Yes, I do have an agenda. It's called "the truth",
See, this is my problem. Where did this truth come from, what makes it better than my "truth", or anyone else's. How firm do people hold this "truth", and how much are they willing to force it on others? Truth is in the realm of religion, not politics.
The Libertarian Party can't really be given a label, as they have not produced any policy that has been implemented. They are thus hardly worth discussing.
So we can't evaluate them on a logical or philosophical until they manage to muck things up as much as the current two parties have?
I never said, or implied, that autism doesn't exist. If you read a bit more of my posts on this topic, you'd see that my girlfriend worked with severely autistic people for a while, which makes it a bit hard to deny its existence.
Just because I question your claims, doesn't mean I question the disease.
Also, why the hell is autism such an emotional issue, complete with proud defenders? This bit confuses the hell out of me, its a mental disorder, that is all it is.
I'd be more inclined to believe you if you actually said WHICH chemicals (bonus points for the mechanisms involved). I haven't seen much evidence either way, though I would be surprised if over/misdiagnosis didn't play a role. Also, what is the difference between rates of increase here and other industrialized nations, or even various parts of the country (with various levels of various teratogens).
I've seen anecdotal studies, and tentative research (which is pretty much useless ffor drawing conclusions from) pointing both ways. Both some sort of nasty chemical, and normal statistical clusters.
But claiming that any of this is clear cut is a bit goofy.
I'm not disagreeing with you... but... All you offer is anecdotal evidence, which is pretty much worthless. But then again the parent only offered empty speculation, which might be even more worthless.
My girlfriend use to take care of special needs kids in a group home, so she dealt with some truly autistic kids. They were almost completely nonfunctional, so nonfunctional that some of them were actually in their 40's and still stuck in a group home. She has some awesome scars where these kids (and "adults) bit her, one while trying to keep one from leaping out of a van on a freeway. To me this puts things in perspective. Autism is like ADD, the real cases are dramatic, but many cases are bunk (for various reasons).
In my years of psych classes, one of the most profound things a professor ever told me was "a natural variation is only a mental illness when it impairs your ability to function". So yes, everyone, from time to time, exhibits symptoms of autism, or ADD (its called boredom), or depression, or mania, or whatnot, but its only when these natural variations start to affect our lives that we can actually call them diseases. As a kid I was diagnosed with ADD (ah.. the 90's, I'd have aspergers or autism today, I'm sure), even though I could sit for hours reading, hiking, playing DnD, or ripping apart electronics. As a result I got to spend some time in special ed classes, where it was completely obvious which children actually had issues, and which children were just bored and/or undisciplined. I could behave if I wanted to, or had to, where some kids couldn't. The latter group probably had something wrong with them.
I've gone pretty far off course there... Must be the AutDD.
Those who seek to return the power to the people are not fascists, by definition. Libertarians (capital L) are clearly not fascists--they are the opposite of fascists (and your attempts to paint them as such reveals a great deal about your own agenda). I don't know about the Greens.
I don't have an agenda, at least not with this topic. This is evident by the fact that I leveled the same accusation at ALL political denominations, and not just Libertarians. I didn't, notice, do the same for all people who affiliate themselves with these groups. Obviously I, like everyone else, ascribe to a political philosophy, as do you, but I can divorce this from deeper discussion on politics. Blasphemy in modern America, I know.
The issue here would be "what power?", and where does responsibility fall with its use. Any answer to this will be an opinion, which leads to another issue I have; how willing are you to inflict opinions on the lives of others? You can't say Libertarians (to name one party/ideology) don't want to inflict their version of truth on others. Again, to be clear, this isn't true of just Libertarians. I want to regulate/deregulate industry out of some grand political scheme, often ignoring the messy bits of life, i.e. individuals.
One example that may or may not be shared by any individual Libertarian is the idea of shuffling controversial legislation (abortion, gay rights, etc...) to the states. This is a bit vexing to me. Should we have done the same with slavery, letting the South violate the rights of Blacks? I don't mean this as a strawman, I don't think you personally believe this, but I've heard arguments like this from respected, public, Libertarians such as Ron Paul. Or earlier on Slashdot the Libertarian view that the government has no right to regulate highway safety... To me this is completely bizarre, since it holds an individuals rights (whoever is being risky) above the rights of every other motorist. We both, hypothetically, hold "freedom" and "power" up. But emphasize it for different groups (right to be safe from willfully dangerous drivers, versus the right to be a dangerous driver). Again, I'm not saying you hold this view, or that all identified Libertarians do, but it does illustrate how "power" is relative, and generally a value judgement.
