While Greece borrowed money it could not pay back, shouldn't the lender also take some responsibility for giving the money to them in the first place?
These aren't free market transactions. These loans are the result of government policy, coordinating banks and corporations and providing explicit or implicit bailout guarantees.
The people ultimately responsible will be paying for it: the tax payers who elected the governments that put this system into place. Unfortunately, it's unclear that they will learn from it.
The rest of the Eurozone gains a place to launder government funds: the German government guarantees loans that German banks make to the Greek government to pay for Greek infrastructure projects that are built by German companies as a requirement of the loan. The Greek government spends some of the money on infrastructure and more on cronyism and vote buying in Greece. German politicians like the deal because they can point to how many jobs "they created". So, it's good for German banks, German corporations, German politicians, and Greek politicians.
When the "investment in Greek infrastructure" doesn't pay off and Greece can't pay its debt because it failed to grow enough, the original politicians are out of office, so they don't care anymore. Everybody can play political theater for a while, feign surprise and innocence, and then go back to doing the same thing. German tax payers are left paying for it, in a vast transfer of funds to banks and corporations.
This kind of corruption is far less efficient than the old, direct kind of corruption. Welcome to the new world of economic stimuli, "investments" in societies, and Keynesian multipliers.
Listen, I agree with your assessment of how it should be, but the fact of the matter is the discussion of marriage within the State. If we removed marriage as a facet of the State, we're on the same page.
That's why I have pointed out: "Unfortunately, while the Irish decision certainly represents progress, it doesn't address the underlying problem."
But I sure as fuck don't want some dipshit in the hospital denying me the ability to visit my husband, and recognition of same-sex marriage is an achievement for me to deal with the fucking laws that exist
"Marriage" isn't required for that, only equivalent legal recognition, as in many other places. Don't kid yourself, but insisting on the name "marriage" is not just a practical matter, it's a question of wanting validation by the majority and the state, and you should ask yourself why you care.
I'll take recognition of same-sex marriage by the State as a temporary path to fixing the fucked up shit that exists about marriage and the State and the Church.
But it isn't a "path to". Quite the opposite. Now that the constitution unnecessarily enshrined the word "marriage", religious, private, and legal issues are going to be mixed up in perpetuity. A better choice would have been to take this opportunity and consistently switch over to the term "civil union" in the law, for everybody.
I joined this conversation specifically to address the broad accusation that folks participating in this conversation "can't articulate a single problem with them."
Well, in that case, perhaps you should have read the whole conversation, since I had already responded to the arguments you made.
All of that environmental science aside, it seems to me that selling plastics intended to enter our wastewater systems and likely unable to be captured by many such systems amounts to basic littering. I can't think of a good reason to allow that in consumer-level products other than to avoid inflicting economic harm on the industries that sell those products. Maybe you can help me out there...
Small plastic particles with large surface areas have huge numbers of applications, from medicine to material science, batteries, and water purification. In fact, the very problem people see with microbeads, namely that they concentrate toxins out of the environment, is itself a huge potential application. Consumer-level applications is what drives research into better and cheaper production methods, investment in high volume production facilities, and new applications.
I also think the distinction between "consumer-level products" and other products is invalid. Microbeads may well be the best solution for some (or even many) consumer-level products, and the choice should be left up to consumers when there is no clearly demonstrable harm and prohibition would be ineffective anyway.
Finally, I think the dichotomy you pose is a false one; there are many other choices between prohibiting their sale in "consumer-level products" and letting microbeads enter every environment on the planet. For example, water treatment plants could be changed to be more efficient.
What we've got is evidence of a mechanism that can cause harm by concentrating compounds into our food chain that shouldn't be there. That is to say, we know compounds bind to the surface of these plastics. We know animals are consuming the plastics. We know these harmful compounds are absorbed into the animal when the plastics are consumed. If that's what you call, "next to no evidence of actual harm", then I a guess we agree.
Yes, that's no evidence of harm, because it's all a matter of quantity and effect. All it says is that there is a theoretical possibility of harm. Why are you beating around the bush? Why are you not stating clearly what your definition actually is?
