Alaska is negligible. ICBM flight paths from Russia are through Canadian airspace, so intercept relies on equipment stationed there.
Ummm... not with ICBMs. Canada was actually offered the opportunity years ago to have missile defense stations their, but they turned it down, and have only just reconsidered earlier this year. Meanwhile, Alaska is a huge participant in the GMD (Ground-Based Midcourse Defense) program, and actually has a pretty sizable network of defense silos. I'm not entirely sure what the original anon meant, which is why I'm asking, but I know that from an ICBM standpoint Canada isn't that significant to the USA compared to Alaska. Also, as a small addon, I can't find anything to suggest they would fly over Canada - and wouldn't it be quicker to make a straight shot over the Pacific?
Thing is, we (Canada) are not only directly beside the US, but we're also the buffer between the US and Russia. The hell does the US care about the UK for, especially if they're no longer contributing back in the occasional "coalitions of the willing"?
Buffer??? May I ask what you mean by that? The way I understand it, wouldn't Alaska be the first part of NA to see combat?
What about Japan then? It's building not just a high speed line, but a maglev line that is 90% tunnels between Tokyo and Osaka. Tunnels though some of the most challenging terrain in the world, lots of new technology, and privately funded.
They look at it as a long term investment, and get revenue not just from carrying passengers, but from building shopping centres and other facilities around the stations.
Oh, and there has never been a single fatal accident on Japanese high speed rail. For construction workers too it is extremely safe.
I entirely agree with you, and you make precisely my point. As someone who currently lives in Japan, in Tokyo, I can say without a doubt that it has a far more advanced infrastructure than any American city - Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, New York, it tops them all. You can go anywhere with trains and buses, you have ridiculously extensive malls carrying a wide array of merchandise from big and small sellers alike, the roads are very well maintained, and in general it's an incredibly sophisticated and advanced style of living, waaaaaaay above anything in the US can compare to.
The above also requires most citizens to pay 30-50% of their income in taxes, numerous and expensive tolls throughout the highway system, and in general a big government that is pretty active in people's lives and is willing to help pay for all of this. If you ever advocate for this in America, you're instantly labeled as "Socialist", right up there with Hugo Chavez, and nobody will listen to you any farther. However, these very same people then applaud China or India or whoever for making these huge investments, and how backwards the US is for not doing the same. These people want all of the amazing infrastructure and economic investment for absolutely free and no personal sacrifice at all, and that just isn't sustainable. If people want an article of confederations style government, then they have to accept that moving beyond what we have now is never going to happen, and that the US is going to continue to rank behind every other first world country for quality of life.
This has the possibility of saving millions of lives. Millions of people who have the potential to make the world better, for all of humanity, for the species.
It's also millions of people who have the potential to make the world worse. And something tells me the people who get this will be your Dick Cheneys, not your Mahatma Gandhis.
While I have yet to see an Adolf Hitler arise out of an ALS patient, we did get Stephen Hawking. Furthermore, cancer comes so late in life that by then they'd already be in power, or you'd already know what their personality is like.
1. Due to extreme amounts of government and institutional red tape, nothing gets done. Nothing. All those stories you read of brain implants? Basically never going to happen.
It will happen, just not in America. In China, stuff gets done.
America will take at least 30 years to build a high speed train from SF to LA, at a cost of $100-300B.
China built the high speed train from Shanghai to Beijing (twice the distance from SF to LA) in 3 years, at a cost of $32B.
Safety regulations don't prevent trains, public aversion to taxes does. If you're not willing to invest in your government, then you can't seriously expect it to cover the cost of something like this, and there's no way a private provider is going to risk a loss of revenue on a project of questionable profitability. I'm not weighing on whether I think it's right or not, but if you're against large government, then I'm afraid you'd also have to be against large government projects too. Also, don't forget that there's a reason we put in worker and safety regulations - there was a time when Americans worked for minimum wage 12+ hours a day with no worker's comp or health insurance, much like these people in China would be.
I suppose it's a typical leftist mindset that people should be able to break contracts and essentially steal money from the other party by not fulfilling their obligations while pocketing the money. Apparently Trump doesn't agree with that. Good on him.
What the hell does being a left minded person have to do with fulfilling a contact? Especially when Trump was quite happy with the work until it came time to pay up???
He got the majority of electoral college votes, which is -- quite literally -- all that matters in this election. The EC was designed in part to ensure it would be next to impossible for a candidate to win if they did not have the support of sparsely populated rural areas as well as densely populated urban areas. That's the way it's always been, and for good reason -- and that's why Idaho has the same number of senators as New York. Those complaining about it now sound like football coaches whining that they lost even though they accumulated more offensive yards then the other team. If the election WERE to be won by a majority vote, and that was stated at the outset, then Trump would have just campaigned in the urban areas like Clinton did, modified his platform accordingly, and he still would have beaten her. You can't change the rules after you lose...
No, not really. If you have the support of the eleventh most populous states, you automatically win the EC, and thus the election. The EC wasn't designed to give small states a voice, it was designed pretty much exclusively so that a vote wouldn't require a guy on horseback to have to ride all the way down south to Alabama and bring the result back up. Any effect it has on the balance of power is a side effect, and I don't really think it's a good one either. People living in rural areas rarely, if ever, have to deal with the consequences of their policies - is it fair to give their vote 4x the count exclusively because they live farther away???
What mistake? I think Trump getting elected has some pretty nice benefits actually, not the least of which being that maybe we're reminded why it's best to stick someone with brains in charge.
Like who, Hillary? Please don't make me laugh, she is as stupid as Trump is...
You still don't get it, you have no idea who was actually running for the key job of "person in charge", and it wasn't either of them...
Um... alright? You've claimed yourself to be against the "intolerant left", so you're obviously not referring to Bernie Sanders, and Jill Stein is out of the question too then. If it's not Hillary or Trump, then who the hell are you referring to? Johnson was the only other candidate to seriously run, but he screwed up his chance at getting people's enthusiasm so badly that he only managed to get the boring average of about 3% of the popular vote. Who are you talking about?
