Another inclusive, open-minded liberal, respectful of opposing viewpoints and encouraing public discussion.
The idea of people such as yourself using the power of government to suppress political dissent terifies the American heartland. No wonder Bush won. Keep my politics at home indeed; It is that command which impells my poltics outside the home and to the voting booth.
It also appears that the process happend via selective breeding rather than gene manipulation, but it's an outside possibility that it was engineered.
Those are both the same thing: evolution by selection. By spraying coca with herbicide either we are selecting for coca which is resistent to herbicide, or we are selecting for drug producers who are capable of gentically engineering coca to make it resistant to herbicide. Anti-drug measures apply selective pressures to the entire system of production, not just the plant.
What does this mean about drug control policy
The enforcers are likely to renew and concentrate their efforts on the point of adaptation within the adversary system, misunderstanding the scope of the problem which they confront, believing it to be a plant rather than a system of production which may adapt at any stage. My prediction: They will find a solution to the problem of resistant plants, apply it, and the system will evolve again, adapting at that point or some other.
"NASA's plan to send robotic scouts to the moon in advance of astronauts is starting to take shape, but politics and the presidential election are stalling progress."
Translation: Kerry has indicated, if elected, he will kill the new moon and mars exploration agenda to pay for increased social spending. So we won't know until after the votes have been counted whether moon exploration is a go.
When a company "wants" increased consumption, it "wants" increased consumption of its own products. Thus if Shell were were selling solar, wind, and petroleum products it could benefit from increased sales of its solar, wind, and petroleum products. Oil corporations are disloyal sluts and will go where the profits lie; oil, wind, solar, fission, hydrogen, watever. In fact it is no longer correct to refer to oil companies as "oil companies". They are energy supply companies diversified into energy generation, storage and management, end-to-end. They stand to profit by selling and promoting effiecient energy systems because those are better product. Your accustation, that "oil companies" benefit from increased consumption of energy is bogus. What they benefit from is increased consumption of their own products, and one way to increase that consumption is by marketing energy-efficient products. What you don't seem to understand is that high-tech, efficient energy systems substitute the sale of technology for the sale of petroleum. "Substitute" means that what they lose in petroleum sales they recover in sales of what they sutstitue for it, technology. If you are selling a wasetful product, you are selling an inferior product. The business plan to get rich by selling inferior products does not work. Hence the massive corporate R&D expenditures on more efficient energy systems.
until we actually decrease our consumption we will still be too dependent on oil.
That is not a fact, it's just something which you imagine because it endorses your own political bias. You have given no argument for why it is impossible to satisfy current energy needs and replace petroleum. Go fire up your magic crystal ball, forcast the future, and tell us that no source of energy will ever become as cheap and plentiful as petroleum.
Why would an oil company want cars to have better gas mileage?
Efficient automobiles and gasoline being complementary goods.
What are the chances of 2 Texas oilmen (financially supported by many more oilmen) giving us a coherent national energy policy which frees us from dependency on oil and the Middle East?
If you want your tax dollars to fund alternative energy research, then you should hope that the President shares the agenda of big oil companies to fund alternative energy research. To give three examples among many: BP, Shell, and Texaco.
This notion which you are implicitly endorsing, that oil companies oppose alterntaive energy sources, amounts to crackpot propaganda: It does not agree with fact, which is that oil companies are pursuing alternative sources of energy. It does not agree with reason: Why would oil companies avoid earning profits from alternative energy? Suppose BP could earn 10 billion/year profit by selling photovoltaics? Why would they not want to do that?
Even for a homicidal cycloptic spaceship computer, I can't imagine any conceivable advantage to having red light shining out of your eye. Was the purpose of that ever explained in the film?
"...Republicans would indeed do the same thing under similar circumstances"
That seems like an attempt to achieve political neutrality by conterbalancing your anti-Democrat statements. It is not an actual fact which you have supported with evidence; You gave none.
Republicans did not try to keep Ross Perot off the ballot in '92. Now, that is not proof that they would not attempt to block a third-party candidate in the future, under other circumstances. However, it is the most closely related historical parallel, and arguably the best evidence we have for predicting how Republicans would recieve competing third-party candidates in the future. Should we try to predict future actions on that basis of past behavior or just rely on proof by assertion?
