Presumably the film(s) were formatted to fit their screen(s), compressed to run in the time allotted, and of course edited for content. I wonder if they paid Universal for a license to broadcast those films? I am betting that they probably did not. If so, Hollywood should file a lawsuit against Iran without delay for unauthorized public broadcast of a copyrighted film(s).
For managing a mutual find, the SS costs of doing that are below all "free market" versions. By far. Period.
Social Security is NOT a mutual fund so it makes no sense to compare it to a mutual fund. That is an apples and oranges comparison. The closest comparison in the private sector to a pay-as-you-go system like Social Security are the annuity products, typically offered by life insurance companies, which guarantee a stream of payments from a fixed retirement age until death in return for regular premiums paid during working years. I do not believe that the Social Security program is run more efficiently than the annuity products offered by the major life insurance companies, not a chance.
I take it that you invest in mutual funds? Let me give you a piece of free advice. Unless you are investing only in index funds with overhead expenses of less than 0.5% and preferably around 0.25% then you are probably giving too much of your hard earned profits (when there are any) to fund managers who don't deserve them. Even worse, if the mutual funds are NOT held in a tax-advantaged account, such as an IRA or 401k, then you could get hit with capital gains tax even in years where you actually have individual losses. Take some time to learn about individual stock investing instead and do your own research; then when there are profits they are yours and yours alone and if there are losses, well, at least you will know who to blame. The managers at mutual funds usually manage the funds in ways that are best for the managers, but not necessarily best for the individual investors. They are betting that most mutual fund investors are too ignorant or too lazy to actually organize a revolt at the shareholder meeting and most of the time they win that bet at the expense of the passive mutual fund investors.
Even so, it raises the question: If electric vehicles are such a worthwhile and wonderful investment where are the private investors? Why couldn't Tesla have raised their $465 million loan(s) from the billionaire club or the private equity investment markets? Like stem cells in here in California, it is always the public that is asked to "take one for the team" and finance a high-risk investment in exchange for little or no reward a long way down the road. I am very suspicious of people who claim that a particular technology (anyone remember the corn ethanol boondoggle?) is such a great investment that the public simply must finance it while the investors of the world, even those who tolerate higher risks and emerging companies, won't touch it with a ten (10) foot pole.
One of the things that people constantly underestimate the price of is certainty.
or overestimate it as the case may be. It also is possible to calculate the amount of risk that he is "betting on" with future power prices. If the price of the solar installation is high enough, and $38,000 is a nice chunk of change, then it might still be the case that he overpaid to protect himself from the likely downside risks to future power prices (i.e. he overestimated the probability of future energy shocks pushing electricity prices to a high price per kw/h). People who talk about "time to pay back" (Prius owners are notorious for this type of cost ignorance) without talking about present value, opportunity costs, depreciation, and risk are probably not coming out ahead.
Yes, it is all that, but it is run more efficiently than the private sector.
What? Not a chance. Right now there are any number of annuity products available from major life insurance companies (all of the majors offers one) including major European firms based in Switzerland (if you like the Euro better than the Dollar) which offer lifetime payments after a set retirement age in exchange for regular premiums paid during working years. If you think that is too conservative then there are any number of other quality investment products available in the private sector. Now, are their bad investments out there? Of course there are, but you would be hard pressed indeed to select a worse investment over 30 years (typical retirement horizon for younger workers these days) than Social Security.
Their overhead is smaller than any private firm that only invests in money market mutual funds
How could that matter to you as a beneficiary? All you care about is how much payment you get in retirement and how stable the source of the payout is (i.e. the risk). As I have already stated there are life insurance companies that have been in business longer than Social Security has been in effect; hundreds of years in the case of some British and European firms and a few American ones (New York Life, for example). Moreover, these firms have actually assets to back up their promises not a book full of IOUs or the "full faith and credit of the US Government" (which is looking worse every year as the Chinese and other US debt holders know well). The overhead doesn't matter to you as a beneficiary if what you are seeking is a defined benefit style pension or a guaranteed stream of payments (i.e. an annuity, which is basically what Social Security tries to be but does worse than just about every private company offering a similar product).
Let me put it to you like this: If I was in the market for an annuity product I would trust most life insurance companies (and the Swiss and European firms especially) much more than I would trust the US government to offer me any kind of decent return. I have zero confidence in Social Security 50+ years from now when I actually get to collect (assuming they don't raise the retirement age again between now and then which they almost certainly will). I am not alone in this belief among the under 30 crowd; we don't believe that their will be anything left (the dollar will be thoroughly debased by then) for us. They might as well be throwing our money in the fire for the all the good Social Security will do us; its is generational theft pure and simple.
You have got to be kidding me. Social Security is the most fantastic piece of Madison Avenue bullshit ever promulgated to the American people. Do you realize that there is in fact NO money in the social security "trust fund"? The current beneficiaries are paid from current contributions by workers and the number of beneficiaries per worker is increasing and will continue to increase in years to come. Social Security is Bernie Madoff writ large. In fact, it is the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of mankind. The only reason it can continue is because the government itself is perpetuating it at the expense of our futures and our childrens' futures. If the government offered me the chance right now to opt out of Social Security so that I could the money currently going into the black hole of FICA and Social Security and instead invest it privately under my own direction I would do it in a New York minute and so would any other younger American with half a brain. Social Security is effectively a negative return on investment for most of us here on Slashdot and as Donald Trump is fond of saying to those offering him the next greatest Ponzi scheme, "I know how to loose my own money, thank you." Hell, you could invest in 30 year Treasury Bills (the money would still be coming from the same source: The Federal Government) and do better than Social Security for no additional risk whatsoever. Of course, the Federal Government doesn't want to do that because then they would actually have to pay you a positive return on your investment instead of simply robbing you as they do now with Social Security.
