IANAL, but it is my understanding, there are sometimes some quasi-legal or even illegal elements in many severance package. At least in California...
.. you cannot sign away your rights to disclose fraud, or other illegal activities
.. you cannot waive federal or state employment discrimination claims including FMLA and Older workers protection act
.. you cannot agree to terms that violate public policy (maybe fostering a culture of intimidation about political beliefs or perhaps related to the law that firing people based on their political beliefs?)
I'm sure the lawyers writing the damn things up attempt to tip-toe around these potholes, to make it non-obvious to the recipient of the severance agreement or at least make them think twice about disclosing certain things, though. My guess that in this case, there is probably just an "understanding" that he wouldn't push the issue any more, but I don't think that a company can simply have an employee sign-away a company's legal liability in an employee severance package, because that appears to me that any such clauses of the contract would not actually be enforceable (at least in California).
One potential loophole is to attempt to use the exemption (91.321 Carriage of candidates in elections)...
Say, have any potential passengers sign up to be candidates in an election for some public office (create a town in the middle of nowhere called 'Airpool' and everyone who signs up to run for mayor is now part of the club where they can access flight sharing).
Of course these folks aren't doing that, but there are of course probably some more realistic loophole in the code...
Maybe, most undergrad educations are the same, but a degree from Harvard says you got accepted to Harvard.
There was a follow-up study (Dale-Kruger) to a interesting study a while back that more-or-less concluded it's more important that you apply to Ivy school, but even if you don't get in, still go to a decent school. Krueger and Dale found that for students bright enough to win admission to a top school, later income "varied little, no matter which type of college they attended." In other words, the student, not the school, was responsible for the success.
In fact the data actually suggested that it didn't even mater that much if you even were admitted into that elite school, only that you had the ego/self-confidence to apply to an elite school.
AFAIK, There is no "trade-secret" law to weaken that is independent of misappropriation of business information through theft, bribery, misrepresentation, breach or inducement of a breach of a duty to maintain secrecy, or espionage.
Note that a trade-secret is not protected from reverse engineering and is limited in time until it is common knowledge to the people that could use it profitably.
Couldn't Kickstarter just act as the majority investor and vote based on a poll of people who contributed?
So Kickstarter becomes the sole investor, with a 51% share or whatever of voting power, they put up a poll to all who contributed saying "Should we allow the Facebook acquisition?" and if 70% of contributors say no, Kickstarter blocks it?
Yes kickstarter could change their charter to do this, but I'm guessing they don't want to because under most state laws, being a mutually-owned company, they would be on the hook to seek/verify *accurate* information about the companies that they invest in and potentially provide some of that information to the (non-accredited) investors. Instead Kickstarter does not seek and does not provide information. Information is provided simply by the project directly to the backers often simply through unverified facebook accounts. Kickstarter is not involved in any way in the information loop and I doubt they want to be so as to encourage a large number of projects and to keep their butts out of the litigation chairs.
GSV is an example of a closed-end mutual fund company that did something like this. The problem as I mentioned is that the investors are not investing in the companies like Facebook, but in GSV. It would be like investing in Kickstarter, not Oculus. For ever Oculus, there are inevitably duds, and this is why closed-end mutual fund companies like have a pretty poor performance record.
New regulations are being drafted that might change the landscape of crowdfunding over the next few years, but reducing reporting requirements for investments under the $500 level and allowing for more solicitation/advertising. Who knows, maybe if the regulations are liberal enough some organization like kickstarter might take that plunge (but I doubt it). Remember, with this route, you don't get rewards, you get equity and with startup ventures, often equity is less valuable than toilet paper. For example, the "c-level" staff of a startup venture for instance could take a business trip to Hawaii with your funds as a team building exercise and it's likely you wouldn't be the wiser... There's a reason that they restrict this stuff to sophisticated investors that have staff to audit finances and select key management staff and board members.
What Mt. Gox did was not fraud in the US because they were not operating in the US as a bank, only as a money services business which is mostly only concerned with reporting to prevent money-laundering.
What Mt. Gox did was not yet fraud in Japan because they claim it to be theft (someone stole their bitcoins) and there are currently no regulated monetary reserve requirements for such an enterprise (e.g., the mere fact that they didn't hold the bitcoins doesn't constitute fraud). However, it could turn out to be fraud, if it wasn't really theft and they did something fishy and didn't tell anyone.
