[Tangent: It's interesting that those who support the "public option" for health care insurance reform do so because they believe that private profit oriented insurers should be forced to compete with non-profit, government backed, insurance. But, it seems that most who support this approach for health insurance seem fearful of making non-profit, government backed public education compete with private enterprises. And the inverse also seems to be the case. Curious indeed...]
The argument against vouchers isn't one against competition, it's one of limited resources. The argument is that with vouchers, tax money is being redirected away from public school system towards private schools. Now this wouldn't be a problem if the lack of funds ended up with simply one underperforming school being eliminated due to lack of students, but rather what actually happens is that total pool of money allocated for all schools in the district is reduced, and thus all schools, but the good and the bad are adversely effected, and that a (perhaps quickly occurring) tipping point is reached where the entire public school system begins to collapse. Now before someone says, "Well good! Private schools are better performing!", a 2006 Dept of Ed report found no significant difference between private and public school performance, once results were controlled for statistical population. (Keep in mind that private school families tend to be wealthier and more engaged than poorer families, and so when poorer students attend the private schools on vouchers, the population of self-selected over-achievers begins to be diluted by newly arriving average and under-achievers.) Also there is doubt that each voucher provides enough financial support to the private school to educate the newly arrived student.
In short, the vouchers shift just enough money away from the public system to hurt it, but not enough to support the private system, while at the same time not actually providing an educational benefit. A lose-lose-draw situation.
Personally, I'd like to see public schools to be funded equally per pupil out of a general state fund, instead of the current system of using property taxes, thus ensuring that that schools attended by the poor are underfunded, dilapidated, and thus guaranteed to underperform, while the schools in the rich part of town get two of the best of everything. It's simply unconscionable that we have schools like the one Ty'Sheoma Bethea attends. (Don't count on stimulus funds to fix it either.)
My understanding is that in England, most of the time if you are born in the "working class", your children will die as part of the "working class". If you look at U.S. statistics, you discover that most of the people in the bottom quarter of wealth in the population ten years ago, aren't in the bottom quarter today.
And since I'm burning karma anyway lemme toss another sacred cow onto the grill. Enough with this continual blather about the 'disadvantaged/poor/etc.' if you nitwits aren't going to deal with the actual problem. To a very high degree of correlation, the 'poor' aren't living in poverty because of a lack of money. They lack money because they have make poor lifestyle decisions that RESULT in a lack of money. Things like failure to get an education (or worse reject the value of knowledge entirely), become a single parent, waste money on substance abuse or Xbox... but I repeat myself.
Wall Street Journal reported that generational class mobility -- how likely it is for someone born poor will die middle class -- is lower in the US than Europe, even though the rags-to-riches story is ingrained, even intrinsic, to the American Dream. Why is that? Are we to believe that Americans are lazier than their "socialist" "nanny state" European brethren? I doubt that. In fact, if one was to take the conservative talking points at face value, the European-style social safety nets would discourage economic mobility. So what gives? Well, European poor are healthier, due to easy and affordable access to health care, thus allowing them to work more. They have better access to daycare, thus enabling them to find a job, instead of being forced to stay home with children. You repeat the canard, that the poor are all lazy that fritter away their money, ironically on luxuries (alcohol, drugs, video games, etc.), but what does the science actually reveal? says that 27% of income of the working poor is left after housing, food, and commuting expenses. The working poor income is defined as less than $8000 a year, so that's $2160 a year, so $180 a month. So where does that $180 go? Well perhaps University of Akron chart will help. $50 for child care, and the rest for "housekeeping supplies, apparel and services, and personal care products and services" And the end ? $-81.
You clearly have no interest in actually reading a study of what's going on, because "reality has a well known liberal bias."
I do have a fundamental problem with majority rule. There's no reason why one employee should have to do what the other employees want because they voted for it.
So you hate democracy? Why do you hate America?
I don't have a problem with the free market. Giving employees democratic power over something they don't own is not the free market.
So you agree that you don't have to work for a union shop, and thus the union isn't ruining anything, because it's your responsibility for you suck life? Then why do you care if some place unionizes? It doesn't effect you.