Any capital letter ideology is suspect. Libertarians, Democrats, Republicans, and whatnot, are just ideological labels, mere constructs. I have a hard time thinking that anyone can actually subscribe to them wholly, without a bit of thought, since it pretty much means that you are RIGHT, and all the others are WRONG. Which is a bit of an odd view, to me. I'm guessing that all of them are right on bits (including bits I don't agree with), and all of them are wrong on bits (including bits I agree with). I can't really align with any political faction outside of being a (small "L") libertarian. If I could still vote in federal primaries in my state, I'd be a registered "schizoid moderate". My own personal views, and those of Libertarians actually allign quite a bit, but most Libertarians hate me since I'm also a liberal on certain issues that they aren't on, I'm also conservative on issues that most liberals aren't, I'm also a bit of a socialist, but also socially conservative... Etc... And all of this is purely my subjective opinion, I try to be as informed as possible, but politics is less of a science than the most fluffy of social sciences, or the equally squishy "science" of higher level economics.
Political conviction is a bad thing.
Also... Your dismissing my claim by claiming I have an agenda, reveals a great deal about your own agenda. Disagreeing with someone (which I didn't do) doesn't mean they have an agenda. Its called discourse. Its great. I miss it. Its pretty much why I gave up on giving two shits about American politics, the second the topic comes up we all sound like a bit of idiotic two year olds.
What the dividers either don't understand, or don't want others to understand is that D and R are both fascist parties.
As are the Libertarians and Greens. As is every single person on this planet who thinks they know the truth, or know better, and are willing to inflict this knowledge on everyone else, "for their own good". I just summed up most (capital-"L") Libertarians here, as well as most of the Republicans and Democrats.
A zero tax rate would allow a huge advantage. After all, China has a 25% rate, and even Mexico has 30%. On automated assembly and manufacturing where there is less hand work, the US could easily compete, and foreign companies would be moving production to the US.
I'm not sure how, if they can still save over 25% with cheaper labor then the tax rate is pretty much meaningless. If American works demand a living wage (by American standards), we can't compete with places where workers are paid pennies a day, even with cutting the tax rate.
I freely admit the high potential for my own ignorance on such matters though. I did take an econ course one... in high school... twenty years ago.
Ignoring the fact that these small, self-contained reactors operate differently than large reactors, and at much lower temperatures, with much less fuel involved. Also, by making them non-user-serviceable, you also can secure them much, much, more than a conventional reactor.
Also, more generally, if you added all of the environmental impacts from nuclear accidents, and all the impacts from fossil fuels, which do you think would be greater? I'm betting on the fossil fuels being the bigger issue. This ignores the nasty geopolitics involved with the ancient dead stuff, as well, and the massive environmental problems from mining (nuclear involves mining, but in a very different sense than coal strip mines, and topping mountains).
Why even bring up Three Mile Island, btw? How many fatalities were there? How many acres of land were rendered unusable? Sure, Fukushima and Chernobyl were bad (very bad), but those are two plants... out of how many?
There are reasons to be concerned about nuclear, without a doubt. But you failed to bring one up.
Sure, drop it down to 25-8%, but only for companies that do over 60% of their manufacturing in the US. I'd be fine with that, other than that lowering the rate will have very little influence. Even with a 0% rate, most companies could increase their profits by moving to China, American workers can't compete.
I've always pondered why we don't use more tariffs to help equalize our embarrassing trade imbalance.
Facebook is not only an enabler, it's also become the instigator in many cases. If it were to disappear tomorrow, long-term, society would be better off.
If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, then something just like it would show up the next day. All social media (since newsgroups, at least) has been vocally dominated by people desperately seeking attention, and using it as a crutch for their own psychological problems. This pre-exists the internet, go to a typical trendy college bar. Go hang out with your obscenely outgoing co-worker... Go to your local shopping mall and listen to the screaming teenagers (which was the social media of my generation, ignoring IRC and BBSs for us nerds).
People said the same stuff your saying about AOL > Geocities/Angelfire > Livejournal > Myspace, and now Twitter. Yes, there are problems with them, but if mature people use them maturely, then these problems are mostly mitigated. The same can be said of things like alcohol, idiots will use them and degrade themselves, but some of us can enjoy a tasty glass of scotch after dinner and be fine. Do the idiots degrade the responsible ones? Only if the responsible ones can't ignore the idiots.
So really, who cares? Facebook users are narcissists, insecure, asocial, or bogus "marketing accounts" [theglobeandmail.com].
Some/majority != All.
Every single person on my friends list is a real life friend or acquaintance. Admittedly some of them are old college friends who I pretty much lost touch with, but occasionally check up so see where they've gone in life, but most of them are people I still keep in touch with (IRL when possible), and at some point I've had a real life beer with every single one of them (all, big whopping, 60 of them). Obviously, then, I'm asocial, insecure, a narcissistic, or a bogus marketing account.