Even if Mt. Gox was a bank, just because someone bank employee is embezzling money from a bank and if the bank knows this doesn't tell anyone for a month and the bank eventually declares bankruptcy, doesn't necessarily make it fraud (even if they continue to take deposits during this time). It all depends on when the bank knew they were insolvent, not when they knew they lost some money...
If you want a car analogy, you shouldn't generally willing hand over your car to someone that is judgment proof (e.g, no assets, no insurance), because if they lose the car, unfortunately, you are the one that has lost the car... You might try to assert that they fraudulently tricked you out of your car, but that's a loser case...
AFAIK, SEC regulation do not strictly prevent companies from selling unregistered shares to unaccredited investors. Rules 505 and 506 allows a company to sell unregistered shares to up to 35 unaccredited investors (and an unlimited number of accredited investors). This limit of 35 unaccredited investors is the thing that kickstarter bumps up against.
However, there is another way to do this. It is actually possible to start a "closed-end" registered investment company (like a mutual fund company) that can invest in startup companies as an accredited investor. This investment company could accept money from unaccredited investors and this money can be invested in some startup companies.
Sadly, the track record of such companies is pretty poor.
For a recent example, consider GSV which was able to use this strategy to allow unaccredited investors to put money into Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga before they went public. The problem is that the liquid value of closed-end fund, is not the value of the underlying securities, but the resale value of your share in the investment company. This is because in a closed end fund, you have to sell your share in the investment company to someone else (the fund won't buy it back from you). In the GSV case, the share value of GSV was driven up by the promise of getting in on a pre-ipo Facebook investment, but it then crashed when the Facebook ipo didn't perform as well as expected.
Also you can sell $3001 worth of bitcoins to your friend in some other country for $1.. and well, what happens next is unknown.
Actually, it's not the amount of money you sell your property for, it's what the "fair market value" is at the time of sale.
Just like the stock that you give to your friend in some other country, you must report the "loss" relative to the FMV from some well known exchange (say like a quote on the close of day of Nasdaq if the stock was listed there). Since there (still) exists some well known exchanges for Bitcoin, I imagine that it would be prudent to use a well established FMV for bitcoin as well..
Of course you could just manufacture your own Bitcoin FMV on your date of sale and use that as the basis of your "loss" report to the IRS on your tax return instead... and well, what happens next is unknown.
I guess you are throwing the right of self determination out of the window dude. What sort of international law are you talking about? It's funny because in Kosovo, there was no referendum at all, it became independent just by bombing. The alaska thing is straw man, it was sold to the US.
Ironically, Alaska was sold to the US in part** to help pay for Russia's war debt incurred during the Crimean War (and in recognition that it would likely loose the territory anyways in a war with Britain as well)...
The reason it took so long to close the Alaska deal (1859-1867) was that the US was fighting its own right-of-self-determination referendum (aka US Civil War) and that temporarily interrupted negotiations. I don't remember how that referendum turned out...;^P
Fortunately for the US, we kicked out most of the 700 Russians in Alaska shortly after annexing (a small part of the off-color history General Jefferson C. Davis), so there would unlikely to be a vote similar to Crimea the matter of rejoining Russia...
On the other hand, I'm sure some high ranking democrats would be happy to support Alaska going to the other red team to make room for Puerto Rico, so you never know...
** the other part was to pay the debts associated with the 1861 Russian Peasant reforms...
This electronic thinking cap seems like it will be slightly more pleasant than someone having "a little mental handicap radio in his ear" which emits "some sharp noise to keep people... from taking unfair advantage of their brains."
For those that wish for the singularity, sadly there's a 50-50 chance of it slipping into a dystopian singularity of forced equality or a professional sports analogy to "The Dark Fields". These possibilities appear to be nearly upon us and we don't even seem realize it... The spirit of Diana must be smiling... Maybe we should attempt to keep such eventualities at bay for a while by take those things out of our ears, oh wait, maybe that's too late for that;^)
OR.... you could just put a radio telescope at earth-sun L2 and call it a day. That's where we seem to put all those new fangled telescopes these days...
