Here here! My own wife stays at home to raise the children. But even that has an overwhelming economic impact. It's no joke that being a housewife and mother is a fulltime job. I didn't mean to imply that benefits arise only from dual incomes; indeed, my wife watches my sister-in-law's son, being that she is a single mother and has no one to watch him.
I further agree on the extended family point; my wife's maternal grandmother stays with us from time to time, and her wisdom and values have contributed enormously to my children. But now, talking about family and values and wisdom, I must really seem like a knuckle dragger to Slashdot.
You fall into the same trap that I hear conservative pundits fall into all the time, of confusing a symptom for a cause. Single parenthood, high-school dropout rates, and drug abuse are symptoms of poverty just as much as they are causes. Perhaps even more so. You cannot say that these people are poor because a lot of them drop out of high school, and just leave it at that. There are reasons why so many of them drop out. Would the same group of people show such high dropout rates if they had been raised in $200,000 homes in the suburbs? Of course not.
Clearly, there are social pressures that the poor have to face which the rich do not. And while it is possible for an individual to overcome these obstacles, it is self-evident that he is more likely to fail than someone who faces fewer obstacles, or none.
All true. With what that I've said have you disagreed? More specifically, how do these circumstances transform what are bad choices for the privileged to good choices for the poor?
Generally speaking, there is a finite amount of wealth in the world
Aha! You're asking the right questions. There is not a finite amount of wealth in the world (quickly demonstrable by the fact that there is vastly more wealth in the world today than 10,000 years ago). Wealth arises from economies that arise from combining resources in increasingly more efficient combinations. The classic economist demonstration of this thusly:
You and I live on a desert island. You have a pile of 10 oranges, I have a pile of 10 apples. I would prefer to have some oranges, and you would prefer to have some apples, so we trade, and we are both better off. The degree to which we are better off is wealth. Where did it come from? It came from a superior combination of resources.
Lest you think this example over-simplistic, the Soviet Union had natural resources beyond the dreams of avarice, and yet ended in bitter, grinding poverty because they improperly arranged those resources. Conversely, Japan, a small country with hardly any resources, has arranged them hyper-efficiently to create enormous wealth.
Lastly, when someone someday invents the nano-assembler, it will be able to rearrange my pencil lead into a diamond for my wife. It's all about configurations of resources. If everyone worked harder, everyone would be better off (family time, recreation, etc. aside).
Your analysis is correct in that it is more specifically non-cohabitation that is the poverty inducer. It is simply that outside of marriage, long-standing cohabitation of this sort is rare. I cannot be sure of how it works in other cultures, I'll rely on your understanding about the French, but in American culture it seemt to be pretty much all or nothing.
I reluctantly disagree with the assertion that males are made less eager to marry by a lack of some formal cohabitation arrangement. Most men clearly would prefer less commitment to more, so it would seem to me that introducing this idea would tend to undermine marriage further rather than bolster it by providing a bridge from singlehood.
I am most certainly making the case of single mothers in several ways:
1. If you are deadbeat Dad, you are a vile, disgusting dog.
2. While we most love, support, and empower single mothers, we must at the same time realize that single motherhood is not an empowering choice.
I am not by any means anti-single mother; God knows their burden is heavy enough without whatever weight my opinion would carry. I am, however, strongly anti-single motherhood. Even the best examples I've seen of it tend towards making the best of a bad situation.
Finally, regarding my sig: I'm a Texas boy, believe it or not. The sig is a double-entendre on a Magritte painting of a pipe which reads "Ceci n'est pas une pipe", meaning, "this is not a pipe". The idea is that it's not a pipe, it's a painting, playing on our idea of scope, recursion, etc. Apart from poor French, my sig means "this is not a sig, it is a monitor", which you would be looking at if you're reading my sig.
Re:Conservative/Liberal take on it
on
Fooled by Randomness
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Thats called the Just World mentality. Its not a Just World.. unfair things happen through dumb luck.
I've found this is the single biggest commenality in partiasian schools of thought:
Conservatives tend to think you are where you are because you deserved it. Dumb and lazy people are poor, smart and hard working people are rich. Dumb people get hit by trains, smart people comment on how dumb they are. Your situation is a result of your disposition.
