A pork project is, by definition, good for the economy of the local area in which the money is spent, and at the same time is a net negative for the national economy.
The cumulative effect of thousands of pork projects is to make every local economy poorer than it otherwise would be. In Congresscritter Smith's district, the positive effect of the projects that Smith secures for his district (influx of money) tends to be outweighed by the negative effect of the projects that the other 434 congresscritters secured for their districts (outflux of money). The exception is when a congresscritter is particularly slick at scoring unearned freebies for his local economy, at the expense of the national economy.
Eisenhower didn't articulate the problem in these terms. If he had, Joe Schmoe would be closer to understanding (and using his vote to do something about) one of the worst aspects of our system of government. The president made a campaign promise to "fundamentally transform the United States of America," and pork-barrel politics is the aspect most in need of "fundamental transformation," but sadly, it has only been reinforced since 2008.
A local magazine surveyed dentists, asking "who, besides yourself, is the best dentist in our city?" By not allowing dentists to vote for themselves, the survey produced a much truer guide to where to get quality dental care. Similarly, a constitutional amendment that bars congresscritters from seeking to have money spent in their own districts would boost the overall effectiveness of government. Lockheed would finally be pressured to source its F-35 components from the most efficient suppliers, rather than from the most pork-ified network of suppliers.
Are there at least windows behind the screens so that they can be moved out of the way in the event of a problem?
That would defeat the point of deleting the cockpit window, which is to save weight (aerospace glass is very heavy), simplify and strengthen the structure, eliminate a potential point of failure for cabin pressurization, and improve aerodynamics.
What is needed to increase your comfort level is redundancy -- a backup camera in case the primary is damaged by, say, a bird strike, and a backup power source in case the primary power source fails.
If you've never watched "Seven Minutes of Terror," which explains the crazy but successful scheme to lower the Curiousity rover onto Mars, do yourself a favor and go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
It's the best video the U.S. Government has ever produced.
I've seen so much over the top hype and hysteria from the climate change deniers
I don't pay attention to hype or hysteria, but I do pay attention to this reasoned comment from James Lovelock:
"The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened."
Hobbyists and amateurs will always be free to create content; but a professional news-gathering organization, or a site like C|NET that attempts to provide impartial product reviews, needs ad revenue. Heck, even Slashdot needs some revenue to keep the lights on.
Making the bubble worse: the current Administration, by nationalizing the student loan industry and further removing market forces from individual decisionmaking: http://heritageaction.com/2013...
Remeber, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Most of the content on the web is seemingly free, but only because advertising covers the costs of creating new content and keeping old content available.
Without advertising, how do you propose to cover those costs? If your solution is, "everyone who is paid to create web content should become a government employee and be paid with tax dollars," I reject your solution a priori.
You may be right that they aren't issued cutting-edge laptops. Nonetheless, think about this: thanks to incomes growing faster than the rate of inflation, basic commodities, like a gallon of milk, consume a significantly smaller fraction of a family's income than they did a generation ago. (This is known as Engel's Law.) And that effect is orders-of-magnitude larger for technological commodities, like a gigaflop of computing power.
Government services, too, ought to be costing a smaller fraction of a family's income. (Especially because government uses technology to provide its services. Most government workers sit in front of a computer all day.) But government services are about the only thing that is bucking the trend, and consuming a larger fraction of a family's income!
Most news reports seem quite accepting of the story that the emails are irretrievably gone because Lerner's local hard drive crashed.
Is it just because journalists are ignorant of how enterprise email systems typically work (messages stored on an Exchange server with offsite backups)?
Or is it the ultimate proof of the mainstream media being "in the tank" for the Administration?
I've worked at places where the size of my mailbox was, literally, limited to 25 cents' worth of hard drive space.
Granted, hard drive prices fall rapidly; maybe when the quota was first imposed, it was the equivalent of 25 dollars' worth of hard drive space, and the policy was never revisited while storage costs fell by two orders of magnitude. Still, a $25 limit on one of a professional's most important tools is very stingy. I could expense $25 for a single breakfast if I wanted to (although I never have).
it was "illegal" for them to use email, and they used mail or phone exclusively
Another policy that doesn't make sense. It's easier to audit an employee's email interactions with the public, than his or her telephone interactions with the public.
And, wouldn't it be funny as hell, if we DID send a time machine back, and as it drifted further and further back, we gathered shitloads of evidence that evolution really is real - BUT, there was also an entity at the beginning that started it all off? Then, EVERYONE would all be embarrassed!
Everyone except me, as that's the exact scenario I've been advocating for years.
Even the simplest living organism is so complex -- dependent on correct interactions between hundreds of proteins, and the instructions for synthesizing each of those proteins are quite cleverly encoded in its DNA -- it's obvious that the first living organism could not have simply assembled itself out of random chemicals dissolved in the "primoridal soup."
