What came to be known as the steam engine evolved slowly (over hundreds of years in the case of the steam engine) with incremental changes, not all at once.
Thousands of years, not hundreds. With a very long period in the middle of little to no development, then a surge of development.
On the other hand, 20 people can pick up 20 cars an hour, whereas 1 person can't pick up 1 car an hour. On the other, other hand, they can with specialized tools. On the other, other, other hand making up a stupid term like "energy synergy" when there's a perfectly good word: "teamwork" which means the same thing is just stupid.
I don't really know much about the performer you're talking about, beyond the hysterical response she provokes from you and the origin of her stage name, which I looked up. I was just nitpicking over a factual inaccuracy.
The human body does have a use for the appendix and for wisdom teeth. The current leading theory on the appendix is, I believe, that it's a sort of "storm cellar" for beneficial bacteria. The wisdom teeth are spare replacement teeth from an age when we were much more likely to need them. Both are frequently removed when not really necessary. You didn't mention tonsils. They used to pull tonsils at the first sign of a sore throat. These days it's much less common, and most studies are saying that it provides little to no actual benefit. The tonsils, by the way, serve an immunological function.
No, the word "Ménage" literally does mean "housekeeping"/"household". I'm not being dishonest. The term "Ménage à trois", which you referenced when you said "with 3-some in her name" literally means 3 people living together. Nicki _Minaj_ is the stage name of Onika Maraj and is quite clearly based on her real name.
But the potential statutory damages for what he was accused of were known to him beforehand and are grossly disproportionate. The RIAA has been legislatively handed an enormous stick to beat people with.
Remember you also suddenly lose all those much-loved copyleft licenses
The control that licenses like the GPL want to keep over derivative works is only to keep them open. Without copyright, it's true that people could take things under the gpl and sell their own closed source versions of them. On the other hand, people could also break the DRM on the proprietary versions and distribute them, reverse-engineer them, etc. Licenses like the GPL exist as a balance against draconian copyright law. Remove the copyright laws and the licenses are suddenly far less necessary. The dynamics of the situation change, of course, but I'm pretty sure even Stallman would be pretty happy with the situation if copyright suddenly went away (especially if patents and trade secret protections went away along with it).
With the planet we're on now we have to deal with our heads being lighter than our feet (by unit of mass, anyway). So the differences are mostly just a matter of degree.
As you mentioned, that was Uranium, not Plutonium. It was also a reactor and not an RTG, which means that it's much harder to lock the fuel up in a safe, shielded container. RTGs use pellets of radioactive material inside a casing that will almost always survive a disastrous re-entry intact. Add to that the fact that Plutonium 238 is very safe relative to Uranium 235. There's no gamma radiation or neutrons and it can be effectively shielded with very thin shielding. The biggest danger it presents is probably that the capsule containing the Plutonium will hit someone on re-entry.
I didn't claim that patent judges shouldn't decide the issue. Clearly it's probably difficult to find legal experts in the intellectual property field without ties to industry. Nevertheless, there is a difference between being an expert in IP law and being heavily pro-IP and pro-industry.
established in 1972, is a trade association for owners of patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets. IPO is the only association in the U.S. that serves all intellectual property owners in all industries and all fields of technology.
The association advocates effective and affordable IP ownership rights and provides a wide array of services to members. It concentrates on: supporting member interests relating to legislative and international issues; analyzing current IP issues; providing information and educational services; and disseminating information to the general public on the importance of intellectual property rights.
Lourie is on the board of directors of this organization, which indicates a pretty clear bias on intellectual property issues. Eligibility for Membership on the Intellectual Property Rights IFAC
He was also ice Chairman of the Industry Functional Advisory Committee on Intellectual Property Rights for Trade Policy Matters (IFAC 3) and:
Committee members are U.S. citizens representing U.S. manufacturing or service firms, trade internationally, and have a special interest in and knowledge of international trade issues. Representatives of industry associations may also participate.
So that's hardly a neutral position.