As a conservative, I'll take the bait. I think that "deserve" is too complex an issue to really know (abused as a child, ends up as a criminal, etc.). It is a core conservative belief, however, that people's fates are in their own hands. I certainly won't sign on to that smart and hard working people automatically get rich, but I've had pretty extensive personal experience with why people end up poor:
#1 reason: being part of a couple that gets pregnant outside of marriage. If you're the woman, you now have the financial burden of a child without the full support of a father. Additionally, you don't enjoy the economies of scale enjoyed when two or more income earners live together. If you're the father, the latter point still applies, and you have child support to pay.
#2 Reason: not completing high school. In our society, for better or worse, this is a signal to all employers that you haven't got your shit together. There are, however, many cases where high school dropout succeed as entrepreneurs.
#3 Reason: Drug / alcohol abuse. No explanation necessary, presumably.
Here's the defining characterstic of a conservative: the belief that if someone works hard and consistently, they can improve their condition. Not everyone who believes this is a conservative, but if you don't believe it, you can't call yourself a conservative. To address your definition of a conservative, I would say that conservatives believe that in almost every circumstance, people are poor as a consequence of poor choices they made.
So, I'm one of the kind of people you can't stand. I suspect that you don't know me very well. I believe that power over one's circumstances comes from persistent personal action and not from authority. Do people end up with bad luck out of no action of their own? Of course, everyday. But is that the defining circumstance of human existence, or is persistence, faith and audacity?
Das unterseeboat ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.
Well said. Humphrey Bogart once said something along the lines of that the only way to have a fair contest would be to line up all of the actors and have them play Hamlet.
No matter how much effort goes into, for example, Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi, without transcendent dialogue, it goes nowhere. And sometimes, as we saw with Serkis, not even then.
The basic problem is that simple stories require simple characters, and generally, we're not talking Jane Austen where computers are involved.
Display a computer programmer that works out, or has a family, etc., that takes time out from the CG and explosions. It also confuses the stupid audience that flocks to the picture...
Having said that, I thought Hugh Jackman's programmer in Swordfish was presented as pretty cool, even the rest of the movie was totally goat.
Consult Richard Feynman's classic Surely you're Joking Mr. Feynman. In this, for example, Feynman (working on the Manhattan project pre-doctorate) catches a ride to visit his sick wife from the man who would later be shown to be a Russian spy on the project. Awesome book, and required reading for geeks.
Re:An upside...
on
Going Cyberpunk
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
'There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.... Create a nation of law-breakers, and then you cash in on the guilt.'
Perhaps I overestimated Slashdot; I just assumed that it would be recgonized. You're probably right, though. I certainly wasn't trying to pass it off as my own.
Star Trek is also a Television Show/Movie. Those Reentry burns require fuel. Fuel that you had to take up with you and store to begin with... at about $10k per pound to lift.
Well, it requires power. Chemical rockets have a particular energy density, other fuels have higher ones. I was just illustrating the point that it's not like there's an atmospheric barrier you have to punch through, it's simply that we use the most minimal deorbital burn and let the atmosphere do the rest. I'm interested in nuclear power, but on the other hand, I'm not sure about the possibility of littering Nacogdoches with nuclear debris. On the first hand again, though, a more powerful deorbital burn makes that break up less likely, so it's an interesting question. We just need to get our Einsteins on the stick and get fusion power licked once and for all.
Well, if you like to twist statistics, let's look at it this way...a regular car has about 1.7 deaths per 100 million miles travelled...
I'm twisting statistics huh? So if 15 people travel 856 million in a spaceship, and 14 die, that's equivalent to car safety? Try fatalities per operating hour and you get the real picture. And minor maintenance? Are you kidding?
Even if the shuttle was perfectly safe, it doesn't change that it was designed in the late sixties / early seventies, when we didn't have nearly the materials / computer science we do now.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. Perhaps I should found the "Department of 'Orwell' Usage".
;)
You may mod me off-topic now.
I think you have to place a counterweight past (at? IANAPhysicist either) the geosynchronous point.
It's the government doing it, so that means there's nothing wrong with it. Quoth Reverend Lovejoy:
Once something has been approved by the Government, It's no longer immoral.
Of course, it would be wrong for private individuals to run gambling operations, just like it's wrong for individuals to steal...
Lupin III was also used to make the classic 80's videodisc game, Cliff Hanger.
