It takes great leaps of logic to interpret the constitution to be referring to the right for the government to bear arms.
I didn't mean the federal goverment, I meant the States themselves.
It's possible that your interpretation is correct, I'm not American so the matter isn't really of much importance to me. Reading the amendment as ratified by the state, I would have thought that the intention was to allow States to raise their own militias independently of the Federal government. The wording ratified by the states was as follows:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
My point (aside from the detail) from my original point stands - the wording is ambiguous, it could have meant either - or even both (because at the time a militia would have been raised from volunteers with their own firearms?). The intentions of the framers are irrelevant here, the courts decided that the WORDING of the amendment allowed individuals to keep arms of any kind and that the federal goverment could not infringe that right. If the government doesn't like it, their option is to change the wording to disambiguate it. This is an example of the court interpreting legislation (or consitutional wording in this case) but not legislating themselves. They couldn't have decided that the right to bear arms was disallowed because they didn't like it.
Patents were not created to encourage innovation. They were created to DISCOURAGE trade secrets, thus making the invention available to all in return for a temporary monopoly. A trade, if you will.
It was a great idea at the time. It's a less good idea now but it probably still has some value, particularly if the terms were shorter
Courts were never intended to legislate and should not legislate. They are there to interpret legislation. The intent of the law and "intent" when it comes to the constitution mean nothing. What means something is what's written down. Thus you get narrow decisions based on semantics and even syntax all the time. For instnace, the "right to bear arms" was originally not an individual right, but it has subsequently been interpreted as such by the courts because that's how the document reads. There are countless examples of loose wording letting off people who were clearly guilty under the intent of the law. And there are examples of the law being interpreted in a much wider manner than intended due to loose wording.
That, incidentally, is why lawyers get paid a lot of money - because they not only have to know the law, they have to know it in mind-numbing detail, as well as (in the US anyway) know where precedents can be applied.
It was yellow on dark blue - which is why it was the default colour for those DOS prompts. It's not strictly "easier on the eye", but it's the best contrast you can get.
Well, yes. And if you think about it you can see why.
A large number of people in their prime productive years get mutilated in a short space of time. And these people work for an organisation that has the resources to spend on looking for a solution. I read recently that 1 in 5 single amputees can return to active duty, and those numbers will rise as solutions get better.
I would disagree slightly about your Uplift Books comment - I liked The Uplift War (uplift book 2) the best out of that series. It had more humour and less pathos
The paper makes the claim that the average voter is insufficiently expert to be able to judge the expertise of the candidates on almost any given issue, and certainly not in aggregate.
Funnily enough, the American electoral college system's idea was (aside from the geographic thing) to help ameliorate this - you vote for your local smart guy that you trust and let HIM decide on the candidate. Unfortunately, nonsense like having to register a party preference nulllified that (because it effectively concentrates power into ever smaller groupings and over time voting preference becomes sacrosanct).
The problem is understood generally - in the UK you have the House of Lords, which sometimes does great work by looking cynically at some legislation, and explaining why it's so very wrong. In Ireland the same function was intended for the Senate - certain seats are voted for by certain consituencies (for instance, there's 6 seats where voting is only open to alumni, students and staff of the National University of Ireland) but as in both the mentioned bodies the government can appoint people to it it ends up stuffed with blinkered political appointees whose real constituency is "the guy who appointed me".
Heinlein's essays on this are instructive and entertaining. The best known example is Starship Troopers "only those who serve in the military can vote, not because they're smarter but because they've demonstrated that they care and are willing to do something for the privilege". In other essays he wrote "let there be an all female leadership - frankly they can't do any worse than our current system" (that's paraphrasing, I'd have to look it up again).
Then came the rise of the Christians who promptly destroyed anything that didn't have the word Jesus on it and we were sent backwards by centuries. Not knocking the Christians as it seemed like every religion did the same thing, hell we see the Muslims trying their damnedest to do the same even today.
ARF'ING! REALLY? Christianty had nothing to do with the fall of the Roman Empire and the subsequent "dark age". The Empire became indolent and riven by civil wars where the prize was the throne. The barbarians took a good look and then promptly burned the lot to the ground, repeatedly, until there was nothing left. The extremeties of the Empire rotted off - anything associated with the Empire was considered bad, the education and security it provided was gone. With no security and medicine life expectancy reduced and life became a struggle for necessities. In this condition, people weren't inclined to spent their energies on technology because the payoff is longer term.
