The fact is that consumers killed US manufacturing.
Not true. The most important rule of market economy is to maximise profits. Moving manufacturing to cheaper countries helps maximising profits. This has got nothing to do with the customers bying the cheapest option...
You are terribly mistaken. Profits are dependent upon sales and consumers decide what sells. Maximizing profits, corporate greed, etc can lead to either domestic manufacture or overseas manufacture. It all depends on consumer preferences. If consumers value domestic manufacture more than retail price and buy accordingly then maximizing profits leads to domestic manufacture. Consumers drive the system, they control the system.
... The more expensive Maglite is still being sold because it caters to a different target market than a chinese made brand. If the Maglite CEO could achieve higher profits by manufacturing in China, he would already have moved the production base there.
No. Sometimes ethics and patriotism prevail. "Why Mag Instrument is against "outsourcing" of flashlight manufacturing jobs: It's a curious thing: While its competitors in the flashlight industry are busy exporting manufacturing jobs from the United States, Mag Instrument is busy exporting flashlights from the United States.
Why? The answer, again, comes down to one man's abiding commitment. To "outsource" flashlight manufacturing jobs -- to take those jobs away from American workers and send them "offshore" -- would violate Tony Maglica's philosophy in several ways." http://www.maglite.com/Mag_commitment.asp
While money is one metric of the stats it also uses the amount of goods exported.
I'd like to see such stats regarding the amount of goods. The products found in Walmart, Target, Toys R Us, brick and mortars around the country, Amazon, etc suggest otherwise. As do the shuttered factories across the country.
If the Chinese or any other country was ranked #1 I seriously doubt you would not be making the same judgements you apply to the US.
How is that? My judgment is that US consumers are responsible for the offshoring of formerly US based manufacturing due to purchasing decisions being made on no other criteria beyond price.
"The fact is that consumers killed US manufacturing" The US is still ranked the #1 manufacturer in the world.
Stats that make that claim usually compare dollar amounts. So extremely high priced products like jet liners, heavy caterpillar tractors, etc distort the numbers and do not reflect huge number of manufacturing jobs that have been exported. These products merely represent the heavy high tech manufacturing which is the last to go and is currently targeted for the next round of job exporting.
These dollar based stats also show that we are just about to fall from that #1 position. You should look at the historical trend and not look at the current stat out of context.
Actually during the 60s and 70s various European green and peace movements were infiltrated and indirectly funded by the Soviet Union in an attempt to weaken the resolve of western europe. Nuclear power got caught in that propaganda. Interestingly the former Soviets running Russia are pretty happy with the current course, the likely result is western europe becoming dependent upon Russian natural gas.
Yes, I'm sure that green activists much prefer the idea of pumping natural gas across Europe to generating electricity through renewable means locally. Obviously they are all deluded Russian stooges.
You, sir, are a fucking twat.
Guess again. When the Kremlin archives were opened in the 90s it was discovered that various European green movements, especially the antinuclear ones, were heavily funded by the Soviets. This was all done covertly, the movements were not aware of it.
Local renewable projects won't be able to meet demand. Without nuclear power Europeans will have to pick between coal and natural gas. You may desperately wish otherwise but that will not make it so. Renewable tech isn't mature enough. We should continue to research it, someday it may be viable, but our current and near future tech is not there yet.
lets face facts. they only outsourced for two main reasons.
number 1, to avoid the EPA
number 2, to avoid labor unions
all of that 'classic american technology' was built with union hands and by people paying union dues. they went on something called a 'strike' once in a while, too. fascinating concept - you stop working in order to improve conditions and pressure employers.
You are not facing facts. The fact is that consumers killed US manufacturing. Consumers selected goods based on one and only one criteria: retail price. When presented with a high quality US made product and a less expensive foreign made product the US consumers overwhelmingly chose the foreign made good. It wasn't the CEOs, the 1%, etc. The 99% did it to themselves. Corporations don't care where things are made, only that they sell, and consumers chose what sells and what does not. Corporate greed can lead to domestic manufacture just as easily as it can lead to foreign manufacture, it just depends on US consumers favoring domestic production over retail price. Assuming you are a US citizen and you need a flashlight for your car, there is a $20 US made Maglite next to a $7 chinese made brand, what do you chose? What does your choice tell the Maglite CEO to do?
Unions knew this too. There was no shortage of "Save a Job, Buy American" bumper stickers in the 1970s. US Consumers didn't care, a classic example of tragedy of the commons.