He was also chairman of the Patent Committee of the Law Section of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association from 1980 to 1985, and clearly the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association is not impartial.
The rest of the stuff in there is recognition from all kinds of pro-ip groups. Based in this resume, this is clearly not a judge whose interests lie in exercising prudence when granting intellectual property rights to claimants. I left out the information on his eduction because it really has nothing to say about any potential bias or neutrality. It clearly does show, however, that he should be educated to clearly understand that "Each of the claimed molecules represents a nonnaturally occurring composition of matter" is a load of steaming genetic material. He clearly understands that the patent-holders in this case figuratively used a pair of pruning shears (which they didn't invent) to cut the (figurative) leaf off (still figurative) tree and then claimed the leaf as their own invention. His conceit is that the act of cutting the leaf off the tree is enough to make the "isolated" leaf an invention. That kind of logic effectively makes everything that can be discovered in nature patentable since the act of discovery "isolates" it from the rest of the natural world in which it originated.
Because someone who is a member of a bunch of organizations whose function is essentially to pat each other on the back for expanding the scope of intellectual property clearly isn't impartial.
Before being appointed to the court, Judge Lourie had been President of the Philadelphia Patent Law Association, a member of the Board of Directors of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (formerly American Patent Law Association), treasurer of the Association of Corporate Patent Counsel, and a member of the board of directors of the Intellectual Property Owners Association. He was also Vice Chairman of the Industry Functional Advisory Committee on Intellectual Property Rights for Trade Policy Matters (IFAC 3) for the Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Diplomatic Conference on the Revision of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, held in Geneva in October and November 1982, and in March 1984. He was chairman of the Patent Committee of the Law Section of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association from 1980 to 1985.
Judge Lourie was awarded the Jefferson Medal of the New Jersey Intellectual Property Law Association for extraordinary contributions to the field of intellectual property law in 1998; was a recipient of the Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation Distinguished Intellectual Property Professional Award for extraordinary leadership in the intellectual property community and a lifetime commitment to invention and innovation in 2008; was a recipient of the Philadelphia Intellectual Property Law Association’s Award for outstanding IP achievement in 2010; was a recipient of the Boston Patent Law Association’s Distinguished Public Service Award in 2011...
Good to know that these cases go to truly impartial judges.
except every type of field grown biofuels competes with food. We are already seeing price hits, and it's hardly used. Unless you are growing bio fuels from tiny animals in places where we can't grow food, then bio fuels should end.
As I pointed out, there are some quite massive areas of otherwise arable land that are contaminated and aren't fit for growing food for human consumption. There are also alternatives like harvesting algae from the sea, etc. Biofuels done poorly (such as corn ethanol) are a problem, but that doesn't magically mean that biofuels can't work. I also just can't accept any financial market-based arguments since those markets are all pretty much entirely based on perception rather than reality. As for "tiny animals", huh?
"Seems like good places to grow crops that aren't intended for human consumption. " it's not nearly enough to offset cost impact to food.
If growing biofuels on land that otherwise wouldn't have any crops growing on it affects food prices, then that means that the markets are broken, not the concept of biofuels.
WTF is every ones hang up with transmission lines? There a lot more efficient the the tankers/ trunks you mention. On average, 6.6% loss. And this has been decreasing as older infrastructure is replaced.
Uh, yeah, that was my point. Creepy, the poster I was replying to, was the one who was citing the requirement for long transmission lines as the reason that wind and solar wouldn't work. This was ignoring the fact that all non-distributed power generation methods require long transmission lines. Creepy went on to say that tidal power would only work for coastal cities, ignoring the fact that long transmission lines solve that problem. I think you may have missed that my post was a (slightly sarcastic in places) response to Creepy.
Op quiz: how many gallon per acre do you get from from plant bio-fuels? After you find that out, do some math comparing how many acres you would need to offset current gasoline fuels.
Gallons of what? The concept of biofuels covers a lot of possibilities, including those that can't be measured in gallons. Growing wood to burn in generators, for example, can't be measured in gallons although it's actually a pretty decent power generation scheme. Biomethane can be measured by the gge, I suppose. If you're making biodiesel from algae, then you need an area about the size of Georgia to provide all the fuel needed by the United States. For other biodiesel crops, you need pretty much all the arable land in the US.