And before the rise of Whabism (sp - the particular sect of radical islam) the Islamic world was a beacon of light. Europe was split, constantly at war and the Middle East and Persia was rich from the silk road and trading in general. At that time mathematics, physics, astronomy and art were highly prized by the Muslim countries. Ghengis Kahn, then the crusades put paid to that, so many resources were put into the war and so much destruction was caused that it took a long time to recover from it. Then along comes el-mental man in the 13th century and suddenly women are property and jihad is on. Sad, really.
Yes, triple their wages, causing massive inflation in China making the poor in China even worse off. You cannot dump wealth into an economy like that. The Russians tried it after the fall of the Soviey union and the result was so disasterous that they've ended up with an oligarchy and had to be grateful that a few people sucked up all the money because the economy was a mess.
If you look at programs such as Fair-trade you will see that the idea is increaes the quality of living for those workers in the developping countries.
While I am all for fair-trade, and increased quality of life for the workers, paying them more has harmful knock on effects in that it drives inflation of basic necessities and means those not lucky enough to have a decent income suffer more, not less. It's all about relativity.
Fostering job creation rather than giving aid is the way to go. It gives people something to feel valued for, and makes them self sufficient so you don't have to keep giving aid. Bear in mind that he suicide rate in Foxconn is significantly lower than the Chinese rate of suicide in general.
The theory of special relativity predicts gravitational behaviour very well indeed, but I want to know HOW! What the is mechanism! Where is my GODDAMN FLYING CAR!
It's because Atheism is a religious position. Thus, having taken a religious position, they do what many others who have a religious position does, a rubbish everyone else. The joke is that it seems most athiests don't recognise this.
On the other hand, I'm agnostic so I just laugh at both sides.
Actually, I can't. Abiotic oil is still up for consideration (although it's never got much traction outside the former Soviet Union). I'm not a geologist and I don't work in the oil industry so I can't say how realistic or not this is.
All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.
Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).
I did caution Dr. Trenberth before the media event and provided him a summary of the current understanding within the hurricane research community. I was disappointed when the IPCC leadership dismissed my concerns when I brought up the misrepresentation of climate science while invoking the authority of the IPCC. Specifically, the IPCC leadership said that Dr. Trenberth was speaking as an individual even though he was introduced in the press conference as an IPCC lead author; I was told that that the media was exaggerating or misrepresenting his words, even though the audio from the press conference and interview tells a different story (available on the web directly); and that Dr. Trenberth was accurately reflecting conclusions from the TAR, even though it is quite clear that the TAR stated that there was no connection between global warming and hurricane activity.
Also, can I refer you to plenty of issues with the Policy Summary of the IPCC AR4 which is damaging the real science that is performed in the many, many fields that were reviewed. Statements blaming AGW for everything from the reduction of the Kilimanjero glaciers (it was deforestation) and the reduction in size of the Himalayan glaciers (carbon soot from cookers in China is the main culprit) to the author's missing socks does not help. And before there's a counter that the Policy Summary isn't the document - it's probably the most important part of it because it's what most will read.
I leave the last word to Nils Axel Mörner, was the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden until 2005. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and was leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. Dr. Mörner studied the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. A bit of a loon about some things, but then many are and he's undoubtedly a sea-level expert.
And there you come to the point: They “know” the answer; the rest of us, we are searching for the answer. Because we are field geologists; they are computer scientists. So all this talk that sea level is rising, this stems from the computer modeling, not from observations. The observations don’t find it!
I have been the expert reviewer for the IPCC, both in 2000 and last year. The first time I read it, I was exceptionally surprised. First of all, it had 22 authors, but none of them—none—were sea-level specialists. They were given this mission, because they promised to answer the right thing. Again, it was a computer issue. This is the typical thing: The metereological community works with computers, simple computers. Geologists don’t do that! We go out in the field and observe, and then we can try to make a model with computerization; but it’s not the first thing.
and
Chapter 11 on "Sea Level Changes" was written by 33 persons; none of which represents actua
Use some kind of tablet/e-reader for your books, but use paper to take notes. Physical writing has several advantages, not least that the act of writing aids recall later. You take notes in class, and refine them and tidy them afterwards - this serves the double purpose of going over the content twice, and having to understand it better to condense it for the notes you store. Messing with multiple pens, or using a device in class disrupts your concentration and hence makes everything harder than it needs to be.