The same is true with my girlfriend (incidentally we're friends on Facebook, and share a house in life), and her mother, and my father's wife, and a vast majority of my friends. Yes, some of them are social media whores, I've had a friend go and try to friend all of my other friends a couple times, even though she never met a single one of them, and shares nothing in common with them (she's from my wilder youth, and most of them are from college), her "friend" total sits at 1500+. There is obviously something wrong there, in my 32 years on this earth I doubt I've even met 1500 people I could tolerate, much less consider "friends". A couple of my friends are spammy, and constantly need attention (which would be true without Facebook), and some of them are spammy because they use Facebook as a tool (one is one of the heads of our local Occupy movement, one is very involved in Occupy LA, and one is a Rave/scene promoter). Most of them are like me, and post once a month or so, and generally use it as a way to keep up to date with geographically distant friends and acquaintances.
Yes, I'm guessing a majority of social connections are bogus, insecure, asocial, or narcissists, but probably the vast majority of users aren't.
In the end, as with most things, Facebook is a tool. You can use it however you want, and what you get out of it depends on what you want from it. Even if 99.9999% of users were undesirable whatnots, it wouldn't effect me, or my use of it, in the slightest.
The "i don't use facespace!" crowd is the obnoxiously snug "i don't watch tv" hipsters of yesteryear. Good for you, but why should I care?
Your rights end when mine begin. Your right to use your phone ends when you become a risk to others. I have the right to be safe on the road, and I would value that right higher than your right to talk about banal crap with uninterested parties. Also laws apply to everyone, just because someone can (or at least claims to) multitask well and not be a threat, that doesn't mean that 99.9% of everyone else isn't.
That said, this restriction would be rather stupid, without even digging into the cliche "nanny state" arguments. There actually are many really good arguments against it in this topic, that never have to resort to Libertarian foppery.
Just get the email addresses of the people you really want to stay in contact with, then disable your account.
But, sadly, email is dying among certain populations. I have friends where the only ways to actually communicate with them is via Facebook or text. Actually the vast majority of my non-nerd friends have pretty much stopped using email for any sustained communications.
Also... If, in a perfect world, I managed to get all my friends to use email, how are we going to replicate the useful functionality of Facebook (what little of it there is)? Do I get them all to set up some enterprise solution for calendar and and schedule sharing? Do I just relegate all the (admittedly mostly useless) status updates to huge amounts of mailbox spam, moving it from a format where I can completely ignore it until I'm suitably bored or chastised?
I'm not saying I like Facebook, either the site or the company, but it is somewhat useful. Is this utility worth the problems? That is probably an individual call, I think it is, at least until something better comes along. Most of its faults can be mitigated by using common sense. Don't post stupid things, and don't post personal things. Guard any information that you don't want out there. And communicate with your "friends" about what content about you, you are uncomfortable with them sharing. All of this is common sense, and all of it pretty much 100% mitigates the problems with Facebook.
Further, I don't walk away because I would loose contact with tons of people who would never walk away, or communicate without Facebook. It is so pervasive that Facebook messaging has actually replaced email (and increasingly SMS) among people of a certain age or peer group. So either I get to be a smug, antisocial loser with a fleeting moral high ground, or I get to be uneasily happy with my friends in the belly of the beast. Point me to a real alternative, where I get to keep the best of both worlds? Or should I ditch friends because they aren't as tech savvy, or flexible as me?
What if "X" is simply showing up to a friend's party? These days, I ask my friends not to tag me on Facebook when they take pictures of me at parties.
I think I'm on the verge of not caring anymore. A couple weeks ago I got curious about what happened to a childhood friend whom I haven't seen for over 20 years. So I Googled him. I now know where he lives, where he works, how much his house is worth and when he bought it, the year/make of his car, his marriage date, his wife's maiden name and family try (and income, professions, etc...)... This is all with perhaps 15 minutes of idle Googling, and I quit after that because this started feeling creepy (with more work I could have found his criminal records, magazine subscriptions, and income). All this from just wanting to confirm that his Facebook profile was actually his. Imagine if I REALLY wanted to dig down, or had the resources of even a medium sized corporation (much less the Government).
Curious, I did an even more invasive search on myself... And while a lot of it is inaccurate (my house of two years is still for sale? My biological mother is my stepmother? I make a hell of a lot more money than I actually make.), it still is a bit eye opening. I'm planning on filing a FOIA request on myself soon, just to see what the gov't admits to knowing...
