Since you're probably too dumb to even understand such basic concepts, here's the nutshell: Just by coincidence, 2 years ago was the lowest level EVER RECORDED. So yes, the past couple years have seen higher lvels than that...but those levels are still far below the average of the last several decades. A sample size of 2 is not sufficient to ignore decades of data.
btw, you even got your lies (both of them) wrong -if it had expanded by 41%, it would be covering a fair portion of Canada. -it's not the most ice since 2006. 2006 had a higher level of ice this year, followed by 2007 was was the lowest level ever recorded...until 2012 which went even lower.
Meanwhile the trend is still down down down down. Stupid trolls.
if you think about just a little, though i nkow it will stress the few neurons you actually have, you'll see that having a safety net doesn't automatically preclude self reliance. in fact, safety nets actually help economies by preventing the loss of assetts and propping people up til they get back on their feet. When countries without safety nets experience economic downturns those economies fall faster and farther than those in countries with a safety net, because the safety serves to break the vicious cycle wherein a falling economy drives itself deeper and deeper in a vicous feedback loop as people react to it. Food stamps alone had a nearly 2:1 economic multiplier during the recession a few years ago. IE, the 40billion a year spent on SNAP caused ~80billion in economic activity. Thats 80billion keeping companies and their workers working.
we are the richest nation on earth, yet we have the highest poverty rate of any developed nation. we are the richest nation on earth, yet we have the highest rate of malnourished children of any developed nation. (this list could go for at least 20 entries, so lets just cut to the chase)
we could easily fund every single social insurance and safety net program under the sun, while still being the richest nation on earth. our biggest subsidies go not to the poor, but to (1) corporations, (2) the rich and (3) the shrinking middle class.
if preserving the middle class, and preventing those in poverty from dying and starving in the streets mean the richest 0.1% make only 1 billion a year instead of 4 billion a year, I'm ok with that. Because what good is being the richest nation on earth, what good is being so rich your money ceases to have value, if it means nearly 1/5th of your citizenry is just one bad day away from being on the street?
It's not nannny statism. It's basic decency.
Also, it's worth noting that all those nanny states you mock have: -cleaner air and water -longer life expectencies -similar per capita incomes -similar (and even larger) per capita GDPs -lower unemployment rates -lower poverty rates -higher rates of home ownership -less affected by economic downturns
And they still manage to have rich people and self-reliant people, and entrepenaurs, and inventors, and all that other stuff you mistakely believe just magically disappears. oh and they manage to do all this while also working fewer average hours per week, with more days off in a year, and dramatically less personal debt (~20% of their yearly income, comapred to American's average of 100-150% of their yearly income).
TLDR: What you've just said... is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul...
It is. The statement is completely true. but first you have to realize that the hospitals are seperate entities from the paper pushers in the AA adminstration. The problem isnt the healthcare provided, like most US healthcare its really quite good (our main problem isnt quality, its quantity and cost). The problem is the horribly mismanaged and innefficient VA adminstration.
Part of it is the adminstration has only a few offices that handle very large regions (consisting of several entire states each). And then the adminstration also handles ALL VA and service related benefits, not just medical care. GI bill, service-related disability pay, healthcare, etc etc on and on. That's not to excuse the problem, or that some officials tried to cover up their inefficiency by lying, but simply to show the scale of the problem.
And then politicians repeatedly NOT doing anything to fix it ("it costs too much") but demanding more and more results, and even cutting funding doesn't help either. And there is something to be said for how fighting two wars for over a decade will tend to dramatically increasing the number of veterans applying to the system, thus increasing backlogs even further.....
But as the man said: Americans have a proud tradition and history of serving their country honorably. And America has a sorry history, dating back to the Revolutionary war, of messing those veterans over once the fighting is done.
1) it's not a given that officer discretion is gone. the same argument was said about dash cams in squad cars, but was just as invalid there. It's up to department policy. Very few departments I know of would even contemplate removing officer discretion, let alone actually do it.
2) No more so than dash cams, or the millions of cameras in peoples pockets already, uploading tons of background to youtube. Public spaces and all that. Plus, it's not terribly difficult to write laws or policies regarding handling of actual privacy data. There's many laws already on the books, it's not an unknown new preoblem, but rather a previously encountered and solved one.
3) No. Absolutely not. Pure absurdity and stupidity.
4) You just cited the "technicality myth". Even more invalid than the slippery slope. It basically only exists on TV. (Myth #6 on http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... ). It rarely happens in real life. But when it does, what you call a "technicality" is when the state somehonw violated your (or specifically the defenedant's) rights in its pursuit of justice. When rights only matter for "law abiding citizens", but can be tosed out the window for anyone accused of a crime...that's not law, that's a charade. You should be happy that in enforcing the law is willing to make its own job harder and more difficult, and even toss it's own victories, in the name of protecting your rights should you be accused.
