take a look around the intersection once in a while" response system, and eventually the (tits&tears) "pop my top blouse button and break down into tears hoping he won't sue my ass off" system to deal with the remaining human drivers on the road.
I get the intent, but I'm going to submit that what people living in HUD housing need is NOT a better porn/tv/streaming bandwidth to their home. *NOBODY* needs gigabit fiber access to do their homework online.
I wasn't even saying "rah rah" my side, actually, just that Democratic presidents are naive enough to believe that such agreements are meaningful, all the way back to FDR who believed he could personally 'charm' Stalin.
I didn't really think we needed an example of what Republican presidents are prone to; has anyone forgotten 2001-2008 (and frankly the following years are a result of them) in Iraq/Afghanistan?
I'd object without any financial stake because it doesn't fucking make sense.
EVERY SINGLE ORGANIC* FOOD YOU EAT HAS BEEN "GENETICALLY MODIFIED" FROM ITS ORIGINAL FORM by (at the very least) selective breeding if not more intrusive means.
*ironically, the only "food" you can eat and totally avoid this would be entirely synthetic things like Twizzlers and Sweetarts. Have at it, Luddites.
....since when it goes off, it'll probably either be in conjunction with or set off the Yellowstone supervolcano, and everyone else will have their own catastrophic issues to deal with.
Hey, but at least we might stop hearing about global warming for a while. There's a silver lining.
You're right; 0.004% of the best-educated, most culturally advanced (IMO) people on the planet have figured out how to do it right.
I"m not sure that's a very encouraging figure?
Personally, I believe that Iceland - population 300,000 - is probably somewhere near a natural limit of actual connected, responsible government. In the same sense that true communism really only works at the household/clan/tribal level, it may be that representative democracy - as an actual thing, not just a pastiche of it - tops out at a certain point as well, and beyond that every government leans towards despotism, for practical effectiveness' sake even setting aside the apparently inherently aggrandizing and greedy nature of humans.
Not precisely. You need to work on your history. First of all, this was the result of policies implemented in the 90s - when Clinton was in office. I remember in the 90s the parade of corporate execs being called before congress (and Mr Frank specifically) to be publicly pilloried for 'racism' of 'redlining' districts - ie, calling out low-income areas as not-worth-the-risk-of-loaning to. As a result of these activities, the US gov't loosened requirements and strongly encouraged these firms both public and private to lend to the low-income households so they too could "share in the American dream". NO DOUBT, once the government made its stance clear, the banking/loan industry went after these ignorance, naive customers aggressively and in many cases illegally exploiting them. But the Bush White House for 6 years warned that there were problems on the horizon without significant structure reform of GSEs like Fannie Mae (http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081009-10.html) but nothing was done - and I'll *certainly* agree with you that the GOP congress was absolutely incompetent from 2000-2004 when they really COULD have done something useful.
"...and democracies with governments wanting to become dictatorships..."
I know you feel you're being cleverly cynical, but name a democracy (or really ANY government) that doesn't have dictatorial tendencies?
That was the brilliance of the US Constitution; the framers assumed that government - as much as we need it in practical terms - was always looking to grow both in scope and power, and that the individuals attracted to that were likely themselves dangerous to the public good.
Because of the unstated last clause: "...because we have to make sure they will keep loaning TO US!"
It has been ever so, since the days of the Fuggers and the Medicis. Since kings can no longer simply decree pogroms against the people they are deeply indebted to, they've had to simply make sure the bankers get paid.
See, and I'd say hypocrisy is spending the last 6 years of your career in government complaining about the fuckery going on with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and their subprime loans...when you were in charge of the relevant committee AND were 'married to' * the dude RESPONSIBLE for the subprime loans at one of those very two agencies.
Healthcare: any hurt person going into an emergency room is treated, full stop. Education: every US resident has free education through 12th grade, including transportation thereto. Safety: the most dangerous people to poor people is...other or people. Freedom: sure they have freedom - freedom to make shitty choices and live with the consequences of those choices. That's actual freedom, in fact.
