> The majority of hunter-gatherers only work about 4 hours a day.
They also shit where they live and move on from their "village" once they've spoiled the ground bad enough.
Absolute bunk. Look at the American Indians. They didn't "shit where they lived"... they were smart enough to relieve themselves away from their encampments. And "spoiled the grounds"? Really? Just how did they do that? What they DID was take what nature gave them, and they were generally wise in their consumption, using all of what they killed and gathered and wasting nothing. When a Kiowa or Cherokee camp moved along to follow a herd, they didn't leave a lot of trash behind, you know?
Indians were the quintessential hunter-gatherers, and their whole lifestyle pretty much contradicts your argument there, paleface.
"People in the west have NEVER been as free as they are now."
Eh, that's pretty iffy.
It would be more accurate to say that people in the West have never been better off in terms of material wealth, true. We've never had as high a level of technology or cheap access to gadgets or advanced medicine.
But free? I guess it depends on your definition of freedom. We're certainly more free than the Russian serf of the 1700's or the Spaniard under the Caliphate of the middle ages or the Greek and Serbian living under Turkish rule before the 20th century. But the homesteader in 1800's Oklahoma or Nebraska had far more freedom than you'll ever have, simply because the laws that governed him could be read, from beginning to end, in a matter of minutes. He didn't live as long, have cars or the Internet, or run up a huge Mastercard bill. But also he didn't have anyone telling him how fast he could ride his horse, he didn't have a "homeowners association" suing him for the color of paint his chose for his humble home, and the government wasn't trying to "help" him by taking half of what he earned and spending it on services he didn't ask for. He had to face the big bad world all on his own, but they were his choices.
I don't think many people want to go back to a horse and buggy, but at the same time it's patently silly to talk about how free we are when our government has re-defined freedom from "freedom TO" do things, and now regards it's role as "freedom FROM" things, "protecting" us like a nanny looks after a child.
Regulating the internet means telling people what they can and cannot use.
Regulating ISPs means preventing them from telling people what they can and cannot use.
This is foolish naivety. You're demanding that the government keep it's hands off your Internet connection, but you still want the government to control the ISP's. But the later will lead to the former. If they're regulating the ISP's, then they're regulating the end users too. You seem to think you can have your cake and eat it too... sic government on the bad ole' ISP's, while staying untouched. Governments don't work that way. Once you invite them in through one door, you can't keep them out of others. Sooner rather than later, they're going to start regulating your personal Internet use too... "for the greater good".
. Nobody would support or comply with another draft.
While the majority of troops surveyed said they had no problem with open-homosexuality in the ranks, the combat oriented troops... infantry, Ranger, Marine Corps, etc, were overwhelmingly against it. They guys that actually do the shooting... the hard chargers that are attracted to the units most likely to actually be in harm's way... are the most likely the leave the service. And so, ironically, this repeal may force a return to the draft just to get the numbers needed.
If there's one thing Tron Paul gets it's the Constitution. I personal freedom (construed broadly) is a misnomer, I think, when it comes to Paul, but at least someone in there realizes that this is about freedom of speech, the integrity of the press, and human rights.
Once again, how is this about freedom of speech? Whose speech is being suppressed? Whose newspapers have been shutdown? Whose radio stations have been shut down? Just who isn't able to say what they want to say here? Certainly not Julian Assange. On the contrary, he won't shut up.
This isn't about free speech, period. This is about a giant classified document dump. The only original writings involved are of government employees and officials. No one is suppressing the writings of Assange or any other protester.
If you want to make the argument that governments should have no secrets at all, that diplomats should have no confidential communications at all, then say that. But quit saying that this is a freedom of speech case.
And the bottom 47% (not 50) still pay Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes, certain state and local income taxes, sales tax, and excise taxes on things like gasoline and alcohol.
And? Questions about the programs aside, those Medicare and SS taxes are nothing compared to what they'll actually get from those programs. Historically, we've received more money from Medicare and SS than we've actually put into it. So that's a net gain. And those state and local taxes and alchohol and gas taxes go for things like police departments and roads... stuff that they benefit from directly. You make it sound like not paying an income tax is OK because they pay those other things, when they come out ahead even without paying an income tax. In fact, most people under the 50K line (with families) end up being paid by other taxpayers when January rolls around. Most tax "refunds" aren't refunds at all, but are cash bonuses, courtesy of richer taxpayers. The "Earned Income Tax Credit" may be the most misnamed tax statute on the books. You get extra cash, gratis, if you fall below a certain income and have kids. How is that "earned"?
