I don't know how small your library is but if it's large enough to warrant a card catalog then I'd suggest first putting all the books in the correct order and making sure the card catalog is accurate. dewey decimal system is your friend here.
Once you have that down and not before, you can set up a basic database for your books.
245 dollars for a complete package is dead cheap. This is a way better idea then programming your own access database. Do that if you're a bigger library or want customization. You probably don't care.
Look around for some sort of complete all in one package. I just posted the first hit on google for this stuff. They have demos... try it out. Apparently they have barcode compatibility which will make check in and out a lot simpler.
But all of that said... the books have to be in order and the card catalog has to be accurate. If people are going to procrastinate about organizing the books until the software is installed then do it backwards. But that's way more important then the database. A library with the books out of order is dysfunctional unless it's tiny.
given the age we live in it is unlikely the chinese regulators will be able to control it. But perhaps it will have some effect on the character of the country. Who can say. Similar restrictions in US history influenced it's culture.
Why virtualize when you can dumb terminal? Anyway... whatever works.
I know thieves can rip information out of ram chips but only whatever was in active memory which in the case of an ATM would be the last client. Hardly seems worth the trouble to just steal one credit card number.
As to logging... by all means have an encrypted flash drive in the machine but don't actually log the actual numbers.
Instead, log some bank ID Code that can be used to FIND an account if you're a bank but can't be used by a customer/client to transfer funds or charge accounts. I'm sure such numbers already exist. Just use those for logging. If you really need to, include the last 4 digits of a card but there's no reason to keep it all there. And of course encrypt it. Doubtless the banks will get lazy and use the same encryption key for every machine and won't change it for ten years. But it will stop some thieves so you might as well.
A better way to think of politicians is not as people but a process. They're a system. A committee of blind people that gets all their information from thousands of little braille cards that are handed to them. These cards indicate polling information, funding, demographic surveys, etc. What they're actually talking about from one second to the other rarely matters. What matters is whether voting one way or the other will improve their chances of getting reelected.
If you want to talk to politicians... don't try to explain. That's like showing the blind people a picture. They don't listen on anything. Why should they make regulation on the finance industry when they don't understand that either? Why should they make regulation on medicine when they don't understand that? Why should they make legislation on war when they don't understand that?
They don't understand anything. They're not even good at law and most of them have passed the bar. That's now how they work.
Just send them little braille cards that make it clear they'll suffer in the polls if they do that and they'll stumble blindly in the opposite direction.
If the US fleet is just passing by Iran then Iran could be assumed to be in range. That's basically knife range for these ships. What will concern the US navy is the speed and stealth of enemy missiles. The US has active missile defense. Those Phalanx cannons and anti missile missiles are pretty effective against cruise missiles. What they're squirrely on is hypersonic missiles. They've been upgrading the system to handle them but they're being closed mouthed about whether they're ready. If Iran can fire missiles that hit their target about ten seconds after launch then it won't give the system much time to respond. If the system has time then it's very hard for enemy missiles to get through. Not only are there interceptor missiles and close in computer guided Vulcan cannons but there is also area denial artillery shells. Basically they detonate bombs immediately around the ship in an attempt to blow up enemy missiles.
Anyway, range isn't the issue. If Iran is having range issues off their own coast then they're not even in the game.
Right but that's likely assuming EXACT accuracy in the path.
I mean if the total deviation because of the pissing were.00000000001 nano meters then sure. You'll need to account for the piss to reach that level of specificity but really it's hard to say that doing so significantly impacted that hurricane.
By the same token, a fly hitting a cruise ship by newton's laws of motion must have SOME effect on the cruise ship. But given the differentials in mass to say nothing of the thrust from the engines, rocking of the waves, and whatever course corrections from the captain... it's just not going to matter.
The crux of my question here was whether injecting that water into the ground were SIGNIFICANT. You can say everything effects everything but by that logic the earth moves a little when I jump up and down. It does move a little. It's just so little that it might as well not move at all. You'll never detect that movement it's so small.
The amount of mass of all the earth for lets say a hundred square miles is monstrous. It's a HUGE mass. The amount of water pumped into the ground was doubtless a lot in human terms but in geological terms... they'd have to divert RIVERS into the ground. Probably the Mississippi. And even then it's anyone's guess.
I say this as a complete novice. I can't claim special knowledge. It just strains credulity to say that such a relatively small amount of water would have such a colossal effect on such a scale. It's completely out of proportion.
Am I a complete moron for thinking this? I'm honestly doing my best to think this through here. It just seems really really unlikely.
... Despite the theory of the butterfly effect, they have yet to be able to actually demonstrate it.