Second, it's most definitely plausible that banning the beads could ultimately result in less of the compounds we've been discussing entering our food chain. Maybe that doesn't fit your definition of significantly improving the marine environment?
Yes, it does not fit my definition of "significantly improving the marine environment". "It is plausible that..." is not sufficient reason to ban potentially useful substances. All it says is that there is a theoretical possibility of improving the marine environment. Why are you beating around the bush? Why are you not stating clearly what your definition actually is?
I'm happy to acknowledge more research is needed before taking a drastic step like banning the microbeads, but I don't think this perspective should impede a rational discussion about the potential impact of these beads on our enviornment and food supply.
California votes to ban microbeads. I ask for evidence of harm. People get abusive and hostile.
The only scientific publications anybody can point to in support of the ban demonstrate no harm from microbeads, only slightly elevated liver activity at the highest doses of microplastics, and provide no evidence or data suggesting that banning microbeads has any effect whatsoever.
And you are trying to have it both ways. Fact is that if your (implied, you're hedging your bets by being evasive) definitions of "harm" or "significantly improving the marine environment" were true, the ban would be justified. But because you don't want to be perceived as anti-environmentalist by questioning environmentalism or as anti-scientific, so you are vague and evasive.
I do care about the environment. But the kind of unscientific fear mongering and bans that this represents are actually hurting the environment, because if you waste your time and political capital on things that don't matter, those things that do matter don't get addressed.
IoT devices use Bluetooth LE, Zigbee, Z-Wave, or a number of other, far better suited networking standards. All of those can be switched on and off as needed too.
They are observing that people more quickly associate "science" and "male" in countries where the population of scientists is predominantly male. The simplest explanation is not that gender bias causes women to stay out of science, the simplest explanation is that human associations reflect what people actually experience in the real world.
Oh, dearest, you are so naive. Like the middle ages and early modern period was run by progressive social scientists and plebiscite.
In addition, at some point in time, the majority of people in many places did think that slavery and genocide were good ideas too; that doesn't mean we still need to govern ourselves like that.
In Norway if a couple lives together for 2 years, it automatically gets the same rights as if they were married.
Well, how nice that Norway discovered the equivalent of common law marriage.
So the notion of marriage from the state point of view is just a shortcut to gain those rights without 2 year delay.
That actually makes things a lot worse. Marriage isn't just rights, it's also a shitload of legal and financial obligations. And now government is in the business of determining whether your roommate of two years was actually your partner and you should be considered married. That should be an interesting court case when he demands support from you after your "separation".
The main things I want from the law/government regarding my marriage is: medical decisions when the other cannot make them,
What does that have to do with who you marry? It shouldn't be necessary to marry someone to give someone that power, nor does everybody who marries someone else want their partner to have that power.
inheritance decisions without me explicitly writing down that my husband co-owns my assets
If you have any significant assets, you better think about inheritance decisions and make a will, because otherwise you are going to leave everybody with a mess. Marriage and the inheritance laws that go along with it actually greatly complicate that, arising out of historical assumptions about stay-at-home moms.
the ability to make decisions for our children,
And why should that require getting married? Why should that come in a bundle with all the other responsibilities?
and... well I think that's it.
No, that's not actually it. You also need to get married in order to bring your partner into the country as an immigrant. And there are lots of other consequences.
Disclaimer: I'm a gay man married to another man.
I'm a gay man too, and sexual orientation has nothing to do with it. Marriage as an institution isn't working for half of straight people either. The problem isn't that all the components of marriage may be useful on their own, it's that it's an all-or-nothing approach. It isn't working for many people, gay or straight, which is why many do not intend to get married. And the root problem is that you accept that government can intrude into your life in this way.
Part of long battery life is also to have an OS that allows the system to sleep most of the time.
A Spec mote takes a few cubic millimeters of space. Those are the kinds of specs we're heading for, and a 1000x difference in memory and the nature of the OS matter a great deal. Android doesn't cut it.
That may show things like the only 3 IoT devices in my house being hard wired and thus no one could care less if they use 1uA or 320000 times more power.
You're confusing cause and effect: the reason they are all hardwired is that getting things to be low-powered is tricky.