At some point I thought all of these private corporations suing the government because they can't compete with the government for efficiency would cause some light bulbs to go off.
What? Are we living on the same planet? The government and efficiency are essentially contradictory terms. The private companies don't want to compete against the government because the government does not go away even if it loses money on every transaction. It is not a fair competition and the consumer is the big loser since public money goes to fund a service that will be worse than the private service, yet paying for it is not optional for those who choose not to use it; sort of like the situation with public education in this country.
As long as it's implemented and controlled at the county level, doesn't prohibit the existence of private offerings, and pays for itself, what exactly is the problem?
Right, what could possibly go wrong? It is the government. If you think that the government can provide the best quality service at the lowest possible prices then you are living in la-la-land. I defy you to name one government program that has provided better quality, cheaper access, and more efficient service than comparable private sector businesses.
Do you really want to choose the tyranny of Comcast or AT&T over that of a local city or county meeting?
To put it plainly...yes. If we are going to judge public policies by their intentions rather than their actual results then we are simply setting ourselves up to be disappointed. You may not like Comcast or AT&T, but the government service would almost certainly be even worse.
If the government provided goods and efficient services at decent prices then the Soviet Union would never have collapsed. Those on the left would do well to remember that before they put forth government as the answer to our problems. Also, there is a big difference between the government paying for and actually providing the a service (i.e. contracted out to AT&T or Comcast). If we have to chose between them then the later is almost always better than the former.
but rather because they don't feel the pressure to excel like students in other cultures.
And why do you suppose that they don't feel that pressure? American pupils may not excel at math, but even among the math underachievers there are smart ones who see the low pay and level of respect that engineering and science receive in our culture. In the United States we glorify and shower wealth upon the athletes, lawyers, businessmen, and politicians who are often willfully ignorant of math and science. These smart students see these wealthy and powerful individuals who couldn't write a proof to save their lives and yet they somehow end up with the best houses, the nicest cars, the most money and generally look down upon scientists and engineers while gleefully outsourcing their jobs to those low-wage Asian countries where rote-memorization scientists and engineers become the next wage slaves of American international corporations. If we want good students to become scientists, engineers, or yes even mathematicians then we have to start rewarding those positions in our society instead of outsourcing their jobs and treating them like dirt.
No, but they do watch television programs like Law and Order and CSI where unconstitutional searches of the "bad guys" and roughing up suspects in interrogation are common story elements. Unfortunately, these TSA knuckle draggers are unable to distinguish reality from fantasy when the arrive back at work the next day and so proceed to "interrogate" a suspect like the crew on Law and Order or CSI might instead of actually doing what would otherwise be a boring rent-a-cop security job.
Yet well within the detection range of a finely tuned balance scale; a technology that has been available for thousands of years. Wooden measuring devices with pre-cut size depressions could easily be used for common ingot and coin sizes and anything unusual could be subjected to either melting down or, even more simply, the buoyancy density test.
The story goes something like this:
At some point during his rein, King Hiero II of Syracuse ordered his goldsmith to fashion for him a new crown. A known quantity of gold was weighed and given to the goldsmith so that he could commence the work. When the work was finished the goldsmith presented the king with his new crown, which weighed the same as the original amount of gold. However, the king became suspicious that the crown was not pure gold so he asked his kinsman, Archimedes, to devise a method of putting the crown to a test without damaging or destroying it in the process. Archimedes pondered for a time how this could be done before the revelation came to him suddenly when he lowered himself into the bath and observed the tub overflowing. This incident provided the necessary inspiration for a solution to the crown problem and Archimedes is said to have lept from the tub, shouting "eureka, eureka", and made his way to the palace; departing in such great haste that he neglected even to put on his clothes.
Thus was discovered the Principle of Archimedes or an immersed body is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid. In order to test the crown, Archimedes weighed it in the air (where it was the same weight as the original gold) and then again when suspended under water where the loss in weight in water is called the buoyant force and is equivalent to the weight of the displaced water. The density of water is 1 gram per cubic centimeter so cubic centimeters can be substituted for grams to yield the volume of the crown and because density = mass/volume the density of the crown can be calculated and compared with the known density of pure gold.
When this was done it was found that the crown was in fact, as the king had suspected, NOT pure gold but rather had been blended with metals of lesser density, perhaps copper or silver. The goldsmith had clearly kept some of the gold for himself. The story generally omits the fate of the dishonest goldsmith, but whatever it was it probably wasn't pleasant.
The episode of the golden crown took place sometime before 212 BC, so we can see that even with a relatively low level of technology the ancients were by no means fools and were quite capable of telling the difference between gold and other metals.