If your fellow coworkers vote to unionize, you're free to leave. If the place turns to sucks, then why would you want to stay? You seem to have fundamental problem with: 1) majority rule 2) the free market
Take some personal responsibility, instead of blaming others for your problems.
I love how if there's a situation that someone doesn't like that's imposed by management, then all the anti-union (rightfully) people say, "Don't like it? Don't work there!" But if there's a situation that a majority of the workers agreed to through a democratic process, then suddenly it's too onerous and the anti-union person should be able to pick and choose what workplace rules he/she gets to follow. What's the difference? Propaganda.
And I'm saying vote with your feet, and don't work at a union shop if you don't want to be in a union. God knows there's more non-union than union. No one is forcing you to join a union shop. If you want to join a union shop, partake in all the benefits that the union fought for, and not join it, you're a freeloader.
The beast has been growing ever since and has reached scary dimensions by now.
Interestingly (and by "interestingly," I mean "unsurprisingly") the American public disagrees with you. All
It is even trying to consume our health care now â" whether it succeeds at that or not, that it is even trying is bad enough.
Especially since the private sector has been so successful in holding down costs. Why is it that prescription drugs are 10 times as expensive in the US than Canada? Am I really supposed to believe that the entire Canadian is a profit loss? Why is the "fix" to (sometimes) allow reimportation of drugs? Why is it that healthcare is routinely denied (i.e. "rationed")? Why is it I can turn on my television and see an advertisement where a woman is talking about how her insurance refused to pay for catheters, and so she has to buy them from someplace else? The stellar system where private sector bureaucrats decide what treatment to pay for, or if even someone should remain on the insurance rolls? The system where some middle manager decides if my doctor is on a list of approved doctors? The system where premiums are rising 3 times inflation. That system? Oh yeah. Best in the world. If your criteria is costs. Performace? 37th. Overall health? 72nd. Goddamn those "socialist" Swedes.
It simply defies all comprehension, that â" after the decades of mediocrity, outright failures, and spectacular cost over-runs of highways
I don't see any private sector highways. No one is stopping anyone from buying up a bunch of land and paving it. Why not? Especially since every private sector endeavor comes in on budget on time.
, Postal Service
Name the private sector company that has door-to-door residential pickup to any address in the United States, six days a week, for 44 cents, and 2 day shipping for 3 dollars?
Public Schools
Damn those universities.
MediCare
Do you mean the Medicare that is extremely popular , more trusted than private insurance, and is the single largest insurer in the United States? The insurance that can't be revoked? The insurance that the private sector commits the most fraud against? That one? No obviously not. You must be speaking about some other hither-to-unknown medicare.
â" anybody still holds the opinion, that a Government taking over a part of life from private sector will improve it...
obviously isn't blind to the gross abuses and inefficiencies of the private sector.
Personally I love how the insurance companies are saying "ZOMG! The big inefficient, ne'er do well federal government is going to run us out of business!" Wait? The people you just called a walking clusterfuck are going to run you out of business? How fucked up are you then?!
Except if you make me raise my hand in front of my co-workers and boss I'm potentially subject to intimidation and coercion by either side. Tell me, why are the Union folks so eager to see the elimination of the secret ballot?
There's a flaw in your logic. Intimidation and coercion by the anti-union company already exists. Mandatory meetings where workers meet individually with management and a hired union buster. Mandatory meetings where the company threatens to close if a union is voted in. Also, the most recent card check bill doesn't eliminate the secret ballot at all. If 30% sign the cards, then a secret ballot is held. If 50%+1 sign up, then the union is formed. The real question is why someone wants to prolong the time workers are intimidated?
And people who drink the Union kool-aid really ought to look a hard look at the downsides of organized labor. Tell me, would you rather work somewhere that rewards you for competence or somewhere that rewards you based on seniority? Guess which system is more likely under the unionized shop?
Yeah. There's no incompetence in non-union shops. Please. This canard has been banded about for years, but there's no evidence that incompetence is any more rampant in union shops than non-union shops. I suggest you put down the anti-union kool-aid and actually study the issue.
