The percentage of fools depends on the IQ threshold that you set. And that depends on the IQ of people that you'd like to decide your fate. If you insist on IQ of 200 then probably 95% of population are fools.
To reach the 95% fool level, you only need to set your IQ cutoff at about125. That's not even high enough to get into Mensa.
At a cutoff of 200, using modern tests, odds are good that no adult on earth is not a fool. (Kids scores are a little different.)
The USA hasn't seen a President of Common Sense for how long? Probably for the entire last century. Herman Cain threatened to be such a president, so they neatly took him out.
Only a minority of people gives even the slightest care to being moral. That's exactly why we invest enormously in police and legal systems, because it's the only way to put the brakes on the avarice that rules most people.
No. We invest in police and military and other forms of state force because it's the only way to preserve the privilege of the sociopaths on the top of the heap. In order to convince us that that all this privilege-protecting infrastructure is necessary, the aristocracy directs a great deal of its energy into getting the rest of us to fear and hate each other, to believe that the only thing keeping most of our neighbors from slitting our throats is the guns of cops and soldiers.
Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each
other. Here is the anlarge of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate--"We lost our land." The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first "we" there grows a still
more dangerous thing: "I have a little food" plus "I have none." If from this problem the sum is "We have a little food," the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-
meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's blanket--take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning--from "I" to "we."
If you're a champion of economic equality, it's better for them to get some pay than none at all, especially when that money is coming from outside the country.
No, it is not always better to accept some pay rather than none. If you get laid off from a decent job, you don't take a minimum wage grind-down right away, you spend that time looking for another decent job, because the long-term results are better.
Developing nations would do better if they could develop their own industries, rather than being used as sources of cheap exploitable labor for foreign corporations.
It' worth remembering that the number of placebo-controlled, double-blinded studies showing homeopathy to be effective, is equal to the number of placebo-controlled, double-blinded studies showing surgery to be effective -- that is, zero. Very little standard medical practice has a firm scientific evidence of effectiveness behind it; "evidence based medicine" is a new term.
I am often amazed that people who demand placebo-controlled, double-blinded studies of acupuncture, will go under the knife without complaint despite the fact that, so far, in every case where a surgical technique has been tested against a sham procedure, the real surgery was no better than the sham. (That's a comment on evidence, BTW, not on the effectiveness of surgery -- the point is not "surgery doesn't work", it's that "getting good medical evidence is hard, because people are complicated systems.")
Homeopathy, though, has the problem that not just does it not have evidence for it, but in order to work better than a placebo it requires the universe to behave in a manner contrary to our best scientific evidence. "Cutting and sewing tissue has a direct effect on the body" fits our general knowledge of how the world works. "Sticking needles in people has a direct effect on the body" is not a particularly extraordinary claim. But "this sugar pill not only has a large direct effect on the body, but has a different effect than this sugar pill" pings the WTF meter.
Let me get this straight: You would connect to the corporate network using a private, unapproved machine? And you would then connect that machine directly to the Internet?
Let me get this straight: your security plan assumes that no one does this?
While you're whining about apps and OS that can't run in 512MB ram, the rest of us have blazing fast desktops that never touch swap, because 16GB of ddr3 ram is something like $100-150 today.
Glad $100 is pocket change to you. Congratulations. That's not the case for everyone. (And of course it's much more expensive than $100 to buy a new PC that takes 16 gigs of DDR3.)
My mobile has more ram than your computer.
So the fact that you have nice toys justifies software bloat? Please explain this reasoning to me.
But I have never seen a side by side comparison of recidivism rates, abuse complaints, etc. If the privately run facilities are really so bad, then why don't the critics show some real data instead of obfuscating.
Sometimes, a minute with Google can keep you from saying dumb things.
"...In 1998, when American prisons held 1.3 million prisoners, there were only 59 inmate-on-inmate homicides. That's a rate of one murder for every 22,000 prisoners. The homicide rate in Wackenhut's New Mexico facilities in those nine months was about one for every 400 prisoners--and that's not counting the death of Ralph Garcia, Wackenhut's guard....