You can, of course... but you're missing the chance to learn something by doing so...
I said that Trump's win should give you pause, if you throw that away, then you've learned nothing and will repeat the mistakes...
What mistake? I think Trump getting elected has some pretty nice benefits actually, not the least of which being that maybe we're reminded why it's best to stick someone with brains in charge. Trump is also super pro on certain democratic issues, such as import tariffs and infrastructure investment, so we basically get those but without any risk of backlash or the absurdly petty resistance Republicans give to anything started by a Democrat. On top of that, when Trump fails to get his goals through, people like you might actually realize that change is only a good thing if it's better than what came before, and he'll almost certainly block the most egregious Republican policies from being tied to his name. If I'm getting a quarter democrat in policies, with no backlash, and at the same time building support for a truly democrat government, what's not to like? When Trump is burned out and crawls back into his shell, he'll take his supporters with him, and we'll be left with a weak Republican party and a power vacuum. Hello Mr. Teddy Roosevelt in 2020 (or maybe perhaps 2024) - and then we can start with helping the poor get actual paying jobs and fixing our healthcare for the better, much as the Republicans will resist both of these.
I want change as well, but rather than listening to a narcissist with no idea what he's talking about, I'd rather listen to the widely respected guy who does genuinely care and has a long and successful history in his job. As for your lesson, what the hell was it? That ignorance is fashionable right now? If that's what energizes people these days, stupid lies and dramatized scandalous headlines, then no thanks. I'll stick to policy and track record, thank you very much.
That's such a rich post I don't even know where to start.
And that is why you lost the election...
For starters, we have a pretty strict separation of church and state
Again, you still don't get it... it has nothing to do with religion, another of your failings...
You either give me the evidence I require
I'm not obligated to give you anything, and you're not entitled to "require" anything, another of your failings...
Please note: You lost, Trump won, that alone should give you a very long pause...
I can laugh at your stupidity all I want, actually, and your only chance to stop that was an effort at rationality. So if you didn't even make an attempt at justifying yourself, you really are just spouting nonsense - would you actually say that garbage to someone in real life, I wonder?
As to your point, to be honest, I don't really care all that much, except for perhaps a little schadenfreude. Trump is probably going to be miserable as all fuck being president because he'll never have time to do anything enjoyable and he'll be blamed for everything, Pence is going to be miserable as fuck because he has to do all of Trump's dull work without getting any of his own input in, and you are going to be miserable as fuck because you don't seem to realize that he's not actually interested in changing very much. In return, all I have to do is wait four years and we'll get a Democrat who would reverse any presidential executive decisions on social matters he makes if they're in a conservative direction, and we'd probably get a Democrat senate with that too. *shrugs*
Given that my only mandate is to sit on my rear for the next four years and complain, I'm pretty happy with my lot after this election. Now that we've switched places, what are you going to do?
I realize I may not be the most effective communicator, and I am quite the cynic. Ultimately all our environmental problems are a consequence of our massive human population. Anything you propose is merely a rationing system, nothing more. Rationing does not solve problems therefore I hate seeing it portrayed as a solution. The ONLY solution is reducing the size of our population. There are ways to do that involuntarily at huge moral and ethical cost via war, hydraulic despotism, or just out and out murder. And there are ways to do it voluntarily and morally, through education - teaching people why it's important that many should abstain from breeding and encouraging them to abstain.
Unfortunately we live in a world where our leaders feel that investing in bombs and jet fighters is far more worthwhile in terms of return on investment than education. So for all you propose, and for all you complain - nothing is going to change - even under a rationing system.
Well, if your goal is to eliminate people, then investments in bombs and fighter aircraft are a very worthwhile investment for the environment:)
Speaking frankly, I agree with that sentiment. Our planet is overpopulated, and policies like insisting every married couple have children aren't helping with that. However, you also have a pretty nihilist attitude on this - even though encouraging energy efficiency isn't going to eliminate our pollution problems, it is going to slow them down and lessen their severity. Likewise, keeping garbage off the streets is healthier for our environment, even if it doesn't reduce Co2, it's still going to drastically improve the quality of life for not just humans but animals and plants as well. To suggest a darkly accurate metaphor, if you have cancer, that doesn't necessarily mean it's fatal if you attack it while it's still small, and even if it is, at least you can reduce the suffering. The alternative is either twiddling our thumbs and saying it's impossible or actively living in a delusional fantasy, and I'd rather be harpooned through the ear than sit around and die from a problem we could have prevented had we taken action sooner...
Of course, we all have to actually come together and want to save our planet, and I'm not really getting the impression that's the case...
If you were really tolerant, then you'd be understanding and accepting of someone who DOESN'T believe in gay people.
You're happy to accept people who think like you do, but you can't imagine it is acceptable to think otherwise. That is your great flaw.
That is why Trump won. Until you understand that, you will continue to have problems on the right.
Trump didn't win by getting 10% or 20% of the country to vote for him, he got 48%, which is more or less half. And yet you dismiss half the country as "deplorables" and wonder why you lost...
That's such a rich post I don't even know where to start. For starters, we have a pretty strict separation of church and state - you cannot cite religion as a reason for influence in any decision. Saying marriage should be strictly between a man and a woman because you're a Christian is acceptable if a Muslim can require you to read the Quaran, because it's against his beliefs for people not to read it. To build on this, you can do whatever the hell you want with your life - if you are gay and chose not to act on it or accept it, that's entirely your choice, and I support your right to make it. In exchange, you have no right to fuck with someone else's life, and if somebody else's freedom of expression bother you so much that you took the time in your life to write not one but two rants on a website, immigrate to Iran or Saudi Arabia. They're more in line with your values than the United States of America is.
Secondly, that is a completely bullshit pivot from my point. I asked you for proof of your statement, and you dodge by trying an ad hominem on me. You either give me the evidence I require, or you look like an idiot spouting bullshit, which increasingly I suspect you are. Now, which is it?
Of course, there's another reason that Clinton lost: because there are so many voting shitheels.
You are the perfect example of the intolerant left, you claim to be all accepting, but you're really not.
