You're ignoring the net present value of all the profit opportunities lost as technologies like GPS or the Internet take decades to emerge. It's beneficial to private industry for the government to take on high risk, long term payback applied research, and if you look at the *actual* budget data (instead of arguing from theoretical principles like a philosophe), you'll see that public applied R&D is *not* breaking the budget.
True, demanding something doesn't guarantee you get it. On the other hand, *not* demanding something *does* guarantee you won't get it.
If nobody in the government demanded a satellite based navigation system, there wouldn't be GPS. If nobody in the government demanded a robust, survivable way of transporting data packets between heterogeneous networks, there wouldn't be the Internet. If nobody in the government demanded a way of automating a wide variety of computations, the computer as we know it wouldn't exist. Same goes for the polio vaccine -- if you don't think that's a big deal ask someone brought up before the Salk vaccine was introduced.
Unlike the iPad or the filtered cigarette, these things were not going to be invented by the private sector (at least not soon) because once you discounted the probable profits by risk, uncertainty and delay, they weren't attractive private investments. On the other hand, the immense public need for these things justified the government investment in removing the initial uncertainties. Once the risky and uncertain parts of the problem are solved, then private investment is clearly a more efficient vehicle for making marginal improvements, which add up quickly. Kind of like shifting responsibility for low Earth orbit launches to private companies.
You don't think that maybe you're just using ancillary data to paint an inaccurate picture? There's far more dialogue now than there was 30 years ago about the topic, and the loudest and most persistent ARE the crazies (on both sides).
There was plenty of dialog in the 80s, if you knew were to look. My wife is an oceanographer and I followed the debate in the scientific journals she reads and in the science press (Science News). If you look through collections of scientific abstracts you'll see the origins of debate go all the way back to the 1950s when the consensus was that the globe was heading for a cooling period. As data to the contrary emerged, the volume of dialogue increased until the 80s and 90s, when climate change and anthropogenic climate change were hot topics.
The crazies didn't get into the discussion until it the scientific debate was largely over. Although there's always room for contrarian papers, those papers *were* contrarian because a new scientific consensus emerged. Given that consensus, AGW became a policy issue, and therefore a political one, and that is when the lunacy started.
It may be true that there are crazies on both sides but that's neither here nor there. There always are crazies in any political controversy. That doesn't mean that both sides are equally right. *One* side is backed by scientific consensus, the other is not.
When you lump everybody that questions MMGW together, and refer to them collectively as "Denialists" - anything YOU have to say about them makes you look like a drooling retard.
I don't lump everyone that questions AGW together. I lump the *denialists* together. They're the people who won't accept any evidence of man-made climate change whatsoever. Thirty years ago they formed only a tiny fraction of climate change skeptics. Today they're the bulk of the climate change skeptics.
It's normal for central banks to invest in US treasuries, and the US Fed isn't the only one. About 40% of US treasury securities are purchased by foreigners in the last month we had figures for.
I understand your concern about savings losing value, but inflation has been running lower this year than last year ever since march. It looks like we'll be ending the year with an annual inflation rate just a tad below average for the last ten years. While your scenario is worth considering, we aren't seeing any evidence that it's actually happening.
Well, being a software developer, I can believe that Google has a 400 year lead if you stipulate that Apple has to *fix* the product it has now rather than develop an entirely new one.
That said, I expect if Google really claimed it had a 400 year lead it probably meant 400 man-years.
Before you give up, I think it's worthwhile to examine the kernel of truth in the denialist position.
When you force a denialist into the corner he'll pull out this chestnut: the history of climate shows greater differences than we're talking about for the next century; there's no "right" temperature for the globe. There's more than a kernel of truth in this, it just misses the fact that there's a big difference between changes that happen over the course of many lifetimes or many lifetimes in the future, and change that happens in the lifetime of people currently inhabiting the planet. It's a bit like somebody saying "fire is part of the natural forest lifecycle" then throwing his lit cigarette butt onto the dry forest floor.
The differences between conservatives and liberals on this issue is that conservatives fear change we'd have to do something about, and liberals fear change we can't do anything about. But I content there are no such changes we cannot do anything about.