5) That's the whole point. In the cities where this has been done, YES INTERACTIONS CHANGED. Specifically, accusations of brutality or misconduct decreased to tremendously. Wearing the camera protects BOTH THE OFFICER AND THE CITIZEN. An impartial observer to the complete interaction is in everyones' interests: the cop's, the citizen's, and society's in general. Cops have a job to do. That job entails making decisions on a daily basis in regards to enforcing law and interacting with everyday citizens. If you dont have the gumptions or confidence to do that and face potential review at a later date, maybe you shouldnt enter that sort of occupation. Course, that applies to every job.
Traffic cameras, police car dash cams, and officer worn cams have all been tremendous success stories in terms of providing an impartial official record of what actually happened. When actual video exists of an entire encounter, rather than relying on notoriously unreliable "eyewitnesses" or hoping some passerby caught it on camera, it becomes clear exactly what happened. Also, we can once again turn to other countries, as this isn't a new thing being encountered for the time ever. It's been common in Europe and UK for close to 10 years now. Also tremendously successful over there.
it has everything to do with it. they didnt JUST pass amendments and laws. they then had to back up those laws with the threat of force many, many times because the states refused to to do it.
if they had left all decisions up to the states, half the states would still have slavery, and in the other half women and blacks still wouldn't be able to vote.
I think that's why he phrased it that way. That is, he phrased in way that casts it as "protecting the officer".
Really, the debate shouldn't be that charged, as in actually it's really to protect BOTH the officer and the detained citizen, just like dash cams in squad cars. It's an impartial observer just recording the interaction. It's a good idea.
there are so many energy storage mechanisms under study and developement it's not even funny. hydro-pumping, compressed air, etc.
Plus it's not really a given that storage will even be needed. A well designed smart grid could adapt to load and switch capacity in and out. A truly global smart grid, the ultimate goal, wouldn't even see any variance as the variance would be so small in comparison to the overall capacity.
Yes. many of them DO get rich through rule of law. Specifically laws that make it legal to exploit the poor, the underprivilidged, the weak, etc. Or to pass down billions to their children to keep it in the family, lest anyone ever actually have to "work".
You'll have to remind me how they contribute to society though.
Oh wait I know...this is the one I get told all the time: think of all those poor Walmart worker, who would be jobless if not for Walmart. Why, they're doing them a favor by even hiring them. Therefore the Waltons and Walmart deserve every dime they get by exploiting the social safety that keeps their workers from dying and starving homeless in the street cause their job doesn't pay them enough to prevent from being homeless.
The Discovery Institute... has nothing to d with science and everything to do with undermining it. The American Family Association... The Family Research Council... Family Values... (Basically anything family has nothing to do with actual caring families, and everythng to do with opposing LGBT rights) Heritage... Enterprise... Freedom... ACLJ (American Center for Law and Justice)...
If inches were truly still based on someone's thumb, while meters are not, you would have a point. But since all measures are tied back to standards internationally agreed upon to be the one true Measure of X, you have no valid point. Conversion factors aren't hard.
what you've just said... is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul...
the US DoED has nothing to do with this. i know people on the right like to mock the department of education, as if education and a department to oversee it are bad things. but this view is born out of ignorance over what exactly the department of education even DOES.
unlike most countries, the US DoED has almost nothing to do with curriculum. most of thethey do is disburse funds from the fed to the states, along with some minor oversight responsibilities regarding civil rights on college campuses. That's it. But after articles like this, and others, maybe they should have something to do with curriculum.
Also, fun fact: the republicans opposed the creation of the US DoED as well. Apparently they were of the opinion that education is unconstitutional because education is not in the constitution...boy, they've sure come a long way in 40 years, haven't they ?
Regulated utilities provide water, natural gas, trash pickup, and power to the majority of americans already. Either through a municipal entity (local government workers) or a private company that holds a contract with the municipality.
Either way, if it's behaviour begins to get unruly and you're unable to force their hand through the market (by cutting back usage of the service), you can also slap them down in the voting booth, which is easier to do on the local level.*
(*for now...the Koch's and ALEC are begining to try and buy local elections too)
Of course actual outright bribery...cash for votes...is rare...it's too obvious. But when a congress critter's campaign (and please dont use that nonsense about PACs not being the same thing...) is majority financed by a particular company in their district, and the critter continually backs anything that benefits that company....what word would you describe it with?