In my experience, the left is FAR more xenophobic and intolerant than the right is, bunch of idiots you are, which is why Trump won. The left is STILL falling all over themselves trying to figure it out, clueless...
Clinton lost because she sucks, is a terrible person, and wanted to start WWIII. Nothing Trump has done is even remotely close.
In your experience, Donald Trump and Jill Stein are FAR more xenophobic and intolerant than Donald Trump and George W. Bush? A man who campaigned 30 years for homosexual rights, even when it was unpopular, is more xenophobic and intolerant then a man who was endorsed by the KKK?
Before anyone takes you seriously, you're going to need to provide some evidence.
all those people complaining about elites and insiders are in for a shock
That's the problem with voting for "change." You are going to get it.
I was very surprised, just based off reading comments on this site over the past few days, how many ardent Trump supporters are here. I say surprised not because I am assessing a value judgement but because US presidential voting in recent years has become much more strongly correlated with education level, and I presumed that a tech site would reflect certain patterns as a result. (Full disclosure: I did not like any of the available ballot options and wrote in my presidential vote for Alexander Hamilton. I live in a solidly colored state on the West Coast and knew that my little exercise in protest would not have any meaningful effect on my state's electoral college votes, otherwise I would have voted seriously.)
At any rate, it turned out that many many more people than pollsters and the media expected cast their votes in the cause of upsetting the status quo. There's nothing wrong with being unsatisfied with the way things are and wanting to lob a big water balloon full of "f--k you" at the powers that be in this country.
When you vote for the loser, you enter a world of "coulda woulda shoulda" and you can just theorize how things would have been better. But when you vote for the winner, you have to own that vote because you're getting what you said you wanted. That's the price of winning. And it will be fascinating to see whether the people who cast a ballot to shake up the system like what they get when the system actually gets shaken up...
Education helps, but it doesn't do you much good if you're not voting rationally. I mean, picking a candidate who's primary selling point is "I'm different, in a way that you have no idea or even a guarantee that I am, but I'm different, believe it" isn't rational at all. On top of that, Slashdot has a pretty quirky crowd, and while we tend to be well educated and accomplished, we also tend to entertain things that are a little less... normal. Sometimes this is healthy, such as our general standards on civil and social rights or the outcry on mass surveillance back in 2013 - but sometimes it's not, such as, well, Donald Trump's popularity. However, it's alright - he's our president now, so there's no more uncertainty. With Republican domination at virtually every level of government, there is absolutely no excuse for his failures except himself and his party, so you can judge for yourself how Republican policies work out in practice.
Ultimately, I have serious doubt the Slashdot crowd will get what they want, but I'm keeping an open mind to Mr. Trump's presidency. If we do wind up dissatisfied, then I'm sure we'll be ready to vote for a progressive candidate, someone who'll probably be a younger version of Mr. Sanders, and hopefully a democratic senate and House of Representatives (as unlikely as that will ever be). And if/when we do, I'll be prepared to own my vote for that, much as I hold Trump supporters today to theirs.
You know how much money we are going to save by stop paying the NATO bills that most of Europe has been welching on for the past 30 years? We won't need Europe to buy our goods on how much we won't be spending on their security.
Oh, not really. We're still going to be spending that money because we want a strong military, which will still get involved in wars, so our bills won't decrease at all. If anything, they'll rise as per Republican advice, so the only change in that is that the European countries might have to pay more for themselves - but at no savings to you.
However, it is going to be nice to watch Apple's and Exxon's market values crash because they lost 50% of their customer base. When your megacorp starts laying off employees to pay for that, you'll be first in line to volunteer, yes?
The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse emissions, guess what - that still wouldn't be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.
If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions...it wouldn't be enough, not when more than 65 percent of the world's carbon pollution comes from the developing world.
-- John Kerry
Well, it's a good thing that Trump wants to bring those factories back home where we can keep an eye on them. Plus, think of all the other good effects from making our own products again. Good thing Hillary the crooked globalist didn't win, eh? Her idea was to go ahead with TPP and shove even MORE globalism down our throats. Hurrah for democracy!
Yeeeeeah. Because Trump and his partners are totalllllllly going to keep an eye on things. We're also going to accept a 30% price increase for paying a living wage, we're going to accept that we need massive amounts of tax investments at your expense to pay for these new factories, and you're personally willing to buy a gas mask for the days where there is no wind.
Oh, and when the rest of the world levies sanctions on us because we refuse to follow the environmental treaties we signed, followed by massive economic depressions, you're going to accept that, yes?
So engineer the climate. Figure out the science to do it right, and do it, don't just push the line that the only answer is to take totalitarian control over everyone else's lifestyle and reduce their carbon usage. But shockingly nobody in the climate science community likes that answer... It doesn't give them an excuse to dictate how the rest of the world should live.
Nobody likes that answer because it's fucking unbelievable. You're against taxes on carbon emissions, investments in renewable energies, and subsidies so people can get more energy efficient, because doling out a little money here and there and recollecting it will be catastrophic to the human race. So instead, within 30 years, we're going to terraform the planet with technology that doesn't exist and doesn't appear to be even close to possible, force people to move off land that we're going to change and completely reshape, and somehow do this all without causing any kind of natural disaster. Oh, and uh, do this all without raising any extra money or without causing anybody any potential loss of theoretical profits.
Uh-huh.
What your ACTUAL answer is is, "Well, it's 'totalitarian control over everyone else's lifestyle' when it's me who has to potentially maybe pay a small tax, but if my children have to lose their homes, eh, it's alright. Not my problem".
We could build things to last and keep them longer.
That fixes a problem with GARBAGE. How will you magically build these durable things without producing CO2? You still need to build the factories that build these durable things, and build the things themselves. Plus entropy works against you - there's no such thing as a product that will last forever.
We could use more insulation so that we use less heating oil.
That insulation has to be manufactured. It has to be shipped to where you need it. It has to be installed.
