All it takes is a trip to Eastern Europe for any American to realize their world is pretty darn good.
You mean, like going to Prague and seeing the magnificent architecture and so on? You see only what to see, it seems; I'm sure we can come to the States and find areas marred by the most shameful poverty, rife with drug dealers, prostitutes and gun violence. And then we can go "Look, that's what Capitalism does". Why not try to cultivate an open mind instead? I think that is what young people criticise more than anything else - the closed minds and prejudice of people who just don't give a damn, and prefer to explain problems away.
When you have to compare yourself to others who don't do very well, it's probably because can't find good arguments for your opinion. And I think you do America an injustice - sure, your society has many faults, but there is also so much good, especially when you look at ordinary people. There is some truth in the cynical, old saying, that it is the scum that rises to the top; it is probably not irrelevant to observe that scum is what you get when a pond is stagnant and polluted - the cure often involves reducing the influx of nutrients and increasing the flow of water through the system. Make of that what you want:-)
Both capitalism and socialism are important ingredients in a well-functioning society; it is self-evident (I hope) that we have to care for the weakest in some way, we have to provide education, healthcare etc, simply because it is better for society as a whole, as well as for the individual - all of which are arguably "socialist" in nature. And it is just as obvious that we need the be allowed the opportunity to aspire to do better than the average, and wealth is a strong motivator - which is essentially what capitalism is about. What we can't have, if we want society to be basically fair and viable in the long term, is all-out Socialism or Capitalism; when it becomes ideology rather than common sense, that's when it stops working.
Weel, if Daesh commanders feel their fundamental, human rights have been violated, they can bring their case to the International Criminal Court, where I'm sure they will be taken care of. Just like all other rights you have in human society, these rights extend to all - if you choose to violate the rights of others, then you forfeit your own right to society's protection, which is why criminals have their freedom taken away.
As a bit of background to put this into perspective, one of the reasons why we humans have been successful as a species is the fact that we have grandparents, to put it simply. There is of course many more contributing factors, like intelligence, toolmaking, language, cooking etc, but 'grandparenting' is perhaps not quite as photogenic as the other factors, but it is one factor that is common for most long-lived, social species (elephants, for example). There is a great survival value to a group in having very experienced members, who are no longer competing for mates, but who have tried it all before - many crises only come around once in a generation, so if you're young, you will never have come across it before. I think it is obvious how this translates into most group situations.
...older people had a reluctance to learn new technologies and techniques even when they were far more appropriate for the task at hand.
As you say, the young are often too inexperienced, and the old are too conservative; but I think those two in combination can be a very potent mix - when it works well, the older employees will modulate the energy of the young and teach them how to handle unexpected problems in a sensible manner. One of the most important jobs for a good manager is to help that cooperation work; when it works well, the older person will be a bit more daring and take on new technologies, learning from the younger team members, but badly managed, the situation can all to easily be one where the older employees see the young as a threat.
As for new techniques being 'clearly far more appropriate' - says who? I code in many languages, being quite old, from the great old ones like FORTRAN and COBOL, to C, C++, Python, Java and whatever is needed. I am sometimes criticised for not going all out with OOP, using design patterns etc, which I can do without much effort, but the truth is that some things are simply best written in a non-OOP style. If the task amounts to knocking in a nails, then a hammer is probably still the best solution, even if you have workshop full of expensive gadgets; and to somebody with a lot of experience, a lot of tasks are not much more than knocking in nails - us old ones are not really easy to impress with the latest and greatest fad in programming - we have seen it all before, you see. When somebody declares "The Future Is This New Technology", we remember all the other times when the future was High Level Languages (FORTRAN, would you believe), Structured Programming, Interpreted Languages, Windows, OS/2,...; they all have some value, and then they fade into the background. It isn't enough to know how to use a new technology, you also have to know when NOT to.