Humans are adaptable. Change is traumatic, but we can adapt to a "new normal". On one of my favorite forest walks I encounter a visible sign of climate change: a dying grove of eastern hemolock (Tsuga canadensis). Twenty years ago walking into the grove in summer was like walking into a refrigerator. You could not see a patch of sky through the canopy, and sometimes snow drifts survived til June under the eaves of the grove. What's killing the grove is the wooly adgelid, an Asian insect whose northward range is limited by cold winters. When that grove finally dies I will miss it, but future generations won't. They'll see the black birch and rhododendron that replace it as normal, the way I see the red oak and Norway maple that replaced the American Chestnut (once the dominant hardwood species in N. America) as normal. Something will be lost but everyone won't experience loss, just those of us who remember what we used to have. *We* will experience loss, as will our children and grandchildren; but our great-great-great grandchildren won't.
So what can we do about climate change? First, it's far from clear we can't stop it; we've been so busy debating (at least in political circles) whether climate is changing at all that we haven't really put any serious thought into stopping it. It's far too early to give up hope.
It's also quite feasible that change can be slowed. People tend to underestimate the utility of that. There's a big difference between a 100cm sea level rise in 100 years and 100cm rise in 200 years; it's much easier and less traumatic to adapt to gradual change than sudden change.
And we can face squarely the changes that are coming rather than pretending they won't or wringing our hands. That includes preparing for the loss of coastal property and accommodating populations as they abandon of some currently habitable areas. It includes preparing for the emergence of new diseases as the geographic range of pathogens and disease vectors expands. There's preserving species in danger of extinction as their habitat shifts out from under them, and changing crops as rainfall patterns change. Those are huge but achievable tasks that are made much easier by a marginal reduction in the rate of change.
Is it scientific spending that is bankrupting the US government?
It behooves us to be precise here, otherwise we risk just parroting talking points. If we use words purely for their emotional impact ('bankruptcy'), we'll just create *new* problems we didn't have before.
Bankruptcy is when you run out of cash. Investors are *eager* to buy US treasury instruments -- to give us cash in other words. In fact they're willing to take interest rates lower than inflation, which means they're willing to *pay us* to hold onto their money for them. So it's simply not the case that the US government is facing bankruptcy, unless politicians choose *deliberate* insolvency. Making desperate moves based on the fear that the government is going bankrupt only creates a new, totally artificial problem: "the fiscal cliff".
The "fiscal cliff" isn't anything like a cliff we're being forced over, at least by financial circumstances. It's simply a massive austerity program that will take huge amounts of money out of the economy due to reduced spending and increased taxation.
Exactly what is forcing us to this desperate situation? Politics. We did *not* have a debt crisis like Greece, as the interest rate the market accepts clearly shows.
Which is not to say that we shouldn't be cutting some expenditures, but the question "which expenses are a waste of money?" It makes no sense to ask "which expenses are bankrupting us?" because if you ask that *no* expenses will be cut.
Why would it matter at all what gender a member of parliament is?
The gender of an *individual* member of parliament shouldn't matter, but the *aggregate* number of women who are influential in some political process that is *not* specifically a "woman's issue" matters if you are keeping score on political equality of the sexes.
The point where women routinely take leadership roles on issues that aren't "just women's issues" is a significant milestone on the path to political equality. We weren't there twenty years ago, when it wouldn't raise any eyebrows to have an all male committee making decisions about things like women's health care. Democracy works better when there's political equality, especially (but not just) for the people who used to be grasping the short end of the stick.
It's OK for guys who like a beer now and then to be taxi drivers or airline pilots. It's not OK for guys who have out-of-control alcohol problems. It's OK for guys attracted to money, status and power to run banks. It's definitely *not* OK for guys whose pursuit of those things eclipse every other human value, including *personal integrity*, which *ought* to be a job requirement for leading a bank, or indeed any other powerful institution.
It alls go back to Aristotle. Virtue is found in moderation. Bravery is the ideal midpoint between rashness and cowardice. Enterprise is the ideal midpoint between greed and sloth. The great capitalists of yore, the ones whom history remembers best, had both titanic personal ambition but also surprisingly public spirited facets to their personalities. Not just the Andrew Carnegies of the world, but the J P Morgans as well.
[Is there enough data] to show this is definitely not a naturally occurring cycle?
That's the wrong question. It's epistemologically broken. The reason is that you can't prove non-existence of something through data. So if your standard of proof is, "show there is no natural process, possibly unknown to current science, which might account for climate trends better than the currently accepted scientific consensus," you will never be satisfied.