We all know that (in broadly applicable generalizations) it's not true of whites, likely untrue of Asians, possibly true of Hispanics, and certainly true of blacks, just nobody wants to say it out loud.
Hate the comment all you like, you know it's what everyone is thinking.
More than 50% of the "poor" in America have refrigeration television stove and oven Microwave Air Conditioning Clothes Washer at least one VCR Cable TV Clothes Dryer >1 TV Cordless Telephone Cellular Phone Ceiling Fans Personal Computer Nonportable stereo coffee maker internet service computer printer dishwasher answering machine....arguably, almost all of these could be served by a staff of household staff pre 1950 but even a household staff wouldn't be as convenient as, say, a single cellphone today - owned by more than THREE QUARTERS of the defined poor.
...I dispute that it would be such a utopia in any case.
We (in the Western world) live in the most benign circumstances ever in human history. We largely have no fear of death by war, plague, famine, or pestilence. We live longer than ever before, and our primary health problems stem from TOO MUCH FOOD. Violence is steadily decreasing, and average wealth & comfort constantly improving. The average American lives better than a king of only several decades ago, and in fact has many abilities at the touch of a button that the greatest emperors never dreamed of.
Nevertheless...as our comforts increase, so does our bitching. Every imagined grievance, every contrived slight prompts paens of ceaseless grief over how horrible everything is.
Have gchq or other intelligence organizations ever used the data inappropriately?
To suggest that such organizations are somehow morally above being spied-upon ignores the long long history of such groups being used as cat's paws by others whose intentions are not so noble.
Sorry, if I'm in charge of security for a church, I'm still frisking the nuns, because to do otherwise would be irresponsible.
100% bullshit. The very idea that others have to tiptoe around your personal sensitivities is anathema to the very concept of free speech (and, frankly, being an adult). In particular, the idea that certain groups can assert that other groups are entitled to social protection because of some historical or perceived grievance is not only particularist (and in that sense astonishingly narcissistic) but patronizing as well. It's really nothing more than oversensitivity, displaced so one doesn't even have to take ownership: "it's not that I'm being hypersensitive, because I'm feeling this way on BEHALF of that person over there." A very later-20th-century form of nonsense.
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This is ridiculous.
First, the expansion/contraction of plastics is generally MUCH much higher than concrete/pavement.
Second, the "prefab road sections" are absurd; nobody builds roads like this already (of any material) because they would be ruinously expensive (not because of the raw material costs), nothing has come close to the level of durability needed to handle 50-ton trucks repeatedly for decades, and extremely hard to deploy.
Third, the overwhelming majority of plastic in the ocean is 0.1mm or smaller (http://theconversation.com/in-the-ocean-the-most-harmful-plastic-is-too-small-to-see-35336) - the cost/magnitude of scale to sieve this from the oceans is mind-boggling.
Seriously, Dutch, I love you - but that's a mind-blowingly dumb idea.
Don't get me wrong, I prefer analog volume dials to the crappy push button volume controls almost everywhere, but a phones a dumb place to have one.
What's going to prevent that dial turning every time it's put into a pocket?
You're missing the point more essentially: What's "GMO"?
Is selective breeding "GMO"? Is splicing a branch onto a tree "GMO"? Hell, if you deliberately select one cow to breed with that bull, you're 'managing' natural selection, and thus is that GMO?
Is using that bull's semen in another artificially inseminated cow "GMO"?
Every piece of corn you eat - from the cob at KFC to something grown entirely organically by the hippies next door, is "genetically modified' because they are not even *close* to the original strain of corn. Same with wheat, apples, oranges, everything of food value has been 'managed', bred, cross pollinated, or selected for traits - is that GMO?
Does it have to be done with a microscope?
If I develop a new herbicide, spray it on a field of grain, and then pull out the plants that survive, use their seeds to grow a new crop, and do the same things a few times to develop herbicide-resistant seeds, are those "GMO"?
I just find the entire subject farcical because you can't get two activists to agree even on what "GMO" means - just that it's evil, whatever the definition.