If Tesla offers the best value on batteries sold to other automakers, that's the first-order consideration. The fact that they are helping the bottom line of a fellow automaker is a much weaker, second-order consideration. No smart automaker would reject Tesla as a battery vendor on that basis.
other car companies won't innovate unless they have competition. Tesla is far more likely to create real change by existing as a car company
Tesla has already created spurred scads of real change despite its tiny market share. I can't wait to see the additional change it will spur over the next, say, 15 years.
It's successful, if not wildly successful. And it diversifies his track record even further; he has majorly shaken up four industries: financial services, automobiles, space launch, and energy.
During the last 23,000 years, sea level rose 400 feet. I won't cast aspersions by calling you a marketer, but how can you, with a straight face, call that a "nice flat line"?!
Of course it's a tautology. Why are you so concerned about species that weren't able to adapt to non-anthropogenic climate change? There's nothing humans could have done to save them.
This cycle is going to continue into the future, and if we don't choke off our economic growth, in the future we will have the means to help threatened species.
apparently think it's going to be as easy for 7 billion people to move around to adjust to said changing climate tomorrow as it was for 700 million people to do it ~23,000 years ago.
You're right, it won't be as easy for modern people to move around; thanks to the invention of buses, trains and trucks it will be vastly easier.
Aww, Vortex, I friended you a while ago because your posts are generally smart. Too bad this one was an exception.
Anyway, I'm trying to spread some actual data: the NOAA dataset that begins in 1855, when humans had had hardly any impact on atmospheric CO2 levels.
The slope of the line then was 2.77 mm/year, and the slope of the line in 2010 was unchanged, 2.77 mm/year (or 0.9 feet per century). So there's nothing anthropogenic about this.
The slope of the line then was 2.77 mm/year, and the slope of the line in 2010 was unchanged, 2.77 mm/year. I predict the trend will continue: 100 yrs from now it will still be 2.77 mm/yr (or 0.9 feet per century), regardless of CO2 levels. That's not going to cause a significant number of people to move..
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A pork project is, by definition, good for the economy of the local area in which the money is spent, and at the same time is a net negative for the national economy.
The cumulative effect of thousands of pork projects is to make every local economy poorer than it otherwise would be. In Congresscritter Smith's district, the positive effect of the projects that Smith secures for his district (influx of money) tends to be outweighed by the negative effect of the projects that the other 434 congresscritters secured for their districts (outflux of money). The exception is when a congresscritter is particularly slick at scoring unearned freebies for his local economy, at the expense of the national economy.
Eisenhower didn't articulate the problem in these terms. If he had, Joe Schmoe would be closer to understanding (and using his vote to do something about) one of the worst aspects of our system of government. The president made a campaign promise to "fundamentally transform the United States of America," and pork-barrel politics is the aspect most in need of "fundamental transformation," but sadly, it has only been reinforced since 2008.
A local magazine surveyed dentists, asking "who, besides yourself, is the best dentist in our city?" By not allowing dentists to vote for themselves, the survey produced a much truer guide to where to get quality dental care. Similarly, a constitutional amendment that bars congresscritters from seeking to have money spent in their own districts would boost the overall effectiveness of government. Lockheed would finally be pressured to source its F-35 components from the most efficient suppliers, rather than from the most pork-ified network of suppliers.
Are there at least windows behind the screens so that they can be moved out of the way in the event of a problem?
That would defeat the point of deleting the cockpit window, which is to save weight (aerospace glass is very heavy), simplify and strengthen the structure, eliminate a potential point of failure for cabin pressurization, and improve aerodynamics.
What is needed to increase your comfort level is redundancy -- a backup camera in case the primary is damaged by, say, a bird strike, and a backup power source in case the primary power source fails.
If you've never watched "Seven Minutes of Terror," which explains the crazy but successful scheme to lower the Curiousity rover onto Mars, do yourself a favor and go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
It's the best video the U.S. Government has ever produced.
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
I've seen so much over the top hype and hysteria from the climate change deniers
I don't pay attention to hype or hysteria, but I do pay attention to this reasoned comment from James Lovelock:
"The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened."
Hobbyists and amateurs will always be free to create content; but a professional news-gathering organization, or a site like C|NET that attempts to provide impartial product reviews, needs ad revenue. Heck, even Slashdot needs some revenue to keep the lights on.
Early predictors of the tuition bubble: John Stossel and Matthew Continetti http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
In the news this week, Mark Cuban on the tuition bubble: http://www.businessinsider.com...
Making the bubble worse: the current Administration, by nationalizing the student loan industry and further removing market forces from individual decisionmaking: http://heritageaction.com/2013...
Remeber, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Most of the content on the web is seemingly free, but only because advertising covers the costs of creating new content and keeping old content available.
Without advertising, how do you propose to cover those costs? If your solution is, "everyone who is paid to create web content should become a government employee and be paid with tax dollars," I reject your solution a priori.
You may be right that they aren't issued cutting-edge laptops. Nonetheless, think about this: thanks to incomes growing faster than the rate of inflation, basic commodities, like a gallon of milk, consume a significantly smaller fraction of a family's income than they did a generation ago. (This is known as Engel's Law.) And that effect is orders-of-magnitude larger for technological commodities, like a gigaflop of computing power.