I think this leads to a mob mentality that justifies repressive behavior against unpopular opinion. If hacking KKK sites is justified because you believe their ideas are reprehensible, why doesn't that give the KKK moral justification for hacking Black Lives Matter? "Black Lives Matter is good and the KKK is bad" isn't sufficient.
It isn't without a certain irony that you should talk about mob mentality in the context of KKK. a group that was notorious for forming lynch mobs and committing the most loathsome atrocities - which still rank up there with the actions of the likes of Daesh, the only major difference being that where their crimes were a sort of cottage industry and not quite so organised.
Maybe they have mellowed out over the years, maybe they are now just about family and nostalgia and wistfully slagging off those of the wrong skin colour, but their provenance is still deeply tainted, I think, in most people's view. I suspect the best one can say about them is that they are grubby, but mostly harmless. Should they be allowed the freedom of expression? Of course, like everybody else, but I think it is the duty of everybody with a bit of decency to speak loudly and clearly out against that kind of things.
Maybe 90% of people will go smoke pot and play video games...
I don't think so - most people don't want to be non-productive, they want to do something they feel is valuable in a wider sense, not just play or waste time on other entertainment. That is why rich people so often keep working hard on something, whether it is charity work or some epxpensive hobby - or expanding their business. It's also why a lot of people, once they've managed to shift their children out of the house, they take up allotment gardening or similar; I personally haven't ever worked as hard as I do now, all for no pay. Perhaps, if we didn't have to work for money, we would go and work hard on things we actually enjoy doing.
See, this is the part I have to question. Historically, blacks aren't the only racial, national, or religious group to be stacked against. Chinese were imported by the tends of thousands as "coolies" to build railroads, working in conditions that made slavery look placid by comparison. Irish immigrants were denied jobs, housing, taken advantage of left and right, and preyed upon by police. Catholics were persecuted nationally for a very long time. The list goes on and on. Blacks do not, have not, and will not get a monopoly on victim status.
Much of what you say is true to some extent, but I think one crucial difference is that black slaves were imported in huge numbers, treated with callous cruelty in many cases, regarded as no more than chattel with a lower rank than some domestic animals. I suppose it added to the problem that when they were freed, the whole situation was grossly mishandled by the winners of the civil war, and the previous, white masters felt severely aggrieved - something that still persists to this day. And, of course, a black person can't simply "fade into the foreground" like most immigrants of European origin; how much of a chance would any white person have given to a black person at that time? Even now the racial tolerance we are proud of is only superficial - it is still all too common to meet attitudes like "I don't mind blacks, but I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one".
Here's a hypothesis: blacks, as a cultural unit, are suffering because they've been given special treatment by government. When someone tells you your problems are not of your own making, that someone else forced them on you, it provides immediate gratification and removes any desire to change your own destructive habits. Instead you become a "hey, it's not my fault I'm out of work, no high school diploma, with a criminal record, and five kids by five different mothers. It's society's fault!" Couple this with a strong anti-achievement bias in the black community -- excelling at school is called "acting white" and gets you treated like a traitor to your race -- and you have a perfect scenario for an entire racial group to achieve and maintain permanent victim status.
Again, some of your observations are not all wrong - when people, as individuals or as a group, are not living up to their objective potential, they need something to motivate them to achieve more, and removing barriers is only one part in that picture. Somebody also has to make reasonable demands of them, because your confidence in yourself and in your place in society grows from overcoming difficulties; this is clearly something we as a society haven't been good enough at. I think the anti-achievement bias is not limited to black communities - it is what Terry Pratchett calls 'the crab bucket': if you observe a bucket full of crabs, you will see that maybe one of them starts climbing out, but then the others grab hold of it and pull it back down. I grew up with that in Denmark, out in the countryside - if you are clever at school, you are met with "you think you are better than us?" and that sort of thing - it is called "The Law of Jante": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... It is something that arises in small communities that are faced with a constant struggle to make a living - your very outlook on life becomes one that relies heavily on never questioning the tradition, because there is no surplus for experimenting with newfangled nonsense.