Pretty much all power generation, including nuclear and coal, requires long transmission lines. The only sources that don't are local ones, such as right in homes or right down the street. That pretty much means solar (could also be wind or gas/diesel generators, or hydro with people lucky enough to have their own river, but not very likely). So, the long transmission line argument is pretty much bunk since you don't present any alternative that doesn't need them.
Wind Turbines supposedly kill eagles and often requires long transmission lines that make them inefficient in the best of cases. Not viable everywhere.
All tall structures kill birds. I don't think the wind turbines actually have any particular vendetta against eagles. Long transmission lines, sure. Of course, as I've pointed out already, unless the power generation is being done in your house/back yard, you're going to need long transmission lines. As for "not viable everywhere", that's certainly true. Of course, that's what the long transmission lines are for.
Solar is inefficient both in land and energy generated and also generally requires long transmission lines. Energy output varies by season in many areas.
How is solar inefficient in energy generated? What are you comparing it against and how are you making the comparison? As for being inefficient in terms of land, that's a tricky one. A solar plant does take up approximately ten times as much land as an equivalent nuclear power plant. On the other hand, that's just comparing the generating plants. Nuclear power plants also require quite a lot of land dedicated to mining uranium. Both types of plant require resources to construct in the first place, which are also mined. Solar probably still takes up more land, but pretty much every solar plant design allows you to also use that land for other things. Usually not farming (although some solar plant designs actually work as big greenhouses), but there's no reason you can't have factories, commercial buildings such as malls, or even housing under a solar plant. The same can't really be said for a nuclear plant. Back to the long transmission lines again. Once again, not unique to any particular form of power generation. Also, if the transmission lines are long enough, then the long transmission lines can be the solution to your last point about varying energy output. If your plants are all located close to the equator, seasonal variation is pretty much a non-issue.
Hydroelectric Dams have a horrible safety record, especially during construction, mess up the earth's spin, and can affect wildlife that depend on rivers. Some of the better power generating models (ie pumped storage) depend on high elevation drops and some other power source (like Coal) to pump
Not much to say on hydroelectric. Just have to mention that you forgot to point out that they need long transmission lines. Also "mess up the earth's spin"? Huh? Now, damming a river and thus creating a large body of water will alter the rotation of our planet, but not by very much. All kinds of natural phenomena such as calving ice sheets, subduction of the crust, earthquake driven upheavals of landmasses, settling of sub-oceanic silt, etc. cause the same kinds of shifts. Is there something I'm missing here?
Tidal (wave) energy - many of the same construction dangers as Hydroelectric, only works for coastal cities
The construction dangers, though real, wouldn't seem to be anywhere near the same as those for hydroelectric since they're so vastly different. As for only working for coastal cities, you forgot the long transmission lines.
Peat (mostly in Russia) - large CO2 producer, kills fish with runoff
Peat is just a fresher version of coal. Same issues with burning our natural carbon sinks as all fossil fuels. Also, requires long transmission lines.
Abortions? I don't think too many researchers (if any at all) were using stem cells from aborted fetuses for research. The embryonic stem cells were coming from medical waste from in vitro fertilization clinics. For every successful implantation, multiple embryos are created and then discarded.
- wrong. You didn't read the link in my signature, which is part of the legal argument supporting the fact that at least the personal income taxes are illegal and are collected illegally, so you are making up nonsense, it's not what he is saying at all. You are making up nonsense out of straw and then are attacking your own nonsense straw argument.
The link in your signature, although it touches on income tax, is not exactly a compact argument on the subject at hand. Personally, I think the health care plan is an abomination. Of course, the private healthcare situation in the US as it stands now is also an abomination. At least there are some tiny steps in the right direction in the plan that was just found constitutional. Overall though, I don't think it's going to make the current bad situation any better. In any case, there's something to be said for making your argument in your actual post rather than referring to a link that won't even be there any more the next time you change your sig.