...in other news, Google Engineers are new developing the next capability for the driverless car, the so called GOASSATODFBADFSPOSTRIYAWHITBTPTHOOTAASFSATPOIAW system, which stand for "Get out and start swearing at the other driver for being a dumb fuck stupid piece of shit that ran into you and wouldn't have if they bothered to pull their head out of their ass and stop fucking staring at their phone once in a while." heuristic engine, which will immediately assign blame and begin a confrontation with the other driver, simultaneously calling a lawyer and filming everything at the scene.
The next stage is expected to be the UYIWMGFYSITMOTFRYFTMIYWSYFYCTALATIOIAW "Oh yeah? It wasn't my goddamned fault you stopped in the middle of the fucking road you fat turd maybe if you weren't stuffing your face you could take a look around the intersection once in a while" response system, and eventually the (tits&tears) "pop my top blouse button and break down into tears hoping he won't sue my ass off" system to deal with the remaining human drivers on the road.
I get the intent, but I'm going to submit that what people living in HUD housing need is NOT a better porn/tv/streaming bandwidth to their home. *NOBODY* needs gigabit fiber access to do their homework online.
I wasn't even saying "rah rah" my side, actually, just that Democratic presidents are naive enough to believe that such agreements are meaningful, all the way back to FDR who believed he could personally 'charm' Stalin.
I didn't really think we needed an example of what Republican presidents are prone to; has anyone forgotten 2001-2008 (and frankly the following years are a result of them) in Iraq/Afghanistan?
I'd object without any financial stake because it doesn't fucking make sense.
EVERY SINGLE ORGANIC* FOOD YOU EAT HAS BEEN "GENETICALLY MODIFIED" FROM ITS ORIGINAL FORM by (at the very least) selective breeding if not more intrusive means.
*ironically, the only "food" you can eat and totally avoid this would be entirely synthetic things like Twizzlers and Sweetarts. Have at it, Luddites.
....since when it goes off, it'll probably either be in conjunction with or set off the Yellowstone supervolcano, and everyone else will have their own catastrophic issues to deal with.
Hey, but at least we might stop hearing about global warming for a while. There's a silver lining.
I'm sure that this will work out at least as well as it did the last time a Dem US president made a deal to "stop the development of nuclear weapons".
I'm sure Japan, South Korea, and others in the region still remember that agreement with pride and joy.
Funny, I was going to say "....we need to figure out how we can tax the shit out of it" but yours works too.
The president is committed to GETTING a deal here regardless of how shitty it is.
Legacy and all that.
You're right; 0.004% of the best-educated, most culturally advanced (IMO) people on the planet have figured out how to do it right.
I"m not sure that's a very encouraging figure?
Personally, I believe that Iceland - population 300,000 - is probably somewhere near a natural limit of actual connected, responsible government. In the same sense that true communism really only works at the household/clan/tribal level, it may be that representative democracy - as an actual thing, not just a pastiche of it - tops out at a certain point as well, and beyond that every government leans towards despotism, for practical effectiveness' sake even setting aside the apparently inherently aggrandizing and greedy nature of humans.
Not precisely. You need to work on your history. First of all, this was the result of policies implemented in the 90s - when Clinton was in office.
I remember in the 90s the parade of corporate execs being called before congress (and Mr Frank specifically) to be publicly pilloried for 'racism' of 'redlining' districts - ie, calling out low-income areas as not-worth-the-risk-of-loaning to.
As a result of these activities, the US gov't loosened requirements and strongly encouraged these firms both public and private to lend to the low-income households so they too could "share in the American dream".
NO DOUBT, once the government made its stance clear, the banking/loan industry went after these ignorance, naive customers aggressively and in many cases illegally exploiting them.
But the Bush White House for 6 years warned that there were problems on the horizon without significant structure reform of GSEs like Fannie Mae (http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081009-10.html) but nothing was done - and I'll *certainly* agree with you that the GOP congress was absolutely incompetent from 2000-2004 when they really COULD have done something useful.
