10%? I don't know what the threshold of "homogenous" for you is but to me 90% is very homogenous. America is nearing 50% non-white, which is normally what we mean when we talk about diversity.
"How many crimes are committed by someone trying to callously shortcut the rules of society vs. someone down on their luck or just trying to survive?"
Good question, here's the answer:
* someone trying to callously shortcut the rules of society: 100% * someone down on their luck or just trying to survive: 0%
We don't live in the world of "Les Miserables", okay? In America we feed 100% of people. Nobody has starved to death in America for a century (a laudable social achievement) so there is no excuse for stealing bread in order to live.
Agreed, and we should start by charging you the same rates -- no, even higher rates -- for American medicines, devices and procedures than we charge ourselves. If countries like Canada and Sweden would stop freeloading off of us, it would be a little bit easier to fix our problems with the medical system. Suddenly your number would be 11.5% and ours would be 12% and you wouldn't have as much of a talking point.
You guys are reading it wrong because you're only hearing the words in the news reports. You hear "Tea Party conservatives are opposed to universal health care" and you probably think that Tea Party conservatives are opposed to universal health care. You can be forgiven for responding to the information you hear but what you need to understand is that the news reports don't detail how the Tea Party conservatives are simpleton racists. It is just not possible to convince a simpleton racist to accept their own policy (the new law was a conservative suggestion in the recent past) from a black President. There is literally, not figuratively, nothing whatsoever that Obama could do to get any support from the simpleton racists in the Tea Party.
American health care is more expensive than other countries because we subsidize the healthcare of the rest of the world. You're welcome! You're welcome for all those inexpensive drugs developed by American companies based on American-government-funded basic science and sold to you at a discount. You're welcome! You're welcome for all those medical devices and procedures developed by American doctors in American hospitals having been trained in American universities with the cost borne by the American economy. You're welcome! We don't mind doing you the favor but frankly it's a little unflattering for you to turn around and say it's to our shame that you are freeloading off of us. Gosh, would it be so hard you all to say thank you?
Obesity is a sign of wealth. Americans are wealthy and fat -- we are living the dream, baby! Pass the cheese dip!
I couldn't tell whether the education expenditure counted both public (tax) and private spending. Sweden has tax-paid college education, right? I don't know whether America's private college tuition payments are part of your numbers, but in any case Sweden is getting outspent by Namibia and Cuba and whatever the heck Lethoso is.
And sheesh we do all of that with tax rates less than half of Sweden's. We have problems, sure, but I'm not sure you've focused on the biggest or truest ones. If you want to focus on the way that Sweden is most better than America, focus on the rate of the populace which believes in magic -- Sweden is a century ahead of us there, even though Sweden was a theocracy until 2000.
Low voter participation is a sign that the population is happy with the status of the democracy but the rest of what you said makes sense.
Keep in mind, however, that most of Europe isn't a democracy. A few countries are, but Spain and Sweden are monarchies and the UK is still a theocracy for goodness sake.
It turns out that holding political office is a hell of a lot of work, and most people don't want to do it. (I sure don't, do you?) You know what's worse than an asshole who wants to be a politician and becomes one? A kindhearted marm who becomes a politician despite not at all wanting the job. That marm is going to wash out but the asshole is at least going to perform the job duties -- and with zeal, even.
I don't think there is enough stupidity in the universe to account for Windows. By the natural law of conservation of stupidity, Windows must be an intentional act of misanthropic hatred.
The largest outpouring of money and goods is through taxation and government spending. Whether the money is "donated" doesn't matter; a dollar is a dollar to a person in need.
Good for those churchgoing folks, they open their wallets, but they don't open them as wide as those big-government high-tax-loving secular liberals.
You make a good point in general, but not for this particular chart: "The figure above comes courtesy Chris Landsea of the US National Hurricane Center. It shows the annual intensity of US landfalling hurricanes from 1900 to 2012." To me it sounds as if storms which are not hurricane-level upon landfall would be excluded from this dataset.