That's no problem, just rock and tilt the machine until your bar drops down into the dispensing area; those stickers on the side that tell you not to do that were put there by greedy vending machine owners who want to cheat you out your candy er...gold bar. DISCLAIMER: This is sarcasm in case any of the eraser heads out there are actually inspired to go out and try it.
Why as an investor would I pay a 30% premium to purchase physical gold?
Agreed. Investor premium for gold should be 7-13% above spot depending upon the product. Anything more than that is a gold dealer taking advantage of an inexperienced buyer.
Assuming I would I then have to worry about keeping the gold physically secure once I take possession of it.
Among the convenient properties of gold is that a large amount of exchange value can be stored in a commodity which is quite compact. At the current price of ~$970.4 per troy ounce a 1 kilogram bar with a spot price value of $31,198.36 only takes up 4 1/2' X 2" X 3/8" or 117mm X 53mm X 8.7mm. There are not many other valuable exchange commodities about which that can be said; even an equivalent stack of $100 bills would probably take up more space than that.
I run into issues when trying to sell the gold after I've taken possession because how can anyone be sure that I haven't tampered with the gold? How do they know that 1oz is still 1oz? What if I drilled and filled it?
There again gold provides an easy answer. There are not many commodities and none worth less than the gold itself that could be used for the "filler" because of the high density of gold among other unique physical properties. There is a reason why gold has classically been chosen, where available in sufficient quantity, to be the exchange commodity. It is difficult or impossible to fake the actual gold content without the fake being almost immediately obvious to anyone who handles gold on a regular basis and doubly so when the gold object in question is standardized into a solid ingot or coin. You shouldn't have any trouble selling your gold back into the marketplace at any gold dealer in any major city. There are dealers in the gold and jewelry districts of major cities like New York and Los Angeles who will readily buy back your gold at spot prices. If you want to dispose of larger quantities of gold at one time then you might have to call around and make arrangements in advance, but generally the gold markets are almost as liquid as cash.
There are many other ways to purchase gold as an investment that eliminate the above issues. Gold ETF's are one.
Some people want physical possession of their gold or they don't want to pay the storage fees; to each his own after all. If one is dealing in larger quantities of gold then ETF's can be quite practical, but for smaller holders the advantages are somewhat lessened over simply keeping personal gold in a hidden safe or safe deposit box at a bank. For the truly paranoid, nothing less than physical possession will do.
There are services that will let me purchase gold and store it at their locations, and will certify the amounts as to avoid purity issues as well as security issues.
Yes, those are the main advantages of gold ETFs. However, don't some ETFs have rather high minimum amounts (i.e. at least 1 kilo) and increments?
If you truly believe that the world economies are going to collapse why bother to buy gold at all? You should be buying guns. Believe me, you'll need them to protect more important things like your family and your home.
Guns would be useful, no doubt about that, but gold would be useful too. Think about the purpose that gold serves. In the absence of a "money" commodity every transaction is done by barter and suffers from what economists call the "coincidence of needs and wants". Suppose that the two of us meet in the typical post apocalyptic setting and rather than shooting each other on site we exchange greetings and attempt to barter. Suppose that you need ammunition and that I have some to trade, but that I want compressed natural gas for my camping stove. If you don't have gas cylinders or anything else to trade that I want then you will first have to find someone else who has gas cylinders and will trad
Even if there is a breakthrough it is likely that some or all of the scientists will immediately quit the project and attempt to jump on board with "investor" companies as they rush to patent the fruits of what was formerly publicly funded research. It would become yet another classic case of privatization of profits and socialization of costs, losses, and risks.
If you're going to object to this screening on the moral basis you state, then by any reasonable standard you should object to the whole idea of having children this way.
Allow me to clarify that I was not stating a personal belief, but rather merely attempting to clarify somewhat the position taken by people who objected to screening of embryos. I suppose that it is possible for one to object to screening for some traits rather than others for reasons other than "when does life begin" (as stated by other posters) such as what traits make one more or less competitive or successful in life or whether or not one should be permitted to select advantages rather than merely mitigate defects in the genes. However, a substantial portion of those opposed to screening probably reject it for any purpose, including disease prevention, due to religious conviction or other genuinely held moral beliefs. Personally, I don't believe that the state ought to insert itself into these situations other than to regulate safe medical practice as it would with any other licensed professional practice where health and safety are potentially at risk from unqualified or unlicensed practitioners.
PLEASE show me two contiguous miles of pavement in the U.S. that's 40 years old.
There are some contiguous concrete pitches on state route 101 North to San Francisco here in California that are original Eisenhower era concrete freeway (albeit much patched with tar in the cracks).
From what I understand, the principal objection of many people who are opposed to this sort of selection is that otherwise viable fertilized embryos, which do not meet the selection criteria, are discarded during the process. So, depending upon how one answers the "when does life begin?" question and the views one takes on the related issue of Abortion this sort of selection and discarding is either a choice like many others that parents make or murder; take your pick.
This has been done before. During the Cold War, in order to disrupt the Soviet economy and serve them some comeuppance for their industrial espionage activities, the CIA, in partnership with American Technology companies ensured that hardware and software with carefully arranged "flaws" found its way into Soviet hands. In one particular instance a "flawed" natural gas pipeline software and associated hardware went "haywire" (i.e. it ran the ultra-high pressure test) after a planned period of normal operation. The result was the largest non-nuclear man-made explosion ever seen from space (the satellites designed to detect plumes from ICBM launches detected a tremendous flash from the area near Vladivostok where the pipeline in question was located). This article covers some of the details excerpted from the book At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War as recalled by Thomas C. Reed, a former Air Force secretary who was serving in the National Security Council at the time.