The utility of wealth is not linear. Progressive taxation makes economic and psychological sense, and it was supported by, among others, Benjamin Franklin."the most equal of all Taxes...is generally in proportion to Mens Wealth." (Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Ruston, October 9, 1780).
Your mistake is in assuming that "proportion" has to be your so-called progressive taxation scheme. With a flat tax, ALL taxation would be in proportion to wealth. You make more, you pay more. You make less, you pay less. But everybody actually pays taxes in that system, which is important in a Democratic Republic, lest a significant portion of the public comes to see those richer than them as their meal ticket, and develop an entitlement to what others have earned. Which is exactly what has happened. That chunk of the populace has discovered that they can vote themselves other people's money. Two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner, in a kind of way.
It has nothing to do with socialism, it's a standard political power grab. What it has to do with is idiots like you who make it into an economic issue, thus distracting everybody from the real point.
Socialism isn't just an economic philosophy. It's an all-encompassing political theory that de-emphasizes the individual and emphasizes the collective. The problem with socialism... demonstrated through the history of socialist governments... is that since we're not insects with a hive mind, individuals are going to rule that collective. And they've always been at the very least too nannying, and at worst, absolutely tyrannical. So this has everything to do with socialism, because the very philosophy is about a power grab... for the good of the people, of course.
The problem is that security tends to be more of a human problem than a technical problem.
In the Pentagon's case, it's a problem of many humans. Too many people have secret clearances or better, and "need to know" isn't enforced vigorously enough in many units. The General Accounting Office says there are over 3 million people with a "secret" level clearance in the US. There's no excuse for that.
And I would happily make a deal with them: I'll take a metered usage, pay-as-you-go Internet access plan if I also get a plan where I only get the channels I choose to pay for.
"The US government should have secured it's own databases then if that information is so important. they're the ones who fucked up. not wikileaks."
Oh, I completely agree that the US needs to do a better job of information security. One of our problems is that we have far too many people with security clearances and access to secret documents and data. We've been violating the "need to know" principle for a very long time.
BUT... that doesn't clear Wikileaks of the violation of diplomatic secrecy. Julian Assange has been quite clear that he's not fighting for anything as noble as "government transparency". He simply doesn't like the United States very much, and wants to harm the government. Take the man at his own words:
Mr. Assange told Time magazine last week, "It is not our goal to achieve a more transparent society; it's our goal to achieve a more just society." If leaks cause U.S. officials to "lock down internally and to balkanize," they will "cease to be as efficient as they were."
Assange's aim is not a more open United States, but a crippled United States. He sees the US as the pre-eminent evil in the world, and this is his way of making war with it.
Neither John F. Kennedy nor Nikita Kruschev would have had the support of their governments had their positions been known because of something like a Wikileaks release.
Why would you assume that the public would have chosen nuclear war over bargaining?
Because neither side wanted to show weakness during the crisis. Which is why both JFK and Kruschev went to such extraordinary lengths to negotiate behind closed doors. We know the Soviet leadership was very hardline, and on the US side, Curtis LeMay argued that we could win with a pre-emptive nuclear strike of our own on Cuba. LeMay thought we could use a limited nuclear campaign, destroy Soviet forces in Cuba, and basically throw down the gauntlet to the Soviets, in essence saying "OK, we just proved that we'll win in a limited exchange, and we're prepared to strike your homeland. You'd better back down now". Now, maybe LeMay was right and his tactics would have worked and the Soviets might have backed down... but it would have resulted in a radioactive Cuba off of the US southern coast, too.
It's a requirement for getting more funding and a bigger budget. With the current emphasis on cutting costs and everyone's budget under the microscope, they are trying to generate as much interest as possible in their work.
And if it turns out that this is another sensationalistic claim... like the mud they claimed were microbes from Mars... isn't that going to peg them as fraudsters? If this discovery is indeed invalid because of mistakes made... how many times can they do this before the public just goes "Oh look, NASA 'found' something again. Alert the National Enquirer". If their critics in the research community are right, then they'd have been better served by not jumping the gun with this announcement.