While you are suggesting techniques that would "stretch" our resources if they were even possible, this merely postpones the problem. As long as the population growth rate remains POSITIVE, we are inevitably going to hit the wall one way or another. Since killing millions or even billions of people is not an acceptable solution to our morality (unless their invisible sky wizard says something offensive about our invisible sky wizard), this problem is one we are irreversibly stuck with no matter what we do - especially IF we have already crossed this mysterious threshold that sends our planet into an irreversible plunge into greenhouse mode.
Right now the primary driver is greed.
Assuming you are not living in a hippy commune in the woods somewhere (and you're not, because you're using a computer and connected to the internet) you are guilty of that very same greed. Greed for the convenience of modern life. It's easy to blame it all on "the corporations" or "the 1%", but in reality we are to blame. You. Me. Each and every one of us. After all, if no one bought the products, no one would waste time selling them...
Your arguments boil down to, "you can't completely eliminate it so there's no point in doing anything", "we're all to blame so everything is pointless", and "delaying the problem is as bad as speeding it up". Are those really the ones you intended to make?
So what? The negative results of climate change are not going to significantly affect me or any of my relatives during my lifetime. It's not at all logical to care about people who aren't alive yet, and who may never be alive. And why should anyone living today care whether humans in the future will make any technological progress?
There are reasons to take care of the planet. Yours are completely illogical and rely purely on emotion.
Alright, let's shift it up. Let's assume you go to your local park, the one with a nice lake. Well, actually, it has dumped trash bags floating on the surface with their contents, is filled with chemical dumpings from the local factory, and was often used to dispose of leftover food scraps. The water looks dark brown, contains no living things anymore, and is unsafe for anyone to swim in it. The previous generation said when they were young, "I don't know if I'll ever have children, so it's illogical to care about my dumping my trash in it" - do you think your father was wrong?
I guess none of the moderators clicked on your 3 links because none of them are even remotely equivalent to what is happening right now. A verbal protest at a college and chair hanging in a tree? Really, you see that as the same as what is happening now? Link some video news stories from 2008 or 2012 of the mainstream media pushing for a riot like I'm seeing tonight on ABC, etc. The MSM meltdown live on election night should be evidence enough that we are being manipulated by their propaganda.
Of course the mainstream media wasn't pushing for a riot because the mainstream, which happens to be the majority of people by definition, didn't want to riot. Their candidate won in 2012. There still were riots though, and with the feet dragging and the refusal to evaluate a nomination for justice, the statement "Republicans accepted Obama" is highly misleading to say the least.
Secondly, as a question of curiosity, who do you consider to be the mainstream media, exactly? There's no malice here, I'm genuinely curious what the Trump supporter's side is. If you don't read mainstream media, then why would you feel like you're being manipulated? And if I evaluate both sides, and then side with the mainstream media, does that also make me manipulated?
It doesn't matter, really. As a self-described socialist democrat and significantly more progressive; Sanders is even more the polar opposite of the Trump people and representation of everything they hate than Clinton is. The only thing Sanders has in his favor, so far as those people are concerned, is his Y chromosome.
And while I am sure there is some small subset of the Trump people who are only misogynistic, but not racist, homophobic, islamophobic, xenophobic or isolationist; I doubt that would amount to enough defections from Trump to Sanders for the election to have gone the right way.
...People hate Clinton because of a long family history, numerous scandals, and strong ties to other politicians. Which one of these does Bernie have?
You are right that he's the polar opposite of Trump though. I guess over the next 4 years we'll see whether privatization or government is the right answer to our problems. My personal guess is that this wave will end in much the same way that Mr. Bush's presidency did, but perhaps a little quicker.
If you supported Trump kindly go fuck yourself, and I'll take the moderation results of this post. If not then I apologize to you, but not the man who decided to run a campaign based on sowing as much hatred as absolutely possible.
This is what happens when you run that kind of campaign.
We didn't protest when Barack Obama was elected. Twice.
Here's some observations about the protests:
Pre-printed signs,
Cash to pay protestors
Crowd Warm-up pro
Professional inciters
Alert media to get it all on TV
You're being manipulated.
One two three
There were quite a few protests in 2008 and 2012, and they had the above list in effect.
But also against idiots like this doing it as a wah wah against Trump becoming president.
America as a defense pact makes sense. America as a single governing entity hasn't made sense since it was still the 13 colonies, and makes even less sense today between the vehement ideological differences across different parts of the US, the corruption and graft at all levels of federal government. All the pork barrel spending and incompetent programs that have resulted, in large part due to backroom deals to 'make it happen' while driving local industry with component manufacture that should really be consolidated into the same geographical region, etc.
California or the Cascadia region splitting off into its own state(s)/country could be exactly what this country needs. Cutting off both federal aid to the western blue states, as well as cutting off those states' tax base from the US economy might be a wake up call for both sides over what advantages the other offers, while also helping to shake up a number of issues due to complacency and corruption. Lack of federal spending in California means the interstate highways and other roads will need to locally maintained, something California is entirely capable of, but which has been neglected due to a preference for federal funds (at the expense of other things like drinking/smoking age, which may stay where they are, but were in part raised in order to keep getting federal funding.)
An added bonus: separation of California from the US could be used to segregate the western and eastern seaboard entertainment industries, whose decline has been in part due to media companies gobbling up industry members on both coasts. If secession takes place and restrictions are put in place, we may see a new influx of creativity in the industry which hasn't been seen since the move west to avoid the patents in the early part of the last century.
Downsides to it is less trust in the US Dollar, political uncertainty worldwide, and the possibility of Russia/China taking it as an opportunity to project military force while the weakened US is distracted.
Personally I think it is still worth the risk, especially if California undoes some of the shortcomings the Clinton/Bush era feds did with decommissioning bases in California (notably the entire Sacramento region, which had dozens of army, reserve, and air force bases sold off to private parties. Including all but one in the capital!
Errm... you realize Federal aid is going with California, yes? If the east and west segregate, DC isn't going to side with the midwest and south, I think that's pretty obvious. If almost all of the states that are the financial backbone of the federal government leave, and the federal government itself has no connection with those parts of the country, why on earth would it stay behind?