"A research project I directed in 1999 compared the quality of
correctional services in a medium-security private prison run by CCA in
Minnesota with the three medium-security prisons run by the state. We found many more operational problems in the CCA prison--from program deficiencies and unreliable methods of classifying prisoners for security purposes to high rates of staff turnover that resulted in inadequate numbers of experienced, well-trained personnel. And this was in a private prison that was not notoriously troubled--a facility that the company, in fact, considered to be exemplary." -- http://prospect.org/article/bailing-out-private-jails
"First, the number of staff assigned to private facilities is approximately 15
percent lower than the number of staff assigned to public facilities (28 per
100 inmates in private facilities versus 32 per 100 inmates in public). Sec-
ond, management information system (MIS) capabilities appear to be
lacking in private facilities. Third, the rate of major incidents is higher
at private facilities than at public facilities....
"The re-
sults are similar to the original analysis with one major exception: in this
comparison, the privately operated facilities have a much higher rate of
inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-staff assaults and other disturbances.
These differences may be related to other factors such as reporting stan-
dards or the fact that correctional facilities often experience management
difficulties when they are newly opened. The CCA Youngstown facility is
a good example of such difficulties (Clark, 1998). However, insufficient
training for and lack of qualified staff in key positions may also be a valid
explanation for these differences. This would be consistent with the claims
of critics of privatization who charge that private prisons are inadequately
staffed by inexperienced and poorly trained correctional officers. Coupled
with a lack of programs and work assignments, higher rates of misconduct
from inmates predictably occur. Nevertheless, the notion that privately
operated prisons are safer or better managed than public facilities is not
supported by these results." -- http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bja/181249.pdf
A hillbilly with a.22 won't even see the SWAT team coming in their armored personnel carrier in the middle of the night with night-vision goggles, air-support from helicopters, flash-bang grenades, and heavy weapons.
If nutcases like this can make a respectable (in combative terms) stand against federal paramilitary law enforcement, it's not unthinkable that sane citizens might do even better.
Arguably, placing one's faith in guns as an antidote to policing is like expecting the widespread availability of strong cryptographic algorithms to protect internet privacy: Architecturally it might be within the realm of the plausible; but it's behaviorally absurd.
While "official" history says that Martin Luther King pretty much did it all single-handedly, in point of fact armed citizens played a key role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Without the Deacons for Defense and Justice and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense standing up to racist cops, things would have gone differently. (Not to say I agree 100% with either group, but the role of armed citizens resisting racist authorities during this time period has been unjustly ignored.)
How can one man (or small cadre) overrule the laws that have always existed and not be an abuse of the position?
If a law is unconstitutional, it never legitimately existed in the first place. (And "always existed"? Laws are temporary creations of humans, not eternal artifacts.)
This view (that Adam's children intermarried) is supported by mainstream genetics - 'mitochondrial Eve' is the term for the _single_ common female ancestor for all humans
Not quite. She is the most-recent common ancestor of all humans alive on Earth today with respect to matrilineal descent -- which is subtly but importantly different, and in no way supports ancient Hebrew mythology about people being made from clay. Details at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mitoeve.html
Paypal served adult merchants at one time but they stopped long ago, maybe 2004.
The problem is Paypal's definition of "adult" merchant. You can't get them to give you a good definition ahead of time, it's a "we know it when we see it" sort of deal, as seen here.
I used to be president of a Pagan organization, the Free Spirit Alliance, that includes sacred sexuality education at its events. (Think tantra workshops, how-to BDSM classes, etc.) Could we use Paypal? Were we an "adult" merchant? I sent a bunch of letters and made phone calls, and could never get an answer from them. There are other events that feature this sort of stuff and use Paypal, I don't know if they're at risk of having that yanked.
addiction creates an interrupt switch in your mind that prevents you from maintaining productive work and relationships
Except for all those artists, writers, and musicians who were drug addicts. And medical pioneers like Sigmund Freud and William Stewart Halsted.
Not to say it's a healthy lifestyle choice, but many -- perhaps most -- addicts can do plenty of productive work so long as their get their fix. It's prohibition that prevents them from doing so, that makes them direct their energies into obtaining the drug they need on the black market, rather than simply picking up their fix at the drugstore.
if you can't speak meaningfully on the subject of addiction, you really should stop commenting on the subject of drug use
Exactly. Your sweeping statements about addiction show that you can't speak meaningfully on the subject; please go educate yourself, and come back to the discussion of drug use after that.
Wind and solar alone will never meet our energy needs.
Wind alone can meet our energy needs: offshore wind potential in the U.S. is 900,000 MW, which is just about equivalent to our current generation capacity. Add solar, and efficiency improvements and a wind-solar world is in our reach.