Memory, recall and learning (understanding concepts) are fairly complex and everyone's slightly different. The above is my own take on it.
If you go that way, the Kindle works quite well for displaying papers (with graphs and the like) although there's no colour for diagrams. I find that the grey background and no back-light with black text is easier on your eyes particularly if you'll be studying those books intensively over a longer period. This is a concern because as your eyes get tired it affects the rate at which you can take things in and you will need more frequent breaks or lose concentration. Anything with a reflective screen should be right out - the shine if the lights are on can make it difficult to read. Don't pick something too bright either, you'll distract those around you!
The Japanese were, by diaries released after the war, ready to surrender, just looking for a face-saving measure (keeping the Emperor in power).
You're not quite correct about that - the Japanese were discussing surrender internally and the Emperor was in favour. This led to an attempted palace coup and he STILL couldn't convince the majority of generals (who were where the power lay) until after the bomb was dropped. No surrender offer had been made and the Americans could not have known that the Japanese were thinking of surrender. Sure there were other geo-political benefits to dropping the bomb, particularly around Soviet relations, but the American High Command who didn't know about the bomb gave those figures and estimates and expected a horrifically bloody 3 year war on the Japanese islands. They did not expect a Japanese surrender as things stood.
We can only hope that's how it goes. Our societies have not caught up with *CURRENT* technologies, never mind the technologies of the future, and believe it or not cheap computing is only going to accelerate techonological progress. There are various ways this could go in the long run - some good, some extinction level - but the long and the short of it is that we are going to hit some serious social upheaval. Think of what happened during the industrial revolution, but magnified. This will be difficult and messy. Are we going to end up with a Federation style society, or a Judge Dredd style?!
As an investor, the next quarter matters far more to you than the state of a company five years in the future.
Then you're not an "investor", you're a gambler. Investment implies at least medium term thinking, and that seems to be absent. It's at least partially because of the rise of small time investors, who are much more likely to panic over short term trends, rather than the big institutional investors who generally aren't because they can absorb a certain level of loss and have anyway factored the risk in. The word "investor" has been diluted badly over the last few years, much like the word "engineer" (everyone's job description is engineer, yay!)
I think that taxing "investments" of lower than 5 years at a higher rate than investments of greater than 5 years would help alleviate the problem.
Unfortunately, most people don't seem to be able to envision any kind of world but one organized solely for the benefit of business, or one that is irrationally and implacably hostile to private enterprise.
I agree with most of your post, by the way. In this case, it has a lot to do with the quality of ALL discourse. The middle ground doesn't seem adequate even though it contains the majority because the fringes are way louder. The examples are everywhere - Republican/Democrat, the Global Warming discussion, environmentalism, animal rights, religion and far, far more. In all of these, one side demonises the other and point blank refuses to engage in a constructive manner. It's hardly surprising that this case applies in business as well.
The best-case estimate was 1.4 million American casualties, worst-case was about 4 million, in an operation that they expected would take until 1948-1949. These estimates were given by a command that did not know the bomb existed, so they were calling it how they saw it in an operation that they were gearing up to. This did not mention the undoubtedly horrific Japanese casualties that would have resulted, and the moralizing over the bomb ignores the fact that the USAF would have *levelled* all the Japanese cities (which were mostly made of very flammable material) in the planned bombing campaigns. Bear in mind that the total US casualties from the war to that point was 250,000.
As an interesting aside, the Japanese high command had correctly guessed exactly where the American landings would have taken place (on the southern island, Kyushu) and had deployed their assets based around these assumptions which would have greatly increased the casualties from the projected minimum. Hard as it is to understand looking back, these were very desperate times and the US Government at the time made the call based on these figures. In hindsight (from behind my comfortable desk) it seems that they made the right one for everyone. The Japanese benefited hugely from the surrender and America gained what turned out to be a valuable ally. The post-war prosperity that both enjoyed would probably not have happened if casualties on that scale were inflicted on the generation who produced the baby boomers, and Japan certainly wouldn't have been in any position for their industrial revival if most of them had been killed and all their infrastructure had been razed.
Slashdot Mirror
They say they "like Dostoyevsky"
It takes great leaps of logic to interpret the constitution to be referring to the right for the government to bear arms.
I didn't mean the federal goverment, I meant the States themselves.
It's possible that your interpretation is correct, I'm not American so the matter isn't really of much importance to me. Reading the amendment as ratified by the state, I would have thought that the intention was to allow States to raise their own militias independently of the Federal government.