Slashdot Mirror
Alaska is negligible. ICBM flight paths from Russia are through Canadian airspace, so intercept relies on equipment stationed there.
Ummm... not with ICBMs. Canada was actually offered the opportunity years ago to have missile defense stations their, but they turned it down, and have only just reconsidered earlier this year. Meanwhile, Alaska is a huge participant in the GMD (Ground-Based Midcourse Defense) program, and actually has a pretty sizable network of defense silos. I'm not entirely sure what the original anon meant, which is why I'm asking, but I know that from an ICBM standpoint Canada isn't that significant to the USA compared to Alaska. Also, as a small addon, I can't find anything to suggest they would fly over Canada - and wouldn't it be quicker to make a straight shot over the Pacific?
She voted for Bush's gulf war. She's a warmonger.
... so did he.
Thing is, we (Canada) are not only directly beside the US, but we're also the buffer between the US and Russia. The hell does the US care about the UK for, especially if they're no longer contributing back in the occasional "coalitions of the willing"?
Buffer??? May I ask what you mean by that? The way I understand it, wouldn't Alaska be the first part of NA to see combat?
What about Japan then? It's building not just a high speed line, but a maglev line that is 90% tunnels between Tokyo and Osaka. Tunnels though some of the most challenging terrain in the world, lots of new technology, and privately funded.
They look at it as a long term investment, and get revenue not just from carrying passengers, but from building shopping centres and other facilities around the stations.
Oh, and there has never been a single fatal accident on Japanese high speed rail. For construction workers too it is extremely safe.
I entirely agree with you, and you make precisely my point. As someone who currently lives in Japan, in Tokyo, I can say without a doubt that it has a far more advanced infrastructure than any American city - Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, New York, it tops them all. You can go anywhere with trains and buses, you have ridiculously extensive malls carrying a wide array of merchandise from big and small sellers alike, the roads are very well maintained, and in general it's an incredibly sophisticated and advanced style of living, waaaaaaay above anything in the US can compare to.
The above also requires most citizens to pay 30-50% of their income in taxes, numerous and expensive tolls throughout the highway system, and in general a big government that is pretty active in people's lives and is willing to help pay for all of this. If you ever advocate for this in America, you're instantly labeled as "Socialist", right up there with Hugo Chavez, and nobody will listen to you any farther. However, these very same people then applaud China or India or whoever for making these huge investments, and how backwards the US is for not doing the same. These people want all of the amazing infrastructure and economic investment for absolutely free and no personal sacrifice at all, and that just isn't sustainable. If people want an article of confederations style government, then they have to accept that moving beyond what we have now is never going to happen, and that the US is going to continue to rank behind every other first world country for quality of life.
This has the possibility of saving millions of lives. Millions of people who have the potential to make the world better, for all of humanity, for the species.
It's also millions of people who have the potential to make the world worse. And something tells me the people who get this will be your Dick Cheneys, not your Mahatma Gandhis.
While I have yet to see an Adolf Hitler arise out of an ALS patient, we did get Stephen Hawking. Furthermore, cancer comes so late in life that by then they'd already be in power, or you'd already know what their personality is like.
1. Due to extreme amounts of government and institutional red tape, nothing gets done. Nothing. All those stories you read of brain implants? Basically never going to happen.
It will happen, just not in America. In China, stuff gets done.
America will take at least 30 years to build a high speed train from SF to LA, at a cost of $100-300B. China built the high speed train from Shanghai to Beijing (twice the distance from SF to LA) in 3 years, at a cost of $32B.
Safety regulations don't prevent trains, public aversion to taxes does. If you're not willing to invest in your government, then you can't seriously expect it to cover the cost of something like this, and there's no way a private provider is going to risk a loss of revenue on a project of questionable profitability. I'm not weighing on whether I think it's right or not, but if you're against large government, then I'm afraid you'd also have to be against large government projects too. Also, don't forget that there's a reason we put in worker and safety regulations - there was a time when Americans worked for minimum wage 12+ hours a day with no worker's comp or health insurance, much like these people in China would be.
I suppose it's a typical leftist mindset that people should be able to break contracts and essentially steal money from the other party by not fulfilling their obligations while pocketing the money. Apparently Trump doesn't agree with that. Good on him.
What the hell does being a left minded person have to do with fulfilling a contact? Especially when Trump was quite happy with the work until it came time to pay up???
He got the majority of electoral college votes, which is -- quite literally -- all that matters in this election. The EC was designed in part to ensure it would be next to impossible for a candidate to win if they did not have the support of sparsely populated rural areas as well as densely populated urban areas. That's the way it's always been, and for good reason -- and that's why Idaho has the same number of senators as New York. Those complaining about it now sound like football coaches whining that they lost even though they accumulated more offensive yards then the other team. If the election WERE to be won by a majority vote, and that was stated at the outset, then Trump would have just campaigned in the urban areas like Clinton did, modified his platform accordingly, and he still would have beaten her. You can't change the rules after you lose...
No, not really. If you have the support of the eleventh most populous states, you automatically win the EC, and thus the election. The EC wasn't designed to give small states a voice, it was designed pretty much exclusively so that a vote wouldn't require a guy on horseback to have to ride all the way down south to Alabama and bring the result back up. Any effect it has on the balance of power is a side effect, and I don't really think it's a good one either. People living in rural areas rarely, if ever, have to deal with the consequences of their policies - is it fair to give their vote 4x the count exclusively because they live farther away???
What mistake? I think Trump getting elected has some pretty nice benefits actually, not the least of which being that maybe we're reminded why it's best to stick someone with brains in charge.
Like who, Hillary? Please don't make me laugh, she is as stupid as Trump is...
You still don't get it, you have no idea who was actually running for the key job of "person in charge", and it wasn't either of them...
Um... alright? You've claimed yourself to be against the "intolerant left", so you're obviously not referring to Bernie Sanders, and Jill Stein is out of the question too then. If it's not Hillary or Trump, then who the hell are you referring to? Johnson was the only other candidate to seriously run, but he screwed up his chance at getting people's enthusiasm so badly that he only managed to get the boring average of about 3% of the popular vote. Who are you talking about?