Privacy is dead. Dead an buried. Should I really care about saving its remnants any more? Most of my information is completely banal. Go dig through my Facebook page, and decades of accumulated online droppings, what will you find? I'm in my 30's. I love video games, books, horror movies, bourbon and craft beers. I spend money on computer components. I am generally politically liberal, but associate with Libertarian circles. I went to college, I majored in philosophy and psychology. I am into amateur, photography, and have occasionally tried my hand at both writing and art. Occasionally I go on a vacation, generally to somewhere in California, and if not generally somewhere on the West Coast or Desert Southwest. Digging deeper: I sowed wild oats in my late teens and early twenties, and have one or two very minor misdemeanor offenses from that time (both harmless and victim-less). I give money to both the ACLU and EFF, and used to give money to environmental causes in the past. Etc...
None of this harms me. Most of it bores even me. And if I had real secrets I would care about them. But, if I had real secrets they wouldn't be posted on the internet, nor would I share them on Facebook. I would fund them with CASH, and use fake names and such as much as possible. I, like in the pre-internet days, tell no one, or limit disclosure to a small circle of trust.
The internet is a small town. Everyone knows more about you than you would like.
How so? They have all the important bits of Christianity, but then added a couple of unique bits (like most Christian denominations, but a bit more extreme). I suppose it also depends on what you would categorize as critical for being "Christian". They accept Jesus, and view him the same as most Christian denominations, so if accepting Jesus, and the various doctrines relating to him, is what makes on Christian, then they are. There are some metaphysical differences, reguarding Christ's origins and "divineness", but these issues have been around for a very long time.
I view Christianity as a skeleton of doctrine, dogma, and a general ethos, revolving around the Bible. Various sects then flesh it out in their own unique ways. Jesus, and his general teachings, obviously, being the biggest part of it. The other stuff such as; the Trinity, transubstantiation, confessions, the means of getting to heaven/hell, important doctrines, non-textual (cultural and normative) doctrine, various interpretations of the Bible and events, etc... are just variables within the more general "Christianity".
The phillips are covered with an orange filter. I've tinted some of my other LED bulbs with water color orange markers and gotten a weaker similar improvement in color.
Am I the only person who likes cool light? All of the CFLs in our house are the "Daylight" variety. My office is mostly lit with white LEDs (my desk lamp is full spectrum), and a "Daylight" CFL. The only room where we still have standard warm "bulbs" (CFLs) is the dining room and kitchen since white renders food a bit oddly. I don't get the attraction to simulated torchlight, which was originally supposed to be simulated sunlight, but we, obviously, lacked the technology.
The "daylight" type bulbs don't render skin-tones badly, like standard fluorescents, and doesn't add the nasty greenish cast that old CFLs did.
Also, whats up with the Church of the Holy Incandescent Light Bulb? Why are people so attached to them? We haven't bought one in years, outside of our old bathroom fixtures, and haven't ever missed them.
"Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member"
Perhaps you should come to Arizona, and listen to the Tea Party folks talk about our nice southern neighbors here.
Oh, and try disagreeing with them on any of their fundamental stock issues... See where it gets you. Did you realize, for example, that all liberals, and Democrats ("SOCIALISTS!") want to take away everyone's guns? "I'm a liberal, and a Democrat, and I don't, and most of my friends are liberals and Democrats who own several guns, and have yet to meet a single person who is against private gun ownership even when I lived in a hippy college town"... Response: "Well, you're not a REAL socialist then!". Me: "I'd be a registered Socialist if I could vote in the primaries...". Silence.
Actually, the whole act of using "socialist" to kill conversations is a bit stupid, and more proof. So what if your a socialist (90% of what is called it today, isn't)? Its called disagreement, all good things come from it. Compromise is what makes America great. Discussion is... oh never mind, I'm a socialist who wants to take your guns, and kill all Christian babies. Fine. Oh yeah, and... Death Panels.
Actually that would be awesome. I've been trying to get into macrophotography lately, and DOF is my biggest bugbear, than and most macro-lenses get nasty diffraction at apertures low enough to get a decent DOF. Most of the macro shooters I know (including the fellow Pentax shooter who was in NatGeo with his jump-spider shots), use software to stitch multiple exposures with varying focal planes. This annoys me, since I love my photos to be as spontaneous, and with as little post work, as possible.
Sadly this tech demo doesn't seem like it will quite get there, and if this is the market that they want to hit, I somewhat doubt we'll be seeing anything really useful. Also, it would require me getting a new camera (from what I could tell), and that would be annoying as hell with the current (and insane) investment people have in their systems (switching from brand/mount to another is a pain, and hugely expensive).
Slashdot Mirror
My, that is a very nice man made of straw you have there!
Yes, I do have an agenda. It's called "the truth",
See, this is my problem. Where did this truth come from, what makes it better than my "truth", or anyone else's. How firm do people hold this "truth", and how much are they willing to force it on others? Truth is in the realm of religion, not politics.