Freedom of speech, priceless. For everything else, there's Mastercard.
Your freedom of speech doesn't include the right to violate your government's diplomatic privacy, which is a long established principle of civilization... the confidentiality of diplomatic communications. Governments have to have the assurance that they can speak to each other at times confidentially, and Julian Assange is basically trying to that. There are damned good reasons why governments need to have this confidentiality with each other at times, and a story I read just this morning provides a stark example of why.
Two up and coming leaders in the Chinese government have now had their private conversations with US diplomats leaked by Assange and his gang, with probable consequences for US-Chinese relations. The men in question were on the fast track to replacing men in very, very high positions in the Chinese government... one of them equivilant to the Vice Presidency of the US. Both of these men were becoming known to US diplomats as believers in the rule of law, of technological and societal progress, and of friendlier cross-pacific trade and in particular, they had a zeal for cracking down on crime and corruption in China, including crime in the booming business community.
The leaks may have dealt their careers a blow. They're members of the Chinese Communist Party... officially, it's still a one party state, after all... and now they'll likely be seen as too soft and friendly towards the west by the hardliners in China's military industrial wing and the military leadership. Their ascensions to higher office may now be jeapordized. Had Wikileaks been around in the mid-80's, it's likely that someone like Mikhail Gorbachev could have never become General Secretary. This kind of practice will make it much harder for government reformers the world over to move into positions of authority, especially in non-democratic societies.
Look at the Cuban Missile Crisis. All of the negotiations that ended the standoff were held secretely, behind the scenes. The compromises that both sides made... the Soviets pulling their missiles from Cuba, the US pulling their Jupiter missiles from Turkey six months later... would have NEVER been supported by the rest of the governments of both nations, nor the publics of both nations. Instead of cooler heads prevailing, you'd have gotten more heated confrontation. Neither John F. Kennedy nor Nikita Kruschev would have had the support of their governments had their positions been known because of something like a Wikileaks release.
Julian Assange is not fighting for your freedom. Wikileaks is not fighting for your freedom of speech. Because no one is stopping you from speaking. No one is stopping your free speech, because the diplomatic cables are not your speech. You have no right to them, nor any burning need to see what's in them. What Assange is doing is an act of petty vandalism. Like some half-ass Tyler Durden wannabe, he just wants to blow it all up.
You may want to brush up on your history. The "wall of separation" idea was first articulated by Jefferson with regard to the First Amendment
It was indeed articulated by Jefferson... but not in the Constitution. That terms comes from a letter he had written to a Baptist minister. When the Constitution was ratified "establishment of religion" meant the adoption by the state of a specific denomination. In the Founder's views, it wasn't faith in God that caused Europe problems, it was official government embrace of a specific denomination.... Anglican England vs. Catholic France vs. Lutheran Germania, etc... that were the cause of wars in Europe (along with plain ole' imperial greed). Hugo Black went too far. The Establishment Clause was never, ever meant to completely ban expressions of faith in public. On the contrary, we have numerous quotes from the Founders themselves that this republic wouldn't last without a strong sense of religious morality among the populace.
"“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”" - President John Adams
Can anyone think of a buyer, without invoking Snow Crash?
Sure, if you don't want to use it as a fixed wing carrier. It would be a cheap way of getting a helicopter assault ship (in the mold of the old USN Iwo Jima class). Considering how India has both cultural and economic ties with the UK, and has a history of buying their old warships... see the Indian carriers Vikrant and Viraat... I wouldn't be shocked to the see the Indians snap this up as a helo-carrying assault ship.
"Are these expensive because they are being designed for military use or that there is no market for naval reactors?"
Economies of scale are one reason, but the sheer expense of nuclear fuel, specialized machinery, specially trained technicians, and safety measures make reactors too expensive for shipping plastic trinkets from China and back. By some accounts (it's hard to get exact dollar figures), the nuclear engines account for over a quarter of the cost of a Nimitz class carrier. That means that the reactors cost over a billion dollars.
Large pieces of OAK were used, and OAK trees don't grow all that fast.