Each of the biggest GW deniers in congress is heavily backed by oil and gas companies. Each of the biggest military industry supporters is heavily backed by defense contractors. Etc. Etc.
As far as the general public is concerned: When it's convenient, people use numbers, real or made up, in order to disprove the other sides point and prove their own... When it's not convenient, all statistics become questionable ("ya, but msot statistics are made up") in order to disprove the other sides point and prove their own...
The reality of the numbers don't matter. People just don't care about actual objective facts, they just want to back up their preconcieved notions to spread their stupidity. It's just like how Americans approach science in general really.
the actual number could be much higher, but go undetected because the user isn't drawing enough current to expose the flaw. or maybe the user just says "damn, what a cruddy power cord" and just grabs another out of his collection.
sounds like cutting corners with narrower gage wire and possibly thinner insulation jacket as well. i don't know the current draw of the devices in question, but if the wire gage is too thin it will get very hot. another possibilty is the connection point between the wire and the connectors. it also needs to be of sufficient cross section to tranfer the full current load without overheating.
a) there isn't one. the most that can be said is it's a concept misunderstood by deniers who have no clue what they are talking about. http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...
c1) wrong. they are NOT naturally absorbed. if they were, the planet would not be warming, leading to ever increasing amounts of stored energy unable to re-radiate out into space. the natural carbon cycle deals out no where near the amount of CO2 humans do. 40 billion tons. That's the YEARLY output of human activity. Imagine the biggest aircraft you can think of...they weigh ~100,000 tons. So now imagine 400,000 of those aircraft carriers. That's the weight of CO2 that we pump into the atmosphere yearly. Alternatively, think of a cubic volume of gas (CO2)....18 miles on each side (that's ~95k feet high...almost to space)...that's also 40 billion tons. And we do that every year. And before you spout some bullshit about volcanoes...no. Volcanic yearly output of the entire planet is only ~3 billion tons of CO2.
c2) the rest of c was pretty stupid, and just frankly not worth it.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...
And here you go, you ignorant twit:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...
Since you're probably too dumb to even understand such basic concepts, here's the nutshell:
Just by coincidence, 2 years ago was the lowest level EVER RECORDED. So yes, the past couple years have seen higher lvels than that...but those levels are still far below the average of the last several decades. A sample size of 2 is not sufficient to ignore decades of data.
btw, you even got your lies (both of them) wrong
-if it had expanded by 41%, it would be covering a fair portion of Canada.
-it's not the most ice since 2006. 2006 had a higher level of ice this year, followed by 2007 was was the lowest level ever recorded...until 2012 which went even lower.
Meanwhile the trend is still down down down down.
Stupid trolls.
the VA isnt nanny state policy.
if you think about just a little, though i nkow it will stress the few neurons you actually have, you'll see that having a safety net doesn't automatically preclude self reliance. in fact, safety nets actually help economies by preventing the loss of assetts and propping people up til they get back on their feet. When countries without safety nets experience economic downturns those economies fall faster and farther than those in countries with a safety net, because the safety serves to break the vicious cycle wherein a falling economy drives itself deeper and deeper in a vicous feedback loop as people react to it. Food stamps alone had a nearly 2:1 economic multiplier during the recession a few years ago. IE, the 40billion a year spent on SNAP caused ~80billion in economic activity. Thats 80billion keeping companies and their workers working.
we are the richest nation on earth, yet we have the highest poverty rate of any developed nation.
we are the richest nation on earth, yet we have the highest rate of malnourished children of any developed nation.
(this list could go for at least 20 entries, so lets just cut to the chase)
we could easily fund every single social insurance and safety net program under the sun, while still being the richest nation on earth. our biggest subsidies go not to the poor, but to (1) corporations, (2) the rich and (3) the shrinking middle class.
if preserving the middle class, and preventing those in poverty from dying and starving in the streets mean the richest 0.1% make only 1 billion a year instead of 4 billion a year, I'm ok with that. Because what good is being the richest nation on earth, what good is being so rich your money ceases to have value, if it means nearly 1/5th of your citizenry is just one bad day away from being on the street?
It's not nannny statism. It's basic decency.
Also, it's worth noting that all those nanny states you mock have:
-cleaner air and water
-longer life expectencies
-similar per capita incomes
-similar (and even larger) per capita GDPs
-lower unemployment rates
-lower poverty rates
-higher rates of home ownership
-less affected by economic downturns
And they still manage to have rich people and self-reliant people, and entrepenaurs, and inventors, and all that other stuff you mistakely believe just magically disappears. oh and they manage to do all this while also working fewer average hours per week, with more days off in a year, and dramatically less personal debt (~20% of their yearly income, comapred to American's average of 100-150% of their yearly income).