If a customer doesn't want to meet the criteria for using the website, then the website should be perfectly within its rights to refuse service. N/quote>
It is perfectly reasonable to tell visitors that they are about to be spied on, if they enter a site, just like the law requires CCTV cameras to be accompanied by a warning message on a sign. It is part of being open, transparent and honest - something that is good for consumers and others; in fact, it is one of the many arguments in favour of remaining in EU. And anyway, using a thing like Privacy Badger in Firefox, you can selectively block cookies on any site very easily.
They don't release them to the public, ostensibly to get consumers to upgrade, but we know the real reason.
We do indeed: they want customers to upgrade. There is no reason to expect otherwise - it is common practice that SW companies don't want to have to keep patching old versions, because 1) there is a new version in which the flaws are being fixed, and people should upgrade, and 2) it is an expense that you get no reward for. I think it is perfectly reasonable that you only want to do this work, if you are payed - many companies won't, even for good money.
...if this guy can get a monument, will Breivik get one in the future?
I think it is unlikely, and I think the reason goes all the way dow to our evolutionary roots, in a way. The forces that shape our society are not entirely random - looking at societies all over the world, one finds that there are a common core of behaviours that are universal, because they tend to help the survival of the group - the family, tribe or nation - as a whole, and they are rewarded by the group structure. This means that in the long run there are certain models of society that are more stable than others. A more equal and open society will be more stable, whereas a society characterised by inequality will tend to be less stable, and ideologies that favour discrimination or outright persecution of minorities cannot form the basis for a stable society. Which is why Daesh will ultimately fail, no matter what we do to fight them, and the similar ideology of a person like Breivik falls into the same category. Statues, of course, are erected by a society that has been stable long enough to want to commemorate their heroes, so I don't think we will ever see one of Breivik. And, building on these considerations, if there is a statue of Che Guevara somewhere, perhaps it is worth looking into why - I guess the answer will be that he actually did something to deserve it.
To me, racial background of a person is not important - what is important is the content inside - the personality
That is why, till this day I cannot understand the sheer hatreds towards the 'White Men' as espoused by the Democrats and the 'liberals'
It is a noble sentiment, and it would be a better world if everybody shared it. However, I think you misrepresent the situation to some extent; these initiatives are not born of hate to white people, but are attempts at rebalancing a society that is still institutionally stacked against certain groups of people. In this case, the lady in question has a background that represents the struggle against racism and slavery in America in a particularly poignant way, and I think it is a very sympathetic gesture with great symbolic value to put her on a bank note. I think many people will look at it and feel a little bit better in some way.
What kind of crap is this? I don't understand!
No, it is hard to understand, I suppose; especially if you are young and haven't grown up in Europe or America. In my lifetime I have seen the race race riots in the US on television, the anti-war movement in the 60es and the ground-in suspicion against the Germans, the USSR and China. And I have seen these things and many others change for the better in most cases. I can recall how we all were casually racist - we would laugh at jokes about black people, people would talk about the scandal of somebody marrying a black person and so on; our ignorance perhaps made this innocent in a sense, but the thing is, what is done, is done, and looking back, I wish it hadn't been like that. The injustices we took part in sholdn't have been, and the problem with systematic injustice like this is that it sticks around for generations; when a group of people is pushed out to the poorest end of society, they don't get education, and even if society changes and don't keep them out because of skin colour, they now keep them out because they don't have the right education, and so it keeps rolling on. That's why the job still is not done - we may be getting in the right direction, and I think we are, but there is some way to go, and it is right that we keep going.
You know if the brits leave the EU, that's a good thing. They were the major stopgap hindering to get real work done against the banks in the late 00's banking crisis.
Sadly, this may well be the case. To all those in UK who are for brexit because 'EU limits the sovereign power of Parliament': is that really such a bad thing, when you think about it? Would it really be sensible to put more power into the hands of the likes of Osbourne, Cameron,...? And they are actually at the more decent end of the spectrum, as Tories go. EU has brought a lot of benefits to UK, quite apart from the economic gains.