Even if the majority vote to join a union, how does that make it in any way fair to force everyone to join? I've heard the argument that non-members get the "benefits" of being in the union without paying for it, but have you ever considered that people might not WANT a union? Oh wait, how could they possibly disagree with you? You're probably much better at running their lives than they are..
You're a party to the collective bargaining agreement. You benefit from the union, therefore you're a part of the union. No one is forcing you to work for a union shop. Don't like it? Don't work there. Good luck finding a the same wage an benefits though.
It's not like how Lucas was able to squeeze more story out of the Star Wars trilogy by adding in effects that brought it up to modern-day standards (and fixed the story in parts that didn't make sense).
Yeah, I'm so glad how me made Greedo shoot first, but Han still measures time in distance.
The main concern is carbon emissions, specifically carbon dioxide. To say that the net effect is unchanged is a highly dubious statement. While it is true all manufacturing creates waste -- and thus pollution -- of some sort, not all pollution is created equal.
Let's for sake of argument just focus on carbon emissions, since that's pollutant of most concern due to the overwhelming evidence of it causing global warming, and overwhelming evidence that we are quickly reaching a tipping point in greenhouse gas levels. Let's also for sake of argument say that the amount of carbon produced by a modern internal combustion engine is equivalent to the amount of carbon produced by the predominant coal fueled power plants when creating an equivalent amount of energy to equivalently power a plug in electric car. Even in this case, we're not just shuffling the pollution sources around, we're consolidating them. By consolidating them, we can then target that one source for reduction, through either economically more efficient replacement, or enhancements. We're taking advantage of an economy of scale that otherwise would be unachievable.
Give me a TDI motor any day over this hybrid stuff.
By that you mean the California voters who voted to deregulate to the system we got? I really wish I could blame the officials, but we did that to ourselves... sort of like our current budget.
Lest we also forget that this deregulation law was primarily written and supported by Enron and the utility traders. From that perspective, it worked perfectly. (Now tell me again why deregulation is axiomatically good?)
As a California resident and a voter, I agree that the initiative process is a crock and prone to manipulation (Perhaps not quite as trivially easy as Oregon's. (I'm looking at you Bill Sizemore!)) using the extreme rhetoric ("Oh won't someone please think of the children!") and feel good measures that it's wrought the current budget crisis. Initiatives that tie the hands of the legislature when making budget cuts, a 30 year old initiative that limit property taxes at essentially 30 year old levels, and requires an asinine two-thirds majority to increase revenue in order to pass a balanced budget? And oh yeah and the minority party is so beholden to Grover Norquist's dogma to become completely irrational and oppose any long term solution to the state's sadly predictably recurring and worsening budget problems.
We are state ruled be the extremes of the political spectrum, and thus so throughly a reflection of the schizophrenic political views of the populace. We are state that wants it all, but at the same time refuses to pay for any of it.
Or as Walt Kelly put it, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
You have correctly deduced my lack of knowledge of musical history. The first few, with the exception of the Greatest Band of the 90s, all had documented screaming throngs of girls. The other just kind of fill it out. Of course, Purcell was a ladies man.;) Cain, of course was the original punk.
replacement of almost all talented acts that produced good music, with hyperproduced kiddie-shit "artists" whose assets are not musical talent or singing voices, but barely-covered bikini bottoms and tits. Just you wait: in 4 years, tops, "Hannah Montana" will be pulling a Britney-style selfdestruct. And neither of them are capable of producing "music" even remotely worth listening to.
I reject your premise that that the existence of a much more advanced intelligent species is "HIGHLY possible". There's simply no evidence that any of the following transitions are highly probable:
nonlife -> simple life simple life -> complex (e.g. multicellular) life stimulus response -> sentient intelligence no tools -> tool making current human understanding of universal constants -> violating current human understanding of universal constants at a whim.
If advanced star faring species were common, the evidence for them would be quite common, but it's not. If advanced life was so common, why isn't every planet in this solar system teeming with life like Earth?