"Flame away"
How cleverly impolite. Preemtively disparage comments critical of your own statements by implying that all subsequent discusssion is flamage.
I think your reading of the situation is more or less correct. That being Latino, he would be easier to confirm if he were ever appointed to the US Supreme Court, and so this was reason to work extra hard to block his appointment.
That is racism. It's not like racial discrimination becomes ok because you have a pragmatic political motive for it. Let's deny blacks the right to vote. Its' not that we don't like black people, we love them, but they tend to support higher taxes. We just have political motives, we are not _realy_ racist, so its ok. Not.
Imagine if something similar happend at IBM or GM. A mid-level minority employee is denied promotion because the higher-ups thought his minority status might help him later attain further promotion. The memo reads "He is especially dangerous because he is... black." Whoever leaked the evidence would not be attacked in the press and prosecuted. A different standard of ethics applies to Democratic Senators than to business. Which is why Senator Byrd, the former KKK leader, can talk about "white niggers" and Hillary Clinton can disparage Ghandi using ethnic stereotypes. They do not appologizie for being racists, they only aknowledge impropriaty of their racist public statements. Same thing here. To some Democrats in the Senate, the only crime here is revelation of their own racial discrimiation, not the act of discrimation itself.
What was found on that hard drive proves that some members of the U.S. Senate had unethical and criminal motives in blocking confirmation of judges to federal courts. If that is going on, I want to know about it. Any patriotic citizen would. I think the guy deservers an award for whisteblowing, not prosecution.
The real story here is not the leak itself, but the content of the leaked documents. They contradict reasons some Senators gave publicly for filibustering judicial nominees. Some powerfull people got caught in a great big lie. Even worse, what was found on the hard drive reveals the true motives for blocking judicial appointees to be unethical and even illegal.
In particular, the leaks reveal that Senators 1) tried to manipulate the outcome of court cases by delaying appointments, which is a federal crime. 2) used racist criteria in deciding which appointees to block. They blocked confirmation of a judge, Miguel Estrada because he was Latino. Shit. The Senate Judiciary Commitee actually wrote that down as reason to block someone from becoming a judge, "because... he is Latino."
Well, the secret is out and you go read about the U.S. Senate's racist and criminal motives, in their own words. The Wall Street Journal has some of the juicy parts from the leaked documents.
This is nice of Novell but I don't understand how they profit from this.
Suse users benefit because they have a larger menu of applications from which to choose. Suse benefits because they will be able to attract users who depend on some of these applications which will be ported. Application vendors will benefit because it makes their product available to Suse Linux users. But Novell? What's in it form them?
"There's nothing wrong with using objective testing criteria, even arbitrary objective testing criteria"
From accounts I have read on the subject, it is my understanding that arbitrary testing criteria, if they have differential impact by race, legally constitute discriminitory hiring practices. If a member of a racial minority group applies for a job, and you do not hire and you have used an arbitrary testing criterion as part of the interview process, then you will lose that in court. Skills testing will win if you can show that the skills tested directly relate to the work.
It would be interseting to see a figure releating 1)real-world sample density and 2)computer power in flops and 3)choice of algorithm to 4) prediction accuracy.
"What? There's nothing illegal about testing candidates. You can't discriminate on sex or race, but testing skills is totally ok."
It is illegal to give job candidates intelligence tests. So if you want smart employees, you need to find a way around the law.
Legally, the determination of whether you are engaged in discrimitory hiring practices is not based only on your intent. It also includes discrepant impact; If any any test which you administer as part of you job selection process favors a particlar race, then you are guilty of discrimimation. Courts have ruled that tests which measure intelligence are an illegal test for purposes selecting job candidates.
The only exception is that if you can show that that the test specifically measures the skill required for the job. For example, you could give driving tests to drivers. I doubt that if these same math riddles were posed on a written exam that they would pass that legal test for job-relatedness. Google would have to show in court that searching for prime numbers was part of the work that these employees would be expected to do on the job. They ony way employers can get away with this is to pose the same questions informally.