Gosh it would be nice if we could have a requirement like that for the corporate charter. Oh, you want corporation protection for your business dealings? Well then we expect you to act in the national interest.
"How do you figure that a college education is a good bargain?"
Great question. College is a good bargain because it has a short payback period. I figure it because people with a college education earn marginally more to pay off their debt in a few years, so anyone who expects to work for more than a few years can get ahead with a college education. (My personal payback period was about eight months. Whoa, eight months of marginal earning to pay back four years of Ivy League education! What a deal!) Professional schools (law, medicine, business) extends the payback period by a few more years but those folks "get to be" lawyers and doctors, and the payback period is still much shorter than a career is.
Also, the average cost of college hasn't gone up much faster than inflation. Only the sticker price of college has shot up so quickly, which is super great because that's one way that rich people help pay for the education of poor people. My alma is something like $55,000 a year. Wow, that's expensive... for me and my family, but not for about a third of people who go there! Those rich folks can afford it, and the poor folks pay less on a sliding scale. It's like a redistributionist's dream come true. Nevertheless, it is true that government support likely increases college costs. Alas, that's the price of expanding access.
Finally, all of these things are irrelevant to the question of whether college is a good bargain: * Tuition prices have vastly outpaced inflation * mainly due to permissive government loan programs * a college degree is the new high school diploma * our colleges seem to be producing more and more well-qualified hamburger flippers. * business, although that is the most popular degree by far. Up 50%
"Dark matter exists" means the same thing as "the numbers don't add up". That's why it's dark, man, that's the whole point. When we figure out what it really is then it won't be dark anymore and the numbers will add up. Then we'll say something along the lines of "in 2021 the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to a team of scientists who discovered definitive evidence that WIMPs are responsible for the phenomenon previously called Dark Matter."
Agreed. The solution is to use statute to redefine "obviousness". That standard should be redefined in statute to match the common understanding of that word instead of the absurd legal definition. You know that thing about a patent not being valid if a person of ordinary skill in the art could reproduce it? To prove that all they should have to do is put twenty programmers on the stand and if ten of them can come up with that solution, then it's invalid. Done. And after that, the troll has to pay costs.
For instance:
"Mr Programmer, if you wanted to make it really easy to buy a product on a webpage, what is the easiest you could possibly make it?" "Well, you could have a button and if you click it, then that's it, you've bought it." "Thank you, Mr Programmer, you just invalidated the 1-click patent. Amazon pays costs."
The conceptual underpinning of patents is theoretically workable, but the actual real-world implementation of patents in our legal system is a travishamockery.
Agreed. Whether or not "free will" exists depends on the definition used. If by "free will" you mean "magic", then no, there's no such thing as magic. If you have some kind of natural definition, then okay.
I do. This is a democracy, so let's have a vote on it. Who wants a bunch of asshole secretive sociopaths to hawk your personal information, gathered surreptitiously, for their own personal profit while you and society suffers? Raise your hands, if you're more than 50% then I'll stop complaining.
In about 2003 or 2004 I lovingly owned an iPod and couldn't wait for the next generation to come out because I was sure it would be all-bluetooth for data transfer. Why would a leading company like Apple stick with a cable? That would be stupid.
Apple is stupid. They not only stuck with cables in general, but they stuck with a proprietary cable. It is precisely that proprietary cable that made me not only stop buying iPods, but stop buying all Apple products.
I didn't watch SNL this week but based on your comment I went and watched the "Gravity"-themed cold open. It didn't make the joke about Clooney and women his age, did they make it some other time during the episode?
Slashdot Mirror
10%? I don't know what the threshold of "homogenous" for you is but to me 90% is very homogenous. America is nearing 50% non-white, which is normally what we mean when we talk about diversity.
"How many crimes are committed by someone trying to callously shortcut the rules of society vs. someone down on their luck or just trying to survive?"