The Libertarian Party can't really be given a label, as they have not produced any policy that has been implemented. They are thus hardly worth discussing.
So we can't evaluate them on a logical or philosophical until they manage to muck things up as much as the current two parties have?
I never said, or implied, that autism doesn't exist. If you read a bit more of my posts on this topic, you'd see that my girlfriend worked with severely autistic people for a while, which makes it a bit hard to deny its existence.
Just because I question your claims, doesn't mean I question the disease.
Also, why the hell is autism such an emotional issue, complete with proud defenders? This bit confuses the hell out of me, its a mental disorder, that is all it is.
I'd be more inclined to believe you if you actually said WHICH chemicals (bonus points for the mechanisms involved). I haven't seen much evidence either way, though I would be surprised if over/misdiagnosis didn't play a role. Also, what is the difference between rates of increase here and other industrialized nations, or even various parts of the country (with various levels of various teratogens).
I've seen anecdotal studies, and tentative research (which is pretty much useless ffor drawing conclusions from) pointing both ways. Both some sort of nasty chemical, and normal statistical clusters.
But claiming that any of this is clear cut is a bit goofy.
I'm not disagreeing with you... but... All you offer is anecdotal evidence, which is pretty much worthless. But then again the parent only offered empty speculation, which might be even more worthless.
My girlfriend use to take care of special needs kids in a group home, so she dealt with some truly autistic kids. They were almost completely nonfunctional, so nonfunctional that some of them were actually in their 40's and still stuck in a group home. She has some awesome scars where these kids (and "adults) bit her, one while trying to keep one from leaping out of a van on a freeway. To me this puts things in perspective. Autism is like ADD, the real cases are dramatic, but many cases are bunk (for various reasons).
In my years of psych classes, one of the most profound things a professor ever told me was "a natural variation is only a mental illness when it impairs your ability to function". So yes, everyone, from time to time, exhibits symptoms of autism, or ADD (its called boredom), or depression, or mania, or whatnot, but its only when these natural variations start to affect our lives that we can actually call them diseases. As a kid I was diagnosed with ADD (ah.. the 90's, I'd have aspergers or autism today, I'm sure), even though I could sit for hours reading, hiking, playing DnD, or ripping apart electronics. As a result I got to spend some time in special ed classes, where it was completely obvious which children actually had issues, and which children were just bored and/or undisciplined. I could behave if I wanted to, or had to, where some kids couldn't. The latter group probably had something wrong with them.
I've gone pretty far off course there... Must be the AutDD.
Those who seek to return the power to the people are not fascists, by definition. Libertarians (capital L) are clearly not fascists--they are the opposite of fascists (and your attempts to paint them as such reveals a great deal about your own agenda). I don't know about the Greens.
I don't have an agenda, at least not with this topic. This is evident by the fact that I leveled the same accusation at ALL political denominations, and not just Libertarians. I didn't, notice, do the same for all people who affiliate themselves with these groups. Obviously I, like everyone else, ascribe to a political philosophy, as do you, but I can divorce this from deeper discussion on politics. Blasphemy in modern America, I know.
The issue here would be "what power?", and where does responsibility fall with its use. Any answer to this will be an opinion, which leads to another issue I have; how willing are you to inflict opinions on the lives of others? You can't say Libertarians (to name one party/ideology) don't want to inflict their version of truth on others. Again, to be clear, this isn't true of just Libertarians. I want to regulate/deregulate industry out of some grand political scheme, often ignoring the messy bits of life, i.e. individuals.
One example that may or may not be shared by any individual Libertarian is the idea of shuffling controversial legislation (abortion, gay rights, etc...) to the states. This is a bit vexing to me. Should we have done the same with slavery, letting the South violate the rights of Blacks? I don't mean this as a strawman, I don't think you personally believe this, but I've heard arguments like this from respected, public, Libertarians such as Ron Paul. Or earlier on Slashdot the Libertarian view that the government has no right to regulate highway safety... To me this is completely bizarre, since it holds an individuals rights (whoever is being risky) above the rights of every other motorist. We both, hypothetically, hold "freedom" and "power" up. But emphasize it for different groups (right to be safe from willfully dangerous drivers, versus the right to be a dangerous driver). Again, I'm not saying you hold this view, or that all identified Libertarians do, but it does illustrate how "power" is relative, and generally a value judgement.