I am continually amazed at the limited thinking by these posts, and the inability for anyone to "think outside the box" of current scientific knowledge.
There's simply no reason to outside the box of current scientific knowledge, since there's no problem here that is failed to be explained by current thinking. You might as well be complaining that naysayers of aliens building the pyramids were failing to "think outside the box." You're arguing for pseudoscience. Even worse, you're arguing for faith.
If I make a game in some post-apocalyptic Texas-like desert, of course you will see massively more Rob Zombies than Mahatma Gandhis.
And how many hispanics would there be? 36%? Would the lead be a Mexican-American? I doubt it. But it wouldn't matter if it was would it? Or would it be "racist" and "politically correct" if that was the case?
Funny how "it doesn't matter" when it's a white guy, but suddenly it's "racist" when it's not.
Except for pseudo-political-correct pathetic people who can't look beyond it.
If I make a game in some post-apocalyptic Texas-like desert, of course you will see massively more Rob Zombies than Mahatma Gandhis. And actually intelligent people know that this has nothing to to with genders or ethnics.
The best zombie movie of all time, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, features a black male lead that at no point ever acts "gangsta." You'd be hard pressed to find that today. With the notable exception of the ever bankable Will Smith, black actors are either a variation of ghetto-thugs/angry-black-men, or magical-negros. (Morgan Freeman being the most prominent example.)
When I hire the best 20 people I can get for the job, I do not care if all 20 of them are white conservative males in their mid-50s, or half-Bantu half-grizzly half-swine-flu-victim-zombie girlie midgets in pink snake skin dresses. That's what it being irrelevant means.:)
Race or gender quotas are really disguised racism. It's just the "other extreme" of the full circle.;) (Yeah, that really describes it very well.)
This isn't a fair comparison. You're not placing an ad and then filling a position from some semi-random sample. You're inventing the position, the employee, and the sample of potential employees. Unless you have a random character generator, there's no way to do this without letting your own experiences and biases shape your decision. That is, there is no objective standard for you use/hide-behind when creating fiction.
It's easy to say, "[just] look beyond it" when it's your ethnicity that's over represented. No one is arguing for quotas, but there is a desire to see people that look like yourself being portrayed heroically.
Gears of War surprised me when it actually had an Asian male as the squad leader, right up until he gets killed, and then the white guy takes the lead, and his black sidekick explains the ways of the space ghetto to him. Remember Daikatana, and how all the non-whites were stereotypes? The stupid fake accents. The stupid models. The whole thing was like a damn Charlie Chan movie. (Search Youtube if you don't believe me.) Look at the games made today. The black character is some super athletic jive talking "gangsta nigga". The Asian is inevitably the erotic assassin love interest of the white male lead.
Is this the game studios' fault? Well, they're the one making the games with their own free will. Honestly, I think it's unintentional. The game designers are white, and so are the execs. They unconsciously make the games look like themselves, and consciously make the games look like television and movies, which has a long history of institutional racism. While story goes that Jews run Hollywood, the fact is that many actors and execs changed their names to pass for white anglo-saxon protestants. (Kirk Douglas's name is really Issur Danielovitch Demsky. The Sheens are really the Estevezes. Even Jon Stewart was Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz. Just to name a few.) Why is everyone on television and movies white? There's the idea that audiences won't go for non-white characters, and so by and far whites get leads, non-whites get supporting roles. Then paradoxically those with minority leads, are either not promoted heavily (because of the belief that the work is already doomed to failure), or they're little more than minstrel shows. ("We're going for the 'urban' audience!") Even when stories do have nonwhite leads, they're frequently "white washed." SciFi's production of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea changed the ethnicities of all the characters. The new book Liar, about a black girl, has white girl on the cover. Should this matter? In a perfect post-racial worl
From my admittedly limited experience, there are a lot of Japanese games which feature people who are pretty clearly Asian. Many of them don't even get exported out of Japan.