Oak wasn't the only kind of wood used in ships, including warships. Often shipbuilders would use oak for the keel and pieces of frame that needed the most strength, but would fill out the rest of the ship with cheaper, faster growing woods like cedar or larch (and in America, pine).
Popular for aircraft carriers. Maybe for cargo ships too? How is the waste dealt with in an aircraft carrier. How do aircraft carriers and submarines avoid unplanned criticality excursions?
Can't go there. There's no good way to ensure that waste stays in the right hands. Just look at all the ships that get hijacked off the Somali coast.
Uh, we've been there. We had nuclear cargo ships. They were retired strictly because of the expense of running them, not over any concerns for nuclear waste. The Japanese built one that was so expensive, it never carried commercial cargo. The Germans built one, saw the bill for it, and then ripped out the reactor and replaced it with diesel engines. The US built a fine ship, and no one used it because of the costs involved. The Russians are the only ones that built them and actually used them for practical work, and mostly as icebreakers.
One big ship or lots of smaller ships? Is it time to lose "the fear" and go nuclear on cargo vessels?
Fear has nothing to do with it. Expense does. We've built nuclear merchant vessels before. They're just too expensive to operate. We built a fast, beautiful nuclear merchant ship (the NS Savannah) as a technology demonstrator, and when companies looked at the costs involved, they simply didn't see the point. Only a handful of nuke cargo ships were ever built, and only the Russians used them for any length of time.
Actually sailing ships required the destruction of vast forests (one of the reasons Britain wanted North American colonies was for the wood to build ships with). They generally didn't last that long and had to be replaced frequently. So their effect on the environment wasn't minimal.
Bullshit. Ships didn't require THAT much wood, and Britain didn't want North America simply to build wooden ships. They wanted North America because things like you know, houses are still made of wood. But more importantly, they wanted America for its other resources, including sheer space for colonization.
As for the ships not lasting all that long... by what standard? A typical non-aircraft carrier, steel-constructed US Navy vessel has a service life of around 30 years. Wooden commerce and naval vessels from the 1600's onwards had service lives of about.... 30 years. Navies went to steel because they made better warships, not because of any scarcity of wood. Nelson's favorite warship, HMS Agamemnon, was in service 28 years and was still one of the prime warships of the Royal Navy when she was wrecked in bad weather in 1809. It wasn't uncommon for navies to put a ship in the yards after 15 years, cut her in half, and literally splice in a section to maker her bigger, then return her to service as a larger vessel for another 15 years or so.
A lovely theory, however, right now Ireland is going tits up, so this sort of trickle down economics won't get them back up soon enough. It's Ireland's fault, and probably in part because of very low corporate tax rates to attract companies like Google.
It's Ireland's fault because they're spending more than they're taking in. Period.
Lifetime judges may be blind but DA's are often elected political creatures.
"Lifetime judges" are human, and are thus just as prone to arrogance, corruption, deceit, and bias as any elected DA or judge. I simply do not understand the reliance by some on the theory of impartiality of judges with life tenures. The idea that life tenure makes them impartial doesn't even work in theory when you think about it. All it does is make them unaccountable. The fact is that there ARE no perfect judges, because there are no perfect people. This is why lifetime tenure for SCOTUS justices was one of the few really bad ideas of the Founders. Limit their terms on the bench. Otherwise, you've basically got a collection of unaccountable kings.
I guess it takes a mathematician to say what most people instinctively know: beyond basic math education, there is zero burning need for much math education when it comes to most people. We DO need some expanded math education, but not the kind that government and industry pushes in high schools and colleges so relentlessly. Most people forced to take Trigonometry, Calculus, etc, will only resent it it, hate the experience, and never use what they learn. The quite insane push to force more students into science and engineering... and the predictably dismal results of that push... should be abolished, and stat. Those that love advanced math, or merely those that are curious, will never need a government sponsored ad campaign to take a calculus class.
So what kinds of math DO most people need more of in High School? Practical maths dealing everyday problems, especially finances. Perhaps if more people knew how to calculate a simple mortgage, governments and banks and interested parties wouldn't have been able to sell subprime loans so easily. Getting the average man to understand interest rates will have a far more positive effect then making him sit through an algebra class he neither needs nor cares about.