I can laugh at your stupidity all I want
You can, of course... but you're missing the chance to learn something by doing so...
I said that Trump's win should give you pause, if you throw that away, then you've learned nothing and will repeat the mistakes...
What mistake? I think Trump getting elected has some pretty nice benefits actually, not the least of which being that maybe we're reminded why it's best to stick someone with brains in charge. Trump is also super pro on certain democratic issues, such as import tariffs and infrastructure investment, so we basically get those but without any risk of backlash or the absurdly petty resistance Republicans give to anything started by a Democrat. On top of that, when Trump fails to get his goals through, people like you might actually realize that change is only a good thing if it's better than what came before, and he'll almost certainly block the most egregious Republican policies from being tied to his name. If I'm getting a quarter democrat in policies, with no backlash, and at the same time building support for a truly democrat government, what's not to like? When Trump is burned out and crawls back into his shell, he'll take his supporters with him, and we'll be left with a weak Republican party and a power vacuum. Hello Mr. Teddy Roosevelt in 2020 (or maybe perhaps 2024) - and then we can start with helping the poor get actual paying jobs and fixing our healthcare for the better, much as the Republicans will resist both of these.
I want change as well, but rather than listening to a narcissist with no idea what he's talking about, I'd rather listen to the widely respected guy who does genuinely care and has a long and successful history in his job. As for your lesson, what the hell was it? That ignorance is fashionable right now? If that's what energizes people these days, stupid lies and dramatized scandalous headlines, then no thanks. I'll stick to policy and track record, thank you very much.
That's such a rich post I don't even know where to start.
And that is why you lost the election...
For starters, we have a pretty strict separation of church and state
Again, you still don't get it... it has nothing to do with religion, another of your failings...
You either give me the evidence I require
I'm not obligated to give you anything, and you're not entitled to "require" anything, another of your failings...
Please note: You lost, Trump won, that alone should give you a very long pause...
I can laugh at your stupidity all I want, actually, and your only chance to stop that was an effort at rationality. So if you didn't even make an attempt at justifying yourself, you really are just spouting nonsense - would you actually say that garbage to someone in real life, I wonder?
As to your point, to be honest, I don't really care all that much, except for perhaps a little schadenfreude. Trump is probably going to be miserable as all fuck being president because he'll never have time to do anything enjoyable and he'll be blamed for everything, Pence is going to be miserable as fuck because he has to do all of Trump's dull work without getting any of his own input in, and you are going to be miserable as fuck because you don't seem to realize that he's not actually interested in changing very much. In return, all I have to do is wait four years and we'll get a Democrat who would reverse any presidential executive decisions on social matters he makes if they're in a conservative direction, and we'd probably get a Democrat senate with that too. *shrugs*
Given that my only mandate is to sit on my rear for the next four years and complain, I'm pretty happy with my lot after this election. Now that we've switched places, what are you going to do?
Are those really the ones you intended to make?
I realize I may not be the most effective communicator, and I am quite the cynic. Ultimately all our environmental problems are a consequence of our massive human population. Anything you propose is merely a rationing system, nothing more. Rationing does not solve problems therefore I hate seeing it portrayed as a solution. The ONLY solution is reducing the size of our population. There are ways to do that involuntarily at huge moral and ethical cost via war, hydraulic despotism, or just out and out murder. And there are ways to do it voluntarily and morally, through education - teaching people why it's important that many should abstain from breeding and encouraging them to abstain.
Unfortunately we live in a world where our leaders feel that investing in bombs and jet fighters is far more worthwhile in terms of return on investment than education. So for all you propose, and for all you complain - nothing is going to change - even under a rationing system.
Well, if your goal is to eliminate people, then investments in bombs and fighter aircraft are a very worthwhile investment for the environment :)
Speaking frankly, I agree with that sentiment. Our planet is overpopulated, and policies like insisting every married couple have children aren't helping with that. However, you also have a pretty nihilist attitude on this - even though encouraging energy efficiency isn't going to eliminate our pollution problems, it is going to slow them down and lessen their severity. Likewise, keeping garbage off the streets is healthier for our environment, even if it doesn't reduce Co2, it's still going to drastically improve the quality of life for not just humans but animals and plants as well. To suggest a darkly accurate metaphor, if you have cancer, that doesn't necessarily mean it's fatal if you attack it while it's still small, and even if it is, at least you can reduce the suffering. The alternative is either twiddling our thumbs and saying it's impossible or actively living in a delusional fantasy, and I'd rather be harpooned through the ear than sit around and die from a problem we could have prevented had we taken action sooner...
Of course, we all have to actually come together and want to save our planet, and I'm not really getting the impression that's the case...
If you were really tolerant, then you'd be understanding and accepting of someone who DOESN'T believe in gay people.
You're happy to accept people who think like you do, but you can't imagine it is acceptable to think otherwise. That is your great flaw.
That is why Trump won. Until you understand that, you will continue to have problems on the right.
Trump didn't win by getting 10% or 20% of the country to vote for him, he got 48%, which is more or less half. And yet you dismiss half the country as "deplorables" and wonder why you lost...
That's such a rich post I don't even know where to start. For starters, we have a pretty strict separation of church and state - you cannot cite religion as a reason for influence in any decision. Saying marriage should be strictly between a man and a woman because you're a Christian is acceptable if a Muslim can require you to read the Quaran, because it's against his beliefs for people not to read it. To build on this, you can do whatever the hell you want with your life - if you are gay and chose not to act on it or accept it, that's entirely your choice, and I support your right to make it. In exchange, you have no right to fuck with someone else's life, and if somebody else's freedom of expression bother you so much that you took the time in your life to write not one but two rants on a website, immigrate to Iran or Saudi Arabia. They're more in line with your values than the United States of America is.
Secondly, that is a completely bullshit pivot from my point. I asked you for proof of your statement, and you dodge by trying an ad hominem on me. You either give me the evidence I require, or you look like an idiot spouting bullshit, which increasingly I suspect you are. Now, which is it?
Of course, there's another reason that Clinton lost: because there are so many voting shitheels.