So a better question would be, "Is there any evidence that suggests global warming might be due to some natural, cyclical process?" The answer is, there is. In fact *there's bound to be*. But nothing so far has stood up as well as AGW.
That's not for lack of trying. Scientists make their careers by poking holes in the scientific consensus. People are still bringing up data that brings global *warming* into question. Scientific consensus shifted from global cooling in the 1950s to warming in the 1980s, with anthropogenic contributions the prime suspect. In the 90s attacks were made on the validity of historical records, on remote sensing data. Most recently we had the issue of Antarctic sea ice. None of them has proved to indicate a cooling climate. Likewise nobody has been able to rule out AGW as the culprit, but so far every other proposed culprit has been exonerated.
So you have to ask what level of proof you demand. If that involves disproving things we haven't even thought of, you aren't going to be convinced. The suspect was seen walking into the room with a pistol, then leaving a few minutes spattered in blood holding the same smoking pistol. Witnesses entered the room to find the victim shot in the back. They look for other entrances and exits to the room and find none. Is that proof enough for you? Well, I say. You can't prove that there might not be some *other* explanation that that the suspect shot the victim. And maybe there is. Maybe a magician contrived the whole thing, and the victim is still alive. It's possible, but without evidence of that you have to go with what the preponderance of evidence you actually *have*.
No I don't think it is a *pressing* problem. With interest rates at a historical low and the government borrowing at *below* the rate of inflation, it's just not that big a deal right now -- certainly not enough to do things that might slow the rate of economic growth.
When inflation resumes and interest rates rise -- that's a different story.
But that doesn't mean that it is appropriate for a President of a school to make a judgement that she should therefor not be allowed to communicate.
It's very hard to budge our perception of an event once we've formed a strong opinion of it. If you read the statement posted above with detachment, you will see that Dr. McShane actually agrees with you and believes that Ms. Coulter *should* be allowed to speak, even though she does harm to her own cause.
We have indeed fallen very far.
We should carefully establish our bearings before making any such conclusion. If we inflate injustices or take fabricated ones at face value, things will naturally appear worse than they are.
The reason you get more out of the 20 year-olds on your team is that no 35 year-old would work for you unless he was a loser. Enclosed please find one clue bat.
America used to be the greatest nation of tinkerers and inventors in the world. Now we're a nation of consumers. The ability and inclination to create things is now considered prima facia evidence of anti-social tendencies.
There's recently been an Internet-driven renaissance of inventing things -- the maker movement. But there's something sinister about the movement. It's *international*. Consider the Arduino. It was developed in the *commune* of Ivrea Italy, and the design is the property of *nobody*. The Trilateral Commission is probably behind it, assisted by the socialist Obama administration.
People who know more than you are scary. People who know more than you *cooperating* with each other is scarier still.
Anybody who's read or watched 1960s spy stories knows how to make a detonation timer with an ordinary watch or analog clock. You scrape the paint of one of the hands and position a bare wire on the face so it completes the circuit at the desired time. So the argument the cops are making that the watch was capable of triggering a bomb means exactly nothing. Anything capable of marking the passage of time can be adapted to trigger a bomb. You could rig a trigger with an hour glass if you wanted to.
The moral you get from this story depends on where you start the narrative. If you start with the most recent strike, *sure* you get the moral "unions are stubbornly stupid". If you start the last time Hostess was unquestionably successful, the moral is "management was a bunch of greedy sociopaths."
Hostess was a thriving unionized business until the 70s, when it was acquired by a computer rental company with no experience in bakery, food or manufacturing. It was merged with a number of other food businesses and management had difficulty integrating these new divisions successfully.
In 2001, management decided (over the objections of its own bakers) to reformulate its successful bread lines for extended shelf life. Unfortunately the enzymes added to the bread gave it an unpleasant, gluey consistency. Sales plummeted, and in 2004 the company had its first bankruptcy.
With the help of *union concessions*, the company emerged from Chapter 11. Unable to service its debt and invest in the business, management closed many bakeries and stopped replacing trucks in its huge delivery fleet. Revenues dropped and expenses rose. Armed with union concessions on pay and benefits, in 2009 management turned to investment bankers to take the company private. This unfortunately saddled the company with almost a billion dollars in debt to private equity firms. In 2011 management was unable to service the debt it used to take the company private, and reneged on its part of the concession deal: continuing to pay into employee pension funds. At the same time management gave itself an 80% raise and the CEO two million dollar severance package, then filed for Chapter 11 again.