As for straw man arguments. I don't think I ever said it was his only argument, but from what I've been able to find on the guy, the argument about fiat currency not being real money and therefore not taxable does actually seem to be one of the arguments he's used. But whatever. The simple fact is that pretty much every government ever has taxed its people, and usually with some form of income tax. People are expected to pay their fair share to enjoy the benefits of civilization.
Regarding only corporate profits being taxable, pretty much anyone in business for themselves is a virtual corporation, even if they aren't legally incorporated. Anyone working for someone else is either working for a corporation or for someone acting as one. When corporations pay people's salaries it comes out of their profits and they take a tax deduction on what they've paid. So, in most cases, income tax is a deferred tax on corporate profits anyway.
But gold is also only valuable when people agree on its value. Pretty much any civilization that has used precious metals as currency has used the precious metals in fiat currency with the government setting the value. An example of that would be the 1/16 laws which were common to pretty much all of Europe setting the value of silver to 1/16th of the value of gold.
Yes, I know what fiat money is: money. Unless you're using direct barter, all money is fiat money.
None of what you say addresses my point which was: if he doesn't believe that his income is real money, why does he object to handing some of it over? If it has no value, what's the point?
Oh I certainly agree with all that. I was criticizing one of his core arguments about income tax, which essentially boils down to the idea that income in currencies that aren't backed by gold doesn't pass constitutional muster as income that can be taxed. The problem with that argument is that, if he were right (which I don't think he is), then modern currency is worthless and therefore not even worth keeping. The fact that he wants to keep his income puts the lie to his theory.
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What came to be known as the steam engine evolved slowly (over hundreds of years in the case of the steam engine) with incremental changes, not all at once.
Thousands of years, not hundreds. With a very long period in the middle of little to no development, then a surge of development.
Whoops, typo. Wrote energy instead of synergy, corrected it, but forgot to erase energy.
On the other hand, 20 people can pick up 20 cars an hour, whereas 1 person can't pick up 1 car an hour. On the other, other hand, they can with specialized tools. On the other, other, other hand making up a stupid term like "energy synergy" when there's a perfectly good word: "teamwork" which means the same thing is just stupid.
I don't really know much about the performer you're talking about, beyond the hysterical response she provokes from you and the origin of her stage name, which I looked up. I was just nitpicking over a factual inaccuracy.
More to the point... has circumcision ever been shown to be linked to something harmful?
Does death count as something harmful?
The human body does have a use for the appendix and for wisdom teeth. The current leading theory on the appendix is, I believe, that it's a sort of "storm cellar" for beneficial bacteria. The wisdom teeth are spare replacement teeth from an age when we were much more likely to need them. Both are frequently removed when not really necessary. You didn't mention tonsils. They used to pull tonsils at the first sign of a sore throat. These days it's much less common, and most studies are saying that it provides little to no actual benefit. The tonsils, by the way, serve an immunological function.
No, the word "Ménage" literally does mean "housekeeping"/"household". I'm not being dishonest. The term "Ménage à trois", which you referenced when you said "with 3-some in her name" literally means 3 people living together. Nicki _Minaj_ is the stage name of Onika Maraj and is quite clearly based on her real name.
But the potential statutory damages for what he was accused of were known to him beforehand and are grossly disproportionate. The RIAA has been legislatively handed an enormous stick to beat people with.
Remember you also suddenly lose all those much-loved copyleft licenses
The control that licenses like the GPL want to keep over derivative works is only to keep them open. Without copyright, it's true that people could take things under the gpl and sell their own closed source versions of them. On the other hand, people could also break the DRM on the proprietary versions and distribute them, reverse-engineer them, etc. Licenses like the GPL exist as a balance against draconian copyright law. Remove the copyright laws and the licenses are suddenly far less necessary. The dynamics of the situation change, of course, but I'm pretty sure even Stallman would be pretty happy with the situation if copyright suddenly went away (especially if patents and trade secret protections went away along with it).