Here here! My own wife stays at home to raise the children. But even that has an overwhelming economic impact. It's no joke that being a housewife and mother is a fulltime job. I didn't mean to imply that benefits arise only from dual incomes; indeed, my wife watches my sister-in-law's son, being that she is a single mother and has no one to watch him.
I further agree on the extended family point; my wife's maternal grandmother stays with us from time to time, and her wisdom and values have contributed enormously to my children. But now, talking about family and values and wisdom, I must really seem like a knuckle dragger to Slashdot.
You fall into the same trap that I hear conservative pundits fall into all the time, of confusing a symptom for a cause. Single parenthood, high-school dropout rates, and drug abuse are symptoms of poverty just as much as they are causes. Perhaps even more so. You cannot say that these people are poor because a lot of them drop out of high school, and just leave it at that. There are reasons why so many of them drop out. Would the same group of people show such high dropout rates if they had been raised in $200,000 homes in the suburbs? Of course not.
Clearly, there are social pressures that the poor have to face which the rich do not. And while it is possible for an individual to overcome these obstacles, it is self-evident that he is more likely to fail than someone who faces fewer obstacles, or none.
All true. With what that I've said have you disagreed? More specifically, how do these circumstances transform what are bad choices for the privileged to good choices for the poor?
Generally speaking, there is a finite amount of wealth in the world
Aha! You're asking the right questions. There is not a finite amount of wealth in the world (quickly demonstrable by the fact that there is vastly more wealth in the world today than 10,000 years ago). Wealth arises from economies that arise from combining resources in increasingly more efficient combinations. The classic economist demonstration of this thusly:
You and I live on a desert island. You have a pile of 10 oranges, I have a pile of 10 apples. I would prefer to have some oranges, and you would prefer to have some apples, so we trade, and we are both better off. The degree to which we are better off is wealth. Where did it come from? It came from a superior combination of resources.
Lest you think this example over-simplistic, the Soviet Union had natural resources beyond the dreams of avarice, and yet ended in bitter, grinding poverty because they improperly arranged those resources. Conversely, Japan, a small country with hardly any resources, has arranged them hyper-efficiently to create enormous wealth.
Lastly, when someone someday invents the nano-assembler, it will be able to rearrange my pencil lead into a diamond for my wife. It's all about configurations of resources. If everyone worked harder, everyone would be better off (family time, recreation, etc. aside).
Your analysis is correct in that it is more specifically non-cohabitation that is the poverty inducer. It is simply that outside of marriage, long-standing cohabitation of this sort is rare. I cannot be sure of how it works in other cultures, I'll rely on your understanding about the French, but in American culture it seemt to be pretty much all or nothing.
I reluctantly disagree with the assertion that males are made less eager to marry by a lack of some formal cohabitation arrangement. Most men clearly would prefer less commitment to more, so it would seem to me that introducing this idea would tend to undermine marriage further rather than bolster it by providing a bridge from singlehood.
I am most certainly making the case of single mothers in several ways:
1. If you are deadbeat Dad, you are a vile, disgusting dog.
2. While we most love, support, and empower single mothers, we must at the same time realize that single motherhood is not an empowering choice.
I am not by any means anti-single mother; God knows their burden is heavy enough without whatever weight my opinion would carry. I am, however, strongly anti-single motherhood. Even the best examples I've seen of it tend towards making the best of a bad situation.
Finally, regarding my sig: I'm a Texas boy, believe it or not. The sig is a double-entendre on a Magritte painting of a pipe which reads "Ceci n'est pas une pipe", meaning, "this is not a pipe". The idea is that it's not a pipe, it's a painting, playing on our idea of scope, recursion, etc. Apart from poor French, my sig means "this is not a sig, it is a monitor", which you would be looking at if you're reading my sig.
Thats called the Just World mentality. Its not a Just World .. unfair things happen through dumb luck.
I've found this is the single biggest commenality in partiasian schools of thought:
Conservatives tend to think you are where you are because you deserved it. Dumb and lazy people are poor, smart and hard working people are rich. Dumb people get hit by trains, smart people comment on how dumb they are. Your situation is a result of your disposition.
As a conservative, I'll take the bait. I think that "deserve" is too complex an issue to really know (abused as a child, ends up as a criminal, etc.). It is a core conservative belief, however, that people's fates are in their own hands. I certainly won't sign on to that smart and hard working people automatically get rich, but I've had pretty extensive personal experience with why people end up poor:
#1 reason: being part of a couple that gets pregnant outside of marriage. If you're the woman, you now have the financial burden of a child without the full support of a father. Additionally, you don't enjoy the economies of scale enjoyed when two or more income earners live together. If you're the father, the latter point still applies, and you have child support to pay.