You do realize that Helium is second only to hydrogen in its ability to diffuse through solids? Helium loss can be reduced or minimized, but it can never be completely prevented no matter what material is used. Helium atoms will escape right through the walls of solid metal tanks (albeit not so solid to helium or hydrogen atoms) because the space between the metallic atoms is large enough for the relatively tiny helium atoms to pass through. Helium, hydrogen, and other light gases defy all attempts to contain them completely and so must be constantly replenished.
Helium is a rare gas here on earth that we would be wise to conserve rather than waste; it is scarce and it is becoming scarcer because we are squandering it. The only reason why many Americans don't understand the relative scarcity of helium (we are rapidly depleting our current supplies and once it all escapes into space it won't be easy to get more) is because the United States happens to have the worlds largest known reserves of helium produced from radioactive decay in oil wells in parts of the State of Texas combined with the fact that for years oil producers were required to collect the helium and sell it to the government for storage in the Strategic Helium Reserve. I cringe when I see helium wasted on things like blimps for sporting events and party balloons because like many other limited natural resources we will only truly appreciate it when it is too late and the helium on this planet is almost gone.
Apple may have failed to meet user expectations with their early minis, you certainly think so, but I have never owned one so I cannot say. I was simply stating that Apple tries, from all outward appearances, to maintain a high-brow and high quality brand image with their computers and I think that most people would agree that that is what they are trying to do. Now, they may fail in that mission, as you suggest they did with the early minis, but that doesn't mean that Apple has suddenly changed course with their entire brand because one product release turns out to be a mistake (even Apple has had some stinkers over the years).
HP/Compaq econo-boxes do serve to illustrate a point: mass market desktop PCs are almost without exception a value price over quality or expandability proposition. In general, a PC will NOT enjoy the full advantages of expandability, flexibility, and range of upgrades that PCs are classically known for unless it is built from carefully selected after-market parts or assembled as a package deal by boutique PC builders who cater to that market. This does not have to be expensive provided that one is prepared to do some work oneself, I recently put together a very decent gaming PC for less than $1000, but it does require a little bit of expertise and sophistication. However, if one has to pay someone else to build it, then it starts to make the high-end Mac towers more attractive price-wise unless the computer is primarily intended for gaming.
Apple is trying to preserve a certain "high-end" brand image and user experience which means selling higher spec machines that avoid the "my computer is slow and crappy" complaint that one often hears about "mid-market" PCs (which compromise too much and really don't satisfy anyone completely). Apple does offer a product in the value market because value buyers generally understand upfront that they are getting less computer fro less money and therefore don't have high expectations. Personally, I don't own any Apple computers (I do have an iPod shuffle that I won in a raffle), but I can see why they don't want to sell a mid-market tower that really wouldn't satisfy very many people (i.e. the value buyers think that it is too expensive and the high-end buyers looking for a bargain will be disappointed by the performance) yet would still harm the image of Apple as a quality, albeit expensive, computer brand. Also, if the Hackintoshes were officially allowed to sell these types of machines then it would still hurt the Apple brand because people would blame Apple, because the machine runs a version of Mac OS, when there are problems.
There are even more direct costs for consumers who wish to maintain their privacy these days. For example, how many of you have signed up for the discount card at the supermarket or the "rewards card" at any number of other businesses? Unless you have taken other steps which also cost money, such as arranging a mail drop or renting a PO Box, you have essentially "sold" your privacy in exchange for a discount on purchases. Those of us who value our privacy and wish to maintain it are frequently compelled to forgo such discounts or else pay, in time, money or effort, to set up specialized fronts to protect our "true" identities (i.e. the mail drop, aliases, corporate credit card, etc). Perhaps privacy was less expensive in the distant past, but in modern society preserving it effectively is becoming ever more labor intensive and expensive. In fact, the invasion of our privacy is now so pervasive that people give strange looks to those of us who decline to be part of "rewards", club cards, and other privacy invasive schemes in exchange for discounts; as if they cannot understand why someone wouldn't fill out a card with their real name, address, SSN, and mother's maiden name in exchange for a $5 discount.
The problem with marketers is that they will not allow this to happen or at least they will do their best to break into the "searches for research or information/informative sites". If there is one thing that marketers cannot stand then it is potential consumers (and everyone with a credit card and a pulse is a potential consumer) who escape their web of advertising. Once people figure out that "research/information" searches don't have advertising which one(s) do you think they will use? No, the goal of marketers is to bombard you with advertising everywhere they can and as often as they can until you are sick of them; so it follows then that they cannot permit an empty space to go unfilled with advertisements for any reason, even "research/information".
Is O'Reilly even a Republican? I cannot recall him ever stating 'Republican' as his party affiliation or indeed any party affiliation at all. The Republicans may chose to use him as an 'example' of a good Republican, but that does not mean that O'Reilly is affiliated with them or supports their platform, even if by coincidence they are in agreement on certain issues.