Government services, too, ought to be costing a smaller fraction of a family's income. (Especially because government uses technology to provide its services. Most government workers sit in front of a computer all day.) But government services are about the only thing that is bucking the trend, and consuming a larger fraction of a family's income!
Actual competition is terrifying to "free market capitalists".
Actual competition is nirvana to free market capitalists; those who oppose it, like NADA, are not free market capitalists. FTFY.
Most news reports seem quite accepting of the story that the emails are irretrievably gone because Lerner's local hard drive crashed.
Is it just because journalists are ignorant of how enterprise email systems typically work (messages stored on an Exchange server with offsite backups)?
Or is it the ultimate proof of the mainstream media being "in the tank" for the Administration?
I've worked at places where the size of my mailbox was, literally, limited to 25 cents' worth of hard drive space.
Granted, hard drive prices fall rapidly; maybe when the quota was first imposed, it was the equivalent of 25 dollars' worth of hard drive space, and the policy was never revisited while storage costs fell by two orders of magnitude. Still, a $25 limit on one of a professional's most important tools is very stingy. I could expense $25 for a single breakfast if I wanted to (although I never have).
it was "illegal" for them to use email, and they used mail or phone exclusively
Another policy that doesn't make sense. It's easier to audit an employee's email interactions with the public, than his or her telephone interactions with the public.
More miniturization equals greater reliability, because smaller components always do better at surviving shock and vibration than larger components.
I'd say the low-hanging fruit disappeared a few decades ago
In an absolute sense, yes. In a relative sense, some fruit will always be lower than others.
And, wouldn't it be funny as hell, if we DID send a time machine back, and as it drifted further and further back, we gathered shitloads of evidence that evolution really is real - BUT, there was also an entity at the beginning that started it all off? Then, EVERYONE would all be embarrassed!
Everyone except me, as that's the exact scenario I've been advocating for years.
Even the simplest living organism is so complex -- dependent on correct interactions between hundreds of proteins, and the instructions for synthesizing each of those proteins are quite cleverly encoded in its DNA -- it's obvious that the first living organism could not have simply assembled itself out of random chemicals dissolved in the "primoridal soup."
is a good approximation for pi.
Far less likely? No.
If Tesla offers the best value on batteries sold to other automakers, that's the first-order consideration. The fact that they are helping the bottom line of a fellow automaker is a much weaker, second-order consideration. No smart automaker would reject Tesla as a battery vendor on that basis.
other car companies won't innovate unless they have competition. Tesla is far more likely to create real change by existing as a car company
Tesla has already created spurred scads of real change despite its tiny market share. I can't wait to see the additional change it will spur over the next, say, 15 years.
It's successful, if not wildly successful. And it diversifies his track record even further; he has majorly shaken up four industries: financial services, automobiles, space launch, and energy.
During the last 23,000 years, sea level rose 400 feet. I won't cast aspersions by calling you a marketer, but how can you, with a straight face, call that a "nice flat line"?!
Of course it's a tautology. Why are you so concerned about species that weren't able to adapt to non-anthropogenic climate change? There's nothing humans could have done to save them.
This cycle is going to continue into the future, and if we don't choke off our economic growth, in the future we will have the means to help threatened species.
Look at this data that correlates well with the cycles of glacial advances and retreats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Do you imagine that humankind somehow has the ability to put a stop to that cycle?
apparently think it's going to be as easy for 7 billion people to move around to adjust to said changing climate tomorrow as it was for 700 million people to do it ~23,000 years ago.
You're right, it won't be as easy for modern people to move around; thanks to the invention of buses, trains and trucks it will be vastly easier.
Aww, Vortex, I friended you a while ago because your posts are generally smart. Too bad this one was an exception.
Anyway, I'm trying to spread some actual data: the NOAA dataset that begins in 1855, when humans had had hardly any impact on atmospheric CO2 levels.
The slope of the line then was 2.77 mm/year, and the slope of the line in 2010 was unchanged, 2.77 mm/year (or 0.9 feet per century). So there's nothing anthropogenic about this.
I for one am not in favor of subsidized flood insurance. If you want to live near the water, assume the full risk.
But look at the NOAA dataset that begins in 1855, when humans had had hardly any impact on atmospheric CO2 levels.
The slope of the line then was 2.77 mm/year, and the slope of the line in 2010 was unchanged, 2.77 mm/year (or 0.9 feet per century).
Now do you still think NYC will be inundated anytime soon?
Look at the NOAA dataset that begins in 1855, when humans had had hardly any impact on atmospheric CO2 levels.
The slope of the line then was 2.77 mm/year, and the slope of the line in 2010 was unchanged, 2.77 mm/year. I predict the trend will continue: 100 yrs from now it will still be 2.77 mm/yr (or 0.9 feet per century), regardless of CO2 levels. That's not going to cause a significant number of people to move..