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> The majority of hunter-gatherers only work about 4 hours a day.
They also shit where they live and move on from their "village" once they've spoiled the ground bad enough.
Absolute bunk. Look at the American Indians. They didn't "shit where they lived"... they were smart enough to relieve themselves away from their encampments. And "spoiled the grounds"? Really? Just how did they do that? What they DID was take what nature gave them, and they were generally wise in their consumption, using all of what they killed and gathered and wasting nothing. When a Kiowa or Cherokee camp moved along to follow a herd, they didn't leave a lot of trash behind, you know?
Indians were the quintessential hunter-gatherers, and their whole lifestyle pretty much contradicts your argument there, paleface.
"People in the west have NEVER been as free as they are now."
Eh, that's pretty iffy.
It would be more accurate to say that people in the West have never been better off in terms of material wealth, true. We've never had as high a level of technology or cheap access to gadgets or advanced medicine.
But free? I guess it depends on your definition of freedom. We're certainly more free than the Russian serf of the 1700's or the Spaniard under the Caliphate of the middle ages or the Greek and Serbian living under Turkish rule before the 20th century. But the homesteader in 1800's Oklahoma or Nebraska had far more freedom than you'll ever have, simply because the laws that governed him could be read, from beginning to end, in a matter of minutes. He didn't live as long, have cars or the Internet, or run up a huge Mastercard bill. But also he didn't have anyone telling him how fast he could ride his horse, he didn't have a "homeowners association" suing him for the color of paint his chose for his humble home, and the government wasn't trying to "help" him by taking half of what he earned and spending it on services he didn't ask for. He had to face the big bad world all on his own, but they were his choices.
I don't think many people want to go back to a horse and buggy, but at the same time it's patently silly to talk about how free we are when our government has re-defined freedom from "freedom TO" do things, and now regards it's role as "freedom FROM" things, "protecting" us like a nanny looks after a child.
Regulating the internet means telling people what they can and cannot use.
Regulating ISPs means preventing them from telling people what they can and cannot use.
This is foolish naivety. You're demanding that the government keep it's hands off your Internet connection, but you still want the government to control the ISP's. But the later will lead to the former. If they're regulating the ISP's, then they're regulating the end users too. You seem to think you can have your cake and eat it too... sic government on the bad ole' ISP's, while staying untouched. Governments don't work that way. Once you invite them in through one door, you can't keep them out of others. Sooner rather than later, they're going to start regulating your personal Internet use too... "for the greater good".
. Nobody would support or comply with another draft.
While the majority of troops surveyed said they had no problem with open-homosexuality in the ranks, the combat oriented troops... infantry, Ranger, Marine Corps, etc, were overwhelmingly against it. They guys that actually do the shooting... the hard chargers that are attracted to the units most likely to actually be in harm's way... are the most likely the leave the service. And so, ironically, this repeal may force a return to the draft just to get the numbers needed.
If there's one thing Tron Paul gets it's the Constitution. I personal freedom (construed broadly) is a misnomer, I think, when it comes to Paul, but at least someone in there realizes that this is about freedom of speech, the integrity of the press, and human rights.
Once again, how is this about freedom of speech? Whose speech is being suppressed? Whose newspapers have been shutdown? Whose radio stations have been shut down? Just who isn't able to say what they want to say here? Certainly not Julian Assange. On the contrary, he won't shut up.
This isn't about free speech, period. This is about a giant classified document dump. The only original writings involved are of government employees and officials. No one is suppressing the writings of Assange or any other protester.
If you want to make the argument that governments should have no secrets at all, that diplomats should have no confidential communications at all, then say that. But quit saying that this is a freedom of speech case.
And the bottom 47% (not 50) still pay Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes, certain state and local income taxes, sales tax, and excise taxes on things like gasoline and alcohol.
And? Questions about the programs aside, those Medicare and SS taxes are nothing compared to what they'll actually get from those programs. Historically, we've received more money from Medicare and SS than we've actually put into it. So that's a net gain. And those state and local taxes and alchohol and gas taxes go for things like police departments and roads... stuff that they benefit from directly. You make it sound like not paying an income tax is OK because they pay those other things, when they come out ahead even without paying an income tax. In fact, most people under the 50K line (with families) end up being paid by other taxpayers when January rolls around. Most tax "refunds" aren't refunds at all, but are cash bonuses, courtesy of richer taxpayers. The "Earned Income Tax Credit" may be the most misnamed tax statute on the books. You get extra cash, gratis, if you fall below a certain income and have kids. How is that "earned"?
The utility of wealth is not linear. Progressive taxation makes economic and psychological sense, and it was supported by, among others, Benjamin Franklin."the most equal of all Taxes...is generally in proportion to Mens Wealth." (Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Ruston, October 9, 1780).
Your mistake is in assuming that "proportion" has to be your so-called progressive taxation scheme. With a flat tax, ALL taxation would be in proportion to wealth. You make more, you pay more. You make less, you pay less. But everybody actually pays taxes in that system, which is important in a Democratic Republic, lest a significant portion of the public comes to see those richer than them as their meal ticket, and develop an entitlement to what others have earned. Which is exactly what has happened. That chunk of the populace has discovered that they can vote themselves other people's money. Two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner, in a kind of way.
It has nothing to do with socialism, it's a standard political power grab. What it has to do with is idiots like you who make it into an economic issue, thus distracting everybody from the real point.
Socialism isn't just an economic philosophy. It's an all-encompassing political theory that de-emphasizes the individual and emphasizes the collective. The problem with socialism... demonstrated through the history of socialist governments... is that since we're not insects with a hive mind, individuals are going to rule that collective. And they've always been at the very least too nannying, and at worst, absolutely tyrannical. So this has everything to do with socialism, because the very philosophy is about a power grab... for the good of the people, of course.
The problem is that security tends to be more of a human problem than a technical problem.
In the Pentagon's case, it's a problem of many humans. Too many people have secret clearances or better, and "need to know" isn't enforced vigorously enough in many units. The General Accounting Office says there are over 3 million people with a "secret" level clearance in the US. There's no excuse for that.
And I would happily make a deal with them: I'll take a metered usage, pay-as-you-go Internet access plan if I also get a plan where I only get the channels I choose to pay for.
"Necessary and Proper" doesn't void the rest of the Constitution, even though the Democratic Party thinks it does (along with the Commerce Clause).
Morons like Stark are why we have a written Constitution in the first place.
"The US government should have secured it's own databases then if that information is so important.
they're the ones who fucked up.
not wikileaks."
Oh, I completely agree that the US needs to do a better job of information security. One of our problems is that we have far too many people with security clearances and access to secret documents and data. We've been violating the "need to know" principle for a very long time.
BUT... that doesn't clear Wikileaks of the violation of diplomatic secrecy. Julian Assange has been quite clear that he's not fighting for anything as noble as "government transparency". He simply doesn't like the United States very much, and wants to harm the government. Take the man at his own words:
Assange's aim is not a more open United States, but a crippled United States. He sees the US as the pre-eminent evil in the world, and this is his way of making war with it.
Neither John F. Kennedy nor Nikita Kruschev would have had the support of their governments had their positions been known because of something like a Wikileaks release.
Why would you assume that the public would have chosen nuclear war over bargaining?
Because neither side wanted to show weakness during the crisis. Which is why both JFK and Kruschev went to such extraordinary lengths to negotiate behind closed doors. We know the Soviet leadership was very hardline, and on the US side, Curtis LeMay argued that we could win with a pre-emptive nuclear strike of our own on Cuba. LeMay thought we could use a limited nuclear campaign, destroy Soviet forces in Cuba, and basically throw down the gauntlet to the Soviets, in essence saying "OK, we just proved that we'll win in a limited exchange, and we're prepared to strike your homeland. You'd better back down now". Now, maybe LeMay was right and his tactics would have worked and the Soviets might have backed down... but it would have resulted in a radioactive Cuba off of the US southern coast, too.
It's a requirement for getting more funding and a bigger budget. With the current emphasis on cutting costs and everyone's budget under the microscope, they are trying to generate as much interest as possible in their work.
And if it turns out that this is another sensationalistic claim... like the mud they claimed were microbes from Mars... isn't that going to peg them as fraudsters? If this discovery is indeed invalid because of mistakes made... how many times can they do this before the public just goes "Oh look, NASA 'found' something again. Alert the National Enquirer". If their critics in the research community are right, then they'd have been better served by not jumping the gun with this announcement.
Freedom of speech, priceless. For everything else, there's Mastercard.
Your freedom of speech doesn't include the right to violate your government's diplomatic privacy, which is a long established principle of civilization... the confidentiality of diplomatic communications. Governments have to have the assurance that they can speak to each other at times confidentially, and Julian Assange is basically trying to that. There are damned good reasons why governments need to have this confidentiality with each other at times, and a story I read just this morning provides a stark example of why.
Two up and coming leaders in the Chinese government have now had their private conversations with US diplomats leaked by Assange and his gang, with probable consequences for US-Chinese relations. The men in question were on the fast track to replacing men in very, very high positions in the Chinese government... one of them equivilant to the Vice Presidency of the US. Both of these men were becoming known to US diplomats as believers in the rule of law, of technological and societal progress, and of friendlier cross-pacific trade and in particular, they had a zeal for cracking down on crime and corruption in China, including crime in the booming business community.
The leaks may have dealt their careers a blow. They're members of the Chinese Communist Party... officially, it's still a one party state, after all... and now they'll likely be seen as too soft and friendly towards the west by the hardliners in China's military industrial wing and the military leadership. Their ascensions to higher office may now be jeapordized. Had Wikileaks been around in the mid-80's, it's likely that someone like Mikhail Gorbachev could have never become General Secretary. This kind of practice will make it much harder for government reformers the world over to move into positions of authority, especially in non-democratic societies.
Look at the Cuban Missile Crisis. All of the negotiations that ended the standoff were held secretely, behind the scenes. The compromises that both sides made... the Soviets pulling their missiles from Cuba, the US pulling their Jupiter missiles from Turkey six months later... would have NEVER been supported by the rest of the governments of both nations, nor the publics of both nations. Instead of cooler heads prevailing, you'd have gotten more heated confrontation. Neither John F. Kennedy nor Nikita Kruschev would have had the support of their governments had their positions been known because of something like a Wikileaks release.
Julian Assange is not fighting for your freedom. Wikileaks is not fighting for your freedom of speech. Because no one is stopping you from speaking. No one is stopping your free speech, because the diplomatic cables are not your speech. You have no right to them, nor any burning need to see what's in them. What Assange is doing is an act of petty vandalism. Like some half-ass Tyler Durden wannabe, he just wants to blow it all up.
You may want to brush up on your history. The "wall of separation" idea was first articulated by Jefferson with regard to the First Amendment
It was indeed articulated by Jefferson... but not in the Constitution. That terms comes from a letter he had written to a Baptist minister. When the Constitution was ratified "establishment of religion" meant the adoption by the state of a specific denomination. In the Founder's views, it wasn't faith in God that caused Europe problems, it was official government embrace of a specific denomination.... Anglican England vs. Catholic France vs. Lutheran Germania, etc... that were the cause of wars in Europe (along with plain ole' imperial greed). Hugo Black went too far. The Establishment Clause was never, ever meant to completely ban expressions of faith in public. On the contrary, we have numerous quotes from the Founders themselves that this republic wouldn't last without a strong sense of religious morality among the populace.
"“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”" - President John Adams
Can anyone think of a buyer, without invoking Snow Crash?
Sure, if you don't want to use it as a fixed wing carrier. It would be a cheap way of getting a helicopter assault ship (in the mold of the old USN Iwo Jima class). Considering how India has both cultural and economic ties with the UK, and has a history of buying their old warships... see the Indian carriers Vikrant and Viraat... I wouldn't be shocked to the see the Indians snap this up as a helo-carrying assault ship.
"Are these expensive because they are being designed for military use or that there is no market for naval reactors?"
Economies of scale are one reason, but the sheer expense of nuclear fuel, specialized machinery, specially trained technicians, and safety measures make reactors too expensive for shipping plastic trinkets from China and back. By some accounts (it's hard to get exact dollar figures), the nuclear engines account for over a quarter of the cost of a Nimitz class carrier. That means that the reactors cost over a billion dollars.
Large pieces of OAK were used, and OAK trees don't grow all that fast.