Putting a telescope (radio or otherwise) on the far side of the moon might make it hard to relay the data back to earth (being able to be bathed in the RF light of the earth also implies the reverse that such a telescope could transmit its data back to us poor folks on earth using RF and not try to relay it back to earth through some other potentially unreliable means.
The far side of the moon is indeed the dark side. Just not in the visible spectrum. Earth gives off a fantastic glow in a certain (large) band of frequencies due to our love for omnidirectional RF transmissions. If your eyes could see 3m wavelength, you'd be arguing that it really is the dark side of the moon.
Considering the sun also gives off a large amount of omnidirectional RF transmissions too, the far-side of the moon is not really dark in that part of the spectrum either (except when it's also pointed away from the sun during a full-moon)...
It has nothing to do with not wanting to believe it - they do believe it but theyve made the decision to take the risk anyway, which is their choice to make.
I don't think you understand. They actually fundamentally really don't believe it. It's like cognitive dissonance you experience in your 20's when you think you are invincible and believe that you won't die because the rules don't apply to you... Some may tip their hats to said rules but still do not acknowledge that there is any risk at all *for them* because the rules don't apply to them (for some inexplicable reason). Think of this as a form of confirmation bias that is part of the human condition.
It's just like teenagers having unprotected sex and then ending up pregnant or with AIDS. Such teenagers haven't (usually) made a conscious choice to take a risk, they honestly don't believe they can get pregnant or catch AIDS (for some inexplicable reason that probably wouldn't make any sense if you say it out loud). Of course the belief is misguided (and wrong), but it is their honestly true belief...
I know some folks who like smoking so much that they dismiss any information that says it's bad for you because they don't want to believe it. Then again, some folks smoke until their 90s, never get emphysema, and eventually die of old age (knew one of them).
I also know some folks who appear to be addicted to all-nighters (like a runner's high, they apparently get some sort of high from staying up too long)... Then again, most of them smoke too, so maybe there's some sort of correlation.
Me, I'm not taking any chances on smoking or any unnecessary all-nighters. Sadly, unlike cigarettes, sometimes all-nighters are necessary (but not many).
I think this is part of the problem in Africa, working hard, studying are seen as bad white traits.
You literally have no idea about Africa if you make that kind of statement.
It's a bit anecdotal, but I know several people (about 1/2 of them "white/mixed") who grew up in Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria. According to them, most people in Africa don't even think about "whites". The biggest problems in Africa today are corruption and war. There are plenty of smart people in most countries there, but they have no access to good schools or jobs. Given the economic situation, many have to work very hard just to put food on the table. Everyone they know seems to want to send their kids to the best school they can (which is usually private) and they try to get their kids to study as much as they can.
The problem is that because of the huge human displacement in Africa (economic, war, etc), there are lots of young kids where their best option is to join a war-gang. This is a sad development, but not because that working hard and studying is a bad white trait.
In my estimation (talking to people I know who live in various places around the world, Africa, Asia, India, Western Europe, South America), this anti-intellectual attitude is primarily an American phenomena (black, white, Asian, it doesn't matter). I don't think you see this in other areas of the world as much as you see it here.
Of course, there is selection bias. In the US, nearly every college-bound person takes the SAT. In other countries, on those that want to attend schools in the US take the SAT. Those that think they can get accepted to schools that are in in the US instead of their home country will likely be applying to top schools (why waste your money otherwise), and if they are applying to top schools they will probably be in the set of people that score better on the SAT on average than your average joe/jane college-bound US student.
Well, that works if they are allowed to do so. If they are just forced to sit and watch while the remedial students are helped, or the other gifted students get that little guidance - as they mostly are in today's American schools - it doesn't work too well.
In my school they used to make the gifted students tutor the remedial students. It actually works better than you think it might as it generally requires more insight into a topic and a problem and the to be able to teach it to someone than to just be able to figure out one way to get an answer...
Of course helping your fellow student is likely a foreign concept to many people (who expect that they shouldn't have to do the teachers "job", ignoring the fact that it's often possible to learn even more by teaching somebody something simple)...
Sorry, that was pointer to BICEP1, this new stuff came from BICEP2 which operated from Jan 2010->Dec 2012... It takes a while to develop the analytics through 3 years of data...
