Eisenhower's original formulation was the military-industrial-congressional complex. He saw the corruption of the nation's political organs by lobbying and campaign finance way back then, but was advised to remove the "congressional" bit since he was delivering the speech to Congress.
Years back, I used to fly from Manchester (UK) to Ireland regularly on business.
Every time I returned to Manchester, I would be taken aside by Special Branch for a quick chat.
Why? Because I looked very like a certain "person of interest" who was of the Fenian persuasion.
Didn't bother me - I just accepted it as part of not letting the IRA set off bombs in the UK. After a while, I could recognise the SB officers before they spotted me - they had a particular shifty look about them. Still, being pulled over because I had a full beard with lots of red in it was a bit silly...
It's not tradeable in the UK, either - what we have here is called a "feed-in tariff", which is a government set price per KWh that is paid for a fixed period.
The UK solar "industry" (read: the hucksters who jumped on this money tree when it first came in) are now bleating because the FIT has been halved (though it's still 30 cents or more per KWh), and their business model is no longer profitable.
Would be so much better if there was a market in the tariffs, and the solar option could then grow at a sensible rate.
I do wish people would allow this spam to stay unmodded for a little longer - the language is just so amusing.
Restore ancient ways in recent street snap of cloak was stars to deduce wantonly
has an inner poetry that is quite beguiling, even if some fool wants to sell a knock-off handbag on the back of it.
It's almost tempting to think that there is a very poorly made recursive transition network somewhere in China knocking this stuff out, but I fear it's just bad Chinglish.
I remember when WordPerfect for Windows first came out, we wondered whether they had shipped with the debug code still in, because it ran so slowly. Upper management then made the decision to go with Word, which caused me no end of problems in retraining the secretaries. All the document management macros had to be rewritten for Word too. That probably soured my attitude to MS permanently;-)
I think it is rather strong to characterise Hitchens as a hypocrite - my reading of strong atheism as espoused by Hitchens, Dawkins and others is that there is no sensible reason for religion, that teaching people to believe in something that almost definitely does not exist is dishonest and manipulatory, and that such activity should be condemned in the strongest manner whenever it is encountered.
Your view of him as a hypocrite seems informed more by your choice of words to describe his views - "fundamentalist", "evangelical", than by his views themselves.
The view that you should respect other peoples beliefs only goes so far - if you consider those beliefs to be harmful, then not to condemn them is surely a selfish act.
Hitchens was full of hyperbole, and a deliberately provocative iconoclast, but a hypocrite? I think not.
There is no empirical evidence for a soul, but there is, undeniably, the existence of a conscious self.
At least one such self exists, and the body that seems irrevocably attached to that self is typing these words now.
I'd assume that you consider yourself to be a conscious entity as well, so that makes at least two.
There appear to be around 7 billion other such entities around, all of which share the vast majority of their physical characteristics with the body of the self that is expressing these thoughts.
From observations of several thousand of these entities, and interactions with the same, it seems clear that they consider themselves to be conscious beings too, and act accordingly for the most part.
The self that writes this certainly considers itself to be in possession of free will within the bounds of physical reality, but accepts that this may not in fact be the case.
However, proceeding as though free will is the case is more satisfying than assuming the opposite.
The existence or otherwise of this conscious self separately from the physical body which it inhabits is not an experiment which this self wishes to try, though past experience with psychoactive compounds has as yet failed to show any reason to divorce the self from the body.
Anything beyond this is metaphysical speculation, as is the positing of a being without body that is somehow superior to the self that writes this but for which there is no evidence whatsoever.
Not from my experience - in fact the larger the organisation, the more the management (in general - there are a few exceptions) tend to have been failures in their previous roles, but very good at playing the system and ingratiating themselves with their superiors.
They often take a lot of hitting with the cluestick before they understand any proposals to improve the performance of the department, and will then immediately claim the idea as their own.
Needless to say, I often don't get on with such people and generally start looking for other work as soon as I encounter one.
The strange thing about your characterisation of the "business cycle" is the reliance on governments influencing the markets. This seems to me to be one of the best arguments for small-government liberal capitalism that I have heard - doubtless the opposite of what you intended.
The fact remains that in any system, capital has to be found to allow business to flourish, and the more technologically advanced the society, the more capital is required.
The ability to process complex risk calculations very quickly, which of course allows more complex calculations to be considered, is a good thing - it ensures that the bank is less exposed to unexpected risk than it otherwise might be, and thus less likely to either go bust (in a liberal capitalist world) or to have its mistakes socialised via bail-outs (in the big-government, small mind world).
If anything, this sort of development is good because it will allow banks to make a reasonable return even with tighter capital requirements, and those banks which do not have this sort of capability will soon either acquire it or have to cut their trading activity.