Don't get me wrong - I am very much a Eurosceptic, as most sensible people would be, but I think even in its current configuration, it is still the right thing to stay in EU and work to change it from within. I don't buy into the 'passionate' arguments for or against, I have much more respect for level-headed reasoning and balanced views. So far in the debate, the leave side sound far more emotional in their arguments than the remain side - and especially Jeremy Corbin's pragmatic views ring true, exactly because he so clearly doesn't like EU much, but on balance has to concede that it is in fact better to stay in. That's how I feel, and I think a lot of people agree.
Solar technology has huge potential and is evolving fast, and the same is true for batteries, whereas coal burning, after having been around since before the industrial revolution, probably won't evolve much further.
Using Einstein's formula, E=mc^2, with m=1000 kg and c=299792458 m/s, we get E=8987551787368176400 J. I'm no expert in silicon manufacturing, but I think this estimate may be somewhat generous; I doubt you would need even half of that.
This is why Obama got elected - folks wanted "hope and change" and now, eight years later, have less freedom and are significantly poorer, unless you were at.1%er to start with.
I'm sure you are right, but I think the problem - and the solution - has less to do with Obama than with an establishment, that resists any change from the status quo, unless it means more money in their pockets.
Trust is earned even among the less than confident
And how do you earn trust in yourself, I wonder? It probably involves not lying to yourself, which implies not trying to explain things away as "not my fault".
It's obvious to me that any one that would even consider this is already too far gone in how far they trust their significant other to remain a viable married couple.
Another thing that is perhaps slightly less obvious is that being suspicious about your partner's trustworthyness most often comes from a lack of confidence in oneself. People tend to trust others and put more weight on facts, if they trust themselves.
Obama has made it a habit of failing to live up to his campaign promise...
To be fair, it isn't only Obama. By now, Americans ought to have caught on to the fact that all politicians promise way more than they can realistically achieve. and as a consequence, they will without fail disappoint people. Perhaps enough people are now tired of this situation and want to change it, but will inevitably take much more effort and cost everybody much more than they imagine. All of the part of the establishment will have to be dismantled in some way to allow something better to grow up and replace it; and the danger is that you either end up with the same old crap with a fresh layer of paint, or something worse - a dictatorship, maybe.
We see much the same in Europe - in UK, people are listening to a guy like Jeremy Corbyn - not a hugely charismatic fellow, and his support for EU is clearly lukewarm at best, but I think that very fact rings true with people, because they feel the same way: nobody likes EU a lot, but staying is still better than leaving. I don't get to vote in the American election, but if I may offer a bit of advice, it would be this: whatever you do, think carefully and realistically about it first. Breaking things in a fit of anger is easy, building them up again afterwards is most definitely not. And who knows, after thinking carefully, perhaps you still find that you need to break things - but then you will know why and how, and what to do after that.
To get back to the topic: how much of a chance does one man have against an establishment that most certainly doesn't want him to succeed? I don't really know another country where big business can steer the public opinion to such a degree that even those who would benefit from a new initiative like public healthcare, are turned against it. In a climate like that, how much could Obama actually achieve? I'm not the least surprised that he is now trying to ram as many executive orders down the establishment's throat as humanly possible; at least it will take whoever comes next a while to unravel, and who knows, maybe some of it will survive.
Slashdot Mirror
All it takes is a trip to Eastern Europe for any American to realize their world is pretty darn good.
You mean, like going to Prague and seeing the magnificent architecture and so on? You see only what to see, it seems; I'm sure we can come to the States and find areas marred by the most shameful poverty, rife with drug dealers, prostitutes and gun violence. And then we can go "Look, that's what Capitalism does". Why not try to cultivate an open mind instead? I think that is what young people criticise more than anything else - the closed minds and prejudice of people who just don't give a damn, and prefer to explain problems away.
When you have to compare yourself to others who don't do very well, it's probably because can't find good arguments for your opinion. And I think you do America an injustice - sure, your society has many faults, but there is also so much good, especially when you look at ordinary people. There is some truth in the cynical, old saying, that it is the scum that rises to the top; it is probably not irrelevant to observe that scum is what you get when a pond is stagnant and polluted - the cure often involves reducing the influx of nutrients and increasing the flow of water through the system. Make of that what you want :-)
Both capitalism and socialism are important ingredients in a well-functioning society; it is self-evident (I hope) that we have to care for the weakest in some way, we have to provide education, healthcare etc, simply because it is better for society as a whole, as well as for the individual - all of which are arguably "socialist" in nature. And it is just as obvious that we need the be allowed the opportunity to aspire to do better than the average, and wealth is a strong motivator - which is essentially what capitalism is about. What we can't have, if we want society to be basically fair and viable in the long term, is all-out Socialism or Capitalism; when it becomes ideology rather than common sense, that's when it stops working.
Weel, if Daesh commanders feel their fundamental, human rights have been violated, they can bring their case to the International Criminal Court, where I'm sure they will be taken care of. Just like all other rights you have in human society, these rights extend to all - if you choose to violate the rights of others, then you forfeit your own right to society's protection, which is why criminals have their freedom taken away.
Behold Zartan, King of the Apps!
As a bit of background to put this into perspective, one of the reasons why we humans have been successful as a species is the fact that we have grandparents, to put it simply. There is of course many more contributing factors, like intelligence, toolmaking, language, cooking etc, but 'grandparenting' is perhaps not quite as photogenic as the other factors, but it is one factor that is common for most long-lived, social species (elephants, for example). There is a great survival value to a group in having very experienced members, who are no longer competing for mates, but who have tried it all before - many crises only come around once in a generation, so if you're young, you will never have come across it before. I think it is obvious how this translates into most group situations.
...older people had a reluctance to learn new technologies and techniques even when they were far more appropriate for the task at hand.
As you say, the young are often too inexperienced, and the old are too conservative; but I think those two in combination can be a very potent mix - when it works well, the older employees will modulate the energy of the young and teach them how to handle unexpected problems in a sensible manner. One of the most important jobs for a good manager is to help that cooperation work; when it works well, the older person will be a bit more daring and take on new technologies, learning from the younger team members, but badly managed, the situation can all to easily be one where the older employees see the young as a threat.
As for new techniques being 'clearly far more appropriate' - says who? I code in many languages, being quite old, from the great old ones like FORTRAN and COBOL, to C, C++, Python, Java and whatever is needed. I am sometimes criticised for not going all out with OOP, using design patterns etc, which I can do without much effort, but the truth is that some things are simply best written in a non-OOP style. If the task amounts to knocking in a nails, then a hammer is probably still the best solution, even if you have workshop full of expensive gadgets; and to somebody with a lot of experience, a lot of tasks are not much more than knocking in nails - us old ones are not really easy to impress with the latest and greatest fad in programming - we have seen it all before, you see. When somebody declares "The Future Is This New Technology", we remember all the other times when the future was High Level Languages (FORTRAN, would you believe), Structured Programming, Interpreted Languages, Windows, OS/2, ...; they all have some value, and then they fade into the background. It isn't enough to know how to use a new technology, you also have to know when NOT to.
I think this leads to a mob mentality that justifies repressive behavior against unpopular opinion. If hacking KKK sites is justified because you believe their ideas are reprehensible, why doesn't that give the KKK moral justification for hacking Black Lives Matter? "Black Lives Matter is good and the KKK is bad" isn't sufficient.
It isn't without a certain irony that you should talk about mob mentality in the context of KKK. a group that was notorious for forming lynch mobs and committing the most loathsome atrocities - which still rank up there with the actions of the likes of Daesh, the only major difference being that where their crimes were a sort of cottage industry and not quite so organised.
Maybe they have mellowed out over the years, maybe they are now just about family and nostalgia and wistfully slagging off those of the wrong skin colour, but their provenance is still deeply tainted, I think, in most people's view. I suspect the best one can say about them is that they are grubby, but mostly harmless. Should they be allowed the freedom of expression? Of course, like everybody else, but I think it is the duty of everybody with a bit of decency to speak loudly and clearly out against that kind of things.
What will USA, Russia and EU do to compete?
Say "please"? ;-)
Maybe 90% of people will go smoke pot and play video games...
I don't think so - most people don't want to be non-productive, they want to do something they feel is valuable in a wider sense, not just play or waste time on other entertainment. That is why rich people so often keep working hard on something, whether it is charity work or some epxpensive hobby - or expanding their business. It's also why a lot of people, once they've managed to shift their children out of the house, they take up allotment gardening or similar; I personally haven't ever worked as hard as I do now, all for no pay. Perhaps, if we didn't have to work for money, we would go and work hard on things we actually enjoy doing.
See, this is the part I have to question. Historically, blacks aren't the only racial, national, or religious group to be stacked against. Chinese were imported by the tends of thousands as "coolies" to build railroads, working in conditions that made slavery look placid by comparison. Irish immigrants were denied jobs, housing, taken advantage of left and right, and preyed upon by police. Catholics were persecuted nationally for a very long time. The list goes on and on. Blacks do not, have not, and will not get a monopoly on victim status.
Much of what you say is true to some extent, but I think one crucial difference is that black slaves were imported in huge numbers, treated with callous cruelty in many cases, regarded as no more than chattel with a lower rank than some domestic animals. I suppose it added to the problem that when they were freed, the whole situation was grossly mishandled by the winners of the civil war, and the previous, white masters felt severely aggrieved - something that still persists to this day. And, of course, a black person can't simply "fade into the foreground" like most immigrants of European origin; how much of a chance would any white person have given to a black person at that time? Even now the racial tolerance we are proud of is only superficial - it is still all too common to meet attitudes like "I don't mind blacks, but I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one".
Here's a hypothesis: blacks, as a cultural unit, are suffering because they've been given special treatment by government. When someone tells you your problems are not of your own making, that someone else forced them on you, it provides immediate gratification and removes any desire to change your own destructive habits. Instead you become a "hey, it's not my fault I'm out of work, no high school diploma, with a criminal record, and five kids by five different mothers. It's society's fault!" Couple this with a strong anti-achievement bias in the black community -- excelling at school is called "acting white" and gets you treated like a traitor to your race -- and you have a perfect scenario for an entire racial group to achieve and maintain permanent victim status.
Again, some of your observations are not all wrong - when people, as individuals or as a group, are not living up to their objective potential, they need something to motivate them to achieve more, and removing barriers is only one part in that picture. Somebody also has to make reasonable demands of them, because your confidence in yourself and in your place in society grows from overcoming difficulties; this is clearly something we as a society haven't been good enough at. I think the anti-achievement bias is not limited to black communities - it is what Terry Pratchett calls 'the crab bucket': if you observe a bucket full of crabs, you will see that maybe one of them starts climbing out, but then the others grab hold of it and pull it back down. I grew up with that in Denmark, out in the countryside - if you are clever at school, you are met with "you think you are better than us?" and that sort of thing - it is called "The Law of Jante": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... It is something that arises in small communities that are faced with a constant struggle to make a living - your very outlook on life becomes one that relies heavily on never questioning the tradition, because there is no surplus for experimenting with newfangled nonsense.
If a customer doesn't want to meet the criteria for using the website, then the website should be perfectly within its rights to refuse service.