Really? Like what? Mario is white. Hell, everyone in every anime and manga and RPG ever made looks white, unless they're black. Then they're a sambo.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, if you are an American WASP... you can look and look and look at the wikipedia all day and not see the problem with NPOV. :-))
Obviously you've never seen Conservapedia. ;)
The fact is that Obama is a redistributionist who claims that jobs are owed and not earned.
You have an interesting definition for the word "fact".
[Tangent: It's interesting that those who support the "public option" for health care insurance reform do so because they believe that private profit oriented insurers should be forced to compete with non-profit, government backed, insurance. But, it seems that most who support this approach for health insurance seem fearful of making non-profit, government backed public education compete with private enterprises. And the inverse also seems to be the case. Curious indeed...]
The argument against vouchers isn't one against competition, it's one of limited resources. The argument is that with vouchers, tax money is being redirected away from public school system towards private schools. Now this wouldn't be a problem if the lack of funds ended up with simply one underperforming school being eliminated due to lack of students, but rather what actually happens is that total pool of money allocated for all schools in the district is reduced, and thus all schools, but the good and the bad are adversely effected, and that a (perhaps quickly occurring) tipping point is reached where the entire public school system begins to collapse. Now before someone says, "Well good! Private schools are better performing!", a 2006 Dept of Ed report found no significant difference between private and public school performance, once results were controlled for statistical population. (Keep in mind that private school families tend to be wealthier and more engaged than poorer families, and so when poorer students attend the private schools on vouchers, the population of self-selected over-achievers begins to be diluted by newly arriving average and under-achievers.) Also there is doubt that each voucher provides enough financial support to the private school to educate the newly arrived student.
In short, the vouchers shift just enough money away from the public system to hurt it, but not enough to support the private system, while at the same time not actually providing an educational benefit. A lose-lose-draw situation.
Personally, I'd like to see public schools to be funded equally per pupil out of a general state fund, instead of the current system of using property taxes, thus ensuring that that schools attended by the poor are underfunded, dilapidated, and thus guaranteed to underperform, while the schools in the rich part of town get two of the best of everything. It's simply unconscionable that we have schools like the one Ty'Sheoma Bethea attends. (Don't count on stimulus funds to fix it either.)
Reference and clarification please?
http://www.acces.us/PDF/WSJ.com%20_As_Rich_Poor_Gap_Widens.pdf
My understanding is that in England, most of the time if you are born in the "working class", your children will die as part of the "working class". If you look at U.S. statistics, you discover that most of the people in the bottom quarter of wealth in the population ten years ago, aren't in the bottom quarter today.
That's the common belief in the US, but the statistics say otherwise.
And since I'm burning karma anyway lemme toss another sacred cow onto the grill. Enough with this continual blather about the 'disadvantaged/poor/etc.' if you nitwits aren't going to deal with the actual problem. To a very high degree of correlation, the 'poor' aren't living in poverty because of a lack of money. They lack money because they have make poor lifestyle decisions that RESULT in a lack of money. Things like failure to get an education (or worse reject the value of knowledge entirely), become a single parent, waste money on substance abuse or Xbox... but I repeat myself.
Wall Street Journal reported that generational class mobility -- how likely it is for someone born poor will die middle class -- is lower in the US than Europe, even though the rags-to-riches story is ingrained, even intrinsic, to the American Dream. Why is that? Are we to believe that Americans are lazier than their "socialist" "nanny state" European brethren? I doubt that. In fact, if one was to take the conservative talking points at face value, the European-style social safety nets would discourage economic mobility. So what gives? Well, European poor are healthier, due to easy and affordable access to health care, thus allowing them to work more. They have better access to daycare, thus enabling them to find a job, instead of being forced to stay home with children.
You repeat the canard, that the poor are all lazy that fritter away their money, ironically on luxuries (alcohol, drugs, video games, etc.), but what does the science actually reveal? says that 27% of income of the working poor is left after housing, food, and commuting expenses. The working poor income is defined as less than $8000 a year, so that's $2160 a year, so $180 a month. So where does that $180 go? Well perhaps University of Akron chart will help. $50 for child care, and the rest for "housekeeping supplies, apparel and services, and personal care products and services" And the end ? $-81.