Slashdot Mirror
Presumably the film(s) were formatted to fit their screen(s), compressed to run in the time allotted, and of course edited for content . I wonder if they paid Universal for a license to broadcast those films? I am betting that they probably did not. If so, Hollywood should file a lawsuit against Iran without delay for unauthorized public broadcast of a copyrighted film(s).
For managing a mutual find, the SS costs of doing that are below all "free market" versions. By far. Period.
Social Security is NOT a mutual fund so it makes no sense to compare it to a mutual fund. That is an apples and oranges comparison. The closest comparison in the private sector to a pay-as-you-go system like Social Security are the annuity products, typically offered by life insurance companies, which guarantee a stream of payments from a fixed retirement age until death in return for regular premiums paid during working years. I do not believe that the Social Security program is run more efficiently than the annuity products offered by the major life insurance companies, not a chance.
I take it that you invest in mutual funds? Let me give you a piece of free advice. Unless you are investing only in index funds with overhead expenses of less than 0.5% and preferably around 0.25% then you are probably giving too much of your hard earned profits (when there are any) to fund managers who don't deserve them. Even worse, if the mutual funds are NOT held in a tax-advantaged account, such as an IRA or 401k, then you could get hit with capital gains tax even in years where you actually have individual losses. Take some time to learn about individual stock investing instead and do your own research; then when there are profits they are yours and yours alone and if there are losses, well, at least you will know who to blame. The managers at mutual funds usually manage the funds in ways that are best for the managers, but not necessarily best for the individual investors. They are betting that most mutual fund investors are too ignorant or too lazy to actually organize a revolt at the shareholder meeting and most of the time they win that bet at the expense of the passive mutual fund investors.
Even so, it raises the question: If electric vehicles are such a worthwhile and wonderful investment where are the private investors? Why couldn't Tesla have raised their $465 million loan(s) from the billionaire club or the private equity investment markets? Like stem cells in here in California, it is always the public that is asked to "take one for the team" and finance a high-risk investment in exchange for little or no reward a long way down the road. I am very suspicious of people who claim that a particular technology (anyone remember the corn ethanol boondoggle?) is such a great investment that the public simply must finance it while the investors of the world, even those who tolerate higher risks and emerging companies, won't touch it with a ten (10) foot pole.
One of the things that people constantly underestimate the price of is certainty.
or overestimate it as the case may be. It also is possible to calculate the amount of risk that he is "betting on" with future power prices. If the price of the solar installation is high enough, and $38,000 is a nice chunk of change, then it might still be the case that he overpaid to protect himself from the likely downside risks to future power prices (i.e. he overestimated the probability of future energy shocks pushing electricity prices to a high price per kw/h). People who talk about "time to pay back" (Prius owners are notorious for this type of cost ignorance) without talking about present value, opportunity costs, depreciation, and risk are probably not coming out ahead.
Yes, it is all that, but it is run more efficiently than the private sector.
What? Not a chance. Right now there are any number of annuity products available from major life insurance companies (all of the majors offers one) including major European firms based in Switzerland (if you like the Euro better than the Dollar) which offer lifetime payments after a set retirement age in exchange for regular premiums paid during working years. If you think that is too conservative then there are any number of other quality investment products available in the private sector. Now, are their bad investments out there? Of course there are, but you would be hard pressed indeed to select a worse investment over 30 years (typical retirement horizon for younger workers these days) than Social Security.
Their overhead is smaller than any private firm that only invests in money market mutual funds
How could that matter to you as a beneficiary? All you care about is how much payment you get in retirement and how stable the source of the payout is (i.e. the risk). As I have already stated there are life insurance companies that have been in business longer than Social Security has been in effect; hundreds of years in the case of some British and European firms and a few American ones (New York Life, for example). Moreover, these firms have actually assets to back up their promises not a book full of IOUs or the "full faith and credit of the US Government" (which is looking worse every year as the Chinese and other US debt holders know well). The overhead doesn't matter to you as a beneficiary if what you are seeking is a defined benefit style pension or a guaranteed stream of payments (i.e. an annuity, which is basically what Social Security tries to be but does worse than just about every private company offering a similar product).
Let me put it to you like this: If I was in the market for an annuity product I would trust most life insurance companies (and the Swiss and European firms especially) much more than I would trust the US government to offer me any kind of decent return. I have zero confidence in Social Security 50+ years from now when I actually get to collect (assuming they don't raise the retirement age again between now and then which they almost certainly will). I am not alone in this belief among the under 30 crowd; we don't believe that their will be anything left (the dollar will be thoroughly debased by then) for us. They might as well be throwing our money in the fire for the all the good Social Security will do us; its is generational theft pure and simple.
Social Security
You have got to be kidding me. Social Security is the most fantastic piece of Madison Avenue bullshit ever promulgated to the American people. Do you realize that there is in fact NO money in the social security "trust fund"? The current beneficiaries are paid from current contributions by workers and the number of beneficiaries per worker is increasing and will continue to increase in years to come. Social Security is Bernie Madoff writ large. In fact, it is the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of mankind. The only reason it can continue is because the government itself is perpetuating it at the expense of our futures and our childrens' futures. If the government offered me the chance right now to opt out of Social Security so that I could the money currently going into the black hole of FICA and Social Security and instead invest it privately under my own direction I would do it in a New York minute and so would any other younger American with half a brain. Social Security is effectively a negative return on investment for most of us here on Slashdot and as Donald Trump is fond of saying to those offering him the next greatest Ponzi scheme, "I know how to loose my own money, thank you." Hell, you could invest in 30 year Treasury Bills (the money would still be coming from the same source: The Federal Government) and do better than Social Security for no additional risk whatsoever. Of course, the Federal Government doesn't want to do that because then they would actually have to pay you a positive return on your investment instead of simply robbing you as they do now with Social Security.