Parents are shown how their kids should be idolizing someone very obviously satanic, with 3-some in her name
"Ménage" means "housekeeping".
With the planet we're on now we have to deal with our heads being lighter than our feet (by unit of mass, anyway). So the differences are mostly just a matter of degree.
As you mentioned, that was Uranium, not Plutonium. It was also a reactor and not an RTG, which means that it's much harder to lock the fuel up in a safe, shielded container. RTGs use pellets of radioactive material inside a casing that will almost always survive a disastrous re-entry intact. Add to that the fact that Plutonium 238 is very safe relative to Uranium 235. There's no gamma radiation or neutrons and it can be effectively shielded with very thin shielding. The biggest danger it presents is probably that the capsule containing the Plutonium will hit someone on re-entry.
I didn't claim that patent judges shouldn't decide the issue. Clearly it's probably difficult to find legal experts in the intellectual property field without ties to industry. Nevertheless, there is a difference between being an expert in IP law and being heavily pro-IP and pro-industry.
The Intellectual Property Owners Association:
established in 1972, is a trade association for owners of patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets. IPO is the only association in the U.S. that serves all intellectual property owners in all industries and all fields of technology.
The association advocates effective and affordable IP ownership rights and provides a wide array of services to members. It concentrates on: supporting member interests relating to legislative and international issues; analyzing current IP issues; providing information and educational services; and disseminating information to the general public on the importance of intellectual property rights.
Lourie is on the board of directors of this organization, which indicates a pretty clear bias on intellectual property issues. Eligibility for Membership on the Intellectual Property Rights IFAC
He was also ice Chairman of the Industry Functional Advisory Committee on Intellectual Property Rights for Trade Policy Matters (IFAC 3) and:
Committee members are U.S. citizens representing U.S. manufacturing or service firms, trade internationally, and have a special interest in and knowledge of international trade issues. Representatives of industry associations may also participate.
So that's hardly a neutral position.
He was also chairman of the Patent Committee of the Law Section of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association from 1980 to 1985, and clearly the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association is not impartial.
The rest of the stuff in there is recognition from all kinds of pro-ip groups. Based in this resume, this is clearly not a judge whose interests lie in exercising prudence when granting intellectual property rights to claimants. I left out the information on his eduction because it really has nothing to say about any potential bias or neutrality. It clearly does show, however, that he should be educated to clearly understand that "Each of the claimed molecules represents a nonnaturally occurring composition of matter" is a load of steaming genetic material. He clearly understands that the patent-holders in this case figuratively used a pair of pruning shears (which they didn't invent) to cut the (figurative) leaf off (still figurative) tree and then claimed the leaf as their own invention. His conceit is that the act of cutting the leaf off the tree is enough to make the "isolated" leaf an invention. That kind of logic effectively makes everything that can be discovered in nature patentable since the act of discovery "isolates" it from the rest of the natural world in which it originated.
Because someone who is a member of a bunch of organizations whose function is essentially to pat each other on the back for expanding the scope of intellectual property clearly isn't impartial.
Regarding Judge Lourie from http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/judges/alan-d-lourie-circuit-judge.html:
Before being appointed to the court, Judge Lourie had been President of the Philadelphia Patent Law Association, a member of the Board of Directors of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (formerly American Patent Law Association), treasurer of the Association of Corporate Patent Counsel, and a member of the board of directors of the Intellectual Property Owners Association. He was also Vice Chairman of the Industry Functional Advisory Committee on Intellectual Property Rights for Trade Policy Matters (IFAC 3) for the Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Diplomatic Conference on the Revision of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, held in Geneva in October and November 1982, and in March 1984. He was chairman of the Patent Committee of the Law Section of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association from 1980 to 1985.
Judge Lourie was awarded the Jefferson Medal of the New Jersey Intellectual Property Law Association for extraordinary contributions to the field of intellectual property law in 1998; was a recipient of the Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation Distinguished Intellectual Property Professional Award for extraordinary leadership in the intellectual property community and a lifetime commitment to invention and innovation in 2008; was a recipient of the Philadelphia Intellectual Property Law Association’s Award for outstanding IP achievement in 2010; was a recipient of the Boston Patent Law Association’s Distinguished Public Service Award in 2011...