This year the unions *again* offered concessions in pay and benefits, provided that management maintain its contracted contributions to retirement plans. During negotiations, management threatened mass layoffs while publicly denying it had any such plans. After almost a year of negotiation, the unions struck. Management *instantly* pulled the plug on the business -- a move it had clearly planned in advance.
So what emerges here isn't a story of uncooperative unions strangling a successful business. It's the story of new management running a once successful business into the ground, then doing everything it could to milk more money out of the business while saddling it with debt and cutting wages and benefits.
Actually, he isn't the the Chic-fil-A guy at all. The Chic-fil-A guy has a problem with gay marriage because of his Christian religion, but *also* because of his Christian religion gives his employees and excellent benefits package. That includes health, dental, vision, disability and life insurance. He also offers a 401(k) retirement plan with a 5% company match, a defined benefits plan, and tuition reimbursement. In other words he's a stand-up guy who happens to be wrong about gay marriage, but I for one support his right to have and express his opinion.
The Papa John's guy wont' offer health care to his full time workers because it'd cost him fourteen cents a pie. He does marketing promotions that cost more than covering his employees would but he doesn't want to do it because he's a scum-sucking bottom-feeder.
Red Hat hires a software development consultant who is not competing with RTS to examine the code (probably a respected academic). After signing an NDA with RTS, they give him access to the source control archive. He pokes around in the commit history and writes his report. If there *is* infringement, it'll show up and RTS pays the consultant's fee and desists from using the GPL'd code. If there is no evidence of infringement, Red Hat pays the consultant's fee and issues an apology.
Note that I said this *should* be easy to resolve. If RTS is deliberately infringing the GPL, they won't go along with this reasonable suggestion. If Red Hat is just trying to stick a thumb in a competitor's eye while scoring some trade secrets, they wouldn't agree with the suggestion. Both conditions might apply at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a big difference between having bought a product from one of the parties to a lawsuit and being a former employee who sued one of them.
You're ignoring the net present value of all the profit opportunities lost as technologies like GPS or the Internet take decades to emerge. It's beneficial to private industry for the government to take on high risk, long term payback applied research, and if you look at the *actual* budget data (instead of arguing from theoretical principles like a philosophe), you'll see that public applied R&D is *not* breaking the budget.
Ah, so the Internet is a *fascist* technology? Computers are a totalitarian technology?
You seriously need to relax. The government can do applied research without becoming a totalitarian state.
True, demanding something doesn't guarantee you get it. On the other hand, *not* demanding something *does* guarantee you won't get it.
If nobody in the government demanded a satellite based navigation system, there wouldn't be GPS. If nobody in the government demanded a robust, survivable way of transporting data packets between heterogeneous networks, there wouldn't be the Internet. If nobody in the government demanded a way of automating a wide variety of computations, the computer as we know it wouldn't exist. Same goes for the polio vaccine -- if you don't think that's a big deal ask someone brought up before the Salk vaccine was introduced.
Unlike the iPad or the filtered cigarette, these things were not going to be invented by the private sector (at least not soon) because once you discounted the probable profits by risk, uncertainty and delay, they weren't attractive private investments. On the other hand, the immense public need for these things justified the government investment in removing the initial uncertainties. Once the risky and uncertain parts of the problem are solved, then private investment is clearly a more efficient vehicle for making marginal improvements, which add up quickly. Kind of like shifting responsibility for low Earth orbit launches to private companies.
And you're still missing the point: the *rate* of change makes a huge difference on how difficult it is for humans living through it to cope.
You don't think that maybe you're just using ancillary data to paint an inaccurate picture? There's far more dialogue now than there was 30 years ago about the topic, and the loudest and most persistent ARE the crazies (on both sides).
There was plenty of dialog in the 80s, if you knew were to look. My wife is an oceanographer and I followed the debate in the scientific journals she reads and in the science press (Science News). If you look through collections of scientific abstracts you'll see the origins of debate go all the way back to the 1950s when the consensus was that the globe was heading for a cooling period. As data to the contrary emerged, the volume of dialogue increased until the 80s and 90s, when climate change and anthropogenic climate change were hot topics.
The crazies didn't get into the discussion until it the scientific debate was largely over. Although there's always room for contrarian papers, those papers *were* contrarian because a new scientific consensus emerged. Given that consensus, AGW became a policy issue, and therefore a political one, and that is when the lunacy started.