Thermite hard to ignite? Give me an old-fashioned flashlight bulb, a battery, some magnesium powder and some sodium chlorate and I can make you a very cheap, very reliable device that will ignite thermite.
Hell, we used to use a bit of magnesium ribbon to ignite it when I was at school.
I'll lay good odds that the Iranians will make a good few million selling whatever information they gain from the drone to the highest bidder. Perhaps the US should outbid the Russians and Chinese for the privilege of examining the drone.
Newcomen might disagree with your assertion that it is extremely bad form to condense the steam inside the cylinder - that is how his steam engines worked. Not until Watt invented his engine was anything other than condensation inside the cylinder even conceived.
First Mathematician: Who's the spacker in the tin-foil hat over there?
Second Mathematician: Oh, that's just zugendneb, our tame lolcat. We keep him because he can sniff out social engineers and destroy them with his wit and repartee. He can't write English worth a shit, but his texting skills are a legend in his own lunchtime.
Weirdly, my 3 dongle gives me an IP address in the 188.28.x.x or 188.29.x.x range, but uses 10.64.64.64 as a gateway. I can only assume it's NATted, but since 188.x is a public address owned by 3, they must be doing something odd.
My reading was that the GPS receivers were picking up the 1552-1559 MHz signal due to being made with cheap parts. That would correlate quite well with the finding that only 3/4 of the receivers were affected - if Light Squared were transmitting out of their assigned band, you'd expect 100% of the receivers to suffer interference.
The 12x table thing is an old hangover from when we used to use pounds, shillings and pence as currency in the UK. There were 12 pence in a shilling, and 20 shillings in a pound. Being able to quickly think in 12s was essential for accounts clerks back in the days of paper ledgers.
That's how I got 141, but then I am a lazy sod and don't want to waste my time doing the sum if I can spot the answer using a quick and dirty cheat like that;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Eisenhower's original formulation was the military-industrial-congressional complex. He saw the corruption of the nation's political organs by lobbying and campaign finance way back then, but was advised to remove the "congressional" bit since he was delivering the speech to Congress.
Years back, I used to fly from Manchester (UK) to Ireland regularly on business.
Every time I returned to Manchester, I would be taken aside by Special Branch for a quick chat.
Why? Because I looked very like a certain "person of interest" who was of the Fenian persuasion.
Didn't bother me - I just accepted it as part of not letting the IRA set off bombs in the UK. After a while, I could recognise the SB officers before they spotted me - they had a particular shifty look about them. Still, being pulled over because I had a full beard with lots of red in it was a bit silly...
Did you read TFA? Latex gloves and a quick alcohol rub? Thought not.
But Gordon saved the world!
He told us so when he pissed all our taxes away on bailing out his favourite Scottish bankers, so it must be true.
And he got us out of gold when the going was good, too.
Still, the Lesser Spotted Moron hasn't been seen much in Parliament lately, what with all his charity work...
Two seconds of Googling found this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/uacontrol/
Depending on the number of users, either this add-on or a reverse proxy might be easier.
It's not tradeable in the UK, either - what we have here is called a "feed-in tariff", which is a government set price per KWh that is paid for a fixed period.
The UK solar "industry" (read: the hucksters who jumped on this money tree when it first came in) are now bleating because the FIT has been halved (though it's still 30 cents or more per KWh), and their business model is no longer profitable.
Would be so much better if there was a market in the tariffs, and the solar option could then grow at a sensible rate.
Must have spent too many days riding on their Little Yellow Bus ;-)
I do wish people would allow this spam to stay unmodded for a little longer - the language is just so amusing.
Restore ancient ways in recent street snap of cloak was stars to deduce wantonly
has an inner poetry that is quite beguiling, even if some fool wants to sell a knock-off handbag on the back of it.
It's almost tempting to think that there is a very poorly made recursive transition network somewhere in China knocking this stuff out, but I fear it's just bad Chinglish.
I remember when WordPerfect for Windows first came out, we wondered whether they had shipped with the debug code still in, because it ran so slowly. Upper management then made the decision to go with Word, which caused me no end of problems in retraining the secretaries. All the document management macros had to be rewritten for Word too. That probably soured my attitude to MS permanently ;-)
I think it is rather strong to characterise Hitchens as a hypocrite - my reading of strong atheism as espoused by Hitchens, Dawkins and others is that there is no sensible reason for religion, that teaching people to believe in something that almost definitely does not exist is dishonest and manipulatory, and that such activity should be condemned in the strongest manner whenever it is encountered.
Your view of him as a hypocrite seems informed more by your choice of words to describe his views - "fundamentalist", "evangelical", than by his views themselves.
The view that you should respect other peoples beliefs only goes so far - if you consider those beliefs to be harmful, then not to condemn them is surely a selfish act.