The whole thing just strikes me as radically far fetched. I mean... do you ACTUALLY think pissing into a hurricane will change the path of the next hurricane meaningfully?
because that's what we're talking about here. Meaningful change. In relation to the ground that's shaking the water being pumped into the ground is nothing.
It would be like saying a fly changed the direction of a cruise ship.
It doesn't seem like a bit of water injected into the ground would cause seismic instability. I'm not an expert it just seems to be about as likely to change the nature of the ground as pissing into a hurricane is to change the direction of the storm.
Again... I make no claim to special knowledge. It just doesn't seem to anywhere near strong enough to have that effect. Some very localized shaking perhaps but nothing wide spread...
Has anyone done the math on this or have some sort of geological background? It just seems really unlikely.
They're implying that IBM took less money for it's asset to curry favor with the chinese. That would only make sense if IBM got more money then the difference between the two payments over time as a result of that good will.
Has that happened? I don't know... I think American business might have been too brash in it's oriental investments. Most of them seem to be backfiring in alarming ways. We seem to have taught our chinese business contacts just well enough to start competing with us directly where before our technological edge made that impossible.
In any case, it seems like many of the US multinationals have woken up to the issue. We'll see what happens.
I don't know how Tom Kratman is... I'll look him up. Hmmm... no clue who that is... Anyway, the comment about Jacksonians is not unusual. It's a well understood phenomenon of US culture.
I have no problem with it beeping at people but I wouldn't feel comfortable with it grabbing the wheel. On a fast freeway with heavy traffic I really don't need some stupid computer second guessing my decisions. If I'm so drowsy that that is an issue then I really shouldn't be on the road. So instead, if they have the stones... I'd rather have the car beep at me then inform me the engine will be turned off in X minutes/seconds and then allow me to pull over while I take a nap for 30 minutes. Where upon the car will let me drive again.
Will they do that? No... because drivers wouldn't put up with it. But I see no difference really. No AI is touching the wheel without my permission. And no, buying a car with this feature does not constitute unrestricted authorization to second guess my driving.
Sure, in an all-out war between the US and Iran, then Iran would be destroyed. But in order to avoid this, the Iranian government only need convince the US that it would it turn suffer unacceptable military and economic losses. It's a game of brinksmanship - the aim (for both sides) is to get as much as you can get without actually going to war.
Why do people keep making this mistake? The US doesn't work that way. The Japanese made the same calculation when they attacked Pearl Harbor and Osama Bin Ladin made that calculation when he attacked the twin towers, pentagon, and white house. US culture is more complex then it is given credit for and different things will cause radically different behavior based on radically different mathematics.
The simplest way to think about it is like a small group of people with very different ideas about how to deal with problems. In different conditions different people are in charge. When the US is at peace and things are civil the calculations you're using are valid. However, if the US is attacked strongly enough to move the US to war conditions those people lose all power and are replaced by people best described as Jacksonians. The mentality of that faction is that threats must be crushed indifferent to cost. This aspect of american society is buried most of the time and only surfaces when provoked. But when it comes out it will not be suppressed until it is done. Again, think of a small group of people with some rough and tumble fellows that rarely say anything and are rarely involved in policy decisions. But when the tribe is attacked that group immediately becomes in charge.
In my first post in this thread, I said the worst thing the Iranians could do is sink a couple US ships. It would probably trigger this response. The US would instantly go through a personality shift and change from the peace at any price/carefully weighing costs to an absolutely indifferent meat grinder that would not stop until the enemy were ground, packaged, and stored.
I am not bragging or insulting or making patriotic motions. I'm telling it how it is in so far as I see it. Americans are very simple on their surface but there are implicit layers to our behavior that are only revealed under certain contexts.
If the Iranians sink some ships then everyone in government that thinks the way you do for example will either suddenly change their mind or be quietly sidelined as others take over until it's over. This response is dynamic, automatic, and unavoidable if the US suffers a major attack.
Elements that make it more likely to come out are if the attack was a sneak attack, an attack made while under truce, or some other kind of underhanded subterfuge. I am not judging those actions or justifying them. It doesn't matter. Either way... if that happens the US will automatically shift policy and damn the cost. The primary reason the underhandedness of the matter is relevant is that it relates to the people that say peace can be obtained through some sort of good faith negotiation. The deceit undermines that faction fatally and they're unable to win any debate on the matter until the conflict is settled.
It is this quality that the Russians of all our rivals actually understood. It was what made MAD an effective deterrent against soviet expansion. After all, why would the US risk nuclear war for an ally country? The cost would exceed any gain. If the US thought the way you suggest then the Russians could move their main military force throughout the world unhindered so long as they avoided the United States itself.