TLDR: What you've just said... is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul...
It is. The statement is completely true. but first you have to realize that the hospitals are seperate entities from the paper pushers in the AA adminstration. The problem isnt the healthcare provided, like most US healthcare its really quite good (our main problem isnt quality, its quantity and cost). The problem is the horribly mismanaged and innefficient VA adminstration.
Part of it is the adminstration has only a few offices that handle very large regions (consisting of several entire states each). And then the adminstration also handles ALL VA and service related benefits, not just medical care. GI bill, service-related disability pay, healthcare, etc etc on and on. That's not to excuse the problem, or that some officials tried to cover up their inefficiency by lying, but simply to show the scale of the problem.
And then politicians repeatedly NOT doing anything to fix it ("it costs too much") but demanding more and more results, and even cutting funding doesn't help either. And there is something to be said for how fighting two wars for over a decade will tend to dramatically increasing the number of veterans applying to the system, thus increasing backlogs even further.....
But as the man said:
Americans have a proud tradition and history of serving their country honorably.
And America has a sorry history, dating back to the Revolutionary war, of messing those veterans over once the fighting is done.
Then I must conclude that you don't know the meaning of the phrase.
Good day.
1) it's not a given that officer discretion is gone. the same argument was said about dash cams in squad cars, but was just as invalid there. It's up to department policy. Very few departments I know of would even contemplate removing officer discretion, let alone actually do it.
2) No more so than dash cams, or the millions of cameras in peoples pockets already, uploading tons of background to youtube. Public spaces and all that. Plus, it's not terribly difficult to write laws or policies regarding handling of actual privacy data. There's many laws already on the books, it's not an unknown new preoblem, but rather a previously encountered and solved one.
3) No. Absolutely not. Pure absurdity and stupidity.
4) You just cited the "technicality myth". Even more invalid than the slippery slope. It basically only exists on TV. (Myth #6 on http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... ). It rarely happens in real life. But when it does, what you call a "technicality" is when the state somehonw violated your (or specifically the defenedant's) rights in its pursuit of justice. When rights only matter for "law abiding citizens", but can be tosed out the window for anyone accused of a crime...that's not law, that's a charade. You should be happy that in enforcing the law is willing to make its own job harder and more difficult, and even toss it's own victories, in the name of protecting your rights should you be accused.
5) That's the whole point. In the cities where this has been done, YES INTERACTIONS CHANGED. Specifically, accusations of brutality or misconduct decreased to tremendously. Wearing the camera protects BOTH THE OFFICER AND THE CITIZEN. An impartial observer to the complete interaction is in everyones' interests: the cop's, the citizen's, and society's in general. Cops have a job to do. That job entails making decisions on a daily basis in regards to enforcing law and interacting with everyday citizens. If you dont have the gumptions or confidence to do that and face potential review at a later date, maybe you shouldnt enter that sort of occupation. Course, that applies to every job.
Traffic cameras, police car dash cams, and officer worn cams have all been tremendous success stories in terms of providing an impartial official record of what actually happened. When actual video exists of an entire encounter, rather than relying on notoriously unreliable "eyewitnesses" or hoping some passerby caught it on camera, it becomes clear exactly what happened. Also, we can once again turn to other countries, as this isn't a new thing being encountered for the time ever. It's been common in Europe and UK for close to 10 years now. Also tremendously successful over there.
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://online.wsj.com/articles...
it has everything to do with it. they didnt JUST pass amendments and laws.
they then had to back up those laws with the threat of force many, many times because the states refused to to do it.
if they had left all decisions up to the states, half the states would still have slavery, and in the other half women and blacks still wouldn't be able to vote.
I think that's why he phrased it that way.
That is, he phrased in way that casts it as "protecting the officer".
Really, the debate shouldn't be that charged, as in actually it's really to protect BOTH the officer and the detained citizen, just like dash cams in squad cars. It's an impartial observer just recording the interaction. It's a good idea.
so we just add this to the list of genetic/bionic improvements we need to implement in the Spacer subspecies.
there are so many energy storage mechanisms under study and developement it's not even funny.
hydro-pumping, compressed air, etc.
Plus it's not really a given that storage will even be needed. A well designed smart grid could adapt to load and switch capacity in and out.
A truly global smart grid, the ultimate goal, wouldn't even see any variance as the variance would be so small in comparison to the overall capacity.
rule of law back then was "Whatever the Lord of the Manor says, is the law".
Yes. many of them DO get rich through rule of law.
Specifically laws that make it legal to exploit the poor, the underprivilidged, the weak, etc.