"...and democracies with governments wanting to become dictatorships..."
I know you feel you're being cleverly cynical, but name a democracy (or really ANY government) that doesn't have dictatorial tendencies?
That was the brilliance of the US Constitution; the framers assumed that government - as much as we need it in practical terms - was always looking to grow both in scope and power, and that the individuals attracted to that were likely themselves dangerous to the public good.
PLUTO has a diameter of 1440 miles.
Charon has a diameter of 790.
I know you're being cynical, but it IS the deal.
Because of the unstated last clause: "...because we have to make sure they will keep loaning TO US!"
It has been ever so, since the days of the Fuggers and the Medicis. Since kings can no longer simply decree pogroms against the people they are deeply indebted to, they've had to simply make sure the bankers get paid.
Congrats, you just figured out civilization.
See, and I'd say hypocrisy is spending the last 6 years of your career in government complaining about the fuckery going on with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and their subprime loans...when you were in charge of the relevant committee AND were 'married to' * the dude RESPONSIBLE for the subprime loans at one of those very two agencies.
THAT'S hypocrisy.
* quote only because it was proforma at the time
Now you are simply lying.
Healthcare: any hurt person going into an emergency room is treated, full stop.
Education: every US resident has free education through 12th grade, including transportation thereto.
Safety: the most dangerous people to poor people is...other or people.
Freedom: sure they have freedom - freedom to make shitty choices and live with the consequences of those choices. That's actual freedom, in fact.
We all know that (in broadly applicable generalizations) it's not true of whites, likely untrue of Asians, possibly true of Hispanics, and certainly true of blacks, just nobody wants to say it out loud.
Hate the comment all you like, you know it's what everyone is thinking.
If you actually want security and not moral posturing, yes.
I get that this is hard for some people to understand.
Nonsense.
http://www.heritage.org/resear...
More than 50% of the "poor" in America have ....arguably, almost all of these could be served by a staff of household staff pre 1950 but even a household staff wouldn't be as convenient as, say, a single cellphone today - owned by more than THREE QUARTERS of the defined poor.
refrigeration
television
stove and oven
Microwave
Air Conditioning
Clothes Washer
at least one VCR
Cable TV
Clothes Dryer
>1 TV
Cordless Telephone
Cellular Phone
Ceiling Fans
Personal Computer
Nonportable stereo
coffee maker
internet service
computer printer
dishwasher
answering machine
...I dispute that it would be such a utopia in any case.
We (in the Western world) live in the most benign circumstances ever in human history.
We largely have no fear of death by war, plague, famine, or pestilence. We live longer than ever before, and our primary health problems stem from TOO MUCH FOOD. Violence is steadily decreasing, and average wealth & comfort constantly improving. The average American lives better than a king of only several decades ago, and in fact has many abilities at the touch of a button that the greatest emperors never dreamed of.
Nevertheless...as our comforts increase, so does our bitching. Every imagined grievance, every contrived slight prompts paens of ceaseless grief over how horrible everything is.
Posturing histrionics.
Have gchq or other intelligence organizations ever used the data inappropriately?
To suggest that such organizations are somehow morally above being spied-upon ignores the long long history of such groups being used as cat's paws by others whose intentions are not so noble.
Sorry, if I'm in charge of security for a church, I'm still frisking the nuns, because to do otherwise would be irresponsible.
100% bullshit.
The very idea that others have to tiptoe around your personal sensitivities is anathema to the very concept of free speech (and, frankly, being an adult).
In particular, the idea that certain groups can assert that other groups are entitled to social protection because of some historical or perceived grievance is not only particularist (and in that sense astonishingly narcissistic) but patronizing as well.
It's really nothing more than oversensitivity, displaced so one doesn't even have to take ownership: "it's not that I'm being hypersensitive, because I'm feeling this way on BEHALF of that person over there."
A very later-20th-century form of nonsense.
Not to dispute your numbers but "absent immigration" is meaningless. The US has been for most of its history sustained by immigration.