Stalin for all his faults understood this about Americans. Perhaps he saw it in our reaction to the Japanese. Perhaps he picked it up from our diplomatic envoys. But it was a major reason why the US frightened him. Because he understood that if he took us to the edge we wouldn't blink before pushing the "button."
You can say that a sign of American insanity or evil or whatever. But it makes almost instinctual sense to us. We will not submit and we will answer grievous wounds to our nation in kind. Judge that how you will but it's how we operate. Thus... the Iranians would be courting total ruin if they provoked us in that matter.
True... and if needed the US will do that. But only if it feels it needs to deal with Iran.
Iran doesn't need to make itself a problem.
1. stop making threatening statements all the time. The US has been much more polite to Iran then Iran has been to it despite the US being radically more powerful. It's like some tiny little dog yapping at a giant wolf. It's very annoying. No one needs to bow or scrape. Just be civil.
2. Stop supporting international terrorism. If you want to brutalize your own people that will probably be tolerated indefinitely. But if you spread chaos throughout the region then it forces the US to respond. Don't do that.
3. Consider other options for the nuclear program. The system as it stands looks like they're getting ready to make nuclear bombs. Maybe they're not... but that's what it looks like and everyone in the region believes that is what they are after. The US believes it. The Israelis believe it. The Saudis believe it. They basically brag about that being their end. And really... that will probably force a reaction by the US. They can't dig bunkers deep enough to keep US munitions out. The military contractors have been designing special bombs JUST for those bunkers and the US has been buying them. If the presidents says "pop the bunkers"... they will get popped.
This is serious business. This is beyond your notions of morality or petty political hypocrisy. This is strategic security. This is not a game. The Iranians are doing something very stupid and there's no good thing that will come from this...
If they attack the US the US will destroy everything that looks like a military target within a hundred miles of the coast. That's minimum.
If they attack and destroy a few US ships, then the US will destroy Iran's whole military and possibly try to start a civil war within the country which might be followed by a ground invasion. However, they might just suppress Iran's military and wait for another student uprising or riot or something. If Iran can't bring in it's military to suppress the population then who knows what will happen. The US could also just be happy with keeping Iran poor and demilitarized. No need to invade. Just destroy any machine from the sky. Send them back in time. No electricity.
If Iran doesn't attack then Iran has increased tensions in the region for no reason at all. What exactly does this accomplish? It just forces the US to send resources to the area and focuses additional resources on their country. None of that is good for Iran.
The worst thing that could happen to Iran is that they could sink a few US ships.
The US would lose face internationally then and would be required to grind Iran into the dust.
What is so frustrating about the Iranians is how bad they are at dealing with ANYONE else. They're the worst diplomats. No one likes them.
If they go toe to toe with the US over the straight they'll have no backers. The chinese need that straight open. They have a strong interest in free trade. Europeans are finally on board. The Russians are not going to be the outsider if the US, China, and EU are largely in agreement. And there's the Arabs that are also scared that Iran is going to start threatening them with nukes.
So... no friends.
The US almost WANTS iran to attack it just for the justification. But the absolute worst thing Iran could do is sink some US ships. Because they're only going to be able to do that ONCE. The US would never get close enough to let that happen again. And because the US is going to keep going through that straight it would mean Iran either demilitarizes the straight or the US demilitarizes it for them at range.
Whenever you see companies treating customers like garbage it means they don't have enough competition. That's all Verizon is telling us here. They're saying "you've basically allowed telephone companies to operate as local monopolies and so as monopolists we don't have to compete for customers."...
Simple as that. It's our own fault. If you don't like what they're doing then don't let them monopolize things anymore. Open up their area for more phone companies. Let other companies run telephone lines if they want in parallel. See if Verizon treats their customers poorly then... they'll be too terrified of losing them. As it should be...
Well it is predictable that this would end with you fantasizing about billions of people starving to death as if there were a good thing.
Anyway, that's why no one is seriously going to listen to you or anyone like you. I say this with no hostility or rancor. It's just that your ideas are abhorrent to anyone that knows what they really mean. I think if you were forced to confront the consequences of your ideas... to see the starving children and so forth... you'd perhaps be forced to be flexible. But hopefully that never happens for their sake.
We're going to do our best to feed the world as best as can in the most sustainable manner practical at that time.
It is our hope that we can use a combination of GM crops and new farming technologies to increase crop yields ahead of population growth. So far we've succeeded in feeding the world. There will be new challenges in the future but it would be unreasonable to expect them to be solved all at once. We have time and we can use it.
Worst case, there might be hunger in the third world. But that is better then the alternative of there being outright starvation.