The wording ratified by the states was as follows:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
My point (aside from the detail) from my original point stands - the wording is ambiguous, it could have meant either - or even both (because at the time a militia would have been raised from volunteers with their own firearms?).
The intentions of the framers are irrelevant here, the courts decided that the WORDING of the amendment allowed individuals to keep arms of any kind and that the federal goverment could not infringe that right. If the government doesn't like it, their option is to change the wording to disambiguate it. This is an example of the court interpreting legislation (or consitutional wording in this case) but not legislating themselves. They couldn't have decided that the right to bear arms was disallowed because they didn't like it.
Repeat after me, and say this 10 times.
Patents were not created to encourage innovation.
They were created to DISCOURAGE trade secrets, thus making the invention available to all in return for a temporary monopoly. A trade, if you will.
It was a great idea at the time. It's a less good idea now but it probably still has some value, particularly if the terms were shorter
Lobbying your politicians
Courts were never intended to legislate and should not legislate. They are there to interpret legislation. The intent of the law and "intent" when it comes to the constitution mean nothing. What means something is what's written down. Thus you get narrow decisions based on semantics and even syntax all the time. For instnace, the "right to bear arms" was originally not an individual right, but it has subsequently been interpreted as such by the courts because that's how the document reads. There are countless examples of loose wording letting off people who were clearly guilty under the intent of the law. And there are examples of the law being interpreted in a much wider manner than intended due to loose wording.
That, incidentally, is why lawyers get paid a lot of money - because they not only have to know the law, they have to know it in mind-numbing detail, as well as (in the US anyway) know where precedents can be applied.
Good job of confusing the hell out of me :)
I was reading AGW and anthropogenic global warming (or man-made global warming)
Besides, accepted standard Slashdot nomneclature for anti-global warming is "Denier"
It was yellow on dark blue - which is why it was the default colour for those DOS prompts. It's not strictly "easier on the eye", but it's the best contrast you can get.
Well, yes. And if you think about it you can see why.
A large number of people in their prime productive years get mutilated in a short space of time. And these people work for an organisation that has the resources to spend on looking for a solution. I read recently that 1 in 5 single amputees can return to active duty, and those numbers will rise as solutions get better.
I would disagree slightly about your Uplift Books comment - I liked The Uplift War (uplift book 2) the best out of that series. It had more humour and less pathos
God no, that entire Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series was awful. Boring as hell.
His Otherlands was excellent (although be warned, the ending is not)
The paper makes the claim that the average voter is insufficiently expert to be able to judge the expertise of the candidates on almost any given issue, and certainly not in aggregate.
Funnily enough, the American electoral college system's idea was (aside from the geographic thing) to help ameliorate this - you vote for your local smart guy that you trust and let HIM decide on the candidate. Unfortunately, nonsense like having to register a party preference nulllified that (because it effectively concentrates power into ever smaller groupings and over time voting preference becomes sacrosanct).
The problem is understood generally - in the UK you have the House of Lords, which sometimes does great work by looking cynically at some legislation, and explaining why it's so very wrong. In Ireland the same function was intended for the Senate - certain seats are voted for by certain consituencies (for instance, there's 6 seats where voting is only open to alumni, students and staff of the National University of Ireland) but as in both the mentioned bodies the government can appoint people to it it ends up stuffed with blinkered political appointees whose real constituency is "the guy who appointed me".
Heinlein's essays on this are instructive and entertaining. The best known example is Starship Troopers "only those who serve in the military can vote, not because they're smarter but because they've demonstrated that they care and are willing to do something for the privilege". In other essays he wrote "let there be an all female leadership - frankly they can't do any worse than our current system" (that's paraphrasing, I'd have to look it up again).
No, considering some peoples as property who can be purchased or sold against their will.
That's slavery.
Then came the rise of the Christians who promptly destroyed anything that didn't have the word Jesus on it and we were sent backwards by centuries. Not knocking the Christians as it seemed like every religion did the same thing, hell we see the Muslims trying their damnedest to do the same even today.
ARF'ING! REALLY?
Christianty had nothing to do with the fall of the Roman Empire and the subsequent "dark age". The Empire became indolent and riven by civil wars where the prize was the throne. The barbarians took a good look and then promptly burned the lot to the ground, repeatedly, until there was nothing left. The extremeties of the Empire rotted off - anything associated with the Empire was considered bad, the education and security it provided was gone. With no security and medicine life expectancy reduced and life became a struggle for necessities. In this condition, people weren't inclined to spent their energies on technology because the payoff is longer term.