It may be true that there are crazies on both sides but that's neither here nor there. There always are crazies in any political controversy. That doesn't mean that both sides are equally right. *One* side is backed by scientific consensus, the other is not.
When you lump everybody that questions MMGW together, and refer to them collectively as "Denialists" - anything YOU have to say about them makes you look like a drooling retard.
I don't lump everyone that questions AGW together. I lump the *denialists* together. They're the people who won't accept any evidence of man-made climate change whatsoever. Thirty years ago they formed only a tiny fraction of climate change skeptics. Today they're the bulk of the climate change skeptics.
It's normal for central banks to invest in US treasuries, and the US Fed isn't the only one. About 40% of US treasury securities are purchased by foreigners in the last month we had figures for.
I understand your concern about savings losing value, but inflation has been running lower this year than last year ever since march. It looks like we'll be ending the year with an annual inflation rate just a tad below average for the last ten years. While your scenario is worth considering, we aren't seeing any evidence that it's actually happening.
Well, being a software developer, I can believe that Google has a 400 year lead if you stipulate that Apple has to *fix* the product it has now rather than develop an entirely new one.
That said, I expect if Google really claimed it had a 400 year lead it probably meant 400 man-years.
Before you give up, I think it's worthwhile to examine the kernel of truth in the denialist position.
When you force a denialist into the corner he'll pull out this chestnut: the history of climate shows greater differences than we're talking about for the next century; there's no "right" temperature for the globe. There's more than a kernel of truth in this, it just misses the fact that there's a big difference between changes that happen over the course of many lifetimes or many lifetimes in the future, and change that happens in the lifetime of people currently inhabiting the planet. It's a bit like somebody saying "fire is part of the natural forest lifecycle" then throwing his lit cigarette butt onto the dry forest floor.
The differences between conservatives and liberals on this issue is that conservatives fear change we'd have to do something about, and liberals fear change we can't do anything about. But I content there are no such changes we cannot do anything about.
Humans are adaptable. Change is traumatic, but we can adapt to a "new normal". On one of my favorite forest walks I encounter a visible sign of climate change: a dying grove of eastern hemolock (Tsuga canadensis). Twenty years ago walking into the grove in summer was like walking into a refrigerator. You could not see a patch of sky through the canopy, and sometimes snow drifts survived til June under the eaves of the grove. What's killing the grove is the wooly adgelid, an Asian insect whose northward range is limited by cold winters. When that grove finally dies I will miss it, but future generations won't. They'll see the black birch and rhododendron that replace it as normal, the way I see the red oak and Norway maple that replaced the American Chestnut (once the dominant hardwood species in N. America) as normal. Something will be lost but everyone won't experience loss, just those of us who remember what we used to have. *We* will experience loss, as will our children and grandchildren; but our great-great-great grandchildren won't.
So what can we do about climate change? First, it's far from clear we can't stop it; we've been so busy debating (at least in political circles) whether climate is changing at all that we haven't really put any serious thought into stopping it. It's far too early to give up hope.
It's also quite feasible that change can be slowed. People tend to underestimate the utility of that. There's a big difference between a 100cm sea level rise in 100 years and 100cm rise in 200 years; it's much easier and less traumatic to adapt to gradual change than sudden change.
And we can face squarely the changes that are coming rather than pretending they won't or wringing our hands. That includes preparing for the loss of coastal property and accommodating populations as they abandon of some currently habitable areas. It includes preparing for the emergence of new diseases as the geographic range of pathogens and disease vectors expands. There's preserving species in danger of extinction as their habitat shifts out from under them, and changing crops as rainfall patterns change. Those are huge but achievable tasks that are made much easier by a marginal reduction in the rate of change.
Is it scientific spending that is bankrupting the US government?
It behooves us to be precise here, otherwise we risk just parroting talking points. If we use words purely for their emotional impact ('bankruptcy'), we'll just create *new* problems we didn't have before.
Bankruptcy is when you run out of cash. Investors are *eager* to buy US treasury instruments -- to give us cash in other words. In fact they're willing to take interest rates lower than inflation, which means they're willing to *pay us* to hold onto their money for them. So it's simply not the case that the US government is facing bankruptcy, unless politicians choose *deliberate* insolvency. Making desperate moves based on the fear that the government is going bankrupt only creates a new, totally artificial problem: "the fiscal cliff".