You clearly have no interest in actually reading a study of what's going on, because "reality has a well known liberal bias."
I do have a fundamental problem with majority rule. There's no reason why one employee should have to do what the other employees want because they voted for it.
So you hate democracy? Why do you hate America?
I don't have a problem with the free market. Giving employees democratic power over something they don't own is not the free market.
So you agree that you don't have to work for a union shop, and thus the union isn't ruining anything, because it's your responsibility for you suck life? Then why do you care if some place unionizes? It doesn't effect you.
If your fellow coworkers vote to unionize, you're free to leave. If the place turns to sucks, then why would you want to stay? You seem to have fundamental problem with:
1) majority rule
2) the free market
Take some personal responsibility, instead of blaming others for your problems.
I love how if there's a situation that someone doesn't like that's imposed by management, then all the anti-union (rightfully) people say, "Don't like it? Don't work there!" But if there's a situation that a majority of the workers agreed to through a democratic process, then suddenly it's too onerous and the anti-union person should be able to pick and choose what workplace rules he/she gets to follow. What's the difference? Propaganda.
And I'm saying vote with your feet, and don't work at a union shop if you don't want to be in a union. God knows there's more non-union than union. No one is forcing you to join a union shop. If you want to join a union shop, partake in all the benefits that the union fought for, and not join it, you're a freeloader.
The beast has been growing ever since and has reached scary dimensions by now.
Interestingly (and by "interestingly," I mean "unsurprisingly") the American public disagrees with you. All
It is even trying to consume our health care now â" whether it succeeds at that or not, that it is even trying is bad enough.
Especially since the private sector has been so successful in holding down costs. Why is it that prescription drugs are 10 times as expensive in the US than Canada? Am I really supposed to believe that the entire Canadian is a profit loss? Why is the "fix" to (sometimes) allow reimportation of drugs? Why is it that healthcare is routinely denied (i.e. "rationed")? Why is it I can turn on my television and see an advertisement where a woman is talking about how her insurance refused to pay for catheters, and so she has to buy them from someplace else? The stellar system where private sector bureaucrats decide what treatment to pay for, or if even someone should remain on the insurance rolls? The system where some middle manager decides if my doctor is on a list of approved doctors? The system where premiums are rising 3 times inflation. That system? Oh yeah. Best in the world. If your criteria is costs. Performace? 37th. Overall health? 72nd. Goddamn those "socialist" Swedes.
It simply defies all comprehension, that â" after the decades of mediocrity, outright failures, and spectacular cost over-runs of highways
I don't see any private sector highways. No one is stopping anyone from buying up a bunch of land and paving it. Why not? Especially since every private sector endeavor comes in on budget on time.
, Postal Service
Name the private sector company that has door-to-door residential pickup to any address in the United States, six days a week, for 44 cents, and 2 day shipping for 3 dollars?
Public Schools
Damn those universities.
MediCare
Do you mean the Medicare that is extremely popular , more trusted than private insurance, and is the single largest insurer in the United States? The insurance that can't be revoked? The insurance that the private sector commits the most fraud against? That one? No obviously not. You must be speaking about some other hither-to-unknown medicare.
â" anybody still holds the opinion, that a Government taking over a part of life from private sector will improve it...
obviously isn't blind to the gross abuses and inefficiencies of the private sector.
Personally I love how the insurance companies are saying "ZOMG! The big inefficient, ne'er do well federal government is going to run us out of business!" Wait? The people you just called a walking clusterfuck are going to run you out of business? How fucked up are you then?!
Except if you make me raise my hand in front of my co-workers and boss I'm potentially subject to intimidation and coercion by either side. Tell me, why are the Union folks so eager to see the elimination of the secret ballot?
There's a flaw in your logic. Intimidation and coercion by the anti-union company already exists. Mandatory meetings where workers meet individually with management and a hired union buster. Mandatory meetings where the company threatens to close if a union is voted in. Also, the most recent card check bill doesn't eliminate the secret ballot at all. If 30% sign the cards, then a secret ballot is held. If 50%+1 sign up, then the union is formed. The real question is why someone wants to prolong the time workers are intimidated?