Good question, here's the answer:
* someone trying to callously shortcut the rules of society: 100%
* someone down on their luck or just trying to survive: 0%
We don't live in the world of "Les Miserables", okay? In America we feed 100% of people. Nobody has starved to death in America for a century (a laudable social achievement) so there is no excuse for stealing bread in order to live.
Nah, man, those guys want it to; they're just rhetorical hypocrites.
Agreed, and we should start by charging you the same rates -- no, even higher rates -- for American medicines, devices and procedures than we charge ourselves. If countries like Canada and Sweden would stop freeloading off of us, it would be a little bit easier to fix our problems with the medical system. Suddenly your number would be 11.5% and ours would be 12% and you wouldn't have as much of a talking point.
You guys are reading it wrong because you're only hearing the words in the news reports. You hear "Tea Party conservatives are opposed to universal health care" and you probably think that Tea Party conservatives are opposed to universal health care. You can be forgiven for responding to the information you hear but what you need to understand is that the news reports don't detail how the Tea Party conservatives are simpleton racists. It is just not possible to convince a simpleton racist to accept their own policy (the new law was a conservative suggestion in the recent past) from a black President. There is literally, not figuratively, nothing whatsoever that Obama could do to get any support from the simpleton racists in the Tea Party.
American health care is more expensive than other countries because we subsidize the healthcare of the rest of the world. You're welcome! You're welcome for all those inexpensive drugs developed by American companies based on American-government-funded basic science and sold to you at a discount. You're welcome! You're welcome for all those medical devices and procedures developed by American doctors in American hospitals having been trained in American universities with the cost borne by the American economy. You're welcome! We don't mind doing you the favor but frankly it's a little unflattering for you to turn around and say it's to our shame that you are freeloading off of us. Gosh, would it be so hard you all to say thank you?
Obesity is a sign of wealth. Americans are wealthy and fat -- we are living the dream, baby! Pass the cheese dip!
I couldn't tell whether the education expenditure counted both public (tax) and private spending. Sweden has tax-paid college education, right? I don't know whether America's private college tuition payments are part of your numbers, but in any case Sweden is getting outspent by Namibia and Cuba and whatever the heck Lethoso is.
And sheesh we do all of that with tax rates less than half of Sweden's. We have problems, sure, but I'm not sure you've focused on the biggest or truest ones. If you want to focus on the way that Sweden is most better than America, focus on the rate of the populace which believes in magic -- Sweden is a century ahead of us there, even though Sweden was a theocracy until 2000.
Low voter participation is a sign that the population is happy with the status of the democracy but the rest of what you said makes sense.
Keep in mind, however, that most of Europe isn't a democracy. A few countries are, but Spain and Sweden are monarchies and the UK is still a theocracy for goodness sake.
It turns out that holding political office is a hell of a lot of work, and most people don't want to do it. (I sure don't, do you?) You know what's worse than an asshole who wants to be a politician and becomes one? A kindhearted marm who becomes a politician despite not at all wanting the job. That marm is going to wash out but the asshole is at least going to perform the job duties -- and with zeal, even.
I don't think there is enough stupidity in the universe to account for Windows. By the natural law of conservation of stupidity, Windows must be an intentional act of misanthropic hatred.
The largest outpouring of money and goods is through taxation and government spending. Whether the money is "donated" doesn't matter; a dollar is a dollar to a person in need.
Good for those churchgoing folks, they open their wallets, but they don't open them as wide as those big-government high-tax-loving secular liberals.
By "all of a sudden" do you mean "slowly and steadily increasing for the last two hundred years"?
You make a good point in general, but not for this particular chart: "The figure above comes courtesy Chris Landsea of the US National Hurricane Center. It shows the annual intensity of US landfalling hurricanes from 1900 to 2012." To me it sounds as if storms which are not hurricane-level upon landfall would be excluded from this dataset.
Lame. I've seen hotter videos on my mom's Facebook feed.
Gosh it would be nice if we could have a requirement like that for the corporate charter. Oh, you want corporation protection for your business dealings? Well then we expect you to act in the national interest.