You are the perfect example of the intolerant left, you claim to be all accepting, but you're really not.
In my experience, the left is FAR more xenophobic and intolerant than the right is, bunch of idiots you are, which is why Trump won. The left is STILL falling all over themselves trying to figure it out, clueless...
Clinton lost because she sucks, is a terrible person, and wanted to start WWIII. Nothing Trump has done is even remotely close.
In your experience, Donald Trump and Jill Stein are FAR more xenophobic and intolerant than Donald Trump and George W. Bush? A man who campaigned 30 years for homosexual rights, even when it was unpopular, is more xenophobic and intolerant then a man who was endorsed by the KKK?
Before anyone takes you seriously, you're going to need to provide some evidence.
all those people complaining about elites and insiders are in for a shock
That's the problem with voting for "change." You are going to get it.
I was very surprised, just based off reading comments on this site over the past few days, how many ardent Trump supporters are here. I say surprised not because I am assessing a value judgement but because US presidential voting in recent years has become much more strongly correlated with education level, and I presumed that a tech site would reflect certain patterns as a result. (Full disclosure: I did not like any of the available ballot options and wrote in my presidential vote for Alexander Hamilton. I live in a solidly colored state on the West Coast and knew that my little exercise in protest would not have any meaningful effect on my state's electoral college votes, otherwise I would have voted seriously.)
At any rate, it turned out that many many more people than pollsters and the media expected cast their votes in the cause of upsetting the status quo. There's nothing wrong with being unsatisfied with the way things are and wanting to lob a big water balloon full of "f--k you" at the powers that be in this country.
When you vote for the loser, you enter a world of "coulda woulda shoulda" and you can just theorize how things would have been better. But when you vote for the winner, you have to own that vote because you're getting what you said you wanted. That's the price of winning. And it will be fascinating to see whether the people who cast a ballot to shake up the system like what they get when the system actually gets shaken up...
Education helps, but it doesn't do you much good if you're not voting rationally. I mean, picking a candidate who's primary selling point is "I'm different, in a way that you have no idea or even a guarantee that I am, but I'm different, believe it" isn't rational at all. On top of that, Slashdot has a pretty quirky crowd, and while we tend to be well educated and accomplished, we also tend to entertain things that are a little less... normal. Sometimes this is healthy, such as our general standards on civil and social rights or the outcry on mass surveillance back in 2013 - but sometimes it's not, such as, well, Donald Trump's popularity. However, it's alright - he's our president now, so there's no more uncertainty. With Republican domination at virtually every level of government, there is absolutely no excuse for his failures except himself and his party, so you can judge for yourself how Republican policies work out in practice.
Ultimately, I have serious doubt the Slashdot crowd will get what they want, but I'm keeping an open mind to Mr. Trump's presidency. If we do wind up dissatisfied, then I'm sure we'll be ready to vote for a progressive candidate, someone who'll probably be a younger version of Mr. Sanders, and hopefully a democratic senate and House of Representatives (as unlikely as that will ever be). And if/when we do, I'll be prepared to own my vote for that, much as I hold Trump supporters today to theirs.
You know how much money we are going to save by stop paying the NATO bills that most of Europe has been welching on for the past 30 years? We won't need Europe to buy our goods on how much we won't be spending on their security.
Oh, not really. We're still going to be spending that money because we want a strong military, which will still get involved in wars, so our bills won't decrease at all. If anything, they'll rise as per Republican advice, so the only change in that is that the European countries might have to pay more for themselves - but at no savings to you.
However, it is going to be nice to watch Apple's and Exxon's market values crash because they lost 50% of their customer base. When your megacorp starts laying off employees to pay for that, you'll be first in line to volunteer, yes?
The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse emissions, guess what - that still wouldn't be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.
If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions...it wouldn't be enough, not when more than 65 percent of the world's carbon pollution comes from the developing world.
-- John Kerry
Well, it's a good thing that Trump wants to bring those factories back home where we can keep an eye on them. Plus, think of all the other good effects from making our own products again. Good thing Hillary the crooked globalist didn't win, eh? Her idea was to go ahead with TPP and shove even MORE globalism down our throats. Hurrah for democracy!
Yeeeeeah. Because Trump and his partners are totalllllllly going to keep an eye on things. We're also going to accept a 30% price increase for paying a living wage, we're going to accept that we need massive amounts of tax investments at your expense to pay for these new factories, and you're personally willing to buy a gas mask for the days where there is no wind.
Oh, and when the rest of the world levies sanctions on us because we refuse to follow the environmental treaties we signed, followed by massive economic depressions, you're going to accept that, yes?
So engineer the climate. Figure out the science to do it right, and do it, don't just push the line that the only answer is to take totalitarian control over everyone else's lifestyle and reduce their carbon usage. But shockingly nobody in the climate science community likes that answer... It doesn't give them an excuse to dictate how the rest of the world should live.
Nobody likes that answer because it's fucking unbelievable. You're against taxes on carbon emissions, investments in renewable energies, and subsidies so people can get more energy efficient, because doling out a little money here and there and recollecting it will be catastrophic to the human race. So instead, within 30 years, we're going to terraform the planet with technology that doesn't exist and doesn't appear to be even close to possible, force people to move off land that we're going to change and completely reshape, and somehow do this all without causing any kind of natural disaster. Oh, and uh, do this all without raising any extra money or without causing anybody any potential loss of theoretical profits.
Uh-huh.
What your ACTUAL answer is is, "Well, it's 'totalitarian control over everyone else's lifestyle' when it's me who has to potentially maybe pay a small tax, but if my children have to lose their homes, eh, it's alright. Not my problem".
You still stand by your point, yes?
We could build things to last and keep them longer.
That fixes a problem with GARBAGE. How will you magically build these durable things without producing CO2? You still need to build the factories that build these durable things, and build the things themselves. Plus entropy works against you - there's no such thing as a product that will last forever.
We could use more insulation so that we use less heating oil.
That insulation has to be manufactured. It has to be shipped to where you need it. It has to be installed.
