That might be true; however, the country was never set up for the popular vote to mean anything, and that people think it was is a failure of our educational system. I think it's more likely that people are losing faith because a) the population keeps getting bigger so each individual vote counts for less, and b) the primary system sucks.
Uhh... Lots of Americans have to deal with higher temperatures for longer than Germany. Lots of Americans get colder in winter too.
I think the homelessness rate in America is not so big as you think it is. And you clearly don't know much about being a lower-class American either.
I have no idea how many German households have no washing machine. However, most lower-class Americans don't drive to a laundromat; those are more in high-density places, so they'd walk or take public transport.
There's dissent within political parties too. The board, for the most part, makes decisions for the company. If you'd prefer to look at it like this, the owners of the company - whoever they are - are electing the board to decide things for them, including lobbying.
On the contrary - in most cases, they did break laws. Silly laws that were meant to be broken, and aren't always enforced equally, but they did technically break laws. Even accounting for that, however, the black homicide rate is much higher than any other group.
Part of the disproportionately high black incarceration rate is due to systemic racism (although conviction and sentencing rates are, to my knowledge, not *that* biased - biased, yes, but not nearly enough to explain all of it) and part is actually due to higher crime rates. Why are crime rates higher? I don't know. Feeling like they can't make progress in the current system, disproportionate poverty rates... I'm not sure.
I hadn't seen the NYT analogy before, I'll have to remember that. I usually go with non-profit corporations like the ACLU, but news is also a good one. I agree that people shouldn't lose rights when acting as a group that they have individually - that doesn't make sense.
I think the one the shooter used was the last one the exploit would work on - current iPhone versions would be immune. Of course, Apple is still going to try to close down future versions even more.
Bad insulation, I'll grant you. Inefficient gear - maybe, depends what you mean by "gear". Stupid lifestyle...? Now there I think we disagree. Furthermore, the average American deals with more extremes in terms of climate and has a larger house (is this your "stupid lifestyle"?).
"GM-free food production" isn't good. It's also a bit more than "superficial distress". Building their own infrastructure and diversifying is good, but it would have been better if they'd been able to keep making oil and gas money at the same time.
How can Norway and Switzerland be outside the EU, and at the same time have the highest per-capita GDP in the western world (excluding Luxembourg, which is basically a tiny money-laundering hole)?
I think there is a danger of EU member countries losing their identity, for a few reasons. First, the US isn't nearly as culturally diverse as the EU is - it's more diverse than most people give it credit for (so thank you for that) but there are large swathes of the country that are pretty much the same. Second, the EU has so many different languages - it'd be hard to forge a sense of a European identity strong enough to support one unified country when people find it difficult to talk to one another (unless they use English, but that has its own drawbacks). Lastly, there's going to be a large initial shock trying to integrate different laws, holidays, and economic disparities into one whole unit.
I do, however, agree that this "free trade++" area is going to keep getting harder to maintain; it really constrains the ability of some countries to manage fiscal policy when they can't appreciate or depreciate their currency. I think the economic benefits of free trade are enormous, but it's going to be a struggle to keep them with the EU's current situation.
I'm sorry, but you're off base here. The dollar being the world's reserve currency helps the US government, certainly, but not to an extreme degree. This column helps explain why. The Fed goes to a lot of effort to keep inflation low, especially recently. Hyperinflation isn't an issue for the dollar right now partly because of that, but also because people want dollars (at the moment) and the US government is seen as fairly stable and backed by a massive economy. People like dollars because they're stable. That being said, they can't borrow as much as they want to, nor can they just start printing more when they need it, because that would cause hyperinflation.
Saying that the US "never has to worry about the cost of anything" is ludicrous. The US hasn't funded lots of programs because they would be too expensive, and a lot of the Presidential candidates talk about the budget and making sure it doesn't grow too unbalanced. It has lots more money than other countries, but that's largely because it has a pretty good economy (compared with other First World countries) and the third largest population of any country. It also prioritizes military spending, as you pointed out, so it's easier to get more money for that (although another trillion would be a difficult sell).
Syria really doesn't produce much oil. Furthermore, there are plenty of majority Muslim countries that are pretty close and could take refugees, but don't.
First, I said it depends on the journal, and that some do good peer review most of the time. Nature and Science have some bad science - like every journal, and no publishing model will really change that without great expense - but they also do have some really good science. When they have bad science, it's often because someone falsified data (hard to check without spending a lot of money) or there's an exciting story, especially if it's controversial. That's human nature, and since scientists are humans I'm not sure how you plan on fixing that. Both of those journals do, in fact, do good peer review most of the time. Their failures are larger, partly because they're considered good journals and people pay more attention to them.
Oh, I agree - being less selective isn't a problem with open access per se, it's just that right now it looks unattractive to some researchers because of that. It'll probably get better over time.
There's a couple reasons. First, as i_ate_god pointed out below, is that proper peer review would be nearly impossible. Second, when you have to publish in order to keep your job (or get a better one), self-publishing is such a big risk that you can't do it unless you're already well-established or there's a large shift in the community. Lastly, it's a lot harder to keep track of the field if there are a bunch more websites, etc. that you have to keep an eye on instead of just checking the journals' websites every week or so.
I don't think copyright is actually an issue at most institutions - the IP is shared between the PI and institution, and sometimes other senior scientists, but publications are only copyrighted once a journal has them, generally speaking.
That depends on the journal. Some journals do good peer review most of the time, some don't. It's often not readily obvious to someone outside that field whether it's a good journal, but just because peer review is done poorly in some places doesn't mean it's done poorly everywhere.
If you don't mind me asking - which journal did you submit to that didn't give a (legal) copy to every author?
As to your right to property - most places have contracts you have to sign before doing research as a student, saying that you can't make money off of your research there, etc. You may have signed over your right to property in this instance when you agreed to work in a lab. I'm not saying that's right - it can lead to some unfortunate situations, like yours - but I understand why they did it.
Your proposed system is interesting, certainly. However, I'd like to point out that some journals do actually charge researchers to publish, and charge subscription fees. Some other journals are freely available, but (generally) charge researchers more to publish their work. Those journals, unfortunately, tend to be less selective in what they publish, so some researchers avoid them because it's not as good for their career.
Okay, so you believe that since some funding came from federal funding agencies for most papers (which, for the record, I agree with), propose a different model for scientific publishing. If you designed the system, how would it work?
Actually, this article digs into the problem; partly it's landlords and companies, but local government and NIMBY anti-development citizens are a large part of the problem. They're blocking development (or at least, making it very expensive and slow), which means that it's really hard to make new places to live at anywhere near the rate that people are moving in.
Slashdot Mirror
That might be true; however, the country was never set up for the popular vote to mean anything, and that people think it was is a failure of our educational system. I think it's more likely that people are losing faith because a) the population keeps getting bigger so each individual vote counts for less, and b) the primary system sucks.
Uhh... Lots of Americans have to deal with higher temperatures for longer than Germany. Lots of Americans get colder in winter too.
I think the homelessness rate in America is not so big as you think it is. And you clearly don't know much about being a lower-class American either.
I have no idea how many German households have no washing machine. However, most lower-class Americans don't drive to a laundromat; those are more in high-density places, so they'd walk or take public transport.
There's dissent within political parties too. The board, for the most part, makes decisions for the company. If you'd prefer to look at it like this, the owners of the company - whoever they are - are electing the board to decide things for them, including lobbying.
On the contrary - in most cases, they did break laws. Silly laws that were meant to be broken, and aren't always enforced equally, but they did technically break laws. Even accounting for that, however, the black homicide rate is much higher than any other group.
Part of the disproportionately high black incarceration rate is due to systemic racism (although conviction and sentencing rates are, to my knowledge, not *that* biased - biased, yes, but not nearly enough to explain all of it) and part is actually due to higher crime rates. Why are crime rates higher? I don't know. Feeling like they can't make progress in the current system, disproportionate poverty rates... I'm not sure.
I hadn't seen the NYT analogy before, I'll have to remember that. I usually go with non-profit corporations like the ACLU, but news is also a good one. I agree that people shouldn't lose rights when acting as a group that they have individually - that doesn't make sense.
I think the one the shooter used was the last one the exploit would work on - current iPhone versions would be immune. Of course, Apple is still going to try to close down future versions even more.
Ha! I hadn't seen that before. Thanks for the link!
Bad insulation, I'll grant you. Inefficient gear - maybe, depends what you mean by "gear". Stupid lifestyle...? Now there I think we disagree. Furthermore, the average American deals with more extremes in terms of climate and has a larger house (is this your "stupid lifestyle"?).
Interestingly enough, apparently TEPCO was planning on beefing up the safety measures later that month. The earthquake just happened first.
"GM-free food production" isn't good. It's also a bit more than "superficial distress". Building their own infrastructure and diversifying is good, but it would have been better if they'd been able to keep making oil and gas money at the same time.
How can Norway and Switzerland be outside the EU, and at the same time have the highest per-capita GDP in the western world (excluding Luxembourg, which is basically a tiny money-laundering hole)?
Oil and banking.