At some point I thought all of these private corporations suing the government because they can't compete with the government for efficiency would cause some light bulbs to go off.
What? Are we living on the same planet? The government and efficiency are essentially contradictory terms. The private companies don't want to compete against the government because the government does not go away even if it loses money on every transaction. It is not a fair competition and the consumer is the big loser since public money goes to fund a service that will be worse than the private service, yet paying for it is not optional for those who choose not to use it; sort of like the situation with public education in this country.
As long as it's implemented and controlled at the county level, doesn't prohibit the existence of private offerings, and pays for itself, what exactly is the problem?
Right, what could possibly go wrong? It is the government. If you think that the government can provide the best quality service at the lowest possible prices then you are living in la-la-land. I defy you to name one government program that has provided better quality, cheaper access, and more efficient service than comparable private sector businesses.
Do you really want to choose the tyranny of Comcast or AT&T over that of a local city or county meeting?
To put it plainly...yes. If we are going to judge public policies by their intentions rather than their actual results then we are simply setting ourselves up to be disappointed. You may not like Comcast or AT&T, but the government service would almost certainly be even worse.
If the government provided goods and efficient services at decent prices then the Soviet Union would never have collapsed. Those on the left would do well to remember that before they put forth government as the answer to our problems. Also, there is a big difference between the government paying for and actually providing the a service (i.e. contracted out to AT&T or Comcast). If we have to chose between them then the later is almost always better than the former.
but rather because they don't feel the pressure to excel like students in other cultures.
And why do you suppose that they don't feel that pressure? American pupils may not excel at math, but even among the math underachievers there are smart ones who see the low pay and level of respect that engineering and science receive in our culture. In the United States we glorify and shower wealth upon the athletes, lawyers, businessmen, and politicians who are often willfully ignorant of math and science. These smart students see these wealthy and powerful individuals who couldn't write a proof to save their lives and yet they somehow end up with the best houses, the nicest cars, the most money and generally look down upon scientists and engineers while gleefully outsourcing their jobs to those low-wage Asian countries where rote-memorization scientists and engineers become the next wage slaves of American international corporations. If we want good students to become scientists, engineers, or yes even mathematicians then we have to start rewarding those positions in our society instead of outsourcing their jobs and treating them like dirt.
TSA screeners are not law enforcement.
No, but they do watch television programs like Law and Order and CSI where unconstitutional searches of the "bad guys" and roughing up suspects in interrogation are common story elements. Unfortunately, these TSA knuckle draggers are unable to distinguish reality from fantasy when the arrive back at work the next day and so proceed to "interrogate" a suspect like the crew on Law and Order or CSI might instead of actually doing what would otherwise be a boring rent-a-cop security job.
The difference it weight is close to negligible
Yet well within the detection range of a finely tuned balance scale; a technology that has been available for thousands of years. Wooden measuring devices with pre-cut size depressions could easily be used for common ingot and coin sizes and anything unusual could be subjected to either melting down or, even more simply, the buoyancy density test.
The story goes something like this:
At some point during his rein, King Hiero II of Syracuse ordered his goldsmith to fashion for him a new crown. A known quantity of gold was weighed and given to the goldsmith so that he could commence the work. When the work was finished the goldsmith presented the king with his new crown, which weighed the same as the original amount of gold. However, the king became suspicious that the crown was not pure gold so he asked his kinsman, Archimedes, to devise a method of putting the crown to a test without damaging or destroying it in the process. Archimedes pondered for a time how this could be done before the revelation came to him suddenly when he lowered himself into the bath and observed the tub overflowing. This incident provided the necessary inspiration for a solution to the crown problem and Archimedes is said to have lept from the tub, shouting "eureka, eureka", and made his way to the palace; departing in such great haste that he neglected even to put on his clothes.
Thus was discovered the Principle of Archimedes or an immersed body is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid. In order to test the crown, Archimedes weighed it in the air (where it was the same weight as the original gold) and then again when suspended under water where the loss in weight in water is called the buoyant force and is equivalent to the weight of the displaced water. The density of water is 1 gram per cubic centimeter so cubic centimeters can be substituted for grams to yield the volume of the crown and because density = mass/volume the density of the crown can be calculated and compared with the known density of pure gold.
When this was done it was found that the crown was in fact, as the king had suspected, NOT pure gold but rather had been blended with metals of lesser density, perhaps copper or silver. The goldsmith had clearly kept some of the gold for himself. The story generally omits the fate of the dishonest goldsmith, but whatever it was it probably wasn't pleasant.
The episode of the golden crown took place sometime before 212 BC, so we can see that even with a relatively low level of technology the ancients were by no means fools and were quite capable of telling the difference between gold and other metals.