While you are suggesting techniques that would "stretch" our resources if they were even possible, this merely postpones the problem. As long as the population growth rate remains POSITIVE, we are inevitably going to hit the wall one way or another. Since killing millions or even billions of people is not an acceptable solution to our morality (unless their invisible sky wizard says something offensive about our invisible sky wizard), this problem is one we are irreversibly stuck with no matter what we do - especially IF we have already crossed this mysterious threshold that sends our planet into an irreversible plunge into greenhouse mode.
Right now the primary driver is greed.
Assuming you are not living in a hippy commune in the woods somewhere (and you're not, because you're using a computer and connected to the internet) you are guilty of that very same greed. Greed for the convenience of modern life. It's easy to blame it all on "the corporations" or "the 1%", but in reality we are to blame. You. Me. Each and every one of us. After all, if no one bought the products, no one would waste time selling them...
Your arguments boil down to, "you can't completely eliminate it so there's no point in doing anything", "we're all to blame so everything is pointless", and "delaying the problem is as bad as speeding it up". Are those really the ones you intended to make?
So what? The negative results of climate change are not going to significantly affect me or any of my relatives during my lifetime. It's not at all logical to care about people who aren't alive yet, and who may never be alive. And why should anyone living today care whether humans in the future will make any technological progress?
There are reasons to take care of the planet. Yours are completely illogical and rely purely on emotion.
Alright, let's shift it up. Let's assume you go to your local park, the one with a nice lake. Well, actually, it has dumped trash bags floating on the surface with their contents, is filled with chemical dumpings from the local factory, and was often used to dispose of leftover food scraps. The water looks dark brown, contains no living things anymore, and is unsafe for anyone to swim in it. The previous generation said when they were young, "I don't know if I'll ever have children, so it's illogical to care about my dumping my trash in it" - do you think your father was wrong?
I guess none of the moderators clicked on your 3 links because none of them are even remotely equivalent to what is happening right now. A verbal protest at a college and chair hanging in a tree? Really, you see that as the same as what is happening now? Link some video news stories from 2008 or 2012 of the mainstream media pushing for a riot like I'm seeing tonight on ABC, etc. The MSM meltdown live on election night should be evidence enough that we are being manipulated by their propaganda.
Of course the mainstream media wasn't pushing for a riot because the mainstream, which happens to be the majority of people by definition, didn't want to riot. Their candidate won in 2012. There still were riots though, and with the feet dragging and the refusal to evaluate a nomination for justice, the statement "Republicans accepted Obama" is highly misleading to say the least.
Secondly, as a question of curiosity, who do you consider to be the mainstream media, exactly? There's no malice here, I'm genuinely curious what the Trump supporter's side is. If you don't read mainstream media, then why would you feel like you're being manipulated? And if I evaluate both sides, and then side with the mainstream media, does that also make me manipulated?
It doesn't matter, really. As a self-described socialist democrat and significantly more progressive; Sanders is even more the polar opposite of the Trump people and representation of everything they hate than Clinton is. The only thing Sanders has in his favor, so far as those people are concerned, is his Y chromosome.
And while I am sure there is some small subset of the Trump people who are only misogynistic, but not racist, homophobic, islamophobic, xenophobic or isolationist; I doubt that would amount to enough defections from Trump to Sanders for the election to have gone the right way.
You are right that he's the polar opposite of Trump though. I guess over the next 4 years we'll see whether privatization or government is the right answer to our problems. My personal guess is that this wave will end in much the same way that Mr. Bush's presidency did, but perhaps a little quicker.
If you supported Trump kindly go fuck yourself, and I'll take the moderation results of this post. If not then I apologize to you, but not the man who decided to run a campaign based on sowing as much hatred as absolutely possible.
This is what happens when you run that kind of campaign.
We didn't protest when Barack Obama was elected. Twice.
Here's some observations about the protests:
You're being manipulated.
One
two
three
There were quite a few protests in 2008 and 2012, and they had the above list in effect.
But also against idiots like this doing it as a wah wah against Trump becoming president.
America as a defense pact makes sense. America as a single governing entity hasn't made sense since it was still the 13 colonies, and makes even less sense today between the vehement ideological differences across different parts of the US, the corruption and graft at all levels of federal government. All the pork barrel spending and incompetent programs that have resulted, in large part due to backroom deals to 'make it happen' while driving local industry with component manufacture that should really be consolidated into the same geographical region, etc.
California or the Cascadia region splitting off into its own state(s)/country could be exactly what this country needs. Cutting off both federal aid to the western blue states, as well as cutting off those states' tax base from the US economy might be a wake up call for both sides over what advantages the other offers, while also helping to shake up a number of issues due to complacency and corruption. Lack of federal spending in California means the interstate highways and other roads will need to locally maintained, something California is entirely capable of, but which has been neglected due to a preference for federal funds (at the expense of other things like drinking/smoking age, which may stay where they are, but were in part raised in order to keep getting federal funding.)
An added bonus: separation of California from the US could be used to segregate the western and eastern seaboard entertainment industries, whose decline has been in part due to media companies gobbling up industry members on both coasts. If secession takes place and restrictions are put in place, we may see a new influx of creativity in the industry which hasn't been seen since the move west to avoid the patents in the early part of the last century.
Downsides to it is less trust in the US Dollar, political uncertainty worldwide, and the possibility of Russia/China taking it as an opportunity to project military force while the weakened US is distracted.
Personally I think it is still worth the risk, especially if California undoes some of the shortcomings the Clinton/Bush era feds did with decommissioning bases in California (notably the entire Sacramento region, which had dozens of army, reserve, and air force bases sold off to private parties. Including all but one in the capital!
Errm... you realize Federal aid is going with California, yes? If the east and west segregate, DC isn't going to side with the midwest and south, I think that's pretty obvious. If almost all of the states that are the financial backbone of the federal government leave, and the federal government itself has no connection with those parts of the country, why on earth would it stay behind?
Sanders? You mean that guy who thought Hugo Chavez was a great leader and Venezuela was an economic model the US should follow? That Sanders?
When did Sanders ever praise Hugo Chavez?