Here's a pointer to the preprint of the "new" paper dated today.
Basically sifting through information gathered from older CMB detectors, they discovered a statistical B-mode in the data that could have come from gravitational wave that occurred during inflation, but the data was really too noisy to be sure.
The new news is they used a new detectors which are capable of making cleaner measurements to convince themselves that the detected B-mode was unlikely to come from gravitational lensing after the big-bang. The current evidence apparently is consistent with the B-mode coming from a gravitational waves that are predicted to occur during the inflationary period of the universe.
However, keep in mind, if you actually live in NJ, you are essentially screwing over the state you live in, so it's not a clear cut win for you give your hard earned money to Pennsylvania (in your example).
You also have to benefit from that sales tax. My take is that New Jersey will miss your sales tax more than you will.
Not if they raise other tax rates to make up for lost revenue... One might think that some how paying tax is kind of like a multi-way prisoner's dilemma between other tax payers, but in reality, the government will get their money some other way, and on that other game (a different tax revenue source), you may be the loser...
If you are in the upper 50%, making sure state revenue comes from paying sales tax and sin taxes is a net win (because sin and sales taxes tends to be highly regressive), but if you are in the lower 50%, rooting for luxury taxes and higher state income tax instead of sin and sales tax is a better way to minimize your contribution to government. I suspect that someone considering buying a Tesla in another state would be in the upper 50% (just an assumption).
Actually, in many states, when you buy a car, you can get a out-of-state delivery rider on the sales contract and not pay sales tax in the state you buy the car in and just pay the use tax on the state that you intend to register/license the car in. This is often done to facilitate title transfer for car brokers (that don't register cars, but still need to transfer title and move cars interstate).
I did this with one car I bought out of state (to simplify the paperwork and still not pay sales tax twice). Of course if your goal is to screw-over NJ for not allowing a Tesla dealership, you would of course pay as much of the sales tax to another state. However, keep in mind, if you actually live in NJ, you are essentially screwing over the state you live in, so it's not a clear cut win for you give your hard earned money to Pennsylvania (in your example).
NY isn't the only state with a so-called exit tax.
One way that states apply an virtual exit tax is change the tax exemption status instead of pro-rating it. For example with property tax, such that if you leave the state, you end up paying a higher rate (e.g., lose the primary residence exemption on your property tax bill) vs if you moved within the same state you could pro-rate your exemption between 2 properties.
Another way is to have a separate rate for a transfer tax for non-residents (meaning it applies if you die or move). California was proposing this.
Another way is to blatantly add a surcharge (I think Yonkers has something like this)
Even if there isn't any actual tax liability, if you move out of the state, they will often chase you around claiming part of your income was derived from the state and you owe taxes on that amount. Say if you file your tax return from 2010-2012 in NY, then in 2013 you move say to Nevada and file a 2013 part year tax return for NY thinking you are in the clear for NY. Later in 2014 you only file federal taxes in Nevada, sometime in 2015 NY discovers that you never filed a NY state tax return for 2014, but the Feds got a 2014 return for you. They immediately send you a notice in the mail, that they have noted on your 2014 Federal Return that you had $X amount of adjusted gross income, and since you didn't file a NY tax return they "estimate" that $Y was earned in NY and as a out-of-state residence you should pay taxes on this amount (one theory they use is non-deductibility of state income tax for non-residents) . You can either fight this shake-down and show that none of the income was earned in NY, or just pay $Y.
There's a BBC doc somewhere about the factories in China that make the "real" branded sunglasses. It's a bunch of Chinese workers in a nondescript white room operating injection molding machines. Some guy calls out "Switch!" in Cantonese, the workers swap out the dies, and it's Guccis for the next two hours.
It's actually not hard to see why this is the case. What you see as many retail brands is really just a few companies...
Luxottica (which also owns Lens Crafters), Marchon (owned by VSP), and Safilo, plus a few smaller companies...
I think together the top three make up over 70% of the market.
Slashdot Mirror
IANAL, but it is my understanding, there are sometimes some quasi-legal or even illegal elements in many severance package. At least in California...