That's no problem, just rock and tilt the machine until your bar drops down into the dispensing area; those stickers on the side that tell you not to do that were put there by greedy vending machine owners who want to cheat you out your candy er...gold bar. DISCLAIMER: This is sarcasm in case any of the eraser heads out there are actually inspired to go out and try it.
Why as an investor would I pay a 30% premium to purchase physical gold?
Agreed. Investor premium for gold should be 7-13% above spot depending upon the product. Anything more than that is a gold dealer taking advantage of an inexperienced buyer.
Assuming I would I then have to worry about keeping the gold physically secure once I take possession of it.
Among the convenient properties of gold is that a large amount of exchange value can be stored in a commodity which is quite compact. At the current price of ~$970.4 per troy ounce a 1 kilogram bar with a spot price value of $31,198.36 only takes up 4 1/2' X 2" X 3/8" or 117mm X 53mm X 8.7mm. There are not many other valuable exchange commodities about which that can be said; even an equivalent stack of $100 bills would probably take up more space than that.
I run into issues when trying to sell the gold after I've taken possession because how can anyone be sure that I haven't tampered with the gold? How do they know that 1oz is still 1oz? What if I drilled and filled it?
There again gold provides an easy answer. There are not many commodities and none worth less than the gold itself that could be used for the "filler" because of the high density of gold among other unique physical properties. There is a reason why gold has classically been chosen, where available in sufficient quantity, to be the exchange commodity. It is difficult or impossible to fake the actual gold content without the fake being almost immediately obvious to anyone who handles gold on a regular basis and doubly so when the gold object in question is standardized into a solid ingot or coin. You shouldn't have any trouble selling your gold back into the marketplace at any gold dealer in any major city. There are dealers in the gold and jewelry districts of major cities like New York and Los Angeles who will readily buy back your gold at spot prices. If you want to dispose of larger quantities of gold at one time then you might have to call around and make arrangements in advance, but generally the gold markets are almost as liquid as cash.
There are many other ways to purchase gold as an investment that eliminate the above issues. Gold ETF's are one.
Some people want physical possession of their gold or they don't want to pay the storage fees; to each his own after all. If one is dealing in larger quantities of gold then ETF's can be quite practical, but for smaller holders the advantages are somewhat lessened over simply keeping personal gold in a hidden safe or safe deposit box at a bank. For the truly paranoid, nothing less than physical possession will do.
There are services that will let me purchase gold and store it at their locations, and will certify the amounts as to avoid purity issues as well as security issues.
Yes, those are the main advantages of gold ETFs. However, don't some ETFs have rather high minimum amounts (i.e. at least 1 kilo) and increments?
If you truly believe that the world economies are going to collapse why bother to buy gold at all? You should be buying guns. Believe me, you'll need them to protect more important things like your family and your home.
Guns would be useful, no doubt about that, but gold would be useful too. Think about the purpose that gold serves. In the absence of a "money" commodity every transaction is done by barter and suffers from what economists call the "coincidence of needs and wants". Suppose that the two of us meet in the typical post apocalyptic setting and rather than shooting each other on site we exchange greetings and attempt to barter. Suppose that you need ammunition and that I have some to trade, but that I want compressed natural gas for my camping stove. If you don't have gas cylinders or anything else to trade that I want then you will first have to find someone else who has gas cylinders and will trad
Even if there is a breakthrough it is likely that some or all of the scientists will immediately quit the project and attempt to jump on board with "investor" companies as they rush to patent the fruits of what was formerly publicly funded research. It would become yet another classic case of privatization of profits and socialization of costs, losses, and risks.
If you're going to object to this screening on the moral basis you state, then by any reasonable standard you should object to the whole idea of having children this way.
Allow me to clarify that I was not stating a personal belief, but rather merely attempting to clarify somewhat the position taken by people who objected to screening of embryos. I suppose that it is possible for one to object to screening for some traits rather than others for reasons other than "when does life begin" (as stated by other posters) such as what traits make one more or less competitive or successful in life or whether or not one should be permitted to select advantages rather than merely mitigate defects in the genes. However, a substantial portion of those opposed to screening probably reject it for any purpose, including disease prevention, due to religious conviction or other genuinely held moral beliefs. Personally, I don't believe that the state ought to insert itself into these situations other than to regulate safe medical practice as it would with any other licensed professional practice where health and safety are potentially at risk from unqualified or unlicensed practitioners.
PLEASE show me two contiguous miles of pavement in the U.S. that's 40 years old.
There are some contiguous concrete pitches on state route 101 North to San Francisco here in California that are original Eisenhower era concrete freeway (albeit much patched with tar in the cracks).
God forbid that impressionable young people in our schools should...gasp...actually see an exposed breast...
From what I understand, the principal objection of many people who are opposed to this sort of selection is that otherwise viable fertilized embryos, which do not meet the selection criteria, are discarded during the process. So, depending upon how one answers the "when does life begin?" question and the views one takes on the related issue of Abortion this sort of selection and discarding is either a choice like many others that parents make or murder; take your pick.