Fortunately the internet has made it easier to find US made goods than one might expect by browsing local brick and mortar establishments.
Ripley: Lieutenant, what do those pulse-rifles fire?
Gorman: 10 millimeter explosive tip caseless. Standard light armor-piercing rounds. Why?
Ripley: Well, look where your team is. They're right under the primary heat exchangers.
Gorman: So?
I know I'm exposing my cluelessness by asking to have this joke explained to me...perhaps it's a reference to some pop culture? Some movie I haven't seen? I mean, if Gorman's team is under the heat exchangers (presumably) of a nuclear power plant), are they going to fire at the heat exchangers? I would think they are defending the heat exchangers or something. Maybe It's something I had to see to understand.
Not really. Even if the heat exchangers were not the intended targets, getting into a firefight with armor piercing incendiary rounds around a nuclear plant's cooling system might seem questionable to any ordinary person.:-)
* GASP! * You want the terrorists to win!
; )
No, I want the troops to use the flame throwers instead of the rifles.:-)
Nuclear power is one of the less polluting ways to get energy out there. Yet they protest against it. Guess they would be more happy with coal plants.
Actually during the 60s and 70s various European green and peace movements were infiltrated and indirectly funded by the Soviet Union in an attempt to weaken the resolve of western europe. Nuclear power got caught in that propaganda. Interestingly the former Soviets running Russia are pretty happy with the current course, the likely result is western europe becoming dependent upon Russian natural gas.
Ripley: Lieutenant, what do those pulse-rifles fire?
Gorman: 10 millimeter explosive tip caseless. Standard light armor-piercing rounds. Why?
Ripley: Well, look where your team is. They're right under the primary heat exchangers.
Gorman: So?
I know I'm exposing my cluelessness by asking to have this joke explained to me...perhaps it's a reference to some pop culture? Some movie I haven't seen? I mean, if Gorman's team is under the heat exchangers (presumably) of a nuclear power plant), are they going to fire at the heat exchangers? I would think they are defending the heat exchangers or something. Maybe It's something I had to see to understand.
Not really. Even if the heat exchangers were not the intended targets, getting into a firefight with armor piercing incendiary rounds around a nuclear plant's cooling system might seem questionable to any ordinary person.:-)
I don't give up hope that there are people out there who know about the origin of sabotage from reading (p.e. Gibson/Sterling's The Difference Engine) instead of Star Trek marathons.
I had no recollection of Sabotage and the origin of the word being in a Star Trek episode. I knew this from studying French and the little bit of French history where striking workers threw their shoes into machinery to bring the machinery to a halt.
In the US we learn (or at least used to) the word in elementary school during social studies (history) when we get to the part about the industrial revolution. That incident was one of several that occurred across the industrializing nations, this one happened to be more visually evocative and happened to be in France. Its a notable event in world history, its not really specific to French history.
I love how people try to rewrite history to suit their own purposes.
What are you talking about? No one's discussing campaign promises.
What is being discussed is that the anti-war protests put Nixon into office by undermining the democrats. Civil unrest scared the middle class / swing voters to go with the "law and order" candidate.
"However, the tragedy of the antiwar riots crippled Humphrey's campaign from the start, and it never fully recovered."
"Nixon ran on a campaign that promised to restore law and order to the nation's cities, torn by riots and crime. The election of 1968 was a realigning election that permanently disrupted the New Deal Coalition that had dominated presidential politics for 36 years." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1968
The owners of the card won't be liable for the charges dumbass.
While the owner of the card may not be liable, the charity may still have to pay the fee for payment processing on the fraudulent charges. At a minimum the charity will be put on a higher fee schedule due to an elevated number of fraudulent credit card charges, so they will lose on all legitimate donations in the future.
Ever heard of the civil rights movement? They cause change without ousting politicians or using force. It's called civil disobedience, and it's proved effective time and time again.
You have it exactly backwards. The civil rights movement succeeded when *voters* decided it would be an electoral issue. The viet nam war ended when *voters* decided it would be an electoral issue, and that decision was made when their lives were affected (increased casualties hitting the middle class) not because of radical anti-war protesters. The true currency of politics are votes not money, money is only useful when the voters are indifferent.
By making ourselves heard (me included) Occupy is waking people up from their fantasy land where government and corporations aren't screwing us.