Any capital letter ideology is suspect. Libertarians, Democrats, Republicans, and whatnot, are just ideological labels, mere constructs. I have a hard time thinking that anyone can actually subscribe to them wholly, without a bit of thought, since it pretty much means that you are RIGHT, and all the others are WRONG. Which is a bit of an odd view, to me. I'm guessing that all of them are right on bits (including bits I don't agree with), and all of them are wrong on bits (including bits I agree with). I can't really align with any political faction outside of being a (small "L") libertarian. If I could still vote in federal primaries in my state, I'd be a registered "schizoid moderate". My own personal views, and those of Libertarians actually allign quite a bit, but most Libertarians hate me since I'm also a liberal on certain issues that they aren't on, I'm also conservative on issues that most liberals aren't, I'm also a bit of a socialist, but also socially conservative... Etc... And all of this is purely my subjective opinion, I try to be as informed as possible, but politics is less of a science than the most fluffy of social sciences, or the equally squishy "science" of higher level economics.
Political conviction is a bad thing.
Also... Your dismissing my claim by claiming I have an agenda, reveals a great deal about your own agenda. Disagreeing with someone (which I didn't do) doesn't mean they have an agenda. Its called discourse. Its great. I miss it. Its pretty much why I gave up on giving two shits about American politics, the second the topic comes up we all sound like a bit of idiotic two year olds.
fnord
What the dividers either don't understand, or don't want others to understand is that D and R are both fascist parties.
As are the Libertarians and Greens. As is every single person on this planet who thinks they know the truth, or know better, and are willing to inflict this knowledge on everyone else, "for their own good". I just summed up most (capital-"L") Libertarians here, as well as most of the Republicans and Democrats.
Democrat
Its "Democratic."
Unless your from the Republic party, that is.
A zero tax rate would allow a huge advantage. After all, China has a 25% rate, and even Mexico has 30%.
On automated assembly and manufacturing where there is less hand work, the US could easily compete, and
foreign companies would be moving production to the US.
I'm not sure how, if they can still save over 25% with cheaper labor then the tax rate is pretty much meaningless. If American works demand a living wage (by American standards), we can't compete with places where workers are paid pennies a day, even with cutting the tax rate.
I freely admit the high potential for my own ignorance on such matters though. I did take an econ course one... in high school... twenty years ago.
Ignoring the fact that these small, self-contained reactors operate differently than large reactors, and at much lower temperatures, with much less fuel involved. Also, by making them non-user-serviceable, you also can secure them much, much, more than a conventional reactor.
Also, more generally, if you added all of the environmental impacts from nuclear accidents, and all the impacts from fossil fuels, which do you think would be greater? I'm betting on the fossil fuels being the bigger issue. This ignores the nasty geopolitics involved with the ancient dead stuff, as well, and the massive environmental problems from mining (nuclear involves mining, but in a very different sense than coal strip mines, and topping mountains).
Why even bring up Three Mile Island, btw? How many fatalities were there? How many acres of land were rendered unusable? Sure, Fukushima and Chernobyl were bad (very bad), but those are two plants... out of how many?
There are reasons to be concerned about nuclear, without a doubt. But you failed to bring one up.
Sure, drop it down to 25-8%, but only for companies that do over 60% of their manufacturing in the US. I'd be fine with that, other than that lowering the rate will have very little influence. Even with a 0% rate, most companies could increase their profits by moving to China, American workers can't compete.
I've always pondered why we don't use more tariffs to help equalize our embarrassing trade imbalance.
Facebook is not only an enabler, it's also become the instigator in many cases. If it were to disappear tomorrow, long-term, society would be better off.
If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, then something just like it would show up the next day. All social media (since newsgroups, at least) has been vocally dominated by people desperately seeking attention, and using it as a crutch for their own psychological problems. This pre-exists the internet, go to a typical trendy college bar. Go hang out with your obscenely outgoing co-worker... Go to your local shopping mall and listen to the screaming teenagers (which was the social media of my generation, ignoring IRC and BBSs for us nerds).
People said the same stuff your saying about AOL > Geocities/Angelfire > Livejournal > Myspace, and now Twitter. Yes, there are problems with them, but if mature people use them maturely, then these problems are mostly mitigated. The same can be said of things like alcohol, idiots will use them and degrade themselves, but some of us can enjoy a tasty glass of scotch after dinner and be fine. Do the idiots degrade the responsible ones? Only if the responsible ones can't ignore the idiots.
So really, who cares? Facebook users are narcissists, insecure, asocial, or bogus "marketing accounts" [theglobeandmail.com].
Some/majority != All.
Every single person on my friends list is a real life friend or acquaintance. Admittedly some of them are old college friends who I pretty much lost touch with, but occasionally check up so see where they've gone in life, but most of them are people I still keep in touch with (IRL when possible), and at some point I've had a real life beer with every single one of them (all, big whopping, 60 of them). Obviously, then, I'm asocial, insecure, a narcissistic, or a bogus marketing account.