I have dozens of IoT devices around my house, and they are almost all battery powered. They also last at least a year each. Even cameras are moving to battery power now, making installation much easier. Ideally, eventually, they will be lower power enough so that they can run on light or beamed power.
And how is that "investment in our society to promote family units" working out? Oh, right, it isn't. The more government gets involved in the family unit, the more it deteriorates.
See, regardless of whether you think it's government's job to "promote the family unit" (or "raise people out of poverty" or "end drug use" or whatever), fact is that government is piss poor at that kind of social engineering and makes things worse rather than better.
(It's ironic, however, that progressives and conservatives both advocate this kind of interference, and yet criticize each other for doing it.)
You can't study microplastic beads directly because once they reach the environment, they quickly become indistinguishable from other microplastic pollution.
I'm not saying that microbeads are less harmful than other microplastics, I'm saying that there is so much microplastics around that it is unclear that banning microbeads will have any effect.
I'm not an expert in this area but it looks like enough serious people are investigating it that I'll back them when they say to stop.
So you're saying that we should ban anything that a lot of people seem to be publishing papers on, no matter what those papers say? Or what? That's basically the environmentalist equivalent of the privacy-violating anti-terrorist measures and security theater at the airport, or the "ban gay marriage because it destroys traditional families" crowd.
Really, is it too much to ask people to demonstrate that a new law (1) addresses harm that is actually observed (i.e., animals and/or humans getting sick in the real world), and (2) actually will reduce the harm?
Because it is one of the very few institutions found in all human cultures. Any legal system that doesn't deal with marriage in some fashion is profoundly deficient.
That's just not true. Until fairly recently in human history, marriage was largely a religious and private issue.
The devil, however, is in the details. What responsibilities does marriage imply
Whatever responsibilities you agree on.
(as a minimum, there are tax issues in most places)
If this contract is treated specially, it should be treated as such based on specific, rational concepts, not a generic "X and Y are 'married'". So, give people tax breaks if they have kids; give them tax breaks if they give each other power of attorney; give them tax breaks if they take on legal liability for each other etc.
and what privileges does it grant (among others, there are medical issues most places - your spouse can make medical decisions on your behalf if you are incapable, for instance)?
Why shouldn't I be able to give anybody that right? Why should my spouse be the default or have any special status in that regard?
What are the limits on marriage (so, why limit it to two people, for instance)?
Once you decompose marriage contracts into its components, you get limits on each component, based on some rational analysis of the actual purpose of that component.
there are very few that consider the religious ceremony legally binding in and of itself
Whether it is legally binding is not for churches to decide, it is for the legal system to decide. But most churches do, in fact, perform legally binding marriages, since church officials are empowered by the state to do so.
No need to found anything. There are plenty of Christian churches that perform gay marriages. People who say that this is against Christianity also implicitly deny that many Christian churches are actually Christian. But, hey, it's the Vatican way: only we hold the truth and people who don't submit to us will go to hell.
But marriage does grant additional rights that fall outside the scope of natural rights, as you appear to be defining them...
Yes, and those "additional rights" should probably be abolished. I mean, what possible justification is there to extend special rights to you because you are in a sexual relationship with someone else?.Even if those "additional rights" aren't abolished, they shouldn't be tied to government scrutiny of the sexual and parenting relationships of citizens. The fact that that scrutiny is less discriminatory and arbitrary than it used to be still doesn't make it right.
There are exactly 0 valid reasons why gay couples shouldn't be allowed to get married, that's it, zero reasons, as in absolutely none.
"Allow"? Why the hell is it government's business to "allow" people to marry in the first place? Government and law should get out of people's private lives, and that includes getting out of deciding which relationships are worthy of tax breaks and immigration visas and which ones aren't. Unfortunately, while the Irish decision certainly represents progress, it doesn't address the underlying problem.
First, they "concentrate" toxins by passing them up the food chain into continually larger organisms after the toxins were ingested by smaller ones. By the time the toxins have moved a ways up the food chain, they've been concentrated into the larger organisms.
That's true for mercury compounds and free fat soluble organic compounds. Microplastics bind the toxins (in fact, similar processes are used for cleaning up pollution because binding toxins like that removes them from the environment).