All Occupy is on a path to do is create a perception of civil unrest and scare the swing voters into going republican, just like the radical anti-war protesters did during the viet nam war resulting in getting nixon elected. Occupy needs to realize that "camping" is going to backfire. Show up, protest, yell and shout, day or night, but when you tire go home or get a room... repeat as necessary. The more the focus is on "camping" the more the middle will feel that Occupy does not represent them. Polls are showing that this is already happening. In the minds of many Occupy is looking more and more like the "professional protesters" that show up at G20, World Bank, and other meetings. Continue on this path if you wish to waste a great opportunity.
Macro-evolution is just the cumulative effect of micro-evolution, there is no difference.
Untrue. The macro/micro distinction is a useful indication of timescale, as well as an indication as to the degree of possible change.
The people who use those words hold onto a belief that micro-evolution can only result in small changes and can never result in the big changes, i.e. they say that it is impossible for a monkey and a human to have evolved from a common ancestor.
Irrelevant. They twist the definition of "evolution" as well, that does not render the term unusable by science. Similarly the twists on "micro" and "macro" are not rendered unusable by science.
Get over it, you have an emotional bias against these words because people you don't like use them.:-)
Or they will talk about "micro-evolution" versus "macro-evolution" - it's a completely false distinction
Your opinion on those words seem to be just as political/philosophical as their opinion on the word "evolution". Being able to characterize evolutionary events as within or beyond human scaled timeframes seems useful, this detail is certainly a major issue in the hypothesize/test/observe process. Much as we can characterize economic events as micro and macro, the former being scaled more towards the actions of individuals.
Actually "micro" and "macro" are pretty good prefixes and the implication of human and non-human scaled timeframes seems a perfectly reasonable one. These timeframes suggest very different approaches to the hypothesize/test/observe process. The hostility toward these prefixes seems just as political/philosophical as the hostility towards the word "evolution".
In the comic example, if the doctor (or patient) didn't believe in evolution, and the old medicines worked just fine way, way back in the day, why prescribe something new and more expensive?
The comic's example is erroneous. Doctors who do not believe in "evolution" do believe in disease resistant organisms and understand how these organisms became that way. They merely reject that particular word for philosophical reasons, however they do understand the scientific evidence, the concept of survival of the fittest. The macro/micro distinction may or may not be appropriate but in their minds it is real. Personally I don't see a problem with the macro/micro distinction. Micro seems to refer to things that are observable on a human scaled timeline, macro referring to things that are observable over much longer timeframes.
I've talked to fundamentalists who do not believe in "evolution". You just have to use phrases like "survival of the fittest" to move the conversation along and avoid the word "evolution". They actually have no problem with concepts like disease resistant organisms. So I have no problem believing these people will follow acceptable guidelines with respect to prescribing antibiotics and will know exactly why these guidelines exists.
And what happens if new information is discovered, those guidelines change, and the new ones happen to use the word "evolution"?
People who have such serious issues with reality shouldn't be in a position where such issues can lead to mistakes which might kill a lot of people. Perhaps if they would do the necessary mental gymnastics to fit things to their worldview, they could be trusted ("ah, these new guidelines clearly mean micro-evolution"), but as is wouldn't they simply stop reading the infidel guideline as soon as they encountered the word "evolution"?
No. They will think the word "evolution" was erroneously applied to the new discovery, do the necessary gymnastics, and begin to follow the new guidelines. They have a track record of performing these gymnastics with respect to past medical discoveries, I'd expect they would continue to do so.
If you don't believe in evolution then by definition you cannot believe that bacteria can acquire resistance to antibiotics. This can and will lead to treatment decisions which are wrong.
No. There is merely a disagreement about what the word "evolution" covers in the darwinian sense. There is actually no problem with the concept of disease resistant organisms. See other responses for a more elaborate explanation.
I'm a bit fuzzy on how a belief in evolution helps a doctor diagnose and fix a problem in the patient in front of them.
Ever heard of infection? You can't understand bacteria and viruses, let alone treat them effectively, if you don't know about evolution. Imagine these people giving out antibiotics.
I've talked to fundamentalists who do not believe in "evolution". You just have to use phrases like "survival of the fittest" to move the conversation along and avoid the word "evolution". They actually have no problem with concepts like disease resistant organisms. So I have no problem believing these people will follow acceptable guidelines with respect to prescribing antibiotics and will know exactly why these guidelines exists.
To quote you, I don't get what the problem is. What does belief/disbelief in evolution have to do with medical treatment?
Presumably such a doctor would have no qualms about handing out antibiotics like candy - after all, it's not as if the bacteria might adapt to it.
And how do they explain where all these new diseases come from anyway?