This has been done before. During the Cold War, in order to disrupt the Soviet economy and serve them some comeuppance for their industrial espionage activities, the CIA, in partnership with American Technology companies ensured that hardware and software with carefully arranged "flaws" found its way into Soviet hands. In one particular instance a "flawed" natural gas pipeline software and associated hardware went "haywire" (i.e. it ran the ultra-high pressure test) after a planned period of normal operation. The result was the largest non-nuclear man-made explosion ever seen from space (the satellites designed to detect plumes from ICBM launches detected a tremendous flash from the area near Vladivostok where the pipeline in question was located). This article covers some of the details excerpted from the book At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War as recalled by Thomas C. Reed, a former Air Force secretary who was serving in the National Security Council at the time.
You do realize that Helium is second only to hydrogen in its ability to diffuse through solids? Helium loss can be reduced or minimized, but it can never be completely prevented no matter what material is used. Helium atoms will escape right through the walls of solid metal tanks (albeit not so solid to helium or hydrogen atoms) because the space between the metallic atoms is large enough for the relatively tiny helium atoms to pass through. Helium, hydrogen, and other light gases defy all attempts to contain them completely and so must be constantly replenished.
Helium is a rare gas here on earth that we would be wise to conserve rather than waste; it is scarce and it is becoming scarcer because we are squandering it. The only reason why many Americans don't understand the relative scarcity of helium (we are rapidly depleting our current supplies and once it all escapes into space it won't be easy to get more) is because the United States happens to have the worlds largest known reserves of helium produced from radioactive decay in oil wells in parts of the State of Texas combined with the fact that for years oil producers were required to collect the helium and sell it to the government for storage in the Strategic Helium Reserve. I cringe when I see helium wasted on things like blimps for sporting events and party balloons because like many other limited natural resources we will only truly appreciate it when it is too late and the helium on this planet is almost gone.
Apple may have failed to meet user expectations with their early minis, you certainly think so, but I have never owned one so I cannot say. I was simply stating that Apple tries, from all outward appearances, to maintain a high-brow and high quality brand image with their computers and I think that most people would agree that that is what they are trying to do. Now, they may fail in that mission, as you suggest they did with the early minis, but that doesn't mean that Apple has suddenly changed course with their entire brand because one product release turns out to be a mistake (even Apple has had some stinkers over the years).
HP/Compaq econo-boxes do serve to illustrate a point: mass market desktop PCs are almost without exception a value price over quality or expandability proposition. In general, a PC will NOT enjoy the full advantages of expandability, flexibility, and range of upgrades that PCs are classically known for unless it is built from carefully selected after-market parts or assembled as a package deal by boutique PC builders who cater to that market. This does not have to be expensive provided that one is prepared to do some work oneself, I recently put together a very decent gaming PC for less than $1000, but it does require a little bit of expertise and sophistication. However, if one has to pay someone else to build it, then it starts to make the high-end Mac towers more attractive price-wise unless the computer is primarily intended for gaming.
Apple is trying to preserve a certain "high-end" brand image and user experience which means selling higher spec machines that avoid the "my computer is slow and crappy" complaint that one often hears about "mid-market" PCs (which compromise too much and really don't satisfy anyone completely). Apple does offer a product in the value market because value buyers generally understand upfront that they are getting less computer fro less money and therefore don't have high expectations. Personally, I don't own any Apple computers (I do have an iPod shuffle that I won in a raffle), but I can see why they don't want to sell a mid-market tower that really wouldn't satisfy very many people (i.e. the value buyers think that it is too expensive and the high-end buyers looking for a bargain will be disappointed by the performance) yet would still harm the image of Apple as a quality, albeit expensive, computer brand. Also, if the Hackintoshes were officially allowed to sell these types of machines then it would still hurt the Apple brand because people would blame Apple, because the machine runs a version of Mac OS, when there are problems.
There are even more direct costs for consumers who wish to maintain their privacy these days. For example, how many of you have signed up for the discount card at the supermarket or the "rewards card" at any number of other businesses? Unless you have taken other steps which also cost money, such as arranging a mail drop or renting a PO Box, you have essentially "sold" your privacy in exchange for a discount on purchases. Those of us who value our privacy and wish to maintain it are frequently compelled to forgo such discounts or else pay, in time, money or effort, to set up specialized fronts to protect our "true" identities (i.e. the mail drop, aliases, corporate credit card, etc). Perhaps privacy was less expensive in the distant past, but in modern society preserving it effectively is becoming ever more labor intensive and expensive. In fact, the invasion of our privacy is now so pervasive that people give strange looks to those of us who decline to be part of "rewards", club cards, and other privacy invasive schemes in exchange for discounts; as if they cannot understand why someone wouldn't fill out a card with their real name, address, SSN, and mother's maiden name in exchange for a $5 discount.
The problem with marketers is that they will not allow this to happen or at least they will do their best to break into the "searches for research or information/informative sites". If there is one thing that marketers cannot stand then it is potential consumers (and everyone with a credit card and a pulse is a potential consumer) who escape their web of advertising. Once people figure out that "research/information" searches don't have advertising which one(s) do you think they will use? No, the goal of marketers is to bombard you with advertising everywhere they can and as often as they can until you are sick of them; so it follows then that they cannot permit an empty space to go unfilled with advertisements for any reason, even "research/information".
Is O'Reilly even a Republican? I cannot recall him ever stating 'Republican' as his party affiliation or indeed any party affiliation at all. The Republicans may chose to use him as an 'example' of a good Republican, but that does not mean that O'Reilly is affiliated with them or supports their platform, even if by coincidence they are in agreement on certain issues.