Good to know that these cases go to truly impartial judges.
except every type of field grown biofuels competes with food. We are already seeing price hits, and it's hardly used.
Unless you are growing bio fuels from tiny animals in places where we can't grow food, then bio fuels should end.
As I pointed out, there are some quite massive areas of otherwise arable land that are contaminated and aren't fit for growing food for human consumption. There are also alternatives like harvesting algae from the sea, etc. Biofuels done poorly (such as corn ethanol) are a problem, but that doesn't magically mean that biofuels can't work. I also just can't accept any financial market-based arguments since those markets are all pretty much entirely based on perception rather than reality. As for "tiny animals", huh?
"Seems like good places to grow crops that aren't intended for human consumption. "
it's not nearly enough to offset cost impact to food.
If growing biofuels on land that otherwise wouldn't have any crops growing on it affects food prices, then that means that the markets are broken, not the concept of biofuels.
WTF is every ones hang up with transmission lines? There a lot more efficient the the tankers/ trunks you mention. On average, 6.6% loss. And this has been decreasing as older infrastructure is replaced.
Uh, yeah, that was my point. Creepy, the poster I was replying to, was the one who was citing the requirement for long transmission lines as the reason that wind and solar wouldn't work. This was ignoring the fact that all non-distributed power generation methods require long transmission lines. Creepy went on to say that tidal power would only work for coastal cities, ignoring the fact that long transmission lines solve that problem. I think you may have missed that my post was a (slightly sarcastic in places) response to Creepy.
Op quiz: how many gallon per acre do you get from from plant bio-fuels?
After you find that out, do some math comparing how many acres you would need to offset current gasoline fuels.
Gallons of what? The concept of biofuels covers a lot of possibilities, including those that can't be measured in gallons. Growing wood to burn in generators, for example, can't be measured in gallons although it's actually a pretty decent power generation scheme. Biomethane can be measured by the gge, I suppose. If you're making biodiesel from algae, then you need an area about the size of Georgia to provide all the fuel needed by the United States. For other biodiesel crops, you need pretty much all the arable land in the US.
Farnsworth: This is for you, Fry [He hands Fry a small, gift-wrapped mummy.] Zevulon the Great. He's teriyaki style.
Pretty much all power generation, including nuclear and coal, requires long transmission lines. The only sources that don't are local ones, such as right in homes or right down the street. That pretty much means solar (could also be wind or gas/diesel generators, or hydro with people lucky enough to have their own river, but not very likely). So, the long transmission line argument is pretty much bunk since you don't present any alternative that doesn't need them.
Wind Turbines supposedly kill eagles and often requires long transmission lines that make them inefficient in the best of cases. Not viable everywhere.
All tall structures kill birds. I don't think the wind turbines actually have any particular vendetta against eagles. Long transmission lines, sure. Of course, as I've pointed out already, unless the power generation is being done in your house/back yard, you're going to need long transmission lines. As for "not viable everywhere", that's certainly true. Of course, that's what the long transmission lines are for.
Solar is inefficient both in land and energy generated and also generally requires long transmission lines. Energy output varies by season in many areas.
How is solar inefficient in energy generated? What are you comparing it against and how are you making the comparison? As for being inefficient in terms of land, that's a tricky one. A solar plant does take up approximately ten times as much land as an equivalent nuclear power plant. On the other hand, that's just comparing the generating plants. Nuclear power plants also require quite a lot of land dedicated to mining uranium. Both types of plant require resources to construct in the first place, which are also mined. Solar probably still takes up more land, but pretty much every solar plant design allows you to also use that land for other things. Usually not farming (although some solar plant designs actually work as big greenhouses), but there's no reason you can't have factories, commercial buildings such as malls, or even housing under a solar plant. The same can't really be said for a nuclear plant. Back to the long transmission lines again. Once again, not unique to any particular form of power generation. Also, if the transmission lines are long enough, then the long transmission lines can be the solution to your last point about varying energy output. If your plants are all located close to the equator, seasonal variation is pretty much a non-issue.