It actually takes more energy to transport food than it does to grow it
Incorrect. While this is an article of faith among "localvores", in point of fact food production and processing uses more energy. According to the Worldwatch Institute,
17 percent of U.S. fossil fuel consumption goes to "the production and consumption of food: 6 percent for crop and livestock production, 6 percent for processing and packaging, and 5 percent for distribution and cooking."
More information on energy use in food production here.
Buying locally produced food is not really meaningful (ecologically speaking), compared with the need to shift away from animal agriculture and processed foods and towards less-processed plant-based diets. (Which are also far more healthful.)
The US may have slipped from its founders' ideals...
It certainly has. Imagine allowing Negros to vote, rather than enslaving and raping them!
I am grateful that we have grown beyond the "ideals" of the American "Founding Fathers" who foresaw an agrarian, slaveholding, class-stratified society. When we talk about freedom, let's not appeal to the Founders, ok?
Islam has been "putting people to the sword" in the "convert or die" type of way from the start.
As has Christianity, since it was made the official religion of Rome. Hinduism and Buddhism and Shinto have also been used to glorify violence.
Broad statements about "Islam" or "Christianity" or any religion with more than a handful of adherents are pretty meaningless. Sufi mystics are have as much in common with the dingbats running Iran as your local Quaker church has with the "Christians" who shoot doctors that perform abortions.
And a majority of those also have more than 2 color TVs (including 1 plasma), a cell phone, and a car.
Color TVs are widely available for free. (Check the "free" section of your local Craigslist.) Cars are a practical necessity in many parts of the U.S. due to the lack of useful mass transit and urban planning that separates jobs from residences, and old clunkers are available for as low as $300 (again, Craigslist) or even for free via various charities. Cell phones have also become a practical necessity -- cheaper than land lines, and try going in for a job interview and telling them you don't have a phone. And because of that, they are often available for free to the poor.
None of these is a luxury item or means shit as a measure of poverty. The measure of poverty is not a couple of third-hand consumer goods, but the secure ability to have a safe and healthful place to live, nutritious food, decent clothing, and medical care.
Believe it or not, all these exploited workers in china are living the great dream.
Yes, people living the dream are often known for jumping off buildings.
But they are condemned to lives of either being peasant farmers who could never read, write or get any actual health care, or being underpaid overworked factory workers.
And of course, no other option could ever even be thought of. There is no imaginable socioecnomic system where people could be peasant farmers who can read, write, and get actual health care, or be fairly paid humanely treated factory workers.
Remember, there are still 2.7 billion people living on less than 2 dollars a day,
Just as there is always someone who can do the job better than you at less cost. Either way it sounds like they should get the job.
Why? If the goal of the economic system is to meet human needs, then a race to the bottom is counter-productive. (If the goal is instead to enrich the aristocracy, of course, then it doesn't matter.)
the difference is that you are not a creative work; your physical body is a product of nature/genetics/parents/god/whatever, but it is not a creative work of man*.
A photograph of me is not merely an image of my physical body; it is of me doing something. My life is a deliberate creative work; any photographs of me are derivatives of that work.
Here's a recent photo of me. I creatively took a drink umbrella and used it to turn my thumb into a hula dancer. My complicated-ex-girlfriend creatively drew a face on my thumb. My friend pulled out her camera phone, and I creatively struck a pose, which I deliberately held for several shots. The photograph that my friend took is a derivative work of a collaboration between me and my complicated-ex.
If the law only recognizes the "creativity" of the friend who took the photo, then the law is an ass. We need to recognize subjectright as being at least as important.
Slashdot Mirror
To reach the 95% fool level, you only need to set your IQ cutoff at about 125. That's not even high enough to get into Mensa.
At a cutoff of 200, using modern tests, odds are good that no adult on earth is not a fool. (Kids scores are a little different.)
ROFLMAO.
No. We invest in police and military and other forms of state force because it's the only way to preserve the privilege of the sociopaths on the top of the heap. In order to convince us that that all this privilege-protecting infrastructure is necessary, the aristocracy directs a great deal of its energy into getting the rest of us to fear and hate each other, to believe that the only thing keeping most of our neighbors from slitting our throats is the guns of cops and soldiers.
As Steinbeck put it,
No, it is not always better to accept some pay rather than none. If you get laid off from a decent job, you don't take a minimum wage grind-down right away, you spend that time looking for another decent job, because the long-term results are better.
Developing nations would do better if they could develop their own industries, rather than being used as sources of cheap exploitable labor for foreign corporations.