.. you cannot sign away your rights to disclose fraud, or other illegal activities
.. you cannot waive federal or state employment discrimination claims including FMLA and Older workers protection act
.. you cannot agree to terms that violate public policy (maybe fostering a culture of intimidation about political beliefs or perhaps related to the law that firing people based on their political beliefs?)
I'm sure the lawyers writing the damn things up attempt to tip-toe around these potholes, to make it non-obvious to the recipient of the severance agreement or at least make them think twice about disclosing certain things, though. My guess that in this case, there is probably just an "understanding" that he wouldn't push the issue any more, but I don't think that a company can simply have an employee sign-away a company's legal liability in an employee severance package, because that appears to me that any such clauses of the contract would not actually be enforceable (at least in California).
One potential loophole is to attempt to use the exemption (91.321 Carriage of candidates in elections)...
Say, have any potential passengers sign up to be candidates in an election for some public office (create a town in the middle of nowhere called 'Airpool' and everyone who signs up to run for mayor is now part of the club where they can access flight sharing).
Of course these folks aren't doing that, but there are of course probably some more realistic loophole in the code...
Maybe, most undergrad educations are the same, but a degree from Harvard says you got accepted to Harvard.
There was a follow-up study (Dale-Kruger) to a interesting study a while back that more-or-less concluded it's more important that you apply to Ivy school, but even if you don't get in, still go to a decent school. Krueger and Dale found that for students bright enough to win admission to a top school, later income "varied little, no matter which type of college they attended." In other words, the student, not the school, was responsible for the success.
In fact the data actually suggested that it didn't even mater that much if you even were admitted into that elite school, only that you had the ego/self-confidence to apply to an elite school.
AFAIK, There is no "trade-secret" law to weaken that is independent of misappropriation of business information through theft, bribery, misrepresentation, breach or inducement of a breach of a duty to maintain secrecy, or espionage.
Note that a trade-secret is not protected from reverse engineering and is limited in time until it is common knowledge to the people that could use it profitably.
Couldn't Kickstarter just act as the majority investor and vote based on a poll of people who contributed?
So Kickstarter becomes the sole investor, with a 51% share or whatever of voting power, they put up a poll to all who contributed saying "Should we allow the Facebook acquisition?" and if 70% of contributors say no, Kickstarter blocks it?
Yes kickstarter could change their charter to do this, but I'm guessing they don't want to because under most state laws, being a mutually-owned company, they would be on the hook to seek/verify *accurate* information about the companies that they invest in and potentially provide some of that information to the (non-accredited) investors. Instead Kickstarter does not seek and does not provide information. Information is provided simply by the project directly to the backers often simply through unverified facebook accounts. Kickstarter is not involved in any way in the information loop and I doubt they want to be so as to encourage a large number of projects and to keep their butts out of the litigation chairs.
GSV is an example of a closed-end mutual fund company that did something like this. The problem as I mentioned is that the investors are not investing in the companies like Facebook, but in GSV. It would be like investing in Kickstarter, not Oculus. For ever Oculus, there are inevitably duds, and this is why closed-end mutual fund companies like have a pretty poor performance record.
New regulations are being drafted that might change the landscape of crowdfunding over the next few years, but reducing reporting requirements for investments under the $500 level and allowing for more solicitation/advertising. Who knows, maybe if the regulations are liberal enough some organization like kickstarter might take that plunge (but I doubt it). Remember, with this route, you don't get rewards, you get equity and with startup ventures, often equity is less valuable than toilet paper. For example, the "c-level" staff of a startup venture for instance could take a business trip to Hawaii with your funds as a team building exercise and it's likely you wouldn't be the wiser... There's a reason that they restrict this stuff to sophisticated investors that have staff to audit finances and select key management staff and board members.
What Mt. Gox did was not fraud in the US because they were not operating in the US as a bank, only as a money services business which is mostly only concerned with reporting to prevent money-laundering.
What Mt. Gox did was not yet fraud in Japan because they claim it to be theft (someone stole their bitcoins) and there are currently no regulated monetary reserve requirements for such an enterprise (e.g., the mere fact that they didn't hold the bitcoins doesn't constitute fraud). However, it could turn out to be fraud, if it wasn't really theft and they did something fishy and didn't tell anyone.