The same is true with my girlfriend (incidentally we're friends on Facebook, and share a house in life), and her mother, and my father's wife, and a vast majority of my friends. Yes, some of them are social media whores, I've had a friend go and try to friend all of my other friends a couple times, even though she never met a single one of them, and shares nothing in common with them (she's from my wilder youth, and most of them are from college), her "friend" total sits at 1500+. There is obviously something wrong there, in my 32 years on this earth I doubt I've even met 1500 people I could tolerate, much less consider "friends". A couple of my friends are spammy, and constantly need attention (which would be true without Facebook), and some of them are spammy because they use Facebook as a tool (one is one of the heads of our local Occupy movement, one is very involved in Occupy LA, and one is a Rave/scene promoter). Most of them are like me, and post once a month or so, and generally use it as a way to keep up to date with geographically distant friends and acquaintances.
Yes, I'm guessing a majority of social connections are bogus, insecure, asocial, or narcissists, but probably the vast majority of users aren't.
In the end, as with most things, Facebook is a tool. You can use it however you want, and what you get out of it depends on what you want from it. Even if 99.9999% of users were undesirable whatnots, it wouldn't effect me, or my use of it, in the slightest.
The "i don't use facespace!" crowd is the obnoxiously snug "i don't watch tv" hipsters of yesteryear. Good for you, but why should I care?
Your rights end when mine begin. Your right to use your phone ends when you become a risk to others. I have the right to be safe on the road, and I would value that right higher than your right to talk about banal crap with uninterested parties. Also laws apply to everyone, just because someone can (or at least claims to) multitask well and not be a threat, that doesn't mean that 99.9% of everyone else isn't.
That said, this restriction would be rather stupid, without even digging into the cliche "nanny state" arguments. There actually are many really good arguments against it in this topic, that never have to resort to Libertarian foppery.
Just get the email addresses of the people you really want to stay in contact with, then disable your account.
But, sadly, email is dying among certain populations. I have friends where the only ways to actually communicate with them is via Facebook or text. Actually the vast majority of my non-nerd friends have pretty much stopped using email for any sustained communications.
Also... If, in a perfect world, I managed to get all my friends to use email, how are we going to replicate the useful functionality of Facebook (what little of it there is)? Do I get them all to set up some enterprise solution for calendar and and schedule sharing? Do I just relegate all the (admittedly mostly useless) status updates to huge amounts of mailbox spam, moving it from a format where I can completely ignore it until I'm suitably bored or chastised?
I'm not saying I like Facebook, either the site or the company, but it is somewhat useful. Is this utility worth the problems? That is probably an individual call, I think it is, at least until something better comes along. Most of its faults can be mitigated by using common sense. Don't post stupid things, and don't post personal things. Guard any information that you don't want out there. And communicate with your "friends" about what content about you, you are uncomfortable with them sharing. All of this is common sense, and all of it pretty much 100% mitigates the problems with Facebook.
Further, I don't walk away because I would loose contact with tons of people who would never walk away, or communicate without Facebook. It is so pervasive that Facebook messaging has actually replaced email (and increasingly SMS) among people of a certain age or peer group. So either I get to be a smug, antisocial loser with a fleeting moral high ground, or I get to be uneasily happy with my friends in the belly of the beast. Point me to a real alternative, where I get to keep the best of both worlds? Or should I ditch friends because they aren't as tech savvy, or flexible as me?
Imagine a "Do Not Index" tag, located in said metadata. (further, imagine a removable HDD, a encrypted account, or a truecrypt partition).
What if "X" is simply showing up to a friend's party? These days, I ask my friends not to tag me on Facebook when they take pictures of me at parties.
I think I'm on the verge of not caring anymore. A couple weeks ago I got curious about what happened to a childhood friend whom I haven't seen for over 20 years. So I Googled him. I now know where he lives, where he works, how much his house is worth and when he bought it, the year/make of his car, his marriage date, his wife's maiden name and family try (and income, professions, etc...)... This is all with perhaps 15 minutes of idle Googling, and I quit after that because this started feeling creepy (with more work I could have found his criminal records, magazine subscriptions, and income). All this from just wanting to confirm that his Facebook profile was actually his. Imagine if I REALLY wanted to dig down, or had the resources of even a medium sized corporation (much less the Government).
Curious, I did an even more invasive search on myself... And while a lot of it is inaccurate (my house of two years is still for sale? My biological mother is my stepmother? I make a hell of a lot more money than I actually make.), it still is a bit eye opening. I'm planning on filing a FOIA request on myself soon, just to see what the gov't admits to knowing...