The "fiscal cliff" isn't anything like a cliff we're being forced over, at least by financial circumstances. It's simply a massive austerity program that will take huge amounts of money out of the economy due to reduced spending and increased taxation.
Exactly what is forcing us to this desperate situation? Politics. We did *not* have a debt crisis like Greece, as the interest rate the market accepts clearly shows.
Which is not to say that we shouldn't be cutting some expenditures, but the question "which expenses are a waste of money?" It makes no sense to ask "which expenses are bankrupting us?" because if you ask that *no* expenses will be cut.
It depends upon how you define AI, I suppose
Artificial Intelligence: those aspects of natural intelligence we do not at present know how to reproduce artificially.
Why would it matter at all what gender a member of parliament is?
The gender of an *individual* member of parliament shouldn't matter, but the *aggregate* number of women who are influential in some political process that is *not* specifically a "woman's issue" matters if you are keeping score on political equality of the sexes.
The point where women routinely take leadership roles on issues that aren't "just women's issues" is a significant milestone on the path to political equality. We weren't there twenty years ago, when it wouldn't raise any eyebrows to have an all male committee making decisions about things like women's health care. Democracy works better when there's political equality, especially (but not just) for the people who used to be grasping the short end of the stick.
It's OK for guys who like a beer now and then to be taxi drivers or airline pilots. It's not OK for guys who have out-of-control alcohol problems. It's OK for guys attracted to money, status and power to run banks. It's definitely *not* OK for guys whose pursuit of those things eclipse every other human value, including *personal integrity*, which *ought* to be a job requirement for leading a bank, or indeed any other powerful institution.
It alls go back to Aristotle. Virtue is found in moderation. Bravery is the ideal midpoint between rashness and cowardice. Enterprise is the ideal midpoint between greed and sloth. The great capitalists of yore, the ones whom history remembers best, had both titanic personal ambition but also surprisingly public spirited facets to their personalities. Not just the Andrew Carnegies of the world, but the J P Morgans as well.
[Is there enough data] to show this is definitely not a naturally occurring cycle?
That's the wrong question. It's epistemologically broken. The reason is that you can't prove non-existence of something through data. So if your standard of proof is, "show there is no natural process, possibly unknown to current science, which might account for climate trends better than the currently accepted scientific consensus," you will never be satisfied.
So a better question would be, "Is there any evidence that suggests global warming might be due to some natural, cyclical process?" The answer is, there is. In fact *there's bound to be*. But nothing so far has stood up as well as AGW.
That's not for lack of trying. Scientists make their careers by poking holes in the scientific consensus. People are still bringing up data that brings global *warming* into question. Scientific consensus shifted from global cooling in the 1950s to warming in the 1980s, with anthropogenic contributions the prime suspect. In the 90s attacks were made on the validity of historical records, on remote sensing data. Most recently we had the issue of Antarctic sea ice. None of them has proved to indicate a cooling climate. Likewise nobody has been able to rule out AGW as the culprit, but so far every other proposed culprit has been exonerated.
So you have to ask what level of proof you demand. If that involves disproving things we haven't even thought of, you aren't going to be convinced. The suspect was seen walking into the room with a pistol, then leaving a few minutes spattered in blood holding the same smoking pistol. Witnesses entered the room to find the victim shot in the back. They look for other entrances and exits to the room and find none. Is that proof enough for you? Well, I say. You can't prove that there might not be some *other* explanation that that the suspect shot the victim. And maybe there is. Maybe a magician contrived the whole thing, and the victim is still alive. It's possible, but without evidence of that you have to go with what the preponderance of evidence you actually *have*.
She was on the HP board, however, and was supportive of the Autonomy deal.
No I don't think it is a *pressing* problem. With interest rates at a historical low and the government borrowing at *below* the rate of inflation, it's just not that big a deal right now -- certainly not enough to do things that might slow the rate of economic growth.
When inflation resumes and interest rates rise -- that's a different story.
But that doesn't mean that it is appropriate for a President of a school to make a judgement that she should therefor not be allowed to communicate.
It's very hard to budge our perception of an event once we've formed a strong opinion of it. If you read the statement posted above with detachment, you will see that Dr. McShane actually agrees with you and believes that Ms. Coulter *should* be allowed to speak, even though she does harm to her own cause.
We have indeed fallen very far.
We should carefully establish our bearings before making any such conclusion. If we inflate injustices or take fabricated ones at face value, things will naturally appear worse than they are.