N/quote>
It is perfectly reasonable to tell visitors that they are about to be spied on, if they enter a site, just like the law requires CCTV cameras to be accompanied by a warning message on a sign. It is part of being open, transparent and honest - something that is good for consumers and others; in fact, it is one of the many arguments in favour of remaining in EU. And anyway, using a thing like Privacy Badger in Firefox, you can selectively block cookies on any site very easily.
They don't release them to the public, ostensibly to get consumers to upgrade, but we know the real reason.
We do indeed: they want customers to upgrade. There is no reason to expect otherwise - it is common practice that SW companies don't want to have to keep patching old versions, because 1) there is a new version in which the flaws are being fixed, and people should upgrade, and 2) it is an expense that you get no reward for. I think it is perfectly reasonable that you only want to do this work, if you are payed - many companies won't, even for good money.
...if this guy can get a monument, will Breivik get one in the future?
I think it is unlikely, and I think the reason goes all the way dow to our evolutionary roots, in a way. The forces that shape our society are not entirely random - looking at societies all over the world, one finds that there are a common core of behaviours that are universal, because they tend to help the survival of the group - the family, tribe or nation - as a whole, and they are rewarded by the group structure. This means that in the long run there are certain models of society that are more stable than others. A more equal and open society will be more stable, whereas a society characterised by inequality will tend to be less stable, and ideologies that favour discrimination or outright persecution of minorities cannot form the basis for a stable society. Which is why Daesh will ultimately fail, no matter what we do to fight them, and the similar ideology of a person like Breivik falls into the same category. Statues, of course, are erected by a society that has been stable long enough to want to commemorate their heroes, so I don't think we will ever see one of Breivik. And, building on these considerations, if there is a statue of Che Guevara somewhere, perhaps it is worth looking into why - I guess the answer will be that he actually did something to deserve it.
Yeah - we're going to turn this country around 360 degrees!!
those who eat a lot of produce, such as vegetarians.
Good thing I'm not a vegetarian then.
Except that meat-eaters tend to eat animals that are, so they get it pre-concentrated, as it were.
To me, racial background of a person is not important - what is important is the content inside - the personality
That is why, till this day I cannot understand the sheer hatreds towards the 'White Men' as espoused by the Democrats and the 'liberals'
It is a noble sentiment, and it would be a better world if everybody shared it. However, I think you misrepresent the situation to some extent; these initiatives are not born of hate to white people, but are attempts at rebalancing a society that is still institutionally stacked against certain groups of people. In this case, the lady in question has a background that represents the struggle against racism and slavery in America in a particularly poignant way, and I think it is a very sympathetic gesture with great symbolic value to put her on a bank note. I think many people will look at it and feel a little bit better in some way.
What kind of crap is this? I don't understand!
No, it is hard to understand, I suppose; especially if you are young and haven't grown up in Europe or America. In my lifetime I have seen the race race riots in the US on television, the anti-war movement in the 60es and the ground-in suspicion against the Germans, the USSR and China. And I have seen these things and many others change for the better in most cases. I can recall how we all were casually racist - we would laugh at jokes about black people, people would talk about the scandal of somebody marrying a black person and so on; our ignorance perhaps made this innocent in a sense, but the thing is, what is done, is done, and looking back, I wish it hadn't been like that. The injustices we took part in sholdn't have been, and the problem with systematic injustice like this is that it sticks around for generations; when a group of people is pushed out to the poorest end of society, they don't get education, and even if society changes and don't keep them out because of skin colour, they now keep them out because they don't have the right education, and so it keeps rolling on. That's why the job still is not done - we may be getting in the right direction, and I think we are, but there is some way to go, and it is right that we keep going.
...requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google's Chrome browser...
If it is wrong for Microsoft to do it, then it must also be wrong for Google, even if their practise isn't unpopular (yet).
You know if the brits leave the EU, that's a good thing. They were the major stopgap hindering to get real work done against the banks in the late 00's banking crisis.