Privacy is dead. Dead an buried. Should I really care about saving its remnants any more? Most of my information is completely banal. Go dig through my Facebook page, and decades of accumulated online droppings, what will you find? I'm in my 30's. I love video games, books, horror movies, bourbon and craft beers. I spend money on computer components. I am generally politically liberal, but associate with Libertarian circles. I went to college, I majored in philosophy and psychology. I am into amateur, photography, and have occasionally tried my hand at both writing and art. Occasionally I go on a vacation, generally to somewhere in California, and if not generally somewhere on the West Coast or Desert Southwest. Digging deeper: I sowed wild oats in my late teens and early twenties, and have one or two very minor misdemeanor offenses from that time (both harmless and victim-less). I give money to both the ACLU and EFF, and used to give money to environmental causes in the past. Etc...
None of this harms me. Most of it bores even me. And if I had real secrets I would care about them. But, if I had real secrets they wouldn't be posted on the internet, nor would I share them on Facebook. I would fund them with CASH, and use fake names and such as much as possible. I, like in the pre-internet days, tell no one, or limit disclosure to a small circle of trust.
The internet is a small town. Everyone knows more about you than you would like.
How so? They have all the important bits of Christianity, but then added a couple of unique bits (like most Christian denominations, but a bit more extreme). I suppose it also depends on what you would categorize as critical for being "Christian". They accept Jesus, and view him the same as most Christian denominations, so if accepting Jesus, and the various doctrines relating to him, is what makes on Christian, then they are. There are some metaphysical differences, reguarding Christ's origins and "divineness", but these issues have been around for a very long time.
I view Christianity as a skeleton of doctrine, dogma, and a general ethos, revolving around the Bible. Various sects then flesh it out in their own unique ways. Jesus, and his general teachings, obviously, being the biggest part of it. The other stuff such as; the Trinity, transubstantiation, confessions, the means of getting to heaven/hell, important doctrines, non-textual (cultural and normative) doctrine, various interpretations of the Bible and events, etc... are just variables within the more general "Christianity".
The phillips are covered with an orange filter. I've tinted some of my other LED bulbs with water color orange markers and gotten a weaker similar improvement in color.
Am I the only person who likes cool light? All of the CFLs in our house are the "Daylight" variety. My office is mostly lit with white LEDs (my desk lamp is full spectrum), and a "Daylight" CFL. The only room where we still have standard warm "bulbs" (CFLs) is the dining room and kitchen since white renders food a bit oddly. I don't get the attraction to simulated torchlight, which was originally supposed to be simulated sunlight, but we, obviously, lacked the technology.
The "daylight" type bulbs don't render skin-tones badly, like standard fluorescents, and doesn't add the nasty greenish cast that old CFLs did.
Also, whats up with the Church of the Holy Incandescent Light Bulb? Why are people so attached to them? We haven't bought one in years, outside of our old bathroom fixtures, and haven't ever missed them.
Mormons are Christians...
"Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member"
Ridiculously racist...
Perhaps you should come to Arizona, and listen to the Tea Party folks talk about our nice southern neighbors here.
Oh, and try disagreeing with them on any of their fundamental stock issues... See where it gets you. Did you realize, for example, that all liberals, and Democrats ("SOCIALISTS!") want to take away everyone's guns? "I'm a liberal, and a Democrat, and I don't, and most of my friends are liberals and Democrats who own several guns, and have yet to meet a single person who is against private gun ownership even when I lived in a hippy college town"... Response: "Well, you're not a REAL socialist then!". Me: "I'd be a registered Socialist if I could vote in the primaries...". Silence.
Actually, the whole act of using "socialist" to kill conversations is a bit stupid, and more proof. So what if your a socialist (90% of what is called it today, isn't)? Its called disagreement, all good things come from it. Compromise is what makes America great. Discussion is... oh never mind, I'm a socialist who wants to take your guns, and kill all Christian babies. Fine. Oh yeah, and... Death Panels.
Nothing says success like a full 16GB memory card, and 5 keepers.
(or insect macros :D)
Actually that would be awesome. I've been trying to get into macrophotography lately, and DOF is my biggest bugbear, than and most macro-lenses get nasty diffraction at apertures low enough to get a decent DOF. Most of the macro shooters I know (including the fellow Pentax shooter who was in NatGeo with his jump-spider shots), use software to stitch multiple exposures with varying focal planes. This annoys me, since I love my photos to be as spontaneous, and with as little post work, as possible.
Sadly this tech demo doesn't seem like it will quite get there, and if this is the market that they want to hit, I somewhat doubt we'll be seeing anything really useful. Also, it would require me getting a new camera (from what I could tell), and that would be annoying as hell with the current (and insane) investment people have in their systems (switching from brand/mount to another is a pain, and hugely expensive).