Even if Mt. Gox was a bank, just because someone bank employee is embezzling money from a bank and if the bank knows this doesn't tell anyone for a month and the bank eventually declares bankruptcy, doesn't necessarily make it fraud (even if they continue to take deposits during this time). It all depends on when the bank knew they were insolvent, not when they knew they lost some money...
If you want a car analogy, you shouldn't generally willing hand over your car to someone that is judgment proof (e.g, no assets, no insurance), because if they lose the car, unfortunately, you are the one that has lost the car... You might try to assert that they fraudulently tricked you out of your car, but that's a loser case...
AFAIK, SEC regulation do not strictly prevent companies from selling unregistered shares to unaccredited investors.
Rules 505 and 506 allows a company to sell unregistered shares to up to 35 unaccredited investors (and an unlimited number of accredited investors). This limit of 35 unaccredited investors is the thing that kickstarter bumps up against.
However, there is another way to do this. It is actually possible to start a "closed-end" registered investment company (like a mutual fund company) that can invest in startup companies as an accredited investor. This investment company could accept money from unaccredited investors and this money can be invested in some startup companies.
Sadly, the track record of such companies is pretty poor.
For a recent example, consider GSV which was able to use this strategy to allow unaccredited investors to put money into Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga before they went public. The problem is that the liquid value of closed-end fund, is not the value of the underlying securities, but the resale value of your share in the investment company. This is because in a closed end fund, you have to sell your share in the investment company to someone else (the fund won't buy it back from you). In the GSV case, the share value of GSV was driven up by the promise of getting in on a pre-ipo Facebook investment, but it then crashed when the Facebook ipo didn't perform as well as expected.
Also you can sell $3001 worth of bitcoins to your friend in some other country for $1 .. and well, what happens next is unknown.
Actually, it's not the amount of money you sell your property for, it's what the "fair market value" is at the time of sale.
Just like the stock that you give to your friend in some other country, you must report the "loss" relative to the FMV from some well known exchange (say like a quote on the close of day of Nasdaq if the stock was listed there). Since there (still) exists some well known exchanges for Bitcoin, I imagine that it would be prudent to use a well established FMV for bitcoin as well..
Of course you could just manufacture your own Bitcoin FMV on your date of sale and use that as the basis of your "loss" report to the IRS on your tax return instead. .. and well, what happens next is unknown.
I guess you are throwing the right of self determination out of the window dude. What sort of international law are you talking about? It's funny because in Kosovo, there was no referendum at all, it became independent just by bombing. The alaska thing is straw man, it was sold to the US.
Ironically, Alaska was sold to the US in part** to help pay for Russia's war debt incurred during the Crimean War (and in recognition that it would likely loose the territory anyways in a war with Britain as well) ...
The reason it took so long to close the Alaska deal (1859-1867) was that the US was fighting its own right-of-self-determination referendum (aka US Civil War) and that temporarily interrupted negotiations. I don't remember how that referendum turned out... ;^P
Fortunately for the US, we kicked out most of the 700 Russians in Alaska shortly after annexing (a small part of the off-color history General Jefferson C. Davis), so there would unlikely to be a vote similar to Crimea the matter of rejoining Russia...
On the other hand, I'm sure some high ranking democrats would be happy to support Alaska going to the other red team to make room for Puerto Rico, so you never know...
** the other part was to pay the debts associated with the 1861 Russian Peasant reforms...
This electronic thinking cap seems like it will be slightly more pleasant than someone having "a little mental handicap radio in his ear" which emits "some sharp noise to keep people... from taking unfair advantage of their brains."
For those that wish for the singularity, sadly there's a 50-50 chance of it slipping into a dystopian singularity of forced equality or a professional sports analogy to "The Dark Fields". These possibilities appear to be nearly upon us and we don't even seem realize it... The spirit of Diana must be smiling... Maybe we should attempt to keep such eventualities at bay for a while by take those things out of our ears, oh wait, maybe that's too late for that ;^)
OR.... you could just put a radio telescope at earth-sun L2 and call it a day. That's where we seem to put all those new fangled telescopes these days...