The most fundamentalist folk I've talked to that mentally shut down when you use the word "evolution" have no problem with the concept of individual organisms having varying levels of resistance and that the repeated use of some compound will lead to a population dominated by the most resistant. "Survival of the fittest" is something that the most fundamentalist will accept in a short term context yielding small changes.
Try it out for yourself. Talk to a fundamentalist, do not use the word "evolution", discuss the drug resistant organisms, the moths that changed color pre/post industrialization, etc. Use phrases like "survival of the fittest", "change over time", etc and you will have no problem. Utter the word "evolution" and then its like a switch flips. These people have no problem with the concept of drug resistant organisms, they just don't want to use the word "evolution" for this. To them "evolution" is exclusively apes became man type of stuff.
Just to be clear. Many Christian churches do not have a problem with evolution either.
Its just a minority Christian group that believes in literal interpretations that gets into all these disagreements with science. They just get a disproportionate amount of media attention and create a false impression of the larger group. I'm sure you are familiar with this concept.
I don't get what the problem is. If you don't grasp the material, regardless of the reason, you fail the course.
Agreed.
I sure as hell don't want to be treated by a doctor who doesn't understand evolution.
To quote you, I don't get what the problem is. What does belief/disbelief in evolution have to do with medical treatment? A medical doctor needs to know how the body works right now, not how it got to that point. I'm a bit fuzzy on how a belief in evolution helps a doctor diagnose and fix a problem in the patient in front of them.
Now if you want to say certain avenues of medical research should probably be closed then I'd agree.
Fun Fact: The Solyndra loans were approved of during the Bush administration. Have fun with your partisan pissing contest.
I'm sorry, you seem a bit short on facts. Here are some facts from the left leaning New York Times and Los Angeles Times.
Preliminary approval under Bush, final approval under Obama. Then financial analysis was skipped under Obama and warnings were ignored. Plus Solyndra's owner was a top Obama campaign contributor. Plus the Obama administration structured the deal so that investors would get paid before taxpayers if the company failed.
"George B. Kaiser, a billionaire from Tulsa, Okla., was a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign and the backer of a foundation that is Solyndra’s leading investor... during the period when Solyndra’s loan guarantee was under review and management by the Energy Department, the company spent nearly $1.8 million on Washington lobbyists, employing six firms with ties to members of Congress and officials of the Obama White House. None of the other three solar panel manufacturers that eventually got federal loan guarantees spent a dime on lobbyists."
""“It was alarming,” said Frank Rusco, a program director at the Government Accountability Office, which found that Energy Department preliminary loan approvals — including the one for Solyndra — were granted at times before officials had completed mandatory evaluations of the financial and engineering viability of the projects. “They can’t really evaluate the risks without following the rules.” The Energy Department’s senior staff has acknowledged in interviews the intense pressure from top Obama administration officials to rush stimulus spending out the door. “We had to knock down some barriers standing in the way to get these projects funded,” Matthew C. Rogers, the Energy Department official overseeing the loan guarantee program, said in March 2009, just days before Solyndra got its provisional loan commitment. Mr. Rogers said Energy Secretary Steven Chu had been personally reviewing loan applications and urging faster action on them."" http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/us/politics/in-rush-to-assist-solyndra-united-states-missed-warning-signs.html?pagewanted=all
"At a White House meeting in late October, Lawrence H. Summers, then director of the National Economic Council, and Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, expressed concerns that the selection process for federal loan guarantees wasn't rigorous enough and raised the risk that funds could be going to the wrong companies, including ones that didn't need the help. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, also at the meeting, had a different view. Under pressure from Congress to speed up the loans, he wanted less scrutiny from the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB." http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/26/nation/la-na-energy-loans-20110927
"Energy Department officials were warned that their plan to help a failing solar company by restructuring its $535 million federal loan could violate the law and should be cleared with the Justice Department, according to newly obtained e-mails from within the Obama administration. The e-mails show that Energy Department officials moved ahead anyway with a new deal that would repay company investors before taxpayers if the company defaulted." http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/solyndra-obama-and-rahm-emanuel-pushed-to-spotlight-energy-company/2011/10/07/gIQACDqSTL_story.html
The People's Republic of China is a totalitarian state
take a close look at yourself first before judging other countries.
Sure, no problem.
USA crowd control and protester dispersion: Police with pepper spray.
Chinese crowd control and protester dispersion: Soldiers with live ammunition.