Without these crops it simply wouldn't have happened. You can't have such dense population clusters without staple crops that can be stockpiled safely for months or years.
Whatever your ideal diet is... that's great. When you go to Whole Foods or whatever buy that and be happy. I wish no ill to you at all. However, the rest of humanity and civilization at large is not doing that. The economics and logistics don't work. In fact, you don't want us to do it. Because if we did you wouldn't be able to do it either.
So give it a rest. As to gluttons... some people are allergic to water. Literally. That's terrible and our hearts go out to them. But if we were all allergic to water we'd have died out as a species. Likewise, if we all had that reaction to rice and wheat the Pyramids never would have been built and we wouldn't be sitting here arguing about this over the internet.
We'd still be roaming the plains following the herds like our ancestors ten thousand years ago.
Grasp what I'm saying here. Eat all the wheat germ and farmer's market you want. I'm not against it. But we can't all go down that path. Civilization would shut down and billions would starve.
Everyone in the organization with a lot of personal responsibility is going to be that way. IT managers are under a lot of pressure.
They also often don't have enough power or influence to meet those responsibilities. So users will screw things up and it's the IT manager's fault for letting it happen. How do you stop that? Well, you try to increase your status within the organization. That might mean acting like you're better then everyone else in the hope that people will treat you that way and possibly someone will listen to you. Because if the users think you're not better then them then they can do whatever they want. And that means the whole thing is going to get screwed up, no one will listen to you, it will be your fault, and everyone will hate you... and you're fired.
As to the IT workers... similiar situation. Those people need to represent the interests of the IT department and keep everything under control.
IT is not an easy profession. It has two conditions. Condition one, no one knows what you do, no one respects you, no one notices you exist. Condition two, everyone hates you because something isn't working and it's all your fault. That's it. Those two conditions.
fat is calories. If you're building up fat it means you have excess calories.
It's possible that your body simply converts carbs into fat more efficiently then it does with meat. Thus a 1:1 ratio on your nutrition chart would not be a 1:1 ratio in your body. If you took your carb heavy diet and reduced the calories by whatever your weight gain was at the time. Then you should level out.
You can't get fat if you're not taking in excess calories. I exclude odd and very rare medical conditions.
Beyond that, while I'm hearing everything you're saying. The point is that your diet is a luxury that we cannot afford. If we tried to feed any reasonable percentage of the planet that way... we'd fail and people would starve.
Carbs feed human civilization. Much of the arab spring in the middle east was caused by increasing bread prices. These people are paying bottom dollar for grain, flour, and rice... and a 50 percent increase in costs meant people were going hungry. If we shifted them to your diet... they'd all die.
Carbs are what people are going to eat. If we want to find a solution we have to find a way to make people healthy on carbs.
Look at rice or pasta. I can buy enough to last me for a whole week on a few dollars and that's with US price inflation. It also keeps for years. I can buy a bag of rice or a bundle of pasta, throw it in the pantry, forget about it for months, and then come back to it and it's just as good as ever. You can't do that with these other energy sources. They cost more and they're all very perishable.
Anyway, your complaint isn't useful. We can't change our diets without killing off at least half the human population of this planet. Carbs are the basis of human civilization. The last time human diets weren't that way we were nomads following the great herds not unlike wolf packs.
I'm not saying that isn't healthy. I'm saying it's logistically and economically impractical.
That's kind of messed up. If I were the banks... I'd try to find some way to 'forgive" that or charge the whole incident to the credit card fraud department. Credit cards charge such high interest in part to pay for such things. Just tap that fund for this and leave the poor charities alone.
How can we be expected to teach children when they can't even fit inside the building?!
Tower of babel is interesting. Have they ever actually figured out how big it actually was etc? Because the carvings aren't very detailed or convincing.
Excessive carbs is just another way of saying excessive food. There's nothing wrong with the carbs. The problem is that we're taking in more calories then we're using... and thus getting fat.
You could do the same thing with meat or liver or eggs or whatever. It would be a trick to do with celery or radishes but you could probably do it with fruit.
That said, we're not really eating that much more then we did a 100 years ago and our weight has gone up. All that's changed is that we sit on our asses all day.
Claiming its anything else is just the addict talking. Carbs are a scapegoat. They're just calories. Fuel.
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I don't know how small your library is but if it's large enough to warrant a card catalog then I'd suggest first putting all the books in the correct order and making sure the card catalog is accurate. dewey decimal system is your friend here.
Once you have that down and not before, you can set up a basic database for your books.
See if this works... first hit on google:
http://www.primasoft.com/pro_software/library_software_pro.htm
245 dollars for a complete package is dead cheap. This is a way better idea then programming your own access database. Do that if you're a bigger library or want customization. You probably don't care.
Look around for some sort of complete all in one package. I just posted the first hit on google for this stuff. They have demos... try it out. Apparently they have barcode compatibility which will make check in and out a lot simpler.
But all of that said... the books have to be in order and the card catalog has to be accurate. If people are going to procrastinate about organizing the books until the software is installed then do it backwards. But that's way more important then the database. A library with the books out of order is dysfunctional unless it's tiny.
given the age we live in it is unlikely the chinese regulators will be able to control it. But perhaps it will have some effect on the character of the country. Who can say. Similar restrictions in US history influenced it's culture.
Why virtualize when you can dumb terminal? Anyway... whatever works.
I know thieves can rip information out of ram chips but only whatever was in active memory which in the case of an ATM would be the last client. Hardly seems worth the trouble to just steal one credit card number.
As to logging... by all means have an encrypted flash drive in the machine but don't actually log the actual numbers.
Instead, log some bank ID Code that can be used to FIND an account if you're a bank but can't be used by a customer/client to transfer funds or charge accounts. I'm sure such numbers already exist. Just use those for logging. If you really need to, include the last 4 digits of a card but there's no reason to keep it all there. And of course encrypt it. Doubtless the banks will get lazy and use the same encryption key for every machine and won't change it for ten years. But it will stop some thieves so you might as well.
A better way to think of politicians is not as people but a process. They're a system. A committee of blind people that gets all their information from thousands of little braille cards that are handed to them. These cards indicate polling information, funding, demographic surveys, etc. What they're actually talking about from one second to the other rarely matters. What matters is whether voting one way or the other will improve their chances of getting reelected.
If you want to talk to politicians... don't try to explain. That's like showing the blind people a picture. They don't listen on anything. Why should they make regulation on the finance industry when they don't understand that either? Why should they make regulation on medicine when they don't understand that? Why should they make legislation on war when they don't understand that?
They don't understand anything. They're not even good at law and most of them have passed the bar. That's now how they work.
Just send them little braille cards that make it clear they'll suffer in the polls if they do that and they'll stumble blindly in the opposite direction.
If the US fleet is just passing by Iran then Iran could be assumed to be in range. That's basically knife range for these ships. What will concern the US navy is the speed and stealth of enemy missiles. The US has active missile defense. Those Phalanx cannons and anti missile missiles are pretty effective against cruise missiles. What they're squirrely on is hypersonic missiles. They've been upgrading the system to handle them but they're being closed mouthed about whether they're ready. If Iran can fire missiles that hit their target about ten seconds after launch then it won't give the system much time to respond. If the system has time then it's very hard for enemy missiles to get through. Not only are there interceptor missiles and close in computer guided Vulcan cannons but there is also area denial artillery shells. Basically they detonate bombs immediately around the ship in an attempt to blow up enemy missiles.
Anyway, range isn't the issue. If Iran is having range issues off their own coast then they're not even in the game.
Oh sweet tap dancing christ... a typo on the internet!
Thanks :P
Right but that's likely assuming EXACT accuracy in the path.
I mean if the total deviation because of the pissing were .00000000001 nano meters then sure. You'll need to account for the piss to reach that level of specificity but really it's hard to say that doing so significantly impacted that hurricane.
By the same token, a fly hitting a cruise ship by newton's laws of motion must have SOME effect on the cruise ship. But given the differentials in mass to say nothing of the thrust from the engines, rocking of the waves, and whatever course corrections from the captain... it's just not going to matter.
The crux of my question here was whether injecting that water into the ground were SIGNIFICANT. You can say everything effects everything but by that logic the earth moves a little when I jump up and down. It does move a little. It's just so little that it might as well not move at all. You'll never detect that movement it's so small.
The amount of mass of all the earth for lets say a hundred square miles is monstrous. It's a HUGE mass. The amount of water pumped into the ground was doubtless a lot in human terms but in geological terms... they'd have to divert RIVERS into the ground. Probably the Mississippi. And even then it's anyone's guess.
I say this as a complete novice. I can't claim special knowledge. It just strains credulity to say that such a relatively small amount of water would have such a colossal effect on such a scale. It's completely out of proportion.
Am I a complete moron for thinking this? I'm honestly doing my best to think this through here. It just seems really really unlikely.
... Despite the theory of the butterfly effect, they have yet to be able to actually demonstrate it.
The whole thing just strikes me as radically far fetched. I mean... do you ACTUALLY think pissing into a hurricane will change the path of the next hurricane meaningfully?
because that's what we're talking about here. Meaningful change. In relation to the ground that's shaking the water being pumped into the ground is nothing.
It would be like saying a fly changed the direction of a cruise ship.
It doesn't seem like a bit of water injected into the ground would cause seismic instability. I'm not an expert it just seems to be about as likely to change the nature of the ground as pissing into a hurricane is to change the direction of the storm.
Again... I make no claim to special knowledge. It just doesn't seem to anywhere near strong enough to have that effect. Some very localized shaking perhaps but nothing wide spread...
Has anyone done the math on this or have some sort of geological background? It just seems really unlikely.
They're implying that IBM took less money for it's asset to curry favor with the chinese. That would only make sense if IBM got more money then the difference between the two payments over time as a result of that good will.
Has that happened? I don't know... I think American business might have been too brash in it's oriental investments. Most of them seem to be backfiring in alarming ways. We seem to have taught our chinese business contacts just well enough to start competing with us directly where before our technological edge made that impossible.
In any case, it seems like many of the US multinationals have woken up to the issue. We'll see what happens.
I don't know how Tom Kratman is... I'll look him up. Hmmm... no clue who that is... Anyway, the comment about Jacksonians is not unusual. It's a well understood phenomenon of US culture.
What could possibly go wrong?
I have no problem with it beeping at people but I wouldn't feel comfortable with it grabbing the wheel. On a fast freeway with heavy traffic I really don't need some stupid computer second guessing my decisions. If I'm so drowsy that that is an issue then I really shouldn't be on the road. So instead, if they have the stones... I'd rather have the car beep at me then inform me the engine will be turned off in X minutes/seconds and then allow me to pull over while I take a nap for 30 minutes. Where upon the car will let me drive again.
Will they do that? No... because drivers wouldn't put up with it. But I see no difference really. No AI is touching the wheel without my permission. And no, buying a car with this feature does not constitute unrestricted authorization to second guess my driving.
Sure, in an all-out war between the US and Iran, then Iran would be destroyed. But in order to avoid this, the Iranian government only need convince the US that it would it turn suffer unacceptable military and economic losses. It's a game of brinksmanship - the aim (for both sides) is to get as much as you can get without actually going to war.
Why do people keep making this mistake? The US doesn't work that way. The Japanese made the same calculation when they attacked Pearl Harbor and Osama Bin Ladin made that calculation when he attacked the twin towers, pentagon, and white house. US culture is more complex then it is given credit for and different things will cause radically different behavior based on radically different mathematics.
The simplest way to think about it is like a small group of people with very different ideas about how to deal with problems. In different conditions different people are in charge. When the US is at peace and things are civil the calculations you're using are valid. However, if the US is attacked strongly enough to move the US to war conditions those people lose all power and are replaced by people best described as Jacksonians. The mentality of that faction is that threats must be crushed indifferent to cost. This aspect of american society is buried most of the time and only surfaces when provoked. But when it comes out it will not be suppressed until it is done. Again, think of a small group of people with some rough and tumble fellows that rarely say anything and are rarely involved in policy decisions. But when the tribe is attacked that group immediately becomes in charge.
In my first post in this thread, I said the worst thing the Iranians could do is sink a couple US ships. It would probably trigger this response. The US would instantly go through a personality shift and change from the peace at any price/carefully weighing costs to an absolutely indifferent meat grinder that would not stop until the enemy were ground, packaged, and stored.
I am not bragging or insulting or making patriotic motions. I'm telling it how it is in so far as I see it. Americans are very simple on their surface but there are implicit layers to our behavior that are only revealed under certain contexts.
If the Iranians sink some ships then everyone in government that thinks the way you do for example will either suddenly change their mind or be quietly sidelined as others take over until it's over. This response is dynamic, automatic, and unavoidable if the US suffers a major attack.
Elements that make it more likely to come out are if the attack was a sneak attack, an attack made while under truce, or some other kind of underhanded subterfuge. I am not judging those actions or justifying them. It doesn't matter. Either way... if that happens the US will automatically shift policy and damn the cost. The primary reason the underhandedness of the matter is relevant is that it relates to the people that say peace can be obtained through some sort of good faith negotiation. The deceit undermines that faction fatally and they're unable to win any debate on the matter until the conflict is settled.
It is this quality that the Russians of all our rivals actually understood. It was what made MAD an effective deterrent against soviet expansion. After all, why would the US risk nuclear war for an ally country? The cost would exceed any gain. If the US thought the way you suggest then the Russians could move their main military force throughout the world unhindered so long as they avoided the United States itself.
Stalin for all his faults understood this about Americans. Perhaps he saw it in our reaction to the Japanese. Perhaps he picked it up from our diplomatic envoys. But it was a major reason why the US frightened him. Because he understood that if he took us to the edge we wouldn't blink before pushing the "button."
You can say that a sign of American insanity or evil or whatever. But it makes almost instinctual sense to us. We will not submit and we will answer grievous wounds to our nation in kind. Judge that how you will but it's how we operate. Thus... the Iranians would be courting total ruin if they provoked us in that matter.
True... and if needed the US will do that. But only if it feels it needs to deal with Iran.
Iran doesn't need to make itself a problem.
1. stop making threatening statements all the time. The US has been much more polite to Iran then Iran has been to it despite the US being radically more powerful. It's like some tiny little dog yapping at a giant wolf. It's very annoying. No one needs to bow or scrape. Just be civil.
2. Stop supporting international terrorism. If you want to brutalize your own people that will probably be tolerated indefinitely. But if you spread chaos throughout the region then it forces the US to respond. Don't do that.
3. Consider other options for the nuclear program. The system as it stands looks like they're getting ready to make nuclear bombs. Maybe they're not... but that's what it looks like and everyone in the region believes that is what they are after. The US believes it. The Israelis believe it. The Saudis believe it. They basically brag about that being their end. And really... that will probably force a reaction by the US. They can't dig bunkers deep enough to keep US munitions out. The military contractors have been designing special bombs JUST for those bunkers and the US has been buying them. If the presidents says "pop the bunkers"... they will get popped.
This is serious business. This is beyond your notions of morality or petty political hypocrisy. This is strategic security. This is not a game. The Iranians are doing something very stupid and there's no good thing that will come from this...
If they attack the US the US will destroy everything that looks like a military target within a hundred miles of the coast. That's minimum.
If they attack and destroy a few US ships, then the US will destroy Iran's whole military and possibly try to start a civil war within the country which might be followed by a ground invasion. However, they might just suppress Iran's military and wait for another student uprising or riot or something. If Iran can't bring in it's military to suppress the population then who knows what will happen. The US could also just be happy with keeping Iran poor and demilitarized. No need to invade. Just destroy any machine from the sky. Send them back in time. No electricity.
If Iran doesn't attack then Iran has increased tensions in the region for no reason at all. What exactly does this accomplish? It just forces the US to send resources to the area and focuses additional resources on their country. None of that is good for Iran.
On and on... Iran is run by idiots.
The worst thing that could happen to Iran is that they could sink a few US ships.
The US would lose face internationally then and would be required to grind Iran into the dust.
What is so frustrating about the Iranians is how bad they are at dealing with ANYONE else. They're the worst diplomats. No one likes them.
If they go toe to toe with the US over the straight they'll have no backers. The chinese need that straight open. They have a strong interest in free trade. Europeans are finally on board. The Russians are not going to be the outsider if the US, China, and EU are largely in agreement. And there's the Arabs that are also scared that Iran is going to start threatening them with nukes.
So... no friends.
The US almost WANTS iran to attack it just for the justification. But the absolute worst thing Iran could do is sink some US ships. Because they're only going to be able to do that ONCE. The US would never get close enough to let that happen again. And because the US is going to keep going through that straight it would mean Iran either demilitarizes the straight or the US demilitarizes it for them at range.
Whenever you see companies treating customers like garbage it means they don't have enough competition. That's all Verizon is telling us here. They're saying "you've basically allowed telephone companies to operate as local monopolies and so as monopolists we don't have to compete for customers."...
Simple as that. It's our own fault. If you don't like what they're doing then don't let them monopolize things anymore. Open up their area for more phone companies. Let other companies run telephone lines if they want in parallel. See if Verizon treats their customers poorly then... they'll be too terrified of losing them. As it should be...
I never said carbs alone are healthy. You're going from suggesting we kill off billions of people to using cheap strawmen arguments.
*sigh*
Anyway... you understand. You won't admit that you understand but you understand. That's enough.
Well it is predictable that this would end with you fantasizing about billions of people starving to death as if there were a good thing.
Anyway, that's why no one is seriously going to listen to you or anyone like you. I say this with no hostility or rancor. It's just that your ideas are abhorrent to anyone that knows what they really mean. I think if you were forced to confront the consequences of your ideas... to see the starving children and so forth... you'd perhaps be forced to be flexible. But hopefully that never happens for their sake.
We're going to do our best to feed the world as best as can in the most sustainable manner practical at that time.
It is our hope that we can use a combination of GM crops and new farming technologies to increase crop yields ahead of population growth. So far we've succeeded in feeding the world. There will be new challenges in the future but it would be unreasonable to expect them to be solved all at once. We have time and we can use it.
Worst case, there might be hunger in the third world. But that is better then the alternative of there being outright starvation.
Sigh... Egypt was based on Wheat.
China was based on Rice.
The Maya and Aztec were based on Maize.
Without these crops it simply wouldn't have happened. You can't have such dense population clusters without staple crops that can be stockpiled safely for months or years.
Whatever your ideal diet is... that's great. When you go to Whole Foods or whatever buy that and be happy. I wish no ill to you at all. However, the rest of humanity and civilization at large is not doing that. The economics and logistics don't work. In fact, you don't want us to do it. Because if we did you wouldn't be able to do it either.
So give it a rest. As to gluttons... some people are allergic to water. Literally. That's terrible and our hearts go out to them. But if we were all allergic to water we'd have died out as a species. Likewise, if we all had that reaction to rice and wheat the Pyramids never would have been built and we wouldn't be sitting here arguing about this over the internet.
We'd still be roaming the plains following the herds like our ancestors ten thousand years ago.
Grasp what I'm saying here. Eat all the wheat germ and farmer's market you want. I'm not against it. But we can't all go down that path. Civilization would shut down and billions would starve.
Everyone in the organization with a lot of personal responsibility is going to be that way. IT managers are under a lot of pressure.
They also often don't have enough power or influence to meet those responsibilities. So users will screw things up and it's the IT manager's fault for letting it happen. How do you stop that? Well, you try to increase your status within the organization. That might mean acting like you're better then everyone else in the hope that people will treat you that way and possibly someone will listen to you. Because if the users think you're not better then them then they can do whatever they want. And that means the whole thing is going to get screwed up, no one will listen to you, it will be your fault, and everyone will hate you... and you're fired.
As to the IT workers... similiar situation. Those people need to represent the interests of the IT department and keep everything under control.
IT is not an easy profession. It has two conditions. Condition one, no one knows what you do, no one respects you, no one notices you exist. Condition two, everyone hates you because something isn't working and it's all your fault. That's it. Those two conditions.
Now try being the manager of that department.
fat is calories. If you're building up fat it means you have excess calories.
It's possible that your body simply converts carbs into fat more efficiently then it does with meat. Thus a 1:1 ratio on your nutrition chart would not be a 1:1 ratio in your body. If you took your carb heavy diet and reduced the calories by whatever your weight gain was at the time. Then you should level out.
You can't get fat if you're not taking in excess calories. I exclude odd and very rare medical conditions.
Beyond that, while I'm hearing everything you're saying. The point is that your diet is a luxury that we cannot afford. If we tried to feed any reasonable percentage of the planet that way... we'd fail and people would starve.
Carbs feed human civilization. Much of the arab spring in the middle east was caused by increasing bread prices. These people are paying bottom dollar for grain, flour, and rice... and a 50 percent increase in costs meant people were going hungry. If we shifted them to your diet... they'd all die.
Carbs are what people are going to eat. If we want to find a solution we have to find a way to make people healthy on carbs.
Look at rice or pasta. I can buy enough to last me for a whole week on a few dollars and that's with US price inflation. It also keeps for years. I can buy a bag of rice or a bundle of pasta, throw it in the pantry, forget about it for months, and then come back to it and it's just as good as ever. You can't do that with these other energy sources. They cost more and they're all very perishable.
no mystery. In "nature" we exercise.
Anyway, your complaint isn't useful. We can't change our diets without killing off at least half the human population of this planet. Carbs are the basis of human civilization. The last time human diets weren't that way we were nomads following the great herds not unlike wolf packs.
I'm not saying that isn't healthy. I'm saying it's logistically and economically impractical.
That's kind of messed up. If I were the banks... I'd try to find some way to 'forgive" that or charge the whole incident to the credit card fraud department. Credit cards charge such high interest in part to pay for such things. Just tap that fund for this and leave the poor charities alone.
What is this, a center for ants?!
How can we be expected to teach children when they can't even fit inside the building?!
Tower of babel is interesting. Have they ever actually figured out how big it actually was etc? Because the carvings aren't very detailed or convincing.
Excessive carbs is just another way of saying excessive food. There's nothing wrong with the carbs. The problem is that we're taking in more calories then we're using... and thus getting fat.
You could do the same thing with meat or liver or eggs or whatever. It would be a trick to do with celery or radishes but you could probably do it with fruit.
That said, we're not really eating that much more then we did a 100 years ago and our weight has gone up. All that's changed is that we sit on our asses all day.
Claiming its anything else is just the addict talking. Carbs are a scapegoat. They're just calories. Fuel.