Second, it's not FUD because "the majority of animal life on this planet" resides in the ocean, by far. Also, higher concentrations of toxins inflict demonstrable harm.
Those are just platitudes, not arguments.
I guess the take-home lesson from all the non-responses is that there is next to no evidence of actual harm, and no plausible way in which the ban will significantly improve the marine environment.
It's more accurate to say they concentrate other toxins.
They bind other toxins. That is not necessarily a bad thing.
Second, pollution exists and cannot be "undone".
Quite right. And pollution continues. Microbeads are negligible compared to other plastic pollution, pollution that nobody even remotely considers tackling.
microbeads interfere with our ability to bide that time without inflicting harm upon the majority of animal life on this planet.
That statement is pure FUD, starting with he fact that "the majority of animal life on this planet" isn't even a well defined concept.
The main claim to harm is based on references 9 and 10. However, the pamphlet misrepresents those studies, implying that they show liver toxicity and endocrine disruption; in fact, all those studies show is that very high levels of contaminated dietary microplastics (not microbeads) result in increased liver activity, not necessarily harmful. There is no evidence at all for any kind of harm to humans, either from direct ingestion or eating fish.
More importantly, though, that paper is about microplastics in general, not microbeads. Microplastics are generated by lots of plastics wastes, and banning microbeads is unlikely to reduce the amounts of microplastics in the ocean or food chain appreciably.
"Harm" is not a question of "can it produce harm under some circumstances", but "does it increase risk demonstrably and significantly in the real world".
Well, if it is so obvious, it should be easy to point to cite something that dispels my ignorance.
No article I could find demonstrated any harm. There is a belief that microbeads might bind some pollutants which might cause harm, but no actual evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
These aren't free market transactions. These loans are the result of government policy, coordinating banks and corporations and providing explicit or implicit bailout guarantees.
The people ultimately responsible will be paying for it: the tax payers who elected the governments that put this system into place. Unfortunately, it's unclear that they will learn from it.
The rest of the Eurozone gains a place to launder government funds: the German government guarantees loans that German banks make to the Greek government to pay for Greek infrastructure projects that are built by German companies as a requirement of the loan. The Greek government spends some of the money on infrastructure and more on cronyism and vote buying in Greece. German politicians like the deal because they can point to how many jobs "they created". So, it's good for German banks, German corporations, German politicians, and Greek politicians.
When the "investment in Greek infrastructure" doesn't pay off and Greece can't pay its debt because it failed to grow enough, the original politicians are out of office, so they don't care anymore. Everybody can play political theater for a while, feign surprise and innocence, and then go back to doing the same thing. German tax payers are left paying for it, in a vast transfer of funds to banks and corporations.
This kind of corruption is far less efficient than the old, direct kind of corruption. Welcome to the new world of economic stimuli, "investments" in societies, and Keynesian multipliers.
That's why I have pointed out: "Unfortunately, while the Irish decision certainly represents progress, it doesn't address the underlying problem."
"Marriage" isn't required for that, only equivalent legal recognition, as in many other places. Don't kid yourself, but insisting on the name "marriage" is not just a practical matter, it's a question of wanting validation by the majority and the state, and you should ask yourself why you care.
But it isn't a "path to". Quite the opposite. Now that the constitution unnecessarily enshrined the word "marriage", religious, private, and legal issues are going to be mixed up in perpetuity. A better choice would have been to take this opportunity and consistently switch over to the term "civil union" in the law, for everybody.
Well, in that case, perhaps you should have read the whole conversation, since I had already responded to the arguments you made.
Small plastic particles with large surface areas have huge numbers of applications, from medicine to material science, batteries, and water purification. In fact, the very problem people see with microbeads, namely that they concentrate toxins out of the environment, is itself a huge potential application. Consumer-level applications is what drives research into better and cheaper production methods, investment in high volume production facilities, and new applications.
I also think the distinction between "consumer-level products" and other products is invalid. Microbeads may well be the best solution for some (or even many) consumer-level products, and the choice should be left up to consumers when there is no clearly demonstrable harm and prohibition would be ineffective anyway.
Finally, I think the dichotomy you pose is a false one; there are many other choices between prohibiting their sale in "consumer-level products" and letting microbeads enter every environment on the planet. For example, water treatment plants could be changed to be more efficient.
Yes, that's no evidence of harm, because it's all a matter of quantity and effect. All it says is that there is a theoretical possibility of harm. Why are you beating around the bush? Why are you not stating clearly what your definition actually is?
Yes, it does not fit my definition of "significantly improving the marine environment". "It is plausible that..." is not sufficient reason to ban potentially useful substances. All it says is that there is a theoretical possibility of improving the marine environment. Why are you beating around the bush? Why are you not stating clearly what your definition actually is?
California votes to ban microbeads. I ask for evidence of harm. People get abusive and hostile.
The only scientific publications anybody can point to in support of the ban demonstrate no harm from microbeads, only slightly elevated liver activity at the highest doses of microplastics, and provide no evidence or data suggesting that banning microbeads has any effect whatsoever.
And you are trying to have it both ways. Fact is that if your (implied, you're hedging your bets by being evasive) definitions of "harm" or "significantly improving the marine environment" were true, the ban would be justified. But because you don't want to be perceived as anti-environmentalist by questioning environmentalism or as anti-scientific, so you are vague and evasive.
I do care about the environment. But the kind of unscientific fear mongering and bans that this represents are actually hurting the environment, because if you waste your time and political capital on things that don't matter, those things that do matter don't get addressed.
None.
IoT devices use Bluetooth LE, Zigbee, Z-Wave, or a number of other, far better suited networking standards. All of those can be switched on and off as needed too.
They are observing that people more quickly associate "science" and "male" in countries where the population of scientists is predominantly male. The simplest explanation is not that gender bias causes women to stay out of science, the simplest explanation is that human associations reflect what people actually experience in the real world.
Oh, dearest, you are so naive. Like the middle ages and early modern period was run by progressive social scientists and plebiscite.
In addition, at some point in time, the majority of people in many places did think that slavery and genocide were good ideas too; that doesn't mean we still need to govern ourselves like that.
Well, how nice that Norway discovered the equivalent of common law marriage.
That actually makes things a lot worse. Marriage isn't just rights, it's also a shitload of legal and financial obligations. And now government is in the business of determining whether your roommate of two years was actually your partner and you should be considered married. That should be an interesting court case when he demands support from you after your "separation".
What does that have to do with who you marry? It shouldn't be necessary to marry someone to give someone that power, nor does everybody who marries someone else want their partner to have that power.
If you have any significant assets, you better think about inheritance decisions and make a will, because otherwise you are going to leave everybody with a mess. Marriage and the inheritance laws that go along with it actually greatly complicate that, arising out of historical assumptions about stay-at-home moms.
And why should that require getting married? Why should that come in a bundle with all the other responsibilities?
No, that's not actually it. You also need to get married in order to bring your partner into the country as an immigrant. And there are lots of other consequences.
I'm a gay man too, and sexual orientation has nothing to do with it. Marriage as an institution isn't working for half of straight people either. The problem isn't that all the components of marriage may be useful on their own, it's that it's an all-or-nothing approach. It isn't working for many people, gay or straight, which is why many do not intend to get married. And the root problem is that you accept that government can intrude into your life in this way.
Arduinos can get by with as little as 5 uA in standby:
https://github.com/petervojtek...
Part of long battery life is also to have an OS that allows the system to sleep most of the time.
A Spec mote takes a few cubic millimeters of space. Those are the kinds of specs we're heading for, and a 1000x difference in memory and the nature of the OS matter a great deal. Android doesn't cut it.
You're confusing cause and effect: the reason they are all hardwired is that getting things to be low-powered is tricky.
I have dozens of IoT devices around my house, and they are almost all battery powered. They also last at least a year each. Even cameras are moving to battery power now, making installation much easier. Ideally, eventually, they will be lower power enough so that they can run on light or beamed power.
And how is that "investment in our society to promote family units" working out? Oh, right, it isn't. The more government gets involved in the family unit, the more it deteriorates.
See, regardless of whether you think it's government's job to "promote the family unit" (or "raise people out of poverty" or "end drug use" or whatever), fact is that government is piss poor at that kind of social engineering and makes things worse rather than better.
(It's ironic, however, that progressives and conservatives both advocate this kind of interference, and yet criticize each other for doing it.)
It's not about cost, it's about power and size.
I'm not saying that microbeads are less harmful than other microplastics, I'm saying that there is so much microplastics around that it is unclear that banning microbeads will have any effect.
So you're saying that we should ban anything that a lot of people seem to be publishing papers on, no matter what those papers say? Or what? That's basically the environmentalist equivalent of the privacy-violating anti-terrorist measures and security theater at the airport, or the "ban gay marriage because it destroys traditional families" crowd.
Really, is it too much to ask people to demonstrate that a new law (1) addresses harm that is actually observed (i.e., animals and/or humans getting sick in the real world), and (2) actually will reduce the harm?
That's just not true. Until fairly recently in human history, marriage was largely a religious and private issue.
Whatever responsibilities you agree on.
If this contract is treated specially, it should be treated as such based on specific, rational concepts, not a generic "X and Y are 'married'". So, give people tax breaks if they have kids; give them tax breaks if they give each other power of attorney; give them tax breaks if they take on legal liability for each other etc.
Why shouldn't I be able to give anybody that right? Why should my spouse be the default or have any special status in that regard?
Once you decompose marriage contracts into its components, you get limits on each component, based on some rational analysis of the actual purpose of that component.
Whether it is legally binding is not for churches to decide, it is for the legal system to decide. But most churches do, in fact, perform legally binding marriages, since church officials are empowered by the state to do so.
No need to found anything. There are plenty of Christian churches that perform gay marriages. People who say that this is against Christianity also implicitly deny that many Christian churches are actually Christian. But, hey, it's the Vatican way: only we hold the truth and people who don't submit to us will go to hell.
Yes, and those "additional rights" should probably be abolished. I mean, what possible justification is there to extend special rights to you because you are in a sexual relationship with someone else?.Even if those "additional rights" aren't abolished, they shouldn't be tied to government scrutiny of the sexual and parenting relationships of citizens. The fact that that scrutiny is less discriminatory and arbitrary than it used to be still doesn't make it right.
"Allow"? Why the hell is it government's business to "allow" people to marry in the first place? Government and law should get out of people's private lives, and that includes getting out of deciding which relationships are worthy of tax breaks and immigration visas and which ones aren't. Unfortunately, while the Irish decision certainly represents progress, it doesn't address the underlying problem.
That's true for mercury compounds and free fat soluble organic compounds. Microplastics bind the toxins (in fact, similar processes are used for cleaning up pollution because binding toxins like that removes them from the environment).
Those are just platitudes, not arguments.
I guess the take-home lesson from all the non-responses is that there is next to no evidence of actual harm, and no plausible way in which the ban will significantly improve the marine environment.
I hope that's 32 kbytes of RAM, not 32 MB of RAM, because most IoT devices don't need and don't have that much memory.
They bind other toxins. That is not necessarily a bad thing.
Quite right. And pollution continues. Microbeads are negligible compared to other plastic pollution, pollution that nobody even remotely considers tackling.
That statement is pure FUD, starting with he fact that "the majority of animal life on this planet" isn't even a well defined concept.
The main claim to harm is based on references 9 and 10. However, the pamphlet misrepresents those studies, implying that they show liver toxicity and endocrine disruption; in fact, all those studies show is that very high levels of contaminated dietary microplastics (not microbeads) result in increased liver activity, not necessarily harmful. There is no evidence at all for any kind of harm to humans, either from direct ingestion or eating fish.
More importantly, though, that paper is about microplastics in general, not microbeads. Microplastics are generated by lots of plastics wastes, and banning microbeads is unlikely to reduce the amounts of microplastics in the ocean or food chain appreciably.
"Harm" is not a question of "can it produce harm under some circumstances", but "does it increase risk demonstrably and significantly in the real world".
Neither of those actually point to any harm.
Seriously, your post history makes it clear that you are a blind partisan, incapable of independent thought.
Well, if it is so obvious, it should be easy to point to cite something that dispels my ignorance.
No article I could find demonstrated any harm. There is a belief that microbeads might bind some pollutants which might cause harm, but no actual evidence.