I have heard rumors that Microsoft does something similar, pose math riddles during job interviews.
I suspect these are just ways around the legal prohibitions on testing job candidates. Employers want to identify the smartest job applicants, and these informal riddles allow them to do that legally.
Re:It's not the music store, it's the contract
on
Beatles vs Apple
·
· Score: 0
"Apple and Apple made an agreement -- Jobs'n'Woz could keep their corporate name if they agreed not to get in the music business. And now they've broken that contract."
Wrong. RTFA. The second sentence of the article:
"The Beatles' company, Apple Corps., is involved in a legal battle with Jobs' Apple Computer, claiming the hardware manufacturer is in breach of a 1991 agreement that that forbids it from using the trademark for any application 'whose principle content is music.' "
So the agreement was not that Apple computer would stay out of the music business, as you incorrectly state. The agreements was that Apple Computer would not use "Apple" trademark for a music application. Apple Computer has abided by that agreement, their application is named "iTunes".
"You all forget one simple fact: the law in some 48 states requires corporations (publicly-held ones, at least) to act solely in the interests of the Company and the Shareholder. Even if an unusually-enlightened CEO were to end up in charge of a major corporation, he would soon be removed from office when his sense of responsibility and duty to the community lowered the profit margin a fraction of a percent."
"Anyone or anything that reduces those dividend checks, even if it is something to the public good, will likely not be tolerated."
As the receipient of a college scholarship sponsored by a corporation, Westinghouse, I am skeptical of those remarks. Winners of other corporate-sponsored scholarships, such as the Intel Science Talent search, might also have cause to doubt you.
I have a close relative who is a consultant for corporate giving. She tells me that corporations do give money away to charitible causes. A lot of money: Nationwide, 60% of University budgets come from corporate or foundation giving. These are gifts and do not include paid research.
Apparently you don't watch PBS either, because they name their sponses on the air, like "this program was paid by generous gifts from x,y, and z" and sometimes those sponsors are corporations.
One of my own favorite charities, spritofamerica.org, which donates sewing machines, carpenter tools, school equipment and toys for children in Iraq and Afghanistan receives free shipping from Fed Ex.
Its true that , as a stock holder, I don't want the board of directors to give away my share of the company. But if the value of my stock is increasing fast, then I am not going to bitch about it they want to donate a cut of the profits to cure cancer or save the environment.
Here are few reasons why corporate boards might be so generous in giving away profits:
1. Corporate board members are humans. Some of them grew up poor and it was a strugle to earn an education. They have friends and relatives who get debilitating diseases for which there is no cure, who die of cancer. They enjoy the outdoors and want to protect nature. For the most part, they are socially successful people who, to make their way up in the world, have had to demonstrate normal human traits such as compassion.
2. Tax deduction.
3. Advertising. Giving money to a chartible cause can send a far more compelling message than another TV add. I can't stand that stupid bunny, but if Energizer, say, donated to Carmack's Armidallo Aerospace, that would change my attitude about their batteries right away.
4. Corporations benefit from operating in a peaceful, healthy and educated society. Employess who are not going postal, who can read and write, and not dropping dead on you, those are some good employees. Corporations help themsleves by promoting a healthy socieity.
"The invention of 0 is a usually considered a >pretty big step in western culture and one arabs >like to claim as their contribution to the world. I'm sorry but that statement is misleading. The 0 is generally accepted to have been invented in the Dravido-Indic cultures, what is currently Southern India."
Some people claim that western cultures took the zero from India, but I say that we took nothing from them.
The president has barred the funding of promising biological research using embryonic stem cells...
President Bush is the only president ever to authorize federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research.
Under Bush, NIH has increased spending on embyonic on human ebryonic stem cell research from $0.00 in 2001 to $24.8 million in 2003. In the same period NIH spending for all types of stem cell research, human and non-human, embryonic and non-embryonic has increased from $306.0 millon to $521.1 million.
Look here for a detailed breakdown. (Link could require free registration.)
"Fusion reactors don't explode. The fusion reaction itself is extremely delicate. If anything goes wrong, it simply stops."