Putting a telescope (radio or otherwise) on the far side of the moon might make it hard to relay the data back to earth (being able to be bathed in the RF light of the earth also implies the reverse that such a telescope could transmit its data back to us poor folks on earth using RF and not try to relay it back to earth through some other potentially unreliable means.
The far side of the moon is indeed the dark side. Just not in the visible spectrum.
Earth gives off a fantastic glow in a certain (large) band of frequencies due to our love for omnidirectional RF transmissions. If your eyes could see 3m wavelength, you'd be arguing that it really is the dark side of the moon.
Considering the sun also gives off a large amount of omnidirectional RF transmissions too, the far-side of the moon is not really dark in that part of the spectrum either (except when it's also pointed away from the sun during a full-moon)...
It has nothing to do with not wanting to believe it - they do believe it but theyve made the decision to take the risk anyway, which is their choice to make.
I don't think you understand. They actually fundamentally really don't believe it. It's like cognitive dissonance you experience in your 20's when you think you are invincible and believe that you won't die because the rules don't apply to you... Some may tip their hats to said rules but still do not acknowledge that there is any risk at all *for them* because the rules don't apply to them (for some inexplicable reason). Think of this as a form of confirmation bias that is part of the human condition.
It's just like teenagers having unprotected sex and then ending up pregnant or with AIDS. Such teenagers haven't (usually) made a conscious choice to take a risk, they honestly don't believe they can get pregnant or catch AIDS (for some inexplicable reason that probably wouldn't make any sense if you say it out loud). Of course the belief is misguided (and wrong), but it is their honestly true belief...
It's just like global warming... *ducks* ;^}
I know some folks who like smoking so much that they dismiss any information that says it's bad for you because they don't want to believe it. Then again, some folks smoke until their 90s, never get emphysema, and eventually die of old age (knew one of them).
I also know some folks who appear to be addicted to all-nighters (like a runner's high, they apparently get some sort of high from staying up too long)... Then again, most of them smoke too, so maybe there's some sort of correlation.
Me, I'm not taking any chances on smoking or any unnecessary all-nighters. Sadly, unlike cigarettes, sometimes all-nighters are necessary (but not many).
I think this is part of the problem in Africa, working hard, studying are seen as bad white traits.
You literally have no idea about Africa if you make that kind of statement.
It's a bit anecdotal, but I know several people (about 1/2 of them "white/mixed") who grew up in Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria. According to them, most people in Africa don't even think about "whites". The biggest problems in Africa today are corruption and war. There are plenty of smart people in most countries there, but they have no access to good schools or jobs. Given the economic situation, many have to work very hard just to put food on the table. Everyone they know seems to want to send their kids to the best school they can (which is usually private) and they try to get their kids to study as much as they can.
The problem is that because of the huge human displacement in Africa (economic, war, etc), there are lots of young kids where their best option is to join a war-gang. This is a sad development, but not because that working hard and studying is a bad white trait.
In my estimation (talking to people I know who live in various places around the world, Africa, Asia, India, Western Europe, South America), this anti-intellectual attitude is primarily an American phenomena (black, white, Asian, it doesn't matter). I don't think you see this in other areas of the world as much as you see it here.
The person that seems to have the most alignment with this message is Bill Cosby.
Sadly, many of the young'ns don't know much about him... Maybe his new show can provide a platform for his message.
Of course, there is selection bias. In the US, nearly every college-bound person takes the SAT. In other countries, on those that want to attend schools in the US take the SAT. Those that think they can get accepted to schools that are in in the US instead of their home country will likely be applying to top schools (why waste your money otherwise), and if they are applying to top schools they will probably be in the set of people that score better on the SAT on average than your average joe/jane college-bound US student.
Well, that works if they are allowed to do so. If they are just forced to sit and watch while the remedial students are helped, or the other gifted students get that little guidance - as they mostly are in today's American schools - it doesn't work too well.
In my school they used to make the gifted students tutor the remedial students. It actually works better than you think it might as it generally requires more insight into a topic and a problem and the to be able to teach it to someone than to just be able to figure out one way to get an answer...
Of course helping your fellow student is likely a foreign concept to many people (who expect that they shouldn't have to do the teachers "job", ignoring the fact that it's often possible to learn even more by teaching somebody something simple)...