Sadly, this may well be the case. To all those in UK who are for brexit because 'EU limits the sovereign power of Parliament': is that really such a bad thing, when you think about it? Would it really be sensible to put more power into the hands of the likes of Osbourne, Cameron, ...? And they are actually at the more decent end of the spectrum, as Tories go. EU has brought a lot of benefits to UK, quite apart from the economic gains.
Don't get me wrong - I am very much a Eurosceptic, as most sensible people would be, but I think even in its current configuration, it is still the right thing to stay in EU and work to change it from within. I don't buy into the 'passionate' arguments for or against, I have much more respect for level-headed reasoning and balanced views. So far in the debate, the leave side sound far more emotional in their arguments than the remain side - and especially Jeremy Corbin's pragmatic views ring true, exactly because he so clearly doesn't like EU much, but on balance has to concede that it is in fact better to stay in. That's how I feel, and I think a lot of people agree.
But, make no mistake, growing silicon consumes a ton of energy, a ton of water,
And then again - the technology behind solar cells is evolving quickly, as this article shows: https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...
Solar technology has huge potential and is evolving fast, and the same is true for batteries, whereas coal burning, after having been around since before the industrial revolution, probably won't evolve much further.
What's a ton of energy?
Using Einstein's formula, E=mc^2, with m=1000 kg and c=299792458 m/s, we get E=8987551787368176400 J. I'm no expert in silicon manufacturing, but I think this estimate may be somewhat generous; I doubt you would need even half of that.
This is why Obama got elected - folks wanted "hope and change" and now, eight years later, have less freedom and are significantly poorer, unless you were at .1%er to start with.
I'm sure you are right, but I think the problem - and the solution - has less to do with Obama than with an establishment, that resists any change from the status quo, unless it means more money in their pockets.
Trust is earned even among the less than confident
And how do you earn trust in yourself, I wonder? It probably involves not lying to yourself, which implies not trying to explain things away as "not my fault".
It's obvious to me that any one that would even consider this is already too far gone in how far they trust their significant other to remain a viable married couple.
Another thing that is perhaps slightly less obvious is that being suspicious about your partner's trustworthyness most often comes from a lack of confidence in oneself. People tend to trust others and put more weight on facts, if they trust themselves.
Obama has made it a habit of failing to live up to his campaign promise...
To be fair, it isn't only Obama. By now, Americans ought to have caught on to the fact that all politicians promise way more than they can realistically achieve. and as a consequence, they will without fail disappoint people. Perhaps enough people are now tired of this situation and want to change it, but will inevitably take much more effort and cost everybody much more than they imagine. All of the part of the establishment will have to be dismantled in some way to allow something better to grow up and replace it; and the danger is that you either end up with the same old crap with a fresh layer of paint, or something worse - a dictatorship, maybe.
We see much the same in Europe - in UK, people are listening to a guy like Jeremy Corbyn - not a hugely charismatic fellow, and his support for EU is clearly lukewarm at best, but I think that very fact rings true with people, because they feel the same way: nobody likes EU a lot, but staying is still better than leaving. I don't get to vote in the American election, but if I may offer a bit of advice, it would be this: whatever you do, think carefully and realistically about it first. Breaking things in a fit of anger is easy, building them up again afterwards is most definitely not. And who knows, after thinking carefully, perhaps you still find that you need to break things - but then you will know why and how, and what to do after that.
To get back to the topic: how much of a chance does one man have against an establishment that most certainly doesn't want him to succeed? I don't really know another country where big business can steer the public opinion to such a degree that even those who would benefit from a new initiative like public healthcare, are turned against it. In a climate like that, how much could Obama actually achieve? I'm not the least surprised that he is now trying to ram as many executive orders down the establishment's throat as humanly possible; at least it will take whoever comes next a while to unravel, and who knows, maybe some of it will survive.
Here I was hoping that the UK government had come up with a new angle on the EU referendum.
One wonders which caption it would put on goatse?
..., operates in the 900mhz band,...
That would be 0.9 hz, right? ;-)