Actually, there is a small likelihood that the fusion reactor goes out of control and creates a growing magnetic vortex which becomes powerful enough to consume an entire city. However, I expect it would be possible to prevent the reaction from going out of control by using an eight-armed non-ferrous mechanical exoskeleton.
It seems to me that fusion research in the US is never going to get decent levels of funding all the time that the Whitehouse is full of people with millions of dollars invested in oil companies.
Vice President Dick Cheney, head of the presidential task force studying our energy needs, favors building new nuclear power plants..
So much for your theory that cutting back on fusion research is part of a secret righ-wing plot to protect oil profits.
It took me 12 seconds (I timed it) to google that up. New tab, "Bush Nuclear Power", first link, first sentence, here.
Is is too much to ask that moderators spend 12 seconds before modding up crackpot propaganda such as the parent post? Of course it is. It's an election year, so you need to use your moderation points to advance your political prejudice that George Bush is public enemy number one. That's justified, because we have the proof: If he backs nuclear power, then that is proof that he is environmentally reckless. If he does not back nuclear power, then that is proof that he is conspiring to protect oil profits.
wikipeida on opponents of "market fundamentalism": "...They argue that where the market works for the public interest, it should be allowed to do so, and where markets work against the public interest, state regulation should step in."
Note that "public interest" is synonymous with "self interest." (Which is distinct from selfish intererest.) Each person interprets "public interest" to mean what he, himself believes is best, which are his self interests. Free pizza or free beer?, linux, OS X or windows or BeOS? Vanilla or chocolate, space exploration or cancer research or golf? The mixture which you believe constitues the ideal describes your self interests. Some people are not content to make these decisions for themselves but want to impose their own self interests on others. When they do this, they term their own self interests the "public interest". (With respect to any decision the interests of the public consist of a diversity of individual interests and the notion of a unitary "public interest" is absurd.) By substitution:
"...They argue that where the market works for their self interest, it should be allowed to do so, and where markets work against their self interest, state regulation should step in."
Note also that "market" is synonomous with "freedom". A free market is a system by which each individual is free negotiate transactions on his own behalf. Market forces are the cumulative outcome of multiple free choices about buying and selling. By subsitituion:
"...They argue that where freedom works for their self interest, it should be allowed to do so, and where freedom works against their self interest, state regulation should step in."
Opponents of market fundamentalism are efficient fascists. They do not claim absolute authorty. The claim authority only when you will not voluntary fall into line with their dictates.
Slashdot Mirror
"Keep your politics at home jackass."
Another inclusive, open-minded liberal, respectful of opposing viewpoints and encouraing public discussion.
The idea of people such as yourself using the power of government to suppress political dissent terifies the American heartland. No wonder Bush won. Keep my politics at home indeed; It is that command which impells my poltics outside the home and to the voting booth.
It also appears that the process happend via selective breeding rather than gene manipulation, but it's an outside possibility that it was engineered.
Those are both the same thing: evolution by selection. By spraying coca with herbicide either we are selecting for coca which is resistent to herbicide, or we are selecting for drug producers who are capable of gentically engineering coca to make it resistant to herbicide. Anti-drug measures apply selective pressures to the entire system of production, not just the plant.
What does this mean about drug control policy
The enforcers are likely to renew and concentrate their efforts on the point of adaptation within the adversary system, misunderstanding the scope of the problem which they confront, believing it to be a plant rather than a system of production which may adapt at any stage. My prediction: They will find a solution to the problem of resistant plants, apply it, and the system will evolve again, adapting at that point or some other.
They are playing wac-a-mole with evolution.
"NASA's plan to send robotic scouts to the moon in advance of astronauts is starting to take shape, but politics and the presidential election are stalling progress."
Translation: Kerry has indicated, if elected, he will kill the new moon and mars exploration agenda to pay for increased social spending. So we won't know until after the votes have been counted whether moon exploration is a go.