#2 Reason: not completing high school. In our society, for better or worse, this is a signal to all employers that you haven't got your shit together. There are, however, many cases where high school dropout succeed as entrepreneurs.
#3 Reason: Drug / alcohol abuse. No explanation necessary, presumably.
Here's the defining characterstic of a conservative: the belief that if someone works hard and consistently, they can improve their condition. Not everyone who believes this is a conservative, but if you don't believe it, you can't call yourself a conservative. To address your definition of a conservative, I would say that conservatives believe that in almost every circumstance, people are poor as a consequence of poor choices they made.
So, I'm one of the kind of people you can't stand. I suspect that you don't know me very well. I believe that power over one's circumstances comes from persistent personal action and not from authority. Do people end up with bad luck out of no action of their own? Of course, everyday. But is that the defining circumstance of human existence, or is persistence, faith and audacity?
ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!
Das unterseeboat ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.
Dean Kamen designed some incredibly sophisticated electronics and computer controls that do the job of a third wheel.
Well, frankly, I smoke a pipe. That is, when I'm working from home. I suppose I did rather enjoy the movie, however wildly unrealistic.
Well said. Humphrey Bogart once said something along the lines of that the only way to have a fair contest would be to line up all of the actors and have them play Hamlet.
No matter how much effort goes into, for example, Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi, without transcendent dialogue, it goes nowhere. And sometimes, as we saw with Serkis, not even then.
The basic problem is that simple stories require simple characters, and generally, we're not talking Jane Austen where computers are involved.
Display a computer programmer that works out, or has a family, etc., that takes time out from the CG and explosions. It also confuses the stupid audience that flocks to the picture...
Having said that, I thought Hugh Jackman's programmer in Swordfish was presented as pretty cool, even the rest of the movie was totally goat.
"Hockey-Pockey" is the Canadian version.
"We had to put her to sleep," they said sheepishly. "She was in shear agony. There was mutton we could do about it."
Top Five boy names:
Jacob
Michael
Matthew
Joshua
Christopher
All biblical names. Of course this doesn't track for the female names:
Emily
Madison
Hannah
Ashley
Alexis
Better yet, a blimp. Better yet, a high altitude cell network repeater blimp.
Consult Richard Feynman's classic Surely you're Joking Mr. Feynman. In this, for example, Feynman (working on the Manhattan project pre-doctorate) catches a ride to visit his sick wife from the man who would later be shown to be a Russian spy on the project. Awesome book, and required reading for geeks.
'There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. ... Create a nation of law-breakers, and then you cash in on the guilt.'
-Ayn Rand "Atlas Shrugged"
Rasa, not Risa. Tabula Risa would mean "laughing slate."
Perhaps I overestimated Slashdot; I just assumed that it would be recgonized. You're probably right, though. I certainly wasn't trying to pass it off as my own.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Quoth Adam Smith.
Nah, no problem. People will just shift their purchases to websites that don't do this. Good news for Amazon.
Star Trek is also a Television Show/Movie. Those Reentry burns require fuel. Fuel that you had to take up with you and store to begin with... at about $10k per pound to lift.
Well, it requires power. Chemical rockets have a particular energy density, other fuels have higher ones. I was just illustrating the point that it's not like there's an atmospheric barrier you have to punch through, it's simply that we use the most minimal deorbital burn and let the atmosphere do the rest. I'm interested in nuclear power, but on the other hand, I'm not sure about the possibility of littering Nacogdoches with nuclear debris. On the first hand again, though, a more powerful deorbital burn makes that break up less likely, so it's an interesting question. We just need to get our Einsteins on the stick and get fusion power licked once and for all.
Well, if you like to twist statistics, let's look at it this way...a regular car has about 1.7 deaths per 100 million miles travelled...
I'm twisting statistics huh? So if 15 people travel 856 million in a spaceship, and 14 die, that's equivalent to car safety? Try fatalities per operating hour and you get the real picture. And minor maintenance? Are you kidding?
Even if the shuttle was perfectly safe, it doesn't change that it was designed in the late sixties / early seventies, when we didn't have nearly the materials / computer science we do now.