"How do you figure that a college education is a good bargain?"
Great question. College is a good bargain because it has a short payback period. I figure it because people with a college education earn marginally more to pay off their debt in a few years, so anyone who expects to work for more than a few years can get ahead with a college education. (My personal payback period was about eight months. Whoa, eight months of marginal earning to pay back four years of Ivy League education! What a deal!) Professional schools (law, medicine, business) extends the payback period by a few more years but those folks "get to be" lawyers and doctors, and the payback period is still much shorter than a career is.
Also, the average cost of college hasn't gone up much faster than inflation. Only the sticker price of college has shot up so quickly, which is super great because that's one way that rich people help pay for the education of poor people. My alma is something like $55,000 a year. Wow, that's expensive... for me and my family, but not for about a third of people who go there! Those rich folks can afford it, and the poor folks pay less on a sliding scale. It's like a redistributionist's dream come true. Nevertheless, it is true that government support likely increases college costs. Alas, that's the price of expanding access.
Finally, all of these things are irrelevant to the question of whether college is a good bargain:
* Tuition prices have vastly outpaced inflation
* mainly due to permissive government loan programs
* a college degree is the new high school diploma
* our colleges seem to be producing more and more well-qualified hamburger flippers.
* business, although that is the most popular degree by far. Up 50%
Yawn. No. The Tea Party has successfully upended the Republican establishment.
College is expensive but to be a 'bubble' the thing has to be overpriced, whereas a college education is still a spectacularly good bargain.
As a moderate, the thing I "stand for" is "no fucking bullshit". Paul and Kucinich are both full of fucking bullshit.
But if I had to choose between them I would choose Kucinich because of this.
The Tea Party is a successful anti-establishment movement, therefore you are wrong.
"Dark matter exists" means the same thing as "the numbers don't add up". That's why it's dark, man, that's the whole point. When we figure out what it really is then it won't be dark anymore and the numbers will add up. Then we'll say something along the lines of "in 2021 the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to a team of scientists who discovered definitive evidence that WIMPs are responsible for the phenomenon previously called Dark Matter."
Agreed. The solution is to use statute to redefine "obviousness". That standard should be redefined in statute to match the common understanding of that word instead of the absurd legal definition. You know that thing about a patent not being valid if a person of ordinary skill in the art could reproduce it? To prove that all they should have to do is put twenty programmers on the stand and if ten of them can come up with that solution, then it's invalid. Done. And after that, the troll has to pay costs.
For instance:
"Mr Programmer, if you wanted to make it really easy to buy a product on a webpage, what is the easiest you could possibly make it?"
"Well, you could have a button and if you click it, then that's it, you've bought it."
"Thank you, Mr Programmer, you just invalidated the 1-click patent. Amazon pays costs."
The conceptual underpinning of patents is theoretically workable, but the actual real-world implementation of patents in our legal system is a travishamockery.
Agreed. Whether or not "free will" exists depends on the definition used. If by "free will" you mean "magic", then no, there's no such thing as magic. If you have some kind of natural definition, then okay.
"I have no problem with the service they provide"
I do. This is a democracy, so let's have a vote on it. Who wants a bunch of asshole secretive sociopaths to hawk your personal information, gathered surreptitiously, for their own personal profit while you and society suffers? Raise your hands, if you're more than 50% then I'll stop complaining.
In about 2003 or 2004 I lovingly owned an iPod and couldn't wait for the next generation to come out because I was sure it would be all-bluetooth for data transfer. Why would a leading company like Apple stick with a cable? That would be stupid.
Apple is stupid. They not only stuck with cables in general, but they stuck with a proprietary cable. It is precisely that proprietary cable that made me not only stop buying iPods, but stop buying all Apple products.
I didn't watch SNL this week but based on your comment I went and watched the "Gravity"-themed cold open. It didn't make the joke about Clooney and women his age, did they make it some other time during the episode?