Your suggestion sure was insightful. It really helps contrast the two countries quite nicely.
Slashdot Mirror
Not true. The most important rule of market economy is to maximise profits. Moving manufacturing to cheaper countries helps maximising profits. This has got nothing to do with the customers bying the cheapest option ...
You are terribly mistaken. Profits are dependent upon sales and consumers decide what sells. Maximizing profits, corporate greed, etc can lead to either domestic manufacture or overseas manufacture. It all depends on consumer preferences. If consumers value domestic manufacture more than retail price and buy accordingly then maximizing profits leads to domestic manufacture. Consumers drive the system, they control the system.
... The more expensive Maglite is still being sold because it caters to a different target market than a chinese made brand. If the Maglite CEO could achieve higher profits by manufacturing in China, he would already have moved the production base there.
No. Sometimes ethics and patriotism prevail. "Why Mag Instrument is against "outsourcing" of flashlight manufacturing jobs: It's a curious thing: While its competitors in the flashlight industry are busy exporting manufacturing jobs from the United States, Mag Instrument is busy exporting flashlights from the United States. Why? The answer, again, comes down to one man's abiding commitment. To "outsource" flashlight manufacturing jobs -- to take those jobs away from American workers and send them "offshore" -- would violate Tony Maglica's philosophy in several ways."
http://www.maglite.com/Mag_commitment.asp
While money is one metric of the stats it also uses the amount of goods exported.
I'd like to see such stats regarding the amount of goods. The products found in Walmart, Target, Toys R Us, brick and mortars around the country, Amazon, etc suggest otherwise. As do the shuttered factories across the country.
If the Chinese or any other country was ranked #1 I seriously doubt you would not be making the same judgements you apply to the US.
How is that? My judgment is that US consumers are responsible for the offshoring of formerly US based manufacturing due to purchasing decisions being made on no other criteria beyond price.
"The fact is that consumers killed US manufacturing" The US is still ranked the #1 manufacturer in the world.
Stats that make that claim usually compare dollar amounts. So extremely high priced products like jet liners, heavy caterpillar tractors, etc distort the numbers and do not reflect huge number of manufacturing jobs that have been exported. These products merely represent the heavy high tech manufacturing which is the last to go and is currently targeted for the next round of job exporting.
These dollar based stats also show that we are just about to fall from that #1 position. You should look at the historical trend and not look at the current stat out of context.
Actually during the 60s and 70s various European green and peace movements were infiltrated and indirectly funded by the Soviet Union in an attempt to weaken the resolve of western europe. Nuclear power got caught in that propaganda. Interestingly the former Soviets running Russia are pretty happy with the current course, the likely result is western europe becoming dependent upon Russian natural gas.
Yes, I'm sure that green activists much prefer the idea of pumping natural gas across Europe to generating electricity through renewable means locally. Obviously they are all deluded Russian stooges. You, sir, are a fucking twat.
Guess again. When the Kremlin archives were opened in the 90s it was discovered that various European green movements, especially the antinuclear ones, were heavily funded by the Soviets. This was all done covertly, the movements were not aware of it.
Local renewable projects won't be able to meet demand. Without nuclear power Europeans will have to pick between coal and natural gas. You may desperately wish otherwise but that will not make it so. Renewable tech isn't mature enough. We should continue to research it, someday it may be viable, but our current and near future tech is not there yet.
lets face facts. they only outsourced for two main reasons.
number 1, to avoid the EPA
number 2, to avoid labor unions
all of that 'classic american technology' was built with union hands and by people paying union dues. they went on something called a 'strike' once in a while, too. fascinating concept - you stop working in order to improve conditions and pressure employers.
You are not facing facts. The fact is that consumers killed US manufacturing. Consumers selected goods based on one and only one criteria: retail price. When presented with a high quality US made product and a less expensive foreign made product the US consumers overwhelmingly chose the foreign made good. It wasn't the CEOs, the 1%, etc. The 99% did it to themselves. Corporations don't care where things are made, only that they sell, and consumers chose what sells and what does not. Corporate greed can lead to domestic manufacture just as easily as it can lead to foreign manufacture, it just depends on US consumers favoring domestic production over retail price. Assuming you are a US citizen and you need a flashlight for your car, there is a $20 US made Maglite next to a $7 chinese made brand, what do you chose? What does your choice tell the Maglite CEO to do?
Unions knew this too. There was no shortage of "Save a Job, Buy American" bumper stickers in the 1970s. US Consumers didn't care, a classic example of tragedy of the commons.