Or to pass down billions to their children to keep it in the family, lest anyone ever actually have to "work".
You'll have to remind me how they contribute to society though.
Oh wait I know...this is the one I get told all the time: think of all those poor Walmart worker, who would be jobless if not for Walmart. Why, they're doing them a favor by even hiring them. Therefore the Waltons and Walmart deserve every dime they get by exploiting the social safety that keeps their workers from dying and starving homeless in the street cause their job doesn't pay them enough to prevent from being homeless.
Here we go. a giant list.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/wik...
The Discovery Institute... has nothing to d with science and everything to do with undermining it. ... ... ... ...
The American Family Association
The Family Research Council
Family Values
(Basically anything family has nothing to do with actual caring families, and everythng to do with opposing LGBT rights)
Heritage...
Enterprise...
Freedom...
ACLJ (American Center for Law and Justice)
Why so many misnomers over on that side?
If inches were truly still based on someone's thumb, while meters are not, you would have a point.
But since all measures are tied back to standards internationally agreed upon to be the one true Measure of X, you have no valid point.
Conversion factors aren't hard.
what you've just said... is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul...
the US DoED has nothing to do with this.
i know people on the right like to mock the department of education, as if education and a department to oversee it are bad things.
but this view is born out of ignorance over what exactly the department of education even DOES.
unlike most countries, the US DoED has almost nothing to do with curriculum.
most of thethey do is disburse funds from the fed to the states, along with some minor oversight responsibilities regarding civil rights on college campuses. That's it. But after articles like this, and others, maybe they should have something to do with curriculum.
Also, fun fact: the republicans opposed the creation of the US DoED as well. Apparently they were of the opinion that education is unconstitutional because education is not in the constitution...boy, they've sure come a long way in 40 years, haven't they ?
Regulated utilities provide water, natural gas, trash pickup, and power to the majority of americans already.
Either through a municipal entity (local government workers) or a private company that holds a contract with the municipality.
Either way, if it's behaviour begins to get unruly and you're unable to force their hand through the market (by cutting back usage of the service), you can also slap them down in the voting booth, which is easier to do on the local level.*
(*for now...the Koch's and ALEC are begining to try and buy local elections too)
Of course actual outright bribery...cash for votes...is rare...it's too obvious.
But when a congress critter's campaign (and please dont use that nonsense about PACs not being the same thing...) is majority financed by a particular company in their district, and the critter continually backs anything that benefits that company....what word would you describe it with?
Each of the biggest GW deniers in congress is heavily backed by oil and gas companies.
Each of the biggest military industry supporters is heavily backed by defense contractors.
Etc.
Etc.
The only manure here is your own.
As far as the general public is concerned:
When it's convenient, people use numbers, real or made up, in order to disprove the other sides point and prove their own...
When it's not convenient, all statistics become questionable ("ya, but msot statistics are made up") in order to disprove the other sides point and prove their own...
The reality of the numbers don't matter. People just don't care about actual objective facts, they just want to back up their preconcieved notions to spread their stupidity. It's just like how Americans approach science in general really.
the actual number could be much higher, but go undetected because the user isn't drawing enough current to expose the flaw. or maybe the user just says "damn, what a cruddy power cord" and just grabs another out of his collection.
sounds like cutting corners with narrower gage wire and possibly thinner insulation jacket as well.
i don't know the current draw of the devices in question, but if the wire gage is too thin it will get very hot.
another possibilty is the connection point between the wire and the connectors. it also needs to be of sufficient cross section to tranfer the full current load without overheating.
either way the answer is: cutting corners.
a) there isn't one. the most that can be said is it's a concept misunderstood by deniers who have no clue what they are talking about.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...
b) wrong.
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-...
c1) wrong. they are NOT naturally absorbed. if they were, the planet would not be warming, leading to ever increasing amounts of stored energy unable to re-radiate out into space. the natural carbon cycle deals out no where near the amount of CO2 humans do. 40 billion tons. That's the YEARLY output of human activity. Imagine the biggest aircraft you can think of...they weigh ~100,000 tons. So now imagine 400,000 of those aircraft carriers. That's the weight of CO2 that we pump into the atmosphere yearly. Alternatively, think of a cubic volume of gas (CO2)....18 miles on each side (that's ~95k feet high...almost to space)...that's also 40 billion tons. And we do that every year. And before you spout some bullshit about volcanoes...no. Volcanic yearly output of the entire planet is only ~3 billion tons of CO2.
c2) the rest of c was pretty stupid, and just frankly not worth it.
And this idiocy still gets modded "insightful" while actual science gets modded "troll".
Stupid fucking mod system.