The reason you get more out of the 20 year-olds on your team is that no 35 year-old would work for you unless he was a loser. Enclosed please find one clue bat.
America used to be the greatest nation of tinkerers and inventors in the world. Now we're a nation of consumers. The ability and inclination to create things is now considered prima facia evidence of anti-social tendencies.
There's recently been an Internet-driven renaissance of inventing things -- the maker movement. But there's something sinister about the movement. It's *international*. Consider the Arduino. It was developed in the *commune* of Ivrea Italy, and the design is the property of *nobody*. The Trilateral Commission is probably behind it, assisted by the socialist Obama administration.
People who know more than you are scary. People who know more than you *cooperating* with each other is scarier still.
Anybody who's read or watched 1960s spy stories knows how to make a detonation timer with an ordinary watch or analog clock. You scrape the paint of one of the hands and position a bare wire on the face so it completes the circuit at the desired time. So the argument the cops are making that the watch was capable of triggering a bomb means exactly nothing. Anything capable of marking the passage of time can be adapted to trigger a bomb. You could rig a trigger with an hour glass if you wanted to.
Genius is more like it. The next step is to auction the watch off while the publicity is still hot.
The moral you get from this story depends on where you start the narrative. If you start with the most recent strike, *sure* you get the moral "unions are stubbornly stupid". If you start the last time Hostess was unquestionably successful, the moral is "management was a bunch of greedy sociopaths."
Hostess was a thriving unionized business until the 70s, when it was acquired by a computer rental company with no experience in bakery, food or manufacturing. It was merged with a number of other food businesses and management had difficulty integrating these new divisions successfully.
In 2001, management decided (over the objections of its own bakers) to reformulate its successful bread lines for extended shelf life. Unfortunately the enzymes added to the bread gave it an unpleasant, gluey consistency. Sales plummeted, and in 2004 the company had its first bankruptcy.
With the help of *union concessions*, the company emerged from Chapter 11. Unable to service its debt and invest in the business, management closed many bakeries and stopped replacing trucks in its huge delivery fleet. Revenues dropped and expenses rose. Armed with union concessions on pay and benefits, in 2009 management turned to investment bankers to take the company private. This unfortunately saddled the company with almost a billion dollars in debt to private equity firms. In 2011 management was unable to service the debt it used to take the company private, and reneged on its part of the concession deal: continuing to pay into employee pension funds. At the same time management gave itself an 80% raise and the CEO two million dollar severance package, then filed for Chapter 11 again.
This year the unions *again* offered concessions in pay and benefits, provided that management maintain its contracted contributions to retirement plans. During negotiations, management threatened mass layoffs while publicly denying it had any such plans. After almost a year of negotiation, the unions struck. Management *instantly* pulled the plug on the business -- a move it had clearly planned in advance.
So what emerges here isn't a story of uncooperative unions strangling a successful business. It's the story of new management running a once successful business into the ground, then doing everything it could to milk more money out of the business while saddling it with debt and cutting wages and benefits.
Actually, he isn't the the Chic-fil-A guy at all. The Chic-fil-A guy has a problem with gay marriage because of his Christian religion, but *also* because of his Christian religion gives his employees and excellent benefits package. That includes health, dental, vision, disability and life insurance. He also offers a 401(k) retirement plan with a 5% company match, a defined benefits plan, and tuition reimbursement. In other words he's a stand-up guy who happens to be wrong about gay marriage, but I for one support his right to have and express his opinion.
The Papa John's guy wont' offer health care to his full time workers because it'd cost him fourteen cents a pie. He does marketing promotions that cost more than covering his employees would but he doesn't want to do it because he's a scum-sucking bottom-feeder.
Red Hat hires a software development consultant who is not competing with RTS to examine the code (probably a respected academic). After signing an NDA with RTS, they give him access to the source control archive. He pokes around in the commit history and writes his report. If there *is* infringement, it'll show up and RTS pays the consultant's fee and desists from using the GPL'd code. If there is no evidence of infringement, Red Hat pays the consultant's fee and issues an apology.
Note that I said this *should* be easy to resolve. If RTS is deliberately infringing the GPL, they won't go along with this reasonable suggestion. If Red Hat is just trying to stick a thumb in a competitor's eye while scoring some trade secrets, they wouldn't agree with the suggestion. Both conditions might apply at the same time.