Hitchens was full of hyperbole, and a deliberately provocative iconoclast, but a hypocrite? I think not.
RIP Hitch - wherever you aren't.
There is no empirical evidence for a soul, but there is, undeniably, the existence of a conscious self.
At least one such self exists, and the body that seems irrevocably attached to that self is typing these words now.
I'd assume that you consider yourself to be a conscious entity as well, so that makes at least two.
There appear to be around 7 billion other such entities around, all of which share the vast majority of their physical characteristics with the body of the self that is expressing these thoughts.
From observations of several thousand of these entities, and interactions with the same, it seems clear that they consider themselves to be conscious beings too, and act accordingly for the most part.
The self that writes this certainly considers itself to be in possession of free will within the bounds of physical reality, but accepts that this may not in fact be the case.
However, proceeding as though free will is the case is more satisfying than assuming the opposite.
The existence or otherwise of this conscious self separately from the physical body which it inhabits is not an experiment which this self wishes to try, though past experience with psychoactive compounds has as yet failed to show any reason to divorce the self from the body.
Anything beyond this is metaphysical speculation, as is the positing of a being without body that is somehow superior to the self that writes this but for which there is no evidence whatsoever.
Not from my experience - in fact the larger the organisation, the more the management (in general - there are a few exceptions) tend to have been failures in their previous roles, but very good at playing the system and ingratiating themselves with their superiors.
They often take a lot of hitting with the cluestick before they understand any proposals to improve the performance of the department, and will then immediately claim the idea as their own.
Needless to say, I often don't get on with such people and generally start looking for other work as soon as I encounter one.
The strange thing about your characterisation of the "business cycle" is the reliance on governments influencing the markets. This seems to me to be one of the best arguments for small-government liberal capitalism that I have heard - doubtless the opposite of what you intended.
The fact remains that in any system, capital has to be found to allow business to flourish, and the more technologically advanced the society, the more capital is required.
The ability to process complex risk calculations very quickly, which of course allows more complex calculations to be considered, is a good thing - it ensures that the bank is less exposed to unexpected risk than it otherwise might be, and thus less likely to either go bust (in a liberal capitalist world) or to have its mistakes socialised via bail-outs (in the big-government, small mind world).
If anything, this sort of development is good because it will allow banks to make a reasonable return even with tighter capital requirements, and those banks which do not have this sort of capability will soon either acquire it or have to cut their trading activity.
From the article:
A former senior Iranian official who asked not to be named said: "There are a lot of human resources in Iran.... Iran is not like Pakistan."
Nice jibe at the Pakistanis there - shows what Iran thinks of the goat herders.
Not only that, but Iran is mainly Shi'ite. If you want Sunnis, try Saudi, Pakistan, or any number of other places.
Still, one foreign religion is probably as good as another to a good 'ole boy.
Thermite hard to ignite? Give me an old-fashioned flashlight bulb, a battery, some magnesium powder and some sodium chlorate and I can make you a very cheap, very reliable device that will ignite thermite.
Hell, we used to use a bit of magnesium ribbon to ignite it when I was at school.
I'll lay good odds that the Iranians will make a good few million selling whatever information they gain from the drone to the highest bidder. Perhaps the US should outbid the Russians and Chinese for the privilege of examining the drone.
Newcomen might disagree with your assertion that it is extremely bad form to condense the steam inside the cylinder - that is how his steam engines worked. Not until Watt invented his engine was anything other than condensation inside the cylinder even conceived.
The trick is to keep Schroedinger's cat away from your photon strings.
Scene: a mathematical conference.
First Mathematician: Who's the spacker in the tin-foil hat over there?
Second Mathematician: Oh, that's just zugendneb, our tame lolcat. We keep him because he can sniff out social engineers and destroy them with his wit and repartee. He can't write English worth a shit, but his texting skills are a legend in his own lunchtime.
Weirdly, my 3 dongle gives me an IP address in the 188.28.x.x or 188.29.x.x range, but uses 10.64.64.64 as a gateway. I can only assume it's NATted, but since 188.x is a public address owned by 3, they must be doing something odd.
Yes, but Renault can adapt the "shake that ass" advert to "shake that app"...
My reading was that the GPS receivers were picking up the 1552-1559 MHz signal due to being made with cheap parts. That would correlate quite well with the finding that only 3/4 of the receivers were affected - if Light Squared were transmitting out of their assigned band, you'd expect 100% of the receivers to suffer interference.
The 12x table thing is an old hangover from when we used to use pounds, shillings and pence as currency in the UK. There were 12 pence in a shilling, and 20 shillings in a pound. Being able to quickly think in 12s was essential for accounts clerks back in the days of paper ledgers.
That's how I got 141, but then I am a lazy sod and don't want to waste my time doing the sum if I can spot the answer using a quick and dirty cheat like that ;-)