Fortunately the internet has made it easier to find US made goods than one might expect by browsing local brick and mortar establishments.
Ripley: Lieutenant, what do those pulse-rifles fire? Gorman: 10 millimeter explosive tip caseless. Standard light armor-piercing rounds. Why? Ripley: Well, look where your team is. They're right under the primary heat exchangers. Gorman: So?
I know I'm exposing my cluelessness by asking to have this joke explained to me...perhaps it's a reference to some pop culture? Some movie I haven't seen? I mean, if Gorman's team is under the heat exchangers (presumably) of a nuclear power plant), are they going to fire at the heat exchangers? I would think they are defending the heat exchangers or something. Maybe It's something I had to see to understand.
Not really. Even if the heat exchangers were not the intended targets, getting into a firefight with armor piercing incendiary rounds around a nuclear plant's cooling system might seem questionable to any ordinary person. :-)
* GASP! * You want the terrorists to win!
; )
No, I want the troops to use the flame throwers instead of the rifles. :-)
Nuclear power is one of the less polluting ways to get energy out there. Yet they protest against it. Guess they would be more happy with coal plants.
Actually during the 60s and 70s various European green and peace movements were infiltrated and indirectly funded by the Soviet Union in an attempt to weaken the resolve of western europe. Nuclear power got caught in that propaganda. Interestingly the former Soviets running Russia are pretty happy with the current course, the likely result is western europe becoming dependent upon Russian natural gas.
Ripley: Lieutenant, what do those pulse-rifles fire? Gorman: 10 millimeter explosive tip caseless. Standard light armor-piercing rounds. Why? Ripley: Well, look where your team is. They're right under the primary heat exchangers. Gorman: So?
I know I'm exposing my cluelessness by asking to have this joke explained to me...perhaps it's a reference to some pop culture? Some movie I haven't seen? I mean, if Gorman's team is under the heat exchangers (presumably) of a nuclear power plant), are they going to fire at the heat exchangers? I would think they are defending the heat exchangers or something. Maybe It's something I had to see to understand.
Not really. Even if the heat exchangers were not the intended targets, getting into a firefight with armor piercing incendiary rounds around a nuclear plant's cooling system might seem questionable to any ordinary person. :-)
I don't give up hope that there are people out there who know about the origin of sabotage from reading (p.e. Gibson/Sterling's The Difference Engine) instead of Star Trek marathons.
I had no recollection of Sabotage and the origin of the word being in a Star Trek episode. I knew this from studying French and the little bit of French history where striking workers threw their shoes into machinery to bring the machinery to a halt.
In the US we learn (or at least used to) the word in elementary school during social studies (history) when we get to the part about the industrial revolution. That incident was one of several that occurred across the industrializing nations, this one happened to be more visually evocative and happened to be in France. Its a notable event in world history, its not really specific to French history.
...just like the radical anti-war protesters did during the viet nam war resulting in getting nixon elected.
Not so much: In the 1968 Presidential campaign, Richard Nixon stated that "new leadership will end the war" in Vietnam.
I love how people try to rewrite history to suit their own purposes.
What are you talking about? No one's discussing campaign promises.
What is being discussed is that the anti-war protests put Nixon into office by undermining the democrats. Civil unrest scared the middle class / swing voters to go with the "law and order" candidate.
"However, the tragedy of the antiwar riots crippled Humphrey's campaign from the start, and it never fully recovered."
"Nixon ran on a campaign that promised to restore law and order to the nation's cities, torn by riots and crime. The election of 1968 was a realigning election that permanently disrupted the New Deal Coalition that had dominated presidential politics for 36 years."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1968
The owners of the card won't be liable for the charges dumbass.
While the owner of the card may not be liable, the charity may still have to pay the fee for payment processing on the fraudulent charges. At a minimum the charity will be put on a higher fee schedule due to an elevated number of fraudulent credit card charges, so they will lose on all legitimate donations in the future.
Ever heard of the civil rights movement? They cause change without ousting politicians or using force. It's called civil disobedience, and it's proved effective time and time again.
You have it exactly backwards. The civil rights movement succeeded when *voters* decided it would be an electoral issue. The viet nam war ended when *voters* decided it would be an electoral issue, and that decision was made when their lives were affected (increased casualties hitting the middle class) not because of radical anti-war protesters. The true currency of politics are votes not money, money is only useful when the voters are indifferent.
By making ourselves heard (me included) Occupy is waking people up from their fantasy land where government and corporations aren't screwing us.
