This is a ridiculous extrapolation; doing the same to health care costs means that health care and education will each be several hundred percent of our GDP in 18 years.
The cost of education is driven by the federal student loan program, the expansion of middle management, and the development of luxury dorms and gyms. I think it's transparent that such costs cannot continue to expand at the same rate for the next 18 years.
Unless we find a way to get insurance companies out of health care it probably will cost more than our GDP to pay for health care each year. We will become ever greater in debt.
20 years ago, I went to a school that was ridiculously expensive for it's time ($25k a year- I had scholarships or I wouldn't have gone), I witnessed all kinds of waste. They did publish where they spent money though so it was obvious where there was waste, I bet they don't now. They keep asking for money donations, but I remember how they wasted it when I was there- no chance in hell I'm giving them more money now.
A simple 3ft brick sign that cost $50,000 (this in a school of only 2000 students- so that was $25 per student for a sign). Sports lost $10million a year. (we weren't a big state school that had leagues of zombies descend on our every game- but we spent big on sports- and no one who attended the school cared or watched. $5000 a year per student lost on sports. That's 20% of our tuition went straight to paying for a bunch of fat kids in helmets and padding to grab each other's bum 13 games a year. (OK, they had other sports besides the American Football, but I'm sure they got the lion's share).
Then we would have speakers like Pat Conroy (multiple a year) come speak to the school (at $20,000 each for a speaking gig). Sure, it was interesting, but worth the money when you would only have a couple hundred students show up to any given event? The school spent $100 for each kid that bothered to show up to each of those events.
When it comes down to it- from that $25k a year probably only half actually got spent on learning. I'm not sure what they waste the money on these days now that everything has skyrocketed in cost. I imagine Presidential manors are a lot more glitzy. There are probably more $50,000 brick signs up too.
Even if you do like kids, bringing them to the world we have today isn't exactly a gift to them...
I know a great many youngster even today who deeply resent our generation's wasteful and selfish way of living, the consequences of which we left to them, and that they'll have to sort out when we're gone.
If that's the case no-one should ever have had kids.
Today, as an average, children are healthier, more likely to have food they need, will be exposed to less crime, have more protections, they're living in an age of more social acceptance, less likely to die in combat (sure, there are always wars, but this is an era of relative peace- over the last several decades globally wars are declining).
People have been saying for decades that the world is in decline and everything is getting worse, but the truth is: there probably hasn't been a better time to be alive. Every generation thinks the generation after theirs is ruined and going to be terrible.
I'd trust it more if it didn't have a fallible human behind the wheel.
I trust computers not to drink, drive sleepy, fiddle with the radio, talk to the hounddog on the CB, text cousin Willy, be aware of what was happening around it for a full 360 degrees every microsecond.
In many cities, the rich wouldn't want to live close to their jobs. You're right though, it does sound uncomfortable; it will be surprising if they pull this off to be a smooth ride. I'm sure they can "class up" the cramped interiors if the clientele so desire. It would be nice if they could make this for the masses.
The rich got cars first, rode aeroplanes first, they'll ride the hyperloop first. It will be interesting if cost come down so you and I could ride in our lifetime.
I suspect it will only be rich people who can afford to use the hyperloop if they get it working- at least for the foreseeable future. That's OK though. Who knows what the expertise in making these will lead to. Space exploration? Underwater habitats? The skills needed to pull off hyperloop will serve other purposes and engineers that work on this project will found companies that enrich humanity in other ways too.
Part of the scientific method is testing to see if something works.
Obviously they have built something because there is now a test track. The next step is to see- does it work or does it fail. I don't think many people on Slashdot are knowledgeable enough to bet their mortgage on whether hyperloop will ever take off or not.
Personally, I'm glad someone is trying, if it works, it could be an interesting transportation method with novelty value, even if not as a major gridlock solution. If it fails, at least we know now.
I think that someone is trying something new and that is good- work or fail. (and he obviously isn't going to throw money away unless he has scientific advisors claiming they can pull it off). If this fails, something else might be discovered in the process. Try nothing new and nothing new is learnt.
Little known fact: Trump isn't a true Republican. A lot of Republicans hated Trump, just like he got a decent size chunk of Democrat votes. He is an authoritarian, and Republicans tend to be more authoritarian (in general) than Democrats, but he is fiscally all over the place, some of his ideas are very fiscally conservative and some of his ideas are very fiscally liberal.
I think he is naturally more fiscally liberal- he has a tendency to want to spend, but he has a desire to appear fiscally conservative. He wants people to think he's the new Reagan, so he has some visible policies that are more conservative in nature. Socially he certainly wasn't a religious conservative until he was criticized for not being a Christian in the primaries- then he became more interested in attracting that demographic.
If I had to bet, I would bet that despite the authoritarian streak, Trump is more of a democrat than a Republican. The republican part seems more forced. He wants to be the new Reagan and have the popularity Reagan has.
The people who like Trump will give him credit for this and blame Obama's lingering policies for any bad months.
The people who hate Trump will give Obama credit for this and blame Trump's new policies for any bad months.
The people who hate both will give neither credit and wonder how long printing funny money and pretending the job market is fantastic will hold up.
I had a friend back in college who during Bill Clinton's first term claimed that the economic boom we were experiencing was because there is 2 year delay before the economy fully reacts to policy. This number increased from 2, to 4 to 6 years as his time in office increased.
I myself aligned heavily with the republicans back then- but even I realized that was bull.
Nowadays, I realize the President doesn't have quite such a huge effect on economy, be it good or bad. The President is mostly a passenger on the economic journey, and the economy is a global thing. Sure, the President can and does impact the economy but he's not an all-important driving force of the country's economics. He's not even the main player. How the world is doing and what legislators do impacts economics much more than the President does, he can only help or hurt a little.
See, here's the obvious thing that people don't seem to understand: Banks do use those 'security questions', but there's no compulsion to use answers consistent with the question being asked. You could even use totally random strings for those, too, if you wanted to.
But you need a method of remembering how you answered them.
I'm curious, if you don't mind me asking: Can you "hear" music in your head? If I were to name a song that you like, could you summon it in memory?
Kind of, but only music. It's an interesting question one I haven't thought about, that people hear things in their head differently to me too. I can't re-hear birds or car engines running, or any random sounds, or usually people's voices (although I sort-of can sometimes).
When I "hear" music in my head, it's more I feel the beat and I find myself subconsciously altering my breathing to mimic the notes in a tune. I don't hear the singer-singing, it's my internal voice singing- or at least what I internalize my voice to be, but I do hear melody- but I have to adjust my breathing to hear it (if that makes any sense).
The more I think about it (I've never really thought about it before), I guess, when I hear music in my head, I'm probably not hearing it like others, it's not like hearing it on the radio and replaying it internally (assuming that's how others hear music in their head). I'm experiencing more the properties of the music than the music itself, if that makes sense. That's a lot like how I visualize things, if I need to fit x object in y space I think- "okay, there is a nub on the left, so when I turn it over it will be on the right". I'm not actually seeing the picture of object x, but I'm thinking about it's properties.
I do get songs stuck in my head, when I get an "ear-worm" it's the beat and the lyrics that get stuck in my head- but it's almost like it's me singing in my head.
I probably look strange when I am "hearing" music in my head because I find myself moving my head slightly to the "beat" and my breathing must look/sound erratic as I adjust my vocal chords in my breathing for the tone.
I wonder if your thought process- remember things as concepts rather than images actually helped you become a mechanical engineer. If it, being a physical science thinking in words and concepts is more useful that picturing things. (cuts out some of the distraction).
I'm a web developer- so thinking in concepts probably helps my coding- but it makes me wonder if I would be better at aesthetics if I could picture moving things around in my head. I tend to think of laying things out by golden ratio, and mimicking what looks good elsewhere.
Strangely enough- I do remember that my dreams as a child contained a visual element, so I can kind of think what having a minds-eye might be like. I probably even had one myself when I was small and I've just forgot about having one.
I know what my mother's face looks like, I know what an Apple logo looks like. I can't literally picture them in my head though. I can't create an image of them in my head, I have no problem recognizing them though. I can certainly draw an infinity symbol- I can't picture one. I could describe a giraffe, but no, I don't see it before describing it- it's purely academic, I know a giraffe is orangey with pale lines between blotches and a long neck with two hairy horns on top of it's head.
(I didn't realise anyone could visualize until a few years ago- I thought when people were told to visualize things it was purely a theoretical experience where you think about a place or object).
The only reason I ever realised that people actually see pictures in their head was discussing a book with the wife one day she was talking about an image the scene portrayed to her and I asked her "why", she said it was just what she saw in her head. From there the conversation progressed and I realized people actually "see things" in their head. Mind's eye wasn't just a metaphor for a thought construct. Suddenly things like "counting sheep" and "seeing people's faces when they close their eyes" made a little more sense.
One thing I liked more about Chrome than IE is that it was closer to being standard. It didn't change every version and was almost always backwards compatible with previous versions.
This non-standard CSS Grid Layout, which, may be a great idea, is completely useless unless it is a standard used by all browsers.
Someone taught me Giordano Bruno's "memory palace" technique when I was a freshman at uchicago, and it made everything about my academic career as student and teacher so much easier. If you don't know what that is, you really ought to look it up.
From the summary " The technique, which involves conjuring up vivid images of objects in a familiar setting, is credited to the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos, and is a favored method among so-called memory athletes".
If this is the same thing- this would be too foreign for me. I actually have a better-than-average memory, but I can't "picture things".
It's as foreign as when people talk about "picture your happy place in your mind", I can't picture things in my mind. I couldn't visualize a house to place objects in to help me remember them because I can't visualize. The only time I've visualized anything was in dreams- and I haven't even remembered having a dream since I was a child.
I don't know if I'm odd- or if there are just different people that have brains that function differently. I'm not sure if I have some sort of brain damage- I've always done well academically and on IQ tests, etc, I'm good at spatial problems despite my lack of ability to "visualize". I suspect these "memory palaces" wouldn't work on someone like me who can't conjure images in his head.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a ridiculous extrapolation; doing the same to health care costs means that health care and education will each be several hundred percent of our GDP in 18 years.
The cost of education is driven by the federal student loan program, the expansion of middle management, and the development of luxury dorms and gyms. I think it's transparent that such costs cannot continue to expand at the same rate for the next 18 years.
Unless we find a way to get insurance companies out of health care it probably will cost more than our GDP to pay for health care each year. We will become ever greater in debt.
You know, that's actually not a bad idea!
20 years ago, I went to a school that was ridiculously expensive for it's time ($25k a year- I had scholarships or I wouldn't have gone), I witnessed all kinds of waste. They did publish where they spent money though so it was obvious where there was waste, I bet they don't now. They keep asking for money donations, but I remember how they wasted it when I was there- no chance in hell I'm giving them more money now.
A simple 3ft brick sign that cost $50,000 (this in a school of only 2000 students- so that was $25 per student for a sign). Sports lost $10million a year. (we weren't a big state school that had leagues of zombies descend on our every game- but we spent big on sports- and no one who attended the school cared or watched. $5000 a year per student lost on sports. That's 20% of our tuition went straight to paying for a bunch of fat kids in helmets and padding to grab each other's bum 13 games a year. (OK, they had other sports besides the American Football, but I'm sure they got the lion's share).
Then we would have speakers like Pat Conroy (multiple a year) come speak to the school (at $20,000 each for a speaking gig). Sure, it was interesting, but worth the money when you would only have a couple hundred students show up to any given event? The school spent $100 for each kid that bothered to show up to each of those events.
When it comes down to it- from that $25k a year probably only half actually got spent on learning. I'm not sure what they waste the money on these days now that everything has skyrocketed in cost. I imagine Presidential manors are a lot more glitzy. There are probably more $50,000 brick signs up too.
How is this news for nerds? What has D&D got to do with nerds? I'm angry! I want my Slashdot back.
/ sarcasm
Even if you do like kids, bringing them to the world we have today isn't exactly a gift to them...
I know a great many youngster even today who deeply resent our generation's wasteful and selfish way of living, the consequences of which we left to them, and that they'll have to sort out when we're gone.
If that's the case no-one should ever have had kids.
Today, as an average, children are healthier, more likely to have food they need, will be exposed to less crime, have more protections, they're living in an age of more social acceptance, less likely to die in combat (sure, there are always wars, but this is an era of relative peace- over the last several decades globally wars are declining).
People have been saying for decades that the world is in decline and everything is getting worse, but the truth is: there probably hasn't been a better time to be alive. Every generation thinks the generation after theirs is ruined and going to be terrible.
I'd trust it more if it didn't have a fallible human behind the wheel.
I trust computers not to drink, drive sleepy, fiddle with the radio, talk to the hounddog on the CB, text cousin Willy, be aware of what was happening around it for a full 360 degrees every microsecond.
And so it begins...
In many cities, the rich wouldn't want to live close to their jobs. You're right though, it does sound uncomfortable; it will be surprising if they pull this off to be a smooth ride. I'm sure they can "class up" the cramped interiors if the clientele so desire. It would be nice if they could make this for the masses.
The rich got cars first, rode aeroplanes first, they'll ride the hyperloop first. It will be interesting if cost come down so you and I could ride in our lifetime.
I suspect it will only be rich people who can afford to use the hyperloop if they get it working- at least for the foreseeable future. That's OK though. Who knows what the expertise in making these will lead to. Space exploration? Underwater habitats? The skills needed to pull off hyperloop will serve other purposes and engineers that work on this project will found companies that enrich humanity in other ways too.
Part of the scientific method is testing to see if something works.
Obviously they have built something because there is now a test track. The next step is to see- does it work or does it fail. I don't think many people on Slashdot are knowledgeable enough to bet their mortgage on whether hyperloop will ever take off or not.
Personally, I'm glad someone is trying, if it works, it could be an interesting transportation method with novelty value, even if not as a major gridlock solution. If it fails, at least we know now.
I think that someone is trying something new and that is good- work or fail. (and he obviously isn't going to throw money away unless he has scientific advisors claiming they can pull it off). If this fails, something else might be discovered in the process. Try nothing new and nothing new is learnt.
moogle cagoogle doogie doogie wobbla bo.
Little known fact.. the Reps won that too.
Little known fact: Trump isn't a true Republican. A lot of Republicans hated Trump, just like he got a decent size chunk of Democrat votes. He is an authoritarian, and Republicans tend to be more authoritarian (in general) than Democrats, but he is fiscally all over the place, some of his ideas are very fiscally conservative and some of his ideas are very fiscally liberal.
I think he is naturally more fiscally liberal- he has a tendency to want to spend, but he has a desire to appear fiscally conservative. He wants people to think he's the new Reagan, so he has some visible policies that are more conservative in nature. Socially he certainly wasn't a religious conservative until he was criticized for not being a Christian in the primaries- then he became more interested in attracting that demographic.
If I had to bet, I would bet that despite the authoritarian streak, Trump is more of a democrat than a Republican. The republican part seems more forced. He wants to be the new Reagan and have the popularity Reagan has.
No, but we have deployed new Nuclear weapons to another country for the first time in a while.
People have picked a side.
The people who like Trump will give him credit for this and blame Obama's lingering policies for any bad months.
The people who hate Trump will give Obama credit for this and blame Trump's new policies for any bad months.
The people who hate both will give neither credit and wonder how long printing funny money and pretending the job market is fantastic will hold up.
I had a friend back in college who during Bill Clinton's first term claimed that the economic boom we were experiencing was because there is 2 year delay before the economy fully reacts to policy. This number increased from 2, to 4 to 6 years as his time in office increased.
I myself aligned heavily with the republicans back then- but even I realized that was bull.
Nowadays, I realize the President doesn't have quite such a huge effect on economy, be it good or bad. The President is mostly a passenger on the economic journey, and the economy is a global thing. Sure, the President can and does impact the economy but he's not an all-important driving force of the country's economics. He's not even the main player. How the world is doing and what legislators do impacts economics much more than the President does, he can only help or hurt a little.
See, here's the obvious thing that people don't seem to understand: Banks do use those 'security questions', but there's no compulsion to use answers consistent with the question being asked. You could even use totally random strings for those, too, if you wanted to.
But you need a method of remembering how you answered them.
I'm curious, if you don't mind me asking: Can you "hear" music in your head? If I were to name a song that you like, could you summon it in memory?
Kind of, but only music. It's an interesting question one I haven't thought about, that people hear things in their head differently to me too. I can't re-hear birds or car engines running, or any random sounds, or usually people's voices (although I sort-of can sometimes).
When I "hear" music in my head, it's more I feel the beat and I find myself subconsciously altering my breathing to mimic the notes in a tune. I don't hear the singer-singing, it's my internal voice singing- or at least what I internalize my voice to be, but I do hear melody- but I have to adjust my breathing to hear it (if that makes any sense).
The more I think about it (I've never really thought about it before), I guess, when I hear music in my head, I'm probably not hearing it like others, it's not like hearing it on the radio and replaying it internally (assuming that's how others hear music in their head). I'm experiencing more the properties of the music than the music itself, if that makes sense. That's a lot like how I visualize things, if I need to fit x object in y space I think- "okay, there is a nub on the left, so when I turn it over it will be on the right". I'm not actually seeing the picture of object x, but I'm thinking about it's properties.
I do get songs stuck in my head, when I get an "ear-worm" it's the beat and the lyrics that get stuck in my head- but it's almost like it's me singing in my head.
I probably look strange when I am "hearing" music in my head because I find myself moving my head slightly to the "beat" and my breathing must look/sound erratic as I adjust my vocal chords in my breathing for the tone.
Drop bears are attracted to batteries. I can't see the battery storage solution surviving the first drop bear attack.
I wonder if your thought process- remember things as concepts rather than images actually helped you become a mechanical engineer. If it, being a physical science thinking in words and concepts is more useful that picturing things. (cuts out some of the distraction).
I'm a web developer- so thinking in concepts probably helps my coding- but it makes me wonder if I would be better at aesthetics if I could picture moving things around in my head. I tend to think of laying things out by golden ratio, and mimicking what looks good elsewhere.
Strangely enough- I do remember that my dreams as a child contained a visual element, so I can kind of think what having a minds-eye might be like. I probably even had one myself when I was small and I've just forgot about having one.
I know what my mother's face looks like, I know what an Apple logo looks like. I can't literally picture them in my head though. I can't create an image of them in my head, I have no problem recognizing them though. I can certainly draw an infinity symbol- I can't picture one. I could describe a giraffe, but no, I don't see it before describing it- it's purely academic, I know a giraffe is orangey with pale lines between blotches and a long neck with two hairy horns on top of it's head.
(I didn't realise anyone could visualize until a few years ago- I thought when people were told to visualize things it was purely a theoretical experience where you think about a place or object).
The only reason I ever realised that people actually see pictures in their head was discussing a book with the wife one day she was talking about an image the scene portrayed to her and I asked her "why", she said it was just what she saw in her head. From there the conversation progressed and I realized people actually "see things" in their head. Mind's eye wasn't just a metaphor for a thought construct. Suddenly things like "counting sheep" and "seeing people's faces when they close their eyes" made a little more sense.
One thing I liked more about Chrome than IE is that it was closer to being standard. It didn't change every version and was almost always backwards compatible with previous versions.
This non-standard CSS Grid Layout, which, may be a great idea, is completely useless unless it is a standard used by all browsers.
I'll be able to share all my private details with even more corporations now.
Things you should never use as a password:
1) Your first pet's name
2) The street you grew up on
3) The model of your first car
Things banks use for "security questions":
see above.
That why I always use Password123
Someone taught me Giordano Bruno's "memory palace" technique when I was a freshman at uchicago, and it made everything about my academic career as student and teacher so much easier. If you don't know what that is, you really ought to look it up.
From the summary " The technique, which involves conjuring up vivid images of objects in a familiar setting, is credited to the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos, and is a favored method among so-called memory athletes".
If this is the same thing- this would be too foreign for me. I actually have a better-than-average memory, but I can't "picture things".
It's as foreign as when people talk about "picture your happy place in your mind", I can't picture things in my mind. I couldn't visualize a house to place objects in to help me remember them because I can't visualize. The only time I've visualized anything was in dreams- and I haven't even remembered having a dream since I was a child.
I don't know if I'm odd- or if there are just different people that have brains that function differently. I'm not sure if I have some sort of brain damage- I've always done well academically and on IQ tests, etc, I'm good at spatial problems despite my lack of ability to "visualize". I suspect these "memory palaces" wouldn't work on someone like me who can't conjure images in his head.
Oh sure, I can remember all my old phone numbers, and all the numbers of all my old friends as kids...
I couldn't tell you my current work phone number though- or even what zip code the office is in without googling it.
not an article but here you go. https://twitter.com/FoxNews/st...
I see the only link is a Fox News link- considering the NYT is online this is suspicious. In other words- Fox News invented a fictitious NYT article?