It's really quite simple: Oil companies want increased consumption
When a company "wants" increased consumption, it "wants" increased consumption of its own products. Thus if Shell were were selling solar, wind, and petroleum products it could benefit from increased sales of its solar, wind, and petroleum products. Oil corporations are disloyal sluts and will go where the profits lie; oil, wind, solar, fission, hydrogen, watever. In fact it is no longer correct to refer to oil companies as "oil companies". They are energy supply companies diversified into energy generation, storage and management, end-to-end. They stand to profit by selling and promoting effiecient energy systems because those are better product. Your accustation, that "oil companies" benefit from increased consumption of energy is bogus. What they benefit from is increased consumption of their own products, and one way to increase that consumption is by marketing energy-efficient products. What you don't seem to understand is that high-tech, efficient energy systems substitute the sale of technology for the sale of petroleum. "Substitute" means that what they lose in petroleum sales they recover in sales of what they sutstitue for it, technology. If you are selling a wasetful product, you are selling an inferior product. The business plan to get rich by selling inferior products does not work. Hence the massive corporate R&D expenditures on more efficient energy systems.
until we actually decrease our consumption we will still be too dependent on oil.
That is not a fact, it's just something which you imagine because it endorses your own political bias. You have given no argument for why it is impossible to satisfy current energy needs and replace petroleum. Go fire up your magic crystal ball, forcast the future, and tell us that no source of energy will ever become as cheap and plentiful as petroleum.
Why would an oil company want cars to have better gas mileage?
Efficient automobiles and gasoline being complementary goods.
What are the chances of 2 Texas oilmen (financially supported by many more oilmen) giving us a coherent national energy policy which frees us from dependency on oil and the Middle East?
If you want your tax dollars to fund alternative energy research, then you should hope that the President shares the agenda of big oil companies to fund alternative energy research. To give three examples among many: BP, Shell, and Texaco.
This notion which you are implicitly endorsing, that oil companies oppose alterntaive energy sources, amounts to crackpot propaganda: It does not agree with fact, which is that oil companies are pursuing alternative sources of energy. It does not agree with reason: Why would oil companies avoid earning profits from alternative energy? Suppose BP could earn 10 billion/year profit by selling photovoltaics? Why would they not want to do that?
A crackpot propagandist on ./"
"...He thought Sweden was neutral and had no army. MY GOD. He won't drop his notions even after they are shown to be dead wrong."
The New York Times
"''I don't know why you're talking about Sweden,'' Bush said. ''They're the neutral one. They don't have an army."
''You were right,'' he said, with bonhomie. ''Sweden does have an army.''
Even for a homicidal cycloptic spaceship computer, I can't imagine any conceivable advantage to having red light shining out of your eye. Was the purpose of that ever explained in the film?
"How do you ever know that 'letters of authenticity' are authentic?"
You validate them with letters of authenticity.
Good Answer.
"...Republicans would indeed do the same thing under similar circumstances"
That seems like an attempt to achieve political neutrality by conterbalancing your anti-Democrat statements. It is not an actual fact which you have supported with evidence; You gave none.
Republicans did not try to keep Ross Perot off the ballot in '92. Now, that is not proof that they would not attempt to block a third-party candidate in the future, under other circumstances. However, it is the most closely related historical parallel, and arguably the best evidence we have for predicting how Republicans would recieve competing third-party candidates in the future. Should we try to predict future actions on that basis of past behavior or just rely on proof by assertion?
"Flame away"
How cleverly impolite. Preemtively disparage comments critical of your own statements by implying that all subsequent discusssion is flamage.
I think your reading of the situation is more or less correct. That being Latino, he would be easier to confirm if he were ever appointed to the US Supreme Court, and so this was reason to work extra hard to block his appointment.
That is racism. It's not like racial discrimination becomes ok because you have a pragmatic political motive for it. Let's deny blacks the right to vote. Its' not that we don't like black people, we love them, but they tend to support higher taxes. We just have political motives, we are not _realy_ racist, so its ok. Not.
Imagine if something similar happend at IBM or GM. A mid-level minority employee is denied promotion because the higher-ups thought his minority status might help him later attain further promotion. The memo reads "He is especially dangerous because he is... black." Whoever leaked the evidence would not be attacked in the press and prosecuted. A different standard of ethics applies to Democratic Senators than to business. Which is why Senator Byrd, the former KKK leader, can talk about "white niggers" and Hