The guy you were responding to used the word "debt", not "deficit". There is a difference.
The story is the same when you look at national debt. The OP claimed the EU was at twice the levels of the US, but google disagrees with this claim.
The national debt of the US approaches 100% of GDP, roughly the same as the UK.
Greece meanwhile is struggling with a debt of 120% of the GDP. According to the wsj article linked above, Spain has a national debt below 70% of GDP. Portugal was above 75% last year, I didn't see figures for this moment. None of these amounts are anything close to twice the level of the USA, as the OP claimed. Only Japan and Zimbabwe seem to reach that level.
The dollar has gained quite significantly since 2007. The Euro's mindshare was the first thing to go in the recession... Not just a chink in the armor, but a forced realization that a defacto currency, from which any country can opt-out at any time, with no central governing authority, but with individual authorities with a poor understanding of how to handle such changes, and with several weak players involved, is not a safe bet in the slightest
The dollar regained gained some, after having steadily declined from about EUR 1.25 to about EUR 0.65
I don't know what you base the idea on that any country could opt-out of it at any time. Such an operation would be purely theoretical, the actual process of leaving the EUR after having joined would take years, carry a staggering cost and would seriously harm the economic outlook of any country attempting it. It's unthinkable, joining the EUR is a one way path.
I'd point to Kosovo for a look at what European "diplomacy" can do... Lots of speeches over the years about "never again," and then a whole lot of nothing when a real stand needs to be made,
It has a whole lot to do with the reluctance towards looking at only one side of an issue. I'd call it a difference in culture between the US and post WW2 Europe. In the US, there is still a strong belief in right vs wrong, good vs. evil. In a conflict, there must be one side that's right and another one that is wrong. Kosovo and Bosnia were solved very decisively by the US, by picking a side, obliterating the other side, and blaming the entire conflict on the obliterated party. It worked, the conflict is over. It no longer matters that the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo later turned out to have been a fabrication, and that the good guys in Bosnia turned out to have been almost as nasty as the bad guys.
I say this not as an ignorant and arrogant American, but as a distant observer.. (...) but this (largely Europeans) fervent anti-Americanism we see touted on/. so often is a rather serious case of not being able to see the forest for the trees. The grass may seems greener on the other side, but it's pretty clear that there's no grass at all over there...
I say this as a half-yank, half-eurofag. In my experience the anti-Americanism in Europe is exaggerated in the US media. Euros just tend to be more 'negative' in general, and many Americans experience any shimmer of doubt or negativity as anti-American. I don't experience anti-Americanism in Europe as worse than anti-Europism in the US, or anti-California-ism in Texas.
Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain are the worst but not the least. Most of the countries in Europe have spending and Debt levels that (as a percentage of GDP) are double the US level everyone is worried about....
Uhm, the US federal deficit stands at 10.64%, only slightly lower than the 12.5% of Greece, the worst performer in the Euro zone at this time. Portugal seems to have a deficit of 9.3%, Spain 11%. The I in PIGS is Ireland with 11%, not Italy. Mind you, these are the worst performers in the Euro zone, and relatively small economies, the average figures of of the entire Euro zone are looking a lot better than the US right now, and definitely better than the UK. The market doesn't only look at cold, hard figures though.
About the Euro tanking vs the dollar, I remember almost a decade ago, the Euro was worth about $0.70, now it stands at twice that amount. Both those extreme values are unrealistic and harmful, it would be better to have a stable exchange rate close to 1:1
Obama is using diplomacy to get other countries to do what we want, while Bush used more or less thinly veiled threats. Whether or not that's better is debatable, but at least in theory it will give other countries more of a choice in the matters.
That was only a stated 'intention' beforehand.
After one round of foreign diplomacy, the Obama administration scratched their heads and went "huh, I don't get it, now we asked them nicely and those foreign governments still want to put their own interests before American interests. Oh well, it's back to thinly veiled threats then"
I don't know what exactly goes on in the mind of a world power leader who somehow expected foreign leaders suddenly to stop doing their job (which is putting the interests of their own countries first) and start putting American interests first, with nothing to gain in return, purely on the basis of a more handsome face and more eloquently phrased thinly veiled threats.
It's hardly a secret that, despite his popularity (compared to his predecessor at least) among the people, the Obama administration seems to be getting along poorly with the European governments, and now they seem to be picking fights with allies in Asia.
I'm not saying that this is wrong. Obama's job description is to look out for American interests only. It's obvious that if you want to get something for nothing, you're going to have to use threats, so that's what he'll be doing.
Essentially, just because we can build this network, doesn't mean we should. I'm giving a big nod of the head to the EU over this one.
You misunderstand. This has nothing to do with fighting terrorism or protecting privacy, but everything to do with tax evasion. As long as the US has official, legal access to European banking data, it's a lot less safe for American tax evaders to use Europe based banks to keep their unreported money.
The US will obviously still have access to all this data via unofficial channels, for use in counter terrorism, but I doubt that illegally obtained data could be used in court to prosecute a tax evader.
Actually studies have shown the complete opposite (I read it on paper). It used to be fashionable to attribute this kind of behavior to low self esteem, until someone actually bothered to investigate this, and found that bullies actually tend to have unrealistically high self esteem and tend to be more bold and impulsive than average.
From this, the logical next step would be to subject a bully to so much abuse that his self esteem is shattered and see if this changes their behavior. This would obviously be immoral.
You can piss and moan all you want about people being dicks and guess what - they will still be dicks. Its like those personal ads where the girl says things like "no jerks need reply" - like that would ever stop a jerk. The only person you have control over is yourself.
I would have KILLED for training in basic social mores and skills as a child - just rote, repetitive stuff the same as any other kind of training, so that what I did not know naturally I could at least fall back on manually learned behavior. We put kids who are slow in math and reading in classes that teach to their level - how about classes that teach social conventions and behaviorism for kids who are slow at that?
But you do get basic training, very intensive training in fact. Every kid does, every moment you interact with people. Just like the way not every kid receiving the same piano training becomes a virtuoso, it is obvious not every kid learns the same amount in their mores and social skills boot camp. But you DO learn an awful lot. Even the biggest nerd understands that if grandma gives you a present, it's best to say thank you, even the biggest social outcast learns that when you loudly fart in company, people will heckle you. Now not everyone reaches the level of virtuosity to learn when refusing a gift or farting loudly in company actually increases your social standing, but I doubt this can be taught.
I suspect many of us skipped the social classes as a kid to have more time alone to read or play with a computer. Some of us might have been expelled from class by kids who knew when to fart, but have you noticed how the real social virtuoso's don't tend to be bullies? They know exactly how to avoid a nerd without having to resort to openly being a dick.
There seems to be this pervasive 'If we're not #1 at <something>, everything is fucked.' attitude in American culture.
Why should anyone be surprised that a country that houses a fifth of the world's population is gradually moving closer towards one fifth of the global influence and achievements? Why would it surprise anyone that gradually, over time, a country with four times the population of the USA will pass the USA on a global '<something>' ranking?
And why would this be a reason to panic? Did the success of the USA, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea in the 2nd half of the 20th century make Europe poorer? Is the standard of living in London or Paris worse than it was in 1939? I dare say quite the opposite happened.
I see no reason to fear the success of China will make the USA poorer. Less supremely powerful in comparison perhaps, but there is no reason to assume this will cause problems. China and the US don't have any overlapping territorial claims, foreign resources are purchased rather than taken by force these days, and China has always shown very little interest in projecting military power globally. I understand that to become more like Britain is the average American's greatest nightmare, but with a population of 300 million and plenty of room to grow, that's just not going to happen in our lifetime, and even if it is, not being #1 at absolutely fucking everything isn't as horrible as it sounds.
Not that I disagree entirely that it may be more difficult to manage someone in India, and I've certainly heard horror stories, but come on. These could all be applied to just about any remote contractor who isn't worth their salt. I have worked with/currently work with plenty of Indians who really knew/know their stuff.
The only problem with projects done in India I keep hearing about over here is that they seem reluctant to second guess a customer that sends a design with an obvious mistake in it, so sometimes you get your product with the mistake in it exactly as you designed it. These Indian consultants cost a lot more than $9, but still not so much that it would be cheaper to hire me than to fly one of those guys in.
He probably went to Quova due to the extreme quantity of data. I imagine most end-user-accessible GeoIP lookup interfaces would temporarily ban your IP after a few thousand rapid-fire lookups.
--- Mr. DOS
You can freely download the database, and roll your own in your favorite scripting language
, usually resulting from famine or starvation during the early stages of childhood.
And that's the real story: Parents who have turned their children over to the television, computer, and daycare centers of the world and neglecting basic nutrition. My sister is like that -- she is fed a diet of fast food and microwave meals because her parents can't be bothered to cook a meal (two income family). I don't think its intentional, people just assume there's no problem if it can't be seen.
On the contrary, this is a case of conscientious and caring parents following the advice not to expose their children to direct sunlight. These kids never go out in the sun without a hat and some high protection factor sunblock cream.
Vitamin D is made in the skin cells, in response to damage done by UV radiation from sunlight. Without unprotected exposure to sunlight, less UV damage is done, and this can result in a vitamin D deficiency.
Blaming modern conveniences and social and moral decay for the deplorable state of the youth today is constant theme in cultural history. Every generation of curmudgeons has always complained that parents these days don't know how to raise their kids responsibly, and kids these days, well they're just a lost generation. Extrapolating this trend back in time, I estimate that roughly around 11000 years BC a singularity took place, where parenting was at infinite levels of perfection and kids were of infinitely high morals and potential. Perhaps someone whose analysis skills are fresher, can post a proof whether in the far future parenting skills and youth potential will go to zero, or whether they will keep declining indefinitely.
I'd add a 3rd axis: resistance to change. One can observe political movements that would lie roughly on the same scale on the authoritarian and left-right axes, but with a radically different outlook on how to achieve their version of utopia. Preparing for revolution now or wanting to revert to some mythical past when society was supposedly perfect.
(if you wonder what I believe in: anarchistic capitalism in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson).
Interesting that you describe Jefferson as capitalist. I thought he despised industrialism and banking. I remember reading that he favored an exclusively agricultural society purged of non-white races. Today, by today's standards, he'd probably be considered pretty weird.
If it is laissez-faire capitalism that you refer to, the problem I have with that over a few generations it always seems to evolve into a form of feudalism. In my opinion we really need an estate tax and some government oversight of the economy to prevent this.
Elsewhere, the desire to control industry vs personal freedom may not be linked as much or at all. The liberal party where I live favors more economic freedom but doesn't seem to consider personal freedom much of a political issue.
Yes, that's called "conservative"
I was under the impression that conservatives tend to consider personal freedom very much a political issue.
I'm still not sure where to place populism. Over here we have a 'right wing' populist party and a 'left wing' populist party. One appeals to the angry working class who hate people with more money, the other is aimed at the angry middle class who hate immigrants and socialists...
What it means to be 'liberal' or 'conservative' can be vastly different depending where you are
The four political poles are liberal, conservative, libertarian, and populist. Sometimes they go by different names but a liberal is by definition one who supports controls on industry but also in personal freedom, while conservatives favor controls on personal freedom but a free market
Those may be the four political poles in the US, though I'm not sure where to place populism.
Elsewhere, the desire to control industry vs personal freedom may not be linked as much or at all. The liberal party where I live favors more economic freedom but doesn't seem to consider personal freedom much of a political issue.
Generally I would say that there's usually a group that wants to change everything (progressives) a group that's ok with the status quo (moderates) and a group that wants to resist or revert change (conservatives).
What the people in these groups specifically want depends heavily on culture and on the status quo. Conservatives in Russia may vote communist, while conservatives in the US generally would not; conservatives in Saudi Arabia will support the Sharia, while conservatives in Turkey wish to suppress Islamic influence.
Progressives aren't necessarily the ones in favor of freedom and conservatives aren't necessarily against it. The nazis were progressives who wanted to change everything, and so were the revolutionaries in Iran in 1979.
How different are things on the other side of the pond, really?
Which part? Hungary or Denmark may be quite different, while France has a system that would feel very familiar to you if you ignored the labels on the parties.
(Leftist party is kind of expected to make such draconian laws in order to "protect" public: it is the very essence of being nanny state.)
I think you're projecting the American situation on another country.
What it means to be 'liberal' or 'conservative' can be vastly different depending where you are. In mainland Europe 'Liberals' tend to favor more freedom (hence the name liberal) at the expense of having less order and safety, while conservatives tend to favor more order and security at the expense of more repression.
You might find that the conservative vs liberal divide is (as far as I'm aware) uniquely American.
Some anecdotal evidence:
In Turkey, conservatives struggle to protect the strict separation of religion and state against liberals who wish to relax it. Where I live, conservative Christian politicians find their natural allies in the Green party, both wanting to roll the country back to some mythical idyllic past when it looked the way either God or Mother Nature intended, homosexuals join extreme right wing parties (because they feel threatened by Muslim immigration), liberals aim to restrict government interference in people's lives while conservatives wish the government to protect us from every real and imaginary threat conceivable.
You forget that Apple has fanboys, and Nokia does not. Nokia might as well settle now, apologise, pay an undisclosed sum and retreat from the American market again.
I mean, the Dutch learned how to live under the sea without massive government intervention. It's not neccessary for our governments to step in and decide how to solve problems for us when we can decide as individuals.
Were you under the impression that such a thing can be left to the private sector? If you own a piece of coastline, and spend a fortune to protect your part diligently, but a neighbour a few dozen miles away for some reason does not, you and everybody else still end up losing everything you've ever worked for. When the livelihood of everyone in a wide region may depend on the weakest link, and expensive work has to be done without a prospect of short term profit for an individual (just for society as a whole), this is the prime example I can think of where a government has to step in.
The oldest government body they have in Holland is the one charged with water management, it dates from the time when the land first started sinking below sea level, more than 1000 years ago. The Dutch living under the sea is a very poor example of a problem being solved without massive government intervention.
People can't think in terms of replacing cities because the idea that cities are changing instead of truly permanent is completely outside what they are taught. They cling to cities they should simply abandon and bulldoze (Detroit, the below-sea-level areas of New Orleans) for no logical reason.
Cities are cheap to replace, there is plenty of room, and the way to get better cities
For some strange reason, after 10, 15 centuries of people giving their life to protect it, cultures get rather attached to a city. Irrational, sentimental fools these old-worlders.
The only real reason for life to organize into multi cellular structures that I can think of is to build radio telescopes and look for other clusters of cells that have done the same on other worlds.
I doubt that very much. There must be a thermodynamic motivation for the development of multicellular organisms despite the fact they are negentropic (trap information) - living organisms metabolize energy to maintain structure and information (and so don't decay).
Your explanation means assuming a mystical anthropocentric driving force to evolution otherwise it's nonsensical - maybe there is one but can it be proved? How can the existence of multi cellular organisms on other planets exert selection pressure here (unless they invade)?
Intriguing theory, but it does not pass Occam's razor. It is far more likely that I meant it as a jest, and actually meant to imply multi cellular organization may not inevitably follow the existence of life
The universe is just too big and vast for this to be the only planet with life on it.
Estimates are what these days for # of galaxies? Hundreds of billions? You telling me we're the only ones out here?
I don't buy it.
Life, maybe, but would there be multi cellular life?
For the first 3 billion years of life on earth, there were only single celled organisms. This time span is in the same order of magnitude as the estimated timespan that life is possible on earth. If life on an earth-like ends a little early or starts a little late, life may never evolve from the goo stage.
And think of some of the extremely rare occurrences that need to coincide to make it possible for life to exist so long on a planet.
Jupiter has kept the inner planets to some extent from bombardment, by sucking up asteroids in its enormous gravity well. Without this long distance Jupiter, the earliest time that life would have been able to exist might have been pushed forward significantly. In extra solar planetary systems discovered so far, it seems that a hot Jupiter, close to the star, appears to be the norm.
Liquid water isn't stable on normal rocky planets. Too far from the star, and it just freezes. Too close to the star and water gets photolysed into hydrogen and oxygen, the oxygen getting bound in the soil and the hydrogen getting stripped away in the solar wind. The earth still has some of its water left, because it is unusually dense and has a magnetic field that protects it somewhat. Both the density and the magnetic field were made possible by an unlikely event: the early earth collided with another planet of similar size. Much of the lighter material got ejected and formed the moon in a low orbit, while much of the denser, metallic material formed the earth. Other planets in the solar system have no magnetic field to speak of. Venus lost its water due to being too close to the sun, Mars lost it due to its low density. Our large metallic core has at least one other effect essential for long lasting life: decay of radio active isotopes keeps it warm and liquid, and keeps the crust thin enough for plate tectonics to be possible. As life does its thing, CO2 gets locked up in the crust in the form of limestone and fossil carbon. Without plate tectonics and the resulting vulcanism, this carbon would not have been recycled back into the atmosphere, causing early life to run out of fuel. As the sun was a lot cooler than it is today, the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere might have caused the early earth to freeze. As the sun gradually gets hotter over the course of its lifespan, this also puts an upper limit to our existence. About a billion years from now, it will likely be too hot for liquid water to exist on earth. A billion years seems like a long time, but that would mean that some two thirds of the time period in which life can exist on earth had already passed before the first multi cellular life forms are known to have arisen.
Our unusually large moon has also served to stabilize the rotation of the earth. Without it, the earth may occasionally have been near-sterilized whenever one rotational axis pointed towards the sun, causing one hemisphere to burn to a crisp, and the other to wither in a frozen darkness for god knows how many thousands of years. The moon, when life was in its early stages, was a lot closer than it is now, causing the difference between low and high tide to be in the order of maybe a mile. This would have covered much of the earth's surface with tidal pools at some point in the day, and tidal pools are believed to have been pivotal in the development of photo synthesis. Other planets we know of have moons that are far smaller in size, relative to the planet they orbit.
The argument that I find most convincing is the observation that even here on earth, multi cellular life seems to hold only a tenuous advantage over good old single celled organisms. Single celled organisms have been dominating the world ever since life began, about
You're not using much of any plating metal on cheap charms, so the cost of the material is probably not as significant as the cost of plating it on. You want a metal that's easy to plate, shiny and corrosion resistant, so cadmium fits the bill (in retrospect, shoulda put "non-toxic" in there)...
Plating? The cadmium is used in the form of cadmium salts, as a heat and light resistant coloring agent for plastics, not in a metallic form. That would be really expensive, if at all possible. Shiny silver colored plastic is normally made with aluminum, and I imagine gold color can be made by putting a translucent yellow layer on top of that.
According to google, the cadmium paint is actually more expensive than the non-toxic alternative (azo compounds), so I really wouldn't be surprised if this was just another case of Chinese manufacturers not second guessing their western customers' faulty specs, like it was with the lead based paint scandal.
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The guy you were responding to used the word "debt", not "deficit". There is a difference.
The story is the same when you look at national debt. The OP claimed the EU was at twice the levels of the US, but google disagrees with this claim.
The national debt of the US approaches 100% of GDP, roughly the same as the UK.
Greece meanwhile is struggling with a debt of 120% of the GDP. According to the wsj article linked above, Spain has a national debt below 70% of GDP. Portugal was above 75% last year, I didn't see figures for this moment. None of these amounts are anything close to twice the level of the USA, as the OP claimed. Only Japan and Zimbabwe seem to reach that level.
The dollar has gained quite significantly since 2007. The Euro's mindshare was the first thing to go in the recession... Not just a chink in the armor, but a forced realization that a defacto currency, from which any country can opt-out at any time, with no central governing authority, but with individual authorities with a poor understanding of how to handle such changes, and with several weak players involved, is not a safe bet in the slightest
The dollar regained gained some, after having steadily declined from about EUR 1.25 to about EUR 0.65
I don't know what you base the idea on that any country could opt-out of it at any time. Such an operation would be purely theoretical, the actual process of leaving the EUR after having joined would take years, carry a staggering cost and would seriously harm the economic outlook of any country attempting it. It's unthinkable, joining the EUR is a one way path.
I'd point to Kosovo for a look at what European "diplomacy" can do... Lots of speeches over the years about "never again," and then a whole lot of nothing when a real stand needs to be made,
It has a whole lot to do with the reluctance towards looking at only one side of an issue. I'd call it a difference in culture between the US and post WW2 Europe. In the US, there is still a strong belief in right vs wrong, good vs. evil. In a conflict, there must be one side that's right and another one that is wrong. Kosovo and Bosnia were solved very decisively by the US, by picking a side, obliterating the other side, and blaming the entire conflict on the obliterated party. It worked, the conflict is over. It no longer matters that the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo later turned out to have been a fabrication, and that the good guys in Bosnia turned out to have been almost as nasty as the bad guys.
I say this not as an ignorant and arrogant American, but as a distant observer.. /. so often is a rather serious case of not being able to see the forest for the trees. The grass may seems greener on the other side, but it's pretty clear that there's no grass at all over there...
(...) but this (largely Europeans) fervent anti-Americanism we see touted on
I say this as a half-yank, half-eurofag. In my experience the anti-Americanism in Europe is exaggerated in the US media. Euros just tend to be more 'negative' in general, and many Americans experience any shimmer of doubt or negativity as anti-American. I don't experience anti-Americanism in Europe as worse than anti-Europism in the US, or anti-California-ism in Texas.
Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain are the worst but not the least. Most of the countries in Europe have spending and Debt levels that (as a percentage of GDP) are double the US level everyone is worried about. ...
Uhm, the US federal deficit stands at 10.64%, only slightly lower than the 12.5% of Greece, the worst performer in the Euro zone at this time. Portugal seems to have a deficit of 9.3%, Spain 11%. The I in PIGS is Ireland with 11%, not Italy. Mind you, these are the worst performers in the Euro zone, and relatively small economies, the average figures of of the entire Euro zone are looking a lot better than the US right now, and definitely better than the UK. The market doesn't only look at cold, hard figures though.
About the Euro tanking vs the dollar, I remember almost a decade ago, the Euro was worth about $0.70, now it stands at twice that amount. Both those extreme values are unrealistic and harmful, it would be better to have a stable exchange rate close to 1:1
Obama is using diplomacy to get other countries to do what we want, while Bush used more or less thinly veiled threats. Whether or not that's better is debatable, but at least in theory it will give other countries more of a choice in the matters.
That was only a stated 'intention' beforehand.
After one round of foreign diplomacy, the Obama administration scratched their heads and went "huh, I don't get it, now we asked them nicely and those foreign governments still want to put their own interests before American interests. Oh well, it's back to thinly veiled threats then"
I don't know what exactly goes on in the mind of a world power leader who somehow expected foreign leaders suddenly to stop doing their job (which is putting the interests of their own countries first) and start putting American interests first, with nothing to gain in return, purely on the basis of a more handsome face and more eloquently phrased thinly veiled threats.
It's hardly a secret that, despite his popularity (compared to his predecessor at least) among the people, the Obama administration seems to be getting along poorly with the European governments, and now they seem to be picking fights with allies in Asia.
I'm not saying that this is wrong. Obama's job description is to look out for American interests only. It's obvious that if you want to get something for nothing, you're going to have to use threats, so that's what he'll be doing.
So how do you know that the parent was American?
Obviously British, not American
the scenery is beautiful
I'll give you that one.
There aren't a lot of places where you can even see the scenery, with all these fucking claustrophobia inducing mountains blocking the view
Essentially, just because we can build this network, doesn't mean we should. I'm giving a big nod of the head to the EU over this one.
You misunderstand. This has nothing to do with fighting terrorism or protecting privacy, but everything to do with tax evasion. As long as the US has official, legal access to European banking data, it's a lot less safe for American tax evaders to use Europe based banks to keep their unreported money.
The US will obviously still have access to all this data via unofficial channels, for use in counter terrorism, but I doubt that illegally obtained data could be used in court to prosecute a tax evader.
Bullies are cowards. All of them.
Actually studies have shown the complete opposite (I read it on paper). It used to be fashionable to attribute this kind of behavior to low self esteem, until someone actually bothered to investigate this, and found that bullies actually tend to have unrealistically high self esteem and tend to be more bold and impulsive than average.
From this, the logical next step would be to subject a bully to so much abuse that his self esteem is shattered and see if this changes their behavior. This would obviously be immoral.
Blaming the victim only keeps the cycle going.
You can piss and moan all you want about people being dicks and guess what - they will still be dicks. Its like those personal ads where the girl says things like "no jerks need reply" - like that would ever stop a jerk. The only person you have control over is yourself.
I would have KILLED for training in basic social mores and skills as a child - just rote, repetitive stuff the same as any other kind of training, so that what I did not know naturally I could at least fall back on manually learned behavior. We put kids who are slow in math and reading in classes that teach to their level - how about classes that teach social conventions and behaviorism for kids who are slow at that?
But you do get basic training, very intensive training in fact. Every kid does, every moment you interact with people. Just like the way not every kid receiving the same piano training becomes a virtuoso, it is obvious not every kid learns the same amount in their mores and social skills boot camp. But you DO learn an awful lot. Even the biggest nerd understands that if grandma gives you a present, it's best to say thank you, even the biggest social outcast learns that when you loudly fart in company, people will heckle you. Now not everyone reaches the level of virtuosity to learn when refusing a gift or farting loudly in company actually increases your social standing, but I doubt this can be taught.
I suspect many of us skipped the social classes as a kid to have more time alone to read or play with a computer. Some of us might have been expelled from class by kids who knew when to fart, but have you noticed how the real social virtuoso's don't tend to be bullies? They know exactly how to avoid a nerd without having to resort to openly being a dick.
There seems to be this pervasive 'If we're not #1 at <something>, everything is fucked.' attitude in American culture.
Why should anyone be surprised that a country that houses a fifth of the world's population is gradually moving closer towards one fifth of the global influence and achievements? Why would it surprise anyone that gradually, over time, a country with four times the population of the USA will pass the USA on a global '<something>' ranking?
And why would this be a reason to panic? Did the success of the USA, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea in the 2nd half of the 20th century make Europe poorer? Is the standard of living in London or Paris worse than it was in 1939? I dare say quite the opposite happened.
I see no reason to fear the success of China will make the USA poorer. Less supremely powerful in comparison perhaps, but there is no reason to assume this will cause problems. China and the US don't have any overlapping territorial claims, foreign resources are purchased rather than taken by force these days, and China has always shown very little interest in projecting military power globally. I understand that to become more like Britain is the average American's greatest nightmare, but with a population of 300 million and plenty of room to grow, that's just not going to happen in our lifetime, and even if it is, not being #1 at absolutely fucking everything isn't as horrible as it sounds.
Not that I disagree entirely that it may be more difficult to manage someone in India, and I've certainly heard horror stories, but come on. These could all be applied to just about any remote contractor who isn't worth their salt. I have worked with/currently work with plenty of Indians who really knew/know their stuff.
The only problem with projects done in India I keep hearing about over here is that they seem reluctant to second guess a customer that sends a design with an obvious mistake in it, so sometimes you get your product with the mistake in it exactly as you designed it. These Indian consultants cost a lot more than $9, but still not so much that it would be cheaper to hire me than to fly one of those guys in.
He probably went to Quova due to the extreme quantity of data. I imagine most end-user-accessible GeoIP lookup interfaces would temporarily ban your IP after a few thousand rapid-fire lookups.
--- Mr. DOS
You can freely download the database, and roll your own in your favorite scripting language
, usually resulting from famine or starvation during the early stages of childhood.
And that's the real story: Parents who have turned their children over to the television, computer, and daycare centers of the world and neglecting basic nutrition. My sister is like that -- she is fed a diet of fast food and microwave meals because her parents can't be bothered to cook a meal (two income family). I don't think its intentional, people just assume there's no problem if it can't be seen.
On the contrary, this is a case of conscientious and caring parents following the advice not to expose their children to direct sunlight. These kids never go out in the sun without a hat and some high protection factor sunblock cream.
Vitamin D is made in the skin cells, in response to damage done by UV radiation from sunlight. Without unprotected exposure to sunlight, less UV damage is done, and this can result in a vitamin D deficiency.
Blaming modern conveniences and social and moral decay for the deplorable state of the youth today is constant theme in cultural history. Every generation of curmudgeons has always complained that parents these days don't know how to raise their kids responsibly, and kids these days, well they're just a lost generation. Extrapolating this trend back in time, I estimate that roughly around 11000 years BC a singularity took place, where parenting was at infinite levels of perfection and kids were of infinitely high morals and potential. Perhaps someone whose analysis skills are fresher, can post a proof whether in the far future parenting skills and youth potential will go to zero, or whether they will keep declining indefinitely.
Most people that run Windows or OS X. Adobe Flash's "Grace and speed" on Linux? Very funny. Flash windows update in squares and flicker.
And the boobies look pixelated!
An extra axis may be helpful: The Political Compass
I'd add a 3rd axis: resistance to change. One can observe political movements that would lie roughly on the same scale on the authoritarian and left-right axes, but with a radically different outlook on how to achieve their version of utopia. Preparing for revolution now or wanting to revert to some mythical past when society was supposedly perfect.
(if you wonder what I believe in: anarchistic capitalism in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson).
Interesting that you describe Jefferson as capitalist. I thought he despised industrialism and banking. I remember reading that he favored an exclusively agricultural society purged of non-white races. Today, by today's standards, he'd probably be considered pretty weird.
If it is laissez-faire capitalism that you refer to, the problem I have with that over a few generations it always seems to evolve into a form of feudalism. In my opinion we really need an estate tax and some government oversight of the economy to prevent this.
Elsewhere, the desire to control industry vs personal freedom may not be linked as much or at all. The liberal party where I live favors more economic freedom but doesn't seem to consider personal freedom much of a political issue.
Yes, that's called "conservative"
I was under the impression that conservatives tend to consider personal freedom very much a political issue.
I'm still not sure where to place populism. Over here we have a 'right wing' populist party and a 'left wing' populist party. One appeals to the angry working class who hate people with more money, the other is aimed at the angry middle class who hate immigrants and socialists...
What it means to be 'liberal' or 'conservative' can be vastly different depending where you are
The four political poles are liberal, conservative, libertarian, and populist. Sometimes they go by different names but a liberal is by definition one who supports controls on industry but also in personal freedom, while conservatives favor controls on personal freedom but a free market
Those may be the four political poles in the US, though I'm not sure where to place populism.
Elsewhere, the desire to control industry vs personal freedom may not be linked as much or at all. The liberal party where I live favors more economic freedom but doesn't seem to consider personal freedom much of a political issue.
Generally I would say that there's usually a group that wants to change everything (progressives) a group that's ok with the status quo (moderates) and a group that wants to resist or revert change (conservatives).
What the people in these groups specifically want depends heavily on culture and on the status quo. Conservatives in Russia may vote communist, while conservatives in the US generally would not; conservatives in Saudi Arabia will support the Sharia, while conservatives in Turkey wish to suppress Islamic influence.
Progressives aren't necessarily the ones in favor of freedom and conservatives aren't necessarily against it. The nazis were progressives who wanted to change everything, and so were the revolutionaries in Iran in 1979.
How different are things on the other side of the pond, really?
Which part? Hungary or Denmark may be quite different, while France has a system that would feel very familiar to you if you ignored the labels on the parties.
(Leftist party is kind of expected to make such draconian laws in order to "protect" public: it is the very essence of being nanny state.)
I think you're projecting the American situation on another country.
What it means to be 'liberal' or 'conservative' can be vastly different depending where you are. In mainland Europe 'Liberals' tend to favor more freedom (hence the name liberal) at the expense of having less order and safety, while conservatives tend to favor more order and security at the expense of more repression.
You might find that the conservative vs liberal divide is (as far as I'm aware) uniquely American.
Some anecdotal evidence:
In Turkey, conservatives struggle to protect the strict separation of religion and state against liberals who wish to relax it. Where I live, conservative Christian politicians find their natural allies in the Green party, both wanting to roll the country back to some mythical idyllic past when it looked the way either God or Mother Nature intended, homosexuals join extreme right wing parties (because they feel threatened by Muslim immigration), liberals aim to restrict government interference in people's lives while conservatives wish the government to protect us from every real and imaginary threat conceivable.
You forget that Apple has fanboys, and Nokia does not. Nokia might as well settle now, apologise, pay an undisclosed sum and retreat from the American market again.
I mean, the Dutch learned how to live under the sea without massive government intervention. It's not neccessary for our governments to step in and decide how to solve problems for us when we can decide as individuals.
Were you under the impression that such a thing can be left to the private sector? If you own a piece of coastline, and spend a fortune to protect your part diligently, but a neighbour a few dozen miles away for some reason does not, you and everybody else still end up losing everything you've ever worked for. When the livelihood of everyone in a wide region may depend on the weakest link, and expensive work has to be done without a prospect of short term profit for an individual (just for society as a whole), this is the prime example I can think of where a government has to step in.
The oldest government body they have in Holland is the one charged with water management, it dates from the time when the land first started sinking below sea level, more than 1000 years ago. The Dutch living under the sea is a very poor example of a problem being solved without massive government intervention.
People can't think in terms of replacing cities because the idea that cities are changing instead of truly permanent is completely outside what they are taught. They cling to cities they should simply abandon and bulldoze (Detroit, the below-sea-level areas of New Orleans) for no logical reason.
Cities are cheap to replace, there is plenty of room, and the way to get better cities
For some strange reason, after 10, 15 centuries of people giving their life to protect it, cultures get rather attached to a city. Irrational, sentimental fools these old-worlders.
The only real reason for life to organize into multi cellular structures that I can think of is to build radio telescopes and look for other clusters of cells that have done the same on other worlds.
I doubt that very much. There must be a thermodynamic motivation for the development of multicellular organisms despite the fact they are negentropic (trap information) - living organisms metabolize energy to maintain structure and information (and so don't decay).
Your explanation means assuming a mystical anthropocentric driving force to evolution otherwise it's nonsensical - maybe there is one but can it be proved? How can the existence of multi cellular organisms on other planets exert selection pressure here (unless they invade)?
Intriguing theory, but it does not pass Occam's razor. It is far more likely that I meant it as a jest, and actually meant to imply multi cellular organization may not inevitably follow the existence of life
The universe is just too big and vast for this to be the only planet with life on it.
Estimates are what these days for # of galaxies? Hundreds of billions? You telling me we're the only ones out here?
I don't buy it.
Life, maybe, but would there be multi cellular life?
For the first 3 billion years of life on earth, there were only single celled organisms. This time span is in the same order of magnitude as the estimated timespan that life is possible on earth. If life on an earth-like ends a little early or starts a little late, life may never evolve from the goo stage.
And think of some of the extremely rare occurrences that need to coincide to make it possible for life to exist so long on a planet.
Jupiter has kept the inner planets to some extent from bombardment, by sucking up asteroids in its enormous gravity well. Without this long distance Jupiter, the earliest time that life would have been able to exist might have been pushed forward significantly. In extra solar planetary systems discovered so far, it seems that a hot Jupiter, close to the star, appears to be the norm.
Liquid water isn't stable on normal rocky planets. Too far from the star, and it just freezes. Too close to the star and water gets photolysed into hydrogen and oxygen, the oxygen getting bound in the soil and the hydrogen getting stripped away in the solar wind. The earth still has some of its water left, because it is unusually dense and has a magnetic field that protects it somewhat. Both the density and the magnetic field were made possible by an unlikely event: the early earth collided with another planet of similar size. Much of the lighter material got ejected and formed the moon in a low orbit, while much of the denser, metallic material formed the earth. Other planets in the solar system have no magnetic field to speak of. Venus lost its water due to being too close to the sun, Mars lost it due to its low density. Our large metallic core has at least one other effect essential for long lasting life: decay of radio active isotopes keeps it warm and liquid, and keeps the crust thin enough for plate tectonics to be possible. As life does its thing, CO2 gets locked up in the crust in the form of limestone and fossil carbon. Without plate tectonics and the resulting vulcanism, this carbon would not have been recycled back into the atmosphere, causing early life to run out of fuel. As the sun was a lot cooler than it is today, the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere might have caused the early earth to freeze. As the sun gradually gets hotter over the course of its lifespan, this also puts an upper limit to our existence. About a billion years from now, it will likely be too hot for liquid water to exist on earth. A billion years seems like a long time, but that would mean that some two thirds of the time period in which life can exist on earth had already passed before the first multi cellular life forms are known to have arisen.
Our unusually large moon has also served to stabilize the rotation of the earth. Without it, the earth may occasionally have been near-sterilized whenever one rotational axis pointed towards the sun, causing one hemisphere to burn to a crisp, and the other to wither in a frozen darkness for god knows how many thousands of years. The moon, when life was in its early stages, was a lot closer than it is now, causing the difference between low and high tide to be in the order of maybe a mile. This would have covered much of the earth's surface with tidal pools at some point in the day, and tidal pools are believed to have been pivotal in the development of photo synthesis. Other planets we know of have moons that are far smaller in size, relative to the planet they orbit.
The argument that I find most convincing is the observation that even here on earth, multi cellular life seems to hold only a tenuous advantage over good old single celled organisms. Single celled organisms have been dominating the world ever since life began, about
You're not using much of any plating metal on cheap charms, so the cost of the material is probably not as significant as the cost of plating it on. You want a metal that's easy to plate, shiny and corrosion resistant, so cadmium fits the bill (in retrospect, shoulda put "non-toxic" in there)...
Plating? The cadmium is used in the form of cadmium salts, as a heat and light resistant coloring agent for plastics, not in a metallic form. That would be really expensive, if at all possible. Shiny silver colored plastic is normally made with aluminum, and I imagine gold color can be made by putting a translucent yellow layer on top of that.
According to google, the cadmium paint is actually more expensive than the non-toxic alternative (azo compounds), so I really wouldn't be surprised if this was just another case of Chinese manufacturers not second guessing their western customers' faulty specs, like it was with the lead based paint scandal.