It' worth remembering that the number of placebo-controlled, double-blinded studies showing homeopathy to be effective, is equal to the number of placebo-controlled, double-blinded studies showing surgery to be effective -- that is, zero. Very little standard medical practice has a firm scientific evidence of effectiveness behind it; "evidence based medicine" is a new term.
I am often amazed that people who demand placebo-controlled, double-blinded studies of acupuncture, will go under the knife without complaint despite the fact that, so far, in every case where a surgical technique has been tested against a sham procedure, the real surgery was no better than the sham. (That's a comment on evidence, BTW, not on the effectiveness of surgery -- the point is not "surgery doesn't work", it's that "getting good medical evidence is hard, because people are complicated systems.")
Homeopathy, though, has the problem that not just does it not have evidence for it, but in order to work better than a placebo it requires the universe to behave in a manner contrary to our best scientific evidence. "Cutting and sewing tissue has a direct effect on the body" fits our general knowledge of how the world works. "Sticking needles in people has a direct effect on the body" is not a particularly extraordinary claim. But "this sugar pill not only has a large direct effect on the body, but has a different effect than this sugar pill" pings the WTF meter.
Let me get this straight: your security plan assumes that no one does this?
Glad $100 is pocket change to you. Congratulations. That's not the case for everyone. (And of course it's much more expensive than $100 to buy a new PC that takes 16 gigs of DDR3.)
So the fact that you have nice toys justifies software bloat? Please explain this reasoning to me.
Sometimes, a minute with Google can keep you from saying dumb things.
"...In 1998, when American prisons held 1.3 million prisoners, there were only 59 inmate-on-inmate homicides. That's a rate of one murder for every 22,000 prisoners. The homicide rate in Wackenhut's New Mexico facilities in those nine months was about one for every 400 prisoners--and that's not counting the death of Ralph Garcia, Wackenhut's guard....
"A research project I directed in 1999 compared the quality of correctional services in a medium-security private prison run by CCA in Minnesota with the three medium-security prisons run by the state. We found many more operational problems in the CCA prison--from program deficiencies and unreliable methods of classifying prisoners for security purposes to high rates of staff turnover that resulted in inadequate numbers of experienced, well-trained personnel. And this was in a private prison that was not notoriously troubled--a facility that the company, in fact, considered to be exemplary." -- http://prospect.org/article/bailing-out-private-jails
"First, the number of staff assigned to private facilities is approximately 15 percent lower than the number of staff assigned to public facilities (28 per 100 inmates in private facilities versus 32 per 100 inmates in public). Sec- ond, management information system (MIS) capabilities appear to be lacking in private facilities. Third, the rate of major incidents is higher at private facilities than at public facilities....
"The re- sults are similar to the original analysis with one major exception: in this comparison, the privately operated facilities have a much higher rate of inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-staff assaults and other disturbances. These differences may be related to other factors such as reporting stan- dards or the fact that correctional facilities often experience management difficulties when they are newly opened. The CCA Youngstown facility is a good example of such difficulties (Clark, 1998). However, insufficient training for and lack of qualified staff in key positions may also be a valid explanation for these differences. This would be consistent with the claims of critics of privatization who charge that private prisons are inadequately staffed by inexperienced and poorly trained correctional officers. Coupled with a lack of programs and work assignments, higher rates of misconduct from inmates predictably occur. Nevertheless, the notion that privately operated prisons are safer or better managed than public facilities is not supported by these results." -- http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bja/181249.pdf
Ruby Ridge.
Waco.
If nutcases like this can make a respectable (in combative terms) stand against federal paramilitary law enforcement, it's not unthinkable that sane citizens might do even better.
While "official" history says that Martin Luther King pretty much did it all single-handedly, in point of fact armed citizens played a key role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Without the Deacons for Defense and Justice and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense standing up to racist cops, things would have gone differently. (Not to say I agree 100% with either group, but the role of armed citizens resisting racist authorities during this time period has been unjustly ignored.)
If a law is unconstitutional, it never legitimately existed in the first place. (And "always existed"? Laws are temporary creations of humans, not eternal artifacts.)
Not quite. She is the most-recent common ancestor of all humans alive on Earth today with respect to matrilineal descent -- which is subtly but importantly different, and in no way supports ancient Hebrew mythology about people being made from clay. Details at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mitoeve.html
The problem is Paypal's definition of "adult" merchant. You can't get them to give you a good definition ahead of time, it's a "we know it when we see it" sort of deal, as seen here.