Sorry, that was pointer to BICEP1, this new stuff came from BICEP2 which operated from Jan 2010->Dec 2012... It takes a while to develop the analytics through 3 years of data...
Here's a pointer to the preprint of the "new" paper dated today.
NOTHING escapes a black hole...
Perhaps so, unless of course you believe Stephen Hawkings...
This was the old news...
Basically sifting through information gathered from older CMB detectors, they discovered a statistical B-mode in the data that could have come from gravitational wave that occurred during inflation, but the data was really too noisy to be sure.
The new news is they used a new detectors which are capable of making cleaner measurements to convince themselves that the detected B-mode was unlikely to come from gravitational lensing after the big-bang. The current evidence apparently is consistent with the B-mode coming from a gravitational waves that are predicted to occur during the inflationary period of the universe.
However, keep in mind, if you actually live in NJ, you are essentially screwing over the state you live in, so it's not a clear cut win for you give your hard earned money to Pennsylvania (in your example).
You also have to benefit from that sales tax. My take is that New Jersey will miss your sales tax more than you will.
Not if they raise other tax rates to make up for lost revenue... One might think that some how paying tax is kind of like a multi-way prisoner's dilemma between other tax payers, but in reality, the government will get their money some other way, and on that other game (a different tax revenue source), you may be the loser...
If you are in the upper 50%, making sure state revenue comes from paying sales tax and sin taxes is a net win (because sin and sales taxes tends to be highly regressive), but if you are in the lower 50%, rooting for luxury taxes and higher state income tax instead of sin and sales tax is a better way to minimize your contribution to government. I suspect that someone considering buying a Tesla in another state would be in the upper 50% (just an assumption).
Actually, in many states, when you buy a car, you can get a out-of-state delivery rider on the sales contract and not pay sales tax in the state you buy the car in and just pay the use tax on the state that you intend to register/license the car in. This is often done to facilitate title transfer for car brokers (that don't register cars, but still need to transfer title and move cars interstate).
I did this with one car I bought out of state (to simplify the paperwork and still not pay sales tax twice). Of course if your goal is to screw-over NJ for not allowing a Tesla dealership, you would of course pay as much of the sales tax to another state. However, keep in mind, if you actually live in NJ, you are essentially screwing over the state you live in, so it's not a clear cut win for you give your hard earned money to Pennsylvania (in your example).
NY isn't the only state with a so-called exit tax.
One way that states apply an virtual exit tax is change the tax exemption status instead of pro-rating it. For example with property tax, such that if you leave the state, you end up paying a higher rate (e.g., lose the primary residence exemption on your property tax bill) vs if you moved within the same state you could pro-rate your exemption between 2 properties.
Another way is to have a separate rate for a transfer tax for non-residents (meaning it applies if you die or move). California was proposing this.
Another way is to blatantly add a surcharge (I think Yonkers has something like this)
Even if there isn't any actual tax liability, if you move out of the state, they will often chase you around claiming part of your income was derived from the state and you owe taxes on that amount. Say if you file your tax return from 2010-2012 in NY, then in 2013 you move say to Nevada and file a 2013 part year tax return for NY thinking you are in the clear for NY. Later in 2014 you only file federal taxes in Nevada, sometime in 2015 NY discovers that you never filed a NY state tax return for 2014, but the Feds got a 2014 return for you. They immediately send you a notice in the mail, that they have noted on your 2014 Federal Return that you had $X amount of adjusted gross income, and since you didn't file a NY tax return they "estimate" that $Y was earned in NY and as a out-of-state residence you should pay taxes on this amount (one theory they use is non-deductibility of state income tax for non-residents) . You can either fight this shake-down and show that none of the income was earned in NY, or just pay $Y.
There's a BBC doc somewhere about the factories in China that make the "real" branded sunglasses. It's a bunch of Chinese workers in a nondescript white room operating injection molding machines. Some guy calls out "Switch!" in Cantonese, the workers swap out the dies, and it's Guccis for the next two hours.
It's actually not hard to see why this is the case. What you see as many retail brands is really just a few companies...
Luxottica (which also owns Lens Crafters), Marchon (owned by VSP), and Safilo, plus a few smaller companies...
I think together the top three make up over 70% of the market.