And people who drink the Union kool-aid really ought to look a hard look at the downsides of organized labor. Tell me, would you rather work somewhere that rewards you for competence or somewhere that rewards you based on seniority? Guess which system is more likely under the unionized shop?
Yeah. There's no incompetence in non-union shops. Please. This canard has been banded about for years, but there's no evidence that incompetence is any more rampant in union shops than non-union shops. I suggest you put down the anti-union kool-aid and actually study the issue.
Even if the majority vote to join a union, how does that make it in any way fair to force everyone to join? I've heard the argument that non-members get the "benefits" of being in the union without paying for it, but have you ever considered that people might not WANT a union? Oh wait, how could they possibly disagree with you? You're probably much better at running their lives than they are..
You're a party to the collective bargaining agreement. You benefit from the union, therefore you're a part of the union.
No one is forcing you to work for a union shop. Don't like it? Don't work there. Good luck finding a the same wage an benefits though.
It's not like how Lucas was able to squeeze more story out of the Star Wars trilogy by adding in effects that brought it up to modern-day standards (and fixed the story in parts that didn't make sense).
Yeah, I'm so glad how me made Greedo shoot first, but Han still measures time in distance.
Now excuse me for yard. I've got a phone call.
and nicotine is not addictive.
The main concern is carbon emissions, specifically carbon dioxide. To say that the net effect is unchanged is a highly dubious statement. While it is true all manufacturing creates waste -- and thus pollution -- of some sort, not all pollution is created equal.
Let's for sake of argument just focus on carbon emissions, since that's pollutant of most concern due to the overwhelming evidence of it causing global warming, and overwhelming evidence that we are quickly reaching a tipping point in greenhouse gas levels. Let's also for sake of argument say that the amount of carbon produced by a modern internal combustion engine is equivalent to the amount of carbon produced by the predominant coal fueled power plants when creating an equivalent amount of energy to equivalently power a plug in electric car. Even in this case, we're not just shuffling the pollution sources around, we're consolidating them. By consolidating them, we can then target that one source for reduction, through either economically more efficient replacement, or enhancements. We're taking advantage of an economy of scale that otherwise would be unachievable.
Give me a TDI motor any day over this hybrid stuff.
God bless the 18th century.
By that you mean the California voters who voted to deregulate to the system we got? I really wish I could blame the officials, but we did that to ourselves... sort of like our current budget.
Lest we forget...
Electricity deregulation began in 1996, not with an initiative as you implied, but rather with The Electric Utility Industry Restructuring Act (Assembly Bill 1890). Perhaps you were confused with 2005's Proposition 80 that re-regulated the industry.
Lest we also forget that this deregulation law was primarily written and supported by Enron and the utility traders. From that perspective, it worked perfectly. (Now tell me again why deregulation is axiomatically good?)
As a California resident and a voter, I agree that the initiative process is a crock and prone to manipulation (Perhaps not quite as trivially easy as Oregon's. (I'm looking at you Bill Sizemore!)) using the extreme rhetoric ("Oh won't someone please think of the children!") and feel good measures that it's wrought the current budget crisis. Initiatives that tie the hands of the legislature when making budget cuts, a 30 year old initiative that limit property taxes at essentially 30 year old levels, and requires an asinine two-thirds majority to increase revenue in order to pass a balanced budget? And oh yeah and the minority party is so beholden to Grover Norquist's dogma to become completely irrational and oppose any long term solution to the state's sadly predictably recurring and worsening budget problems.
We are state ruled be the extremes of the political spectrum, and thus so throughly a reflection of the schizophrenic political views of the populace. We are state that wants it all, but at the same time refuses to pay for any of it.
Or as Walt Kelly put it, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
You have correctly deduced my lack of knowledge of musical history. The first few, with the exception of the Greatest Band of the 90s, all had documented screaming throngs of girls. The other just kind of fill it out. Of course, Purcell was a ladies man. ;) Cain, of course was the original punk.