Oak wasn't the only kind of wood used in ships, including warships. Often shipbuilders would use oak for the keel and pieces of frame that needed the most strength, but would fill out the rest of the ship with cheaper, faster growing woods like cedar or larch (and in America, pine).
Popular for aircraft carriers. Maybe for cargo ships too? How is the waste dealt with in an aircraft carrier. How do aircraft carriers and submarines avoid unplanned criticality excursions?
Can't go there. There's no good way to ensure that waste stays in the right hands. Just look at all the ships that get hijacked off the Somali coast.
Uh, we've been there. We had nuclear cargo ships. They were retired strictly because of the expense of running them, not over any concerns for nuclear waste. The Japanese built one that was so expensive, it never carried commercial cargo. The Germans built one, saw the bill for it, and then ripped out the reactor and replaced it with diesel engines. The US built a fine ship, and no one used it because of the costs involved. The Russians are the only ones that built them and actually used them for practical work, and mostly as icebreakers.
I'm a little suspicious of those numbers too.
One big ship or lots of smaller ships? Is it time to lose "the fear" and go nuclear on cargo vessels?
Fear has nothing to do with it. Expense does. We've built nuclear merchant vessels before. They're just too expensive to operate. We built a fast, beautiful nuclear merchant ship (the NS Savannah) as a technology demonstrator, and when companies looked at the costs involved, they simply didn't see the point. Only a handful of nuke cargo ships were ever built, and only the Russians used them for any length of time.
Actually sailing ships required the destruction of vast forests (one of the reasons Britain wanted North American colonies was for the wood to build ships with). They generally didn't last that long and had to be replaced frequently. So their effect on the environment wasn't minimal.
Bullshit. Ships didn't require THAT much wood, and Britain didn't want North America simply to build wooden ships. They wanted North America because things like you know, houses are still made of wood. But more importantly, they wanted America for its other resources, including sheer space for colonization.
As for the ships not lasting all that long... by what standard? A typical non-aircraft carrier, steel-constructed US Navy vessel has a service life of around 30 years. Wooden commerce and naval vessels from the 1600's onwards had service lives of about.... 30 years. Navies went to steel because they made better warships, not because of any scarcity of wood. Nelson's favorite warship, HMS Agamemnon, was in service 28 years and was still one of the prime warships of the Royal Navy when she was wrecked in bad weather in 1809. It wasn't uncommon for navies to put a ship in the yards after 15 years, cut her in half, and literally splice in a section to maker her bigger, then return her to service as a larger vessel for another 15 years or so.
A lovely theory, however, right now Ireland is going tits up, so this sort of trickle down economics won't get them back up soon enough. It's Ireland's fault, and probably in part because of very low corporate tax rates to attract companies like Google.
It's Ireland's fault because they're spending more than they're taking in. Period.
Lifetime judges may be blind but DA's are often elected political creatures.
"Lifetime judges" are human, and are thus just as prone to arrogance, corruption, deceit, and bias as any elected DA or judge. I simply do not understand the reliance by some on the theory of impartiality of judges with life tenures. The idea that life tenure makes them impartial doesn't even work in theory when you think about it. All it does is make them unaccountable. The fact is that there ARE no perfect judges, because there are no perfect people. This is why lifetime tenure for SCOTUS justices was one of the few really bad ideas of the Founders. Limit their terms on the bench. Otherwise, you've basically got a collection of unaccountable kings.
I guess it takes a mathematician to say what most people instinctively know: beyond basic math education, there is zero burning need for much math education when it comes to most people. We DO need some expanded math education, but not the kind that government and industry pushes in high schools and colleges so relentlessly. Most people forced to take Trigonometry, Calculus, etc, will only resent it it, hate the experience, and never use what they learn. The quite insane push to force more students into science and engineering... and the predictably dismal results of that push... should be abolished, and stat. Those that love advanced math, or merely those that are curious, will never need a government sponsored ad campaign to take a calculus class.
So what kinds of math DO most people need more of in High School? Practical maths dealing everyday problems, especially finances. Perhaps if more people knew how to calculate a simple mortgage, governments and banks and interested parties wouldn't have been able to sell subprime loans so easily. Getting the average man to understand interest rates will have a far more positive effect then making him sit through an algebra class he neither needs nor cares about.