And before the rise of Whabism (sp - the particular sect of radical islam) the Islamic world was a beacon of light. Europe was split, constantly at war and the Middle East and Persia was rich from the silk road and trading in general. At that time mathematics, physics, astronomy and art were highly prized by the Muslim countries. Ghengis Kahn, then the crusades put paid to that, so many resources were put into the war and so much destruction was caused that it took a long time to recover from it. Then along comes el-mental man in the 13th century and suddenly women are property and jihad is on. Sad, really.
Old Man's War by John Scalzi
The real question is, how did I miss the dragons!
Yes, triple their wages, causing massive inflation in China making the poor in China even worse off. You cannot dump wealth into an economy like that. The Russians tried it after the fall of the Soviey union and the result was so disasterous that they've ended up with an oligarchy and had to be grateful that a few people sucked up all the money because the economy was a mess.
If you look at programs such as Fair-trade you will see that the idea is increaes the quality of living for those workers in the developping countries.
While I am all for fair-trade, and increased quality of life for the workers, paying them more has harmful knock on effects in that it drives inflation of basic necessities and means those not lucky enough to have a decent income suffer more, not less. It's all about relativity.
Fostering job creation rather than giving aid is the way to go. It gives people something to feel valued for, and makes them self sufficient so you don't have to keep giving aid. Bear in mind that he suicide rate in Foxconn is significantly lower than the Chinese rate of suicide in general.
The theory of special relativity predicts gravitational behaviour very well indeed, but I want to know HOW! What the is mechanism! Where is my GODDAMN FLYING CAR!
It's because Atheism is a religious position. Thus, having taken a religious position, they do what many others who have a religious position does, a rubbish everyone else. The joke is that it seems most athiests don't recognise this.
On the other hand, I'm agnostic so I just laugh at both sides.
Must. Resist....
Actually, I can't. Abiotic oil is still up for consideration (although it's never got much traction outside the former Soviet Union). I'm not a geologist and I don't work in the oil industry so I can't say how realistic or not this is.
All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.
Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).
I did caution Dr. Trenberth before the media event and provided him a summary of the current understanding within the hurricane research community. I was disappointed when the IPCC leadership dismissed my concerns when I brought up the misrepresentation of climate science while invoking the authority of the IPCC. Specifically, the IPCC leadership said that Dr. Trenberth was speaking as an individual even though he was introduced in the press conference as an IPCC lead author; I was told that that the media was exaggerating or misrepresenting his words, even though the audio from the press conference and interview tells a different story (available on the web directly); and that Dr. Trenberth was accurately reflecting conclusions from the TAR, even though it is quite clear that the TAR stated that there was no connection between global warming and hurricane activity.
Also, can I refer you to plenty of issues with the Policy Summary of the IPCC AR4 which is damaging the real science that is performed in the many, many fields that were reviewed. Statements blaming AGW for everything from the reduction of the Kilimanjero glaciers (it was deforestation) and the reduction in size of the Himalayan glaciers (carbon soot from cookers in China is the main culprit) to the author's missing socks does not help. And before there's a counter that the Policy Summary isn't the document - it's probably the most important part of it because it's what most will read.
I leave the last word to Nils Axel Mörner, was the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden until 2005. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and was leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. Dr. Mörner studied the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. A bit of a loon about some things, but then many are and he's undoubtedly a sea-level expert.
And there you come to the point: They “know” the answer; the rest of us, we are searching for the answer. Because we are field geologists; they are computer scientists. So all this talk that sea level is rising, this stems from the computer modeling, not from observations. The observations don’t find it!
I have been the expert reviewer for the IPCC, both in 2000 and last year. The first time I read it, I was exceptionally surprised. First of all, it had 22 authors, but none of them—none—were sea-level specialists. They were given this mission, because they promised to answer the right thing. Again, it was a computer issue. This is the typical thing: The metereological community works with computers, simple computers. Geologists don’t do that! We go out in the field and observe, and then we can try to make a model with computerization; but it’s not the first thing.
and
Chapter 11 on "Sea Level Changes" was written by 33 persons; none of which represents actua
Use some kind of tablet/e-reader for your books, but use paper to take notes. Physical writing has several advantages, not least that the act of writing aids recall later. You take notes in class, and refine them and tidy them afterwards - this serves the double purpose of going over the content twice, and having to understand it better to condense it for the notes you store. Messing with multiple pens, or using a device in class disrupts your concentration and hence makes everything harder than it needs to be.