Yeah, music's been shit since
Nirvana ... ...
The Beatles
Elvis Presley
Frank Sinatra
Frederic_Chopin
Johann Stamitz
Henry Purcell
Andrea Gabrieli
Francesco Landini
Cain.
Seriously. This is the same crap that old broken down has beens have been whining for generations.
Now get off my lawn.
I reject your premise that that the existence of a much more advanced intelligent species is "HIGHLY possible". There's simply no evidence that any of the following transitions are highly probable:
nonlife -> simple life
simple life -> complex (e.g. multicellular) life
stimulus response -> sentient intelligence
no tools -> tool making
current human understanding of universal constants -> violating current human understanding of universal constants at a whim.
If advanced star faring species were common, the evidence for them would be quite common, but it's not. If advanced life was so common, why isn't every planet in this solar system teeming with life like Earth?
There's simply no reason to outside the box of current scientific knowledge, since there's no problem here that is failed to be explained by current thinking. You might as well be complaining that naysayers of aliens building the pyramids were failing to "think outside the box." You're arguing for pseudoscience. Even worse, you're arguing for faith.
And how many hispanics would there be? 36%? Would the lead be a Mexican-American? I doubt it. But it wouldn't matter if it was would it? Or would it be "racist" and "politically correct" if that was the case?
Funny how "it doesn't matter" when it's a white guy, but suddenly it's "racist" when it's not.
Author Ursula K. Le Guin cares. Author Justine Larbalestier cares.
I'll tell your wife "hello" for you.
The best zombie movie of all time, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, features a black male lead that at no point ever acts "gangsta." You'd be hard pressed to find that today. With the notable exception of the ever bankable Will Smith, black actors are either a variation of ghetto-thugs/angry-black-men, or magical-negros. (Morgan Freeman being the most prominent example.)
This isn't a fair comparison. You're not placing an ad and then filling a position from some semi-random sample. You're inventing the position, the employee, and the sample of potential employees. Unless you have a random character generator, there's no way to do this without letting your own experiences and biases shape your decision. That is, there is no objective standard for you use/hide-behind when creating fiction.
It's easy to say, "[just] look beyond it" when it's your ethnicity that's over represented. No one is arguing for quotas, but there is a desire to see people that look like yourself being portrayed heroically.
Gears of War surprised me when it actually had an Asian male as the squad leader, right up until he gets killed, and then the white guy takes the lead, and his black sidekick explains the ways of the space ghetto to him. Remember Daikatana, and how all the non-whites were stereotypes? The stupid fake accents. The stupid models. The whole thing was like a damn Charlie Chan movie. (Search Youtube if you don't believe me.) Look at the games made today. The black character is some super athletic jive talking "gangsta nigga". The Asian is inevitably the erotic assassin love interest of the white male lead.
Is this the game studios' fault? Well, they're the one making the games with their own free will. Honestly, I think it's unintentional. The game designers are white, and so are the execs. They unconsciously make the games look like themselves, and consciously make the games look like television and movies, which has a long history of institutional racism. While story goes that Jews run Hollywood, the fact is that many actors and execs changed their names to pass for white anglo-saxon protestants. (Kirk Douglas's name is really Issur Danielovitch Demsky. The Sheens are really the Estevezes. Even Jon Stewart was Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz. Just to name a few.) Why is everyone on television and movies white? There's the idea that audiences won't go for non-white characters, and so by and far whites get leads, non-whites get supporting roles. Then paradoxically those with minority leads, are either not promoted heavily (because of the belief that the work is already doomed to failure), or they're little more than minstrel shows. ("We're going for the 'urban' audience!") Even when stories do have nonwhite leads, they're frequently "white washed." SciFi's production of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea changed the ethnicities of all the characters. The new book Liar, about a black girl, has white girl on the cover. Should this matter? In a perfect post-racial worl
Really? Like what? Mario is white. Hell, everyone in every anime and manga and RPG ever made looks white, unless they're black. Then they're a sambo.