I used to be president of a Pagan organization, the Free Spirit Alliance, that includes sacred sexuality education at its events. (Think tantra workshops, how-to BDSM classes, etc.) Could we use Paypal? Were we an "adult" merchant? I sent a bunch of letters and made phone calls, and could never get an answer from them. There are other events that feature this sort of stuff and use Paypal, I don't know if they're at risk of having that yanked.
Except for all those artists, writers, and musicians who were drug addicts. And medical pioneers like Sigmund Freud and William Stewart Halsted.
Not to say it's a healthy lifestyle choice, but many -- perhaps most -- addicts can do plenty of productive work so long as their get their fix. It's prohibition that prevents them from doing so, that makes them direct their energies into obtaining the drug they need on the black market, rather than simply picking up their fix at the drugstore.
Exactly. Your sweeping statements about addiction show that you can't speak meaningfully on the subject; please go educate yourself, and come back to the discussion of drug use after that.
I'm sorry, when exactly was this? You seem to have mistaken mythology for history...
Japan has already built an artificial island and put an international airport on it, for just $20 billion; yes, seems to me that amount is lost in the noise on a space elevator.
Wind alone can meet our energy needs: offshore wind potential in the U.S. is 900,000 MW, which is just about equivalent to our current generation capacity. Add solar, and efficiency improvements and a wind-solar world is in our reach.
Incorrect. While this is an article of faith among "localvores", in point of fact food production and processing uses more energy. According to the Worldwatch Institute, 17 percent of U.S. fossil fuel consumption goes to "the production and consumption of food: 6 percent for crop and livestock production, 6 percent for processing and packaging, and 5 percent for distribution and cooking." More information on energy use in food production here.
Buying locally produced food is not really meaningful (ecologically speaking), compared with the need to shift away from animal agriculture and processed foods and towards less-processed plant-based diets. (Which are also far more healthful.)
And you think these people (to use the term loosely) would comply? Backdating a forgery and saying it's the original ain't hard.
It certainly has. Imagine allowing Negros to vote, rather than enslaving and raping them!
I am grateful that we have grown beyond the "ideals" of the American "Founding Fathers" who foresaw an agrarian, slaveholding, class-stratified society. When we talk about freedom, let's not appeal to the Founders, ok?
As has Christianity, since it was made the official religion of Rome. Hinduism and Buddhism and Shinto have also been used to glorify violence.
Broad statements about "Islam" or "Christianity" or any religion with more than a handful of adherents are pretty meaningless. Sufi mystics are have as much in common with the dingbats running Iran as your local Quaker church has with the "Christians" who shoot doctors that perform abortions.
Color TVs are widely available for free. (Check the "free" section of your local Craigslist.) Cars are a practical necessity in many parts of the U.S. due to the lack of useful mass transit and urban planning that separates jobs from residences, and old clunkers are available for as low as $300 (again, Craigslist) or even for free via various charities. Cell phones have also become a practical necessity -- cheaper than land lines, and try going in for a job interview and telling them you don't have a phone. And because of that, they are often available for free to the poor.
None of these is a luxury item or means shit as a measure of poverty. The measure of poverty is not a couple of third-hand consumer goods, but the secure ability to have a safe and healthful place to live, nutritious food, decent clothing, and medical care.
Yes, people living the dream are often known for jumping off buildings.
And of course, no other option could ever even be thought of. There is no imaginable socioecnomic system where people could be peasant farmers who can read, write, and get actual health care, or be fairly paid humanely treated factory workers.
The fallacy of scraps from the king's table.
Why? If the goal of the economic system is to meet human needs, then a race to the bottom is counter-productive. (If the goal is instead to enrich the aristocracy, of course, then it doesn't matter.)
And I'm sure that your family's oral history is a completely unbiased version of what happened.
Um, no. Uninitialized memory is not random.
A photograph of me is not merely an image of my physical body; it is of me doing something. My life is a deliberate creative work; any photographs of me are derivatives of that work.
Here's a recent photo of me. I creatively took a drink umbrella and used it to turn my thumb into a hula dancer. My complicated-ex-girlfriend creatively drew a face on my thumb. My friend pulled out her camera phone, and I creatively struck a pose, which I deliberately held for several shots. The photograph that my friend took is a derivative work of a collaboration between me and my complicated-ex.
If the law only recognizes the "creativity" of the friend who took the photo, then the law is an ass. We need to recognize subjectright as being at least as important.