Memory, recall and learning (understanding concepts) are fairly complex and everyone's slightly different. The above is my own take on it.
If you go that way, the Kindle works quite well for displaying papers (with graphs and the like) although there's no colour for diagrams. I find that the grey background and no back-light with black text is easier on your eyes particularly if you'll be studying those books intensively over a longer period. This is a concern because as your eyes get tired it affects the rate at which you can take things in and you will need more frequent breaks or lose concentration. Anything with a reflective screen should be right out - the shine if the lights are on can make it difficult to read. Don't pick something too bright either, you'll distract those around you!
Best of luck to your wife
The Japanese were, by diaries released after the war, ready to surrender, just looking for a face-saving measure (keeping the Emperor in power).
You're not quite correct about that - the Japanese were discussing surrender internally and the Emperor was in favour. This led to an attempted palace coup and he STILL couldn't convince the majority of generals (who were where the power lay) until after the bomb was dropped. No surrender offer had been made and the Americans could not have known that the Japanese were thinking of surrender. Sure there were other geo-political benefits to dropping the bomb, particularly around Soviet relations, but the American High Command who didn't know about the bomb gave those figures and estimates and expected a horrifically bloody 3 year war on the Japanese islands. They did not expect a Japanese surrender as things stood.
We can only hope that's how it goes. Our societies have not caught up with *CURRENT* technologies, never mind the technologies of the future, and believe it or not cheap computing is only going to accelerate techonological progress. There are various ways this could go in the long run - some good, some extinction level - but the long and the short of it is that we are going to hit some serious social upheaval. Think of what happened during the industrial revolution, but magnified. This will be difficult and messy. Are we going to end up with a Federation style society, or a Judge Dredd style?!
As an investor, the next quarter matters far more to you than the state of a company five years in the future.
Then you're not an "investor", you're a gambler. Investment implies at least medium term thinking, and that seems to be absent. It's at least partially because of the rise of small time investors, who are much more likely to panic over short term trends, rather than the big institutional investors who generally aren't because they can absorb a certain level of loss and have anyway factored the risk in. The word "investor" has been diluted badly over the last few years, much like the word "engineer" (everyone's job description is engineer, yay!)
I think that taxing "investments" of lower than 5 years at a higher rate than investments of greater than 5 years would help alleviate the problem.
Unfortunately, most people don't seem to be able to envision any kind of world but one organized solely for the benefit of business, or one that is irrationally and implacably hostile to private enterprise.
I agree with most of your post, by the way. In this case, it has a lot to do with the quality of ALL discourse. The middle ground doesn't seem adequate even though it contains the majority because the fringes are way louder. The examples are everywhere - Republican/Democrat, the Global Warming discussion, environmentalism, animal rights, religion and far, far more. In all of these, one side demonises the other and point blank refuses to engage in a constructive manner. It's hardly surprising that this case applies in business as well.
The best-case estimate was 1.4 million American casualties, worst-case was about 4 million, in an operation that they expected would take until 1948-1949. These estimates were given by a command that did not know the bomb existed, so they were calling it how they saw it in an operation that they were gearing up to. This did not mention the undoubtedly horrific Japanese casualties that would have resulted, and the moralizing over the bomb ignores the fact that the USAF would have *levelled* all the Japanese cities (which were mostly made of very flammable material) in the planned bombing campaigns. Bear in mind that the total US casualties from the war to that point was 250,000.
As an interesting aside, the Japanese high command had correctly guessed exactly where the American landings would have taken place (on the southern island, Kyushu) and had deployed their assets based around these assumptions which would have greatly increased the casualties from the projected minimum. Hard as it is to understand looking back, these were very desperate times and the US Government at the time made the call based on these figures. In hindsight (from behind my comfortable desk) it seems that they made the right one for everyone. The Japanese benefited hugely from the surrender and America gained what turned out to be a valuable ally. The post-war prosperity that both enjoyed would probably not have happened if casualties on that scale were inflicted on the generation who produced the baby boomers, and Japan certainly wouldn't have been in any position for their industrial revival if most of them had been killed and all their infrastructure had been razed.