Hydroelectric Dams have a horrible safety record, especially during construction, mess up the earth's spin, and can affect wildlife that depend on rivers. Some of the better power generating models (ie pumped storage) depend on high elevation drops and some other power source (like Coal) to pump
Not much to say on hydroelectric. Just have to mention that you forgot to point out that they need long transmission lines. Also "mess up the earth's spin"? Huh? Now, damming a river and thus creating a large body of water will alter the rotation of our planet, but not by very much. All kinds of natural phenomena such as calving ice sheets, subduction of the crust, earthquake driven upheavals of landmasses, settling of sub-oceanic silt, etc. cause the same kinds of shifts. Is there something I'm missing here?
Tidal (wave) energy - many of the same construction dangers as Hydroelectric, only works for coastal cities
The construction dangers, though real, wouldn't seem to be anywhere near the same as those for hydroelectric since they're so vastly different. As for only working for coastal cities, you forgot the long transmission lines.
Peat (mostly in Russia) - large CO2 producer, kills fish with runoff
Peat is just a fresher version of coal. Same issues with burning our natural carbon sinks as all fossil fuels. Also, requires long transmission lines.
Biofuel - corn absolutely rap
the author of the Revelations got into all kinds of eclectic beliefs
...and apparently some psychedelic drugs.
Abortions? I don't think too many researchers (if any at all) were using stem cells from aborted fetuses for research. The embryonic stem cells were coming from medical waste from in vitro fertilization clinics. For every successful implantation, multiple embryos are created and then discarded.
- wrong. You didn't read the link in my signature, which is part of the legal argument supporting the fact that at least the personal income taxes are illegal and are collected illegally, so you are making up nonsense, it's not what he is saying at all. You are making up nonsense out of straw and then are attacking your own nonsense straw argument.
The link in your signature, although it touches on income tax, is not exactly a compact argument on the subject at hand. Personally, I think the health care plan is an abomination. Of course, the private healthcare situation in the US as it stands now is also an abomination. At least there are some tiny steps in the right direction in the plan that was just found constitutional. Overall though, I don't think it's going to make the current bad situation any better. In any case, there's something to be said for making your argument in your actual post rather than referring to a link that won't even be there any more the next time you change your sig.
As for straw man arguments. I don't think I ever said it was his only argument, but from what I've been able to find on the guy, the argument about fiat currency not being real money and therefore not taxable does actually seem to be one of the arguments he's used. But whatever. The simple fact is that pretty much every government ever has taxed its people, and usually with some form of income tax. People are expected to pay their fair share to enjoy the benefits of civilization.
Regarding only corporate profits being taxable, pretty much anyone in business for themselves is a virtual corporation, even if they aren't legally incorporated. Anyone working for someone else is either working for a corporation or for someone acting as one. When corporations pay people's salaries it comes out of their profits and they take a tax deduction on what they've paid. So, in most cases, income tax is a deferred tax on corporate profits anyway.
But gold is also only valuable when people agree on its value. Pretty much any civilization that has used precious metals as currency has used the precious metals in fiat currency with the government setting the value. An example of that would be the 1/16 laws which were common to pretty much all of Europe setting the value of silver to 1/16th of the value of gold.
Yes, I know what fiat money is: money. Unless you're using direct barter, all money is fiat money.
None of what you say addresses my point which was: if he doesn't believe that his income is real money, why does he object to handing some of it over? If it has no value, what's the point?
Oh I certainly agree with all that. I was criticizing one of his core arguments about income tax, which essentially boils down to the idea that income in currencies that aren't backed by gold doesn't pass constitutional muster as income that can be taxed. The problem with that argument is that, if he were right (which I don't think he is), then modern currency is worthless and therefore not even worth keeping. The fact that he wants to keep his income puts the lie to his theory.