I think there is a danger of EU member countries losing their identity, for a few reasons. First, the US isn't nearly as culturally diverse as the EU is - it's more diverse than most people give it credit for (so thank you for that) but there are large swathes of the country that are pretty much the same. Second, the EU has so many different languages - it'd be hard to forge a sense of a European identity strong enough to support one unified country when people find it difficult to talk to one another (unless they use English, but that has its own drawbacks). Lastly, there's going to be a large initial shock trying to integrate different laws, holidays, and economic disparities into one whole unit.
I do, however, agree that this "free trade++" area is going to keep getting harder to maintain; it really constrains the ability of some countries to manage fiscal policy when they can't appreciate or depreciate their currency. I think the economic benefits of free trade are enormous, but it's going to be a struggle to keep them with the EU's current situation.
I'm sorry, but you're off base here. The dollar being the world's reserve currency helps the US government, certainly, but not to an extreme degree. This column helps explain why. The Fed goes to a lot of effort to keep inflation low, especially recently. Hyperinflation isn't an issue for the dollar right now partly because of that, but also because people want dollars (at the moment) and the US government is seen as fairly stable and backed by a massive economy. People like dollars because they're stable. That being said, they can't borrow as much as they want to, nor can they just start printing more when they need it, because that would cause hyperinflation.
Saying that the US "never has to worry about the cost of anything" is ludicrous. The US hasn't funded lots of programs because they would be too expensive, and a lot of the Presidential candidates talk about the budget and making sure it doesn't grow too unbalanced. It has lots more money than other countries, but that's largely because it has a pretty good economy (compared with other First World countries) and the third largest population of any country. It also prioritizes military spending, as you pointed out, so it's easier to get more money for that (although another trillion would be a difficult sell).
Syria really doesn't produce much oil. Furthermore, there are plenty of majority Muslim countries that are pretty close and could take refugees, but don't.
Switzerland is an example of harm to science imposed by restricting travel and grant money. You know, what the article is about.
"I don't want to look at this content, therefore I'm not going to" is not the same thing as censorship.
First, I said it depends on the journal, and that some do good peer review most of the time. Nature and Science have some bad science - like every journal, and no publishing model will really change that without great expense - but they also do have some really good science. When they have bad science, it's often because someone falsified data (hard to check without spending a lot of money) or there's an exciting story, especially if it's controversial. That's human nature, and since scientists are humans I'm not sure how you plan on fixing that. Both of those journals do, in fact, do good peer review most of the time. Their failures are larger, partly because they're considered good journals and people pay more attention to them.
Oh, I agree - being less selective isn't a problem with open access per se, it's just that right now it looks unattractive to some researchers because of that. It'll probably get better over time.
No you can't. It's not publicly reviewed, but peer review could have happened.
There's a couple reasons. First, as i_ate_god pointed out below, is that proper peer review would be nearly impossible. Second, when you have to publish in order to keep your job (or get a better one), self-publishing is such a big risk that you can't do it unless you're already well-established or there's a large shift in the community. Lastly, it's a lot harder to keep track of the field if there are a bunch more websites, etc. that you have to keep an eye on instead of just checking the journals' websites every week or so.
I don't think copyright is actually an issue at most institutions - the IP is shared between the PI and institution, and sometimes other senior scientists, but publications are only copyrighted once a journal has them, generally speaking.
That depends on the journal. Some journals do good peer review most of the time, some don't. It's often not readily obvious to someone outside that field whether it's a good journal, but just because peer review is done poorly in some places doesn't mean it's done poorly everywhere.
If you don't mind me asking - which journal did you submit to that didn't give a (legal) copy to every author?
As to your right to property - most places have contracts you have to sign before doing research as a student, saying that you can't make money off of your research there, etc. You may have signed over your right to property in this instance when you agreed to work in a lab. I'm not saying that's right - it can lead to some unfortunate situations, like yours - but I understand why they did it.
Your proposed system is interesting, certainly. However, I'd like to point out that some journals do actually charge researchers to publish, and charge subscription fees. Some other journals are freely available, but (generally) charge researchers more to publish their work. Those journals, unfortunately, tend to be less selective in what they publish, so some researchers avoid them because it's not as good for their career.
Okay, so you believe that since some funding came from federal funding agencies for most papers (which, for the record, I agree with), propose a different model for scientific publishing. If you designed the system, how would it work?
Actually, this article digs into the problem; partly it's landlords and companies, but local government and NIMBY anti-development citizens are a large part of the problem. They're blocking development (or at least, making it very expensive and slow), which means that it's really hard to make new places to live at anywhere near the rate that people are moving in.