All Occupy is on a path to do is create a perception of civil unrest and scare the swing voters into going republican, just like the radical anti-war protesters did during the viet nam war resulting in getting nixon elected. Occupy needs to realize that "camping" is going to backfire. Show up, protest, yell and shout, day or night, but when you tire go home or get a room ... repeat as necessary. The more the focus is on "camping" the more the middle will feel that Occupy does not represent them. Polls are showing that this is already happening. In the minds of many Occupy is looking more and more like the "professional protesters" that show up at G20, World Bank, and other meetings. Continue on this path if you wish to waste a great opportunity.
Macro-evolution is just the cumulative effect of micro-evolution, there is no difference.
Untrue. The macro/micro distinction is a useful indication of timescale, as well as an indication as to the degree of possible change.
The people who use those words hold onto a belief that micro-evolution can only result in small changes and can never result in the big changes, i.e. they say that it is impossible for a monkey and a human to have evolved from a common ancestor.
Irrelevant. They twist the definition of "evolution" as well, that does not render the term unusable by science. Similarly the twists on "micro" and "macro" are not rendered unusable by science.
:-)
Get over it, you have an emotional bias against these words because people you don't like use them.
Or they will talk about "micro-evolution" versus "macro-evolution" - it's a completely false distinction
Your opinion on those words seem to be just as political/philosophical as their opinion on the word "evolution". Being able to characterize evolutionary events as within or beyond human scaled timeframes seems useful, this detail is certainly a major issue in the hypothesize/test/observe process. Much as we can characterize economic events as micro and macro, the former being scaled more towards the actions of individuals.
Actually "micro" and "macro" are pretty good prefixes and the implication of human and non-human scaled timeframes seems a perfectly reasonable one. These timeframes suggest very different approaches to the hypothesize/test/observe process. The hostility toward these prefixes seems just as political/philosophical as the hostility towards the word "evolution".
In the comic example, if the doctor (or patient) didn't believe in evolution, and the old medicines worked just fine way, way back in the day, why prescribe something new and more expensive?
The comic's example is erroneous. Doctors who do not believe in "evolution" do believe in disease resistant organisms and understand how these organisms became that way. They merely reject that particular word for philosophical reasons, however they do understand the scientific evidence, the concept of survival of the fittest. The macro/micro distinction may or may not be appropriate but in their minds it is real. Personally I don't see a problem with the macro/micro distinction. Micro seems to refer to things that are observable on a human scaled timeline, macro referring to things that are observable over much longer timeframes.
And what happens if new information is discovered, those guidelines change, and the new ones happen to use the word "evolution"?
People who have such serious issues with reality shouldn't be in a position where such issues can lead to mistakes which might kill a lot of people. Perhaps if they would do the necessary mental gymnastics to fit things to their worldview, they could be trusted ("ah, these new guidelines clearly mean micro-evolution"), but as is wouldn't they simply stop reading the infidel guideline as soon as they encountered the word "evolution"?
No. They will think the word "evolution" was erroneously applied to the new discovery, do the necessary gymnastics, and begin to follow the new guidelines. They have a track record of performing these gymnastics with respect to past medical discoveries, I'd expect they would continue to do so.
If you don't believe in evolution then by definition you cannot believe that bacteria can acquire resistance to antibiotics. This can and will lead to treatment decisions which are wrong.
No. There is merely a disagreement about what the word "evolution" covers in the darwinian sense. There is actually no problem with the concept of disease resistant organisms. See other responses for a more elaborate explanation.
I'm a bit fuzzy on how a belief in evolution helps a doctor diagnose and fix a problem in the patient in front of them.
Ever heard of infection? You can't understand bacteria and viruses, let alone treat them effectively, if you don't know about evolution. Imagine these people giving out antibiotics.
I've talked to fundamentalists who do not believe in "evolution". You just have to use phrases like "survival of the fittest" to move the conversation along and avoid the word "evolution". They actually have no problem with concepts like disease resistant organisms. So I have no problem believing these people will follow acceptable guidelines with respect to prescribing antibiotics and will know exactly why these guidelines exists.
To quote you, I don't get what the problem is. What does belief/disbelief in evolution have to do with medical treatment?
Presumably such a doctor would have no qualms about handing out antibiotics like candy - after all, it's not as if the bacteria might adapt to it. And how do they explain where all these new diseases come from anyway?
The most fundamentalist folk I've talked to that mentally shut down when you use the word "evolution" have no problem with the concept of individual organisms having varying levels of resistance and that the repeated use of some compound will lead to a population dominated by the most resistant. "Survival of the fittest" is something that the most fundamentalist will accept in a short term context yielding small changes.
Try it out for yourself. Talk to a fundamentalist, do not use the word "evolution", discuss the drug resistant organisms, the moths that changed color pre/post industrialization, etc. Use phrases like "survival of the fittest", "change over time", etc and you will have no problem. Utter the word "evolution" and then its like a switch flips. These people have no problem with the concept of drug resistant organisms, they just don't want to use the word "evolution" for this. To them "evolution" is exclusively apes became man type of stuff.
Just to be clear. Many Christian churches do not have a problem with evolution either.
Its just a minority Christian group that believes in literal interpretations that gets into all these disagreements with science. They just get a disproportionate amount of media attention and create a false impression of the larger group. I'm sure you are familiar with this concept.
I don't get what the problem is. If you don't grasp the material, regardless of the reason, you fail the course.
Agreed.
I sure as hell don't want to be treated by a doctor who doesn't understand evolution.
To quote you, I don't get what the problem is. What does belief/disbelief in evolution have to do with medical treatment? A medical doctor needs to know how the body works right now, not how it got to that point. I'm a bit fuzzy on how a belief in evolution helps a doctor diagnose and fix a problem in the patient in front of them.
Now if you want to say certain avenues of medical research should probably be closed then I'd agree.
Fun Fact: The Solyndra loans were approved of during the Bush administration. Have fun with your partisan pissing contest.
I'm sorry, you seem a bit short on facts. Here are some facts from the left leaning New York Times and Los Angeles Times.
... during the period when Solyndra’s loan guarantee was under review and management by the Energy Department, the company spent nearly $1.8 million on Washington lobbyists, employing six firms with ties to members of Congress and officials of the Obama White House. None of the other three solar panel manufacturers that eventually got federal loan guarantees spent a dime on lobbyists."
Preliminary approval under Bush, final approval under Obama. Then financial analysis was skipped under Obama and warnings were ignored. Plus Solyndra's owner was a top Obama campaign contributor. Plus the Obama administration structured the deal so that investors would get paid before taxpayers if the company failed.
"George B. Kaiser, a billionaire from Tulsa, Okla., was a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign and the backer of a foundation that is Solyndra’s leading investor
""“It was alarming,” said Frank Rusco, a program director at the Government Accountability Office, which found that Energy Department preliminary loan approvals — including the one for Solyndra — were granted at times before officials had completed mandatory evaluations of the financial and engineering viability of the projects. “They can’t really evaluate the risks without following the rules.” The Energy Department’s senior staff has acknowledged in interviews the intense pressure from top Obama administration officials to rush stimulus spending out the door. “We had to knock down some barriers standing in the way to get these projects funded,” Matthew C. Rogers, the Energy Department official overseeing the loan guarantee program, said in March 2009, just days before Solyndra got its provisional loan commitment. Mr. Rogers said Energy Secretary Steven Chu had been personally reviewing loan applications and urging faster action on them.""
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/us/politics/in-rush-to-assist-solyndra-united-states-missed-warning-signs.html?pagewanted=all
"At a White House meeting in late October, Lawrence H. Summers, then director of the National Economic Council, and Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, expressed concerns that the selection process for federal loan guarantees wasn't rigorous enough and raised the risk that funds could be going to the wrong companies, including ones that didn't need the help. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, also at the meeting, had a different view. Under pressure from Congress to speed up the loans, he wanted less scrutiny from the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB."
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/26/nation/la-na-energy-loans-20110927
"Energy Department officials were warned that their plan to help a failing solar company by restructuring its $535 million federal loan could violate the law and should be cleared with the Justice Department, according to newly obtained e-mails from within the Obama administration. The e-mails show that Energy Department officials moved ahead anyway with a new deal that would repay company investors before taxpayers if the company defaulted."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/solyndra-obama-and-rahm-emanuel-pushed-to-spotlight-energy-company/2011/10/07/gIQACDqSTL_story.html
The People's Republic of China is a totalitarian state
take a close look at yourself first before judging other countries.
Sure, no problem.
USA crowd control and protester dispersion: Police with pepper spray.
Chinese crowd control and protester dispersion: Soldiers with live ammunition.
Your suggestion sure was insightful. It really helps contrast the two countries quite nicely.
Biden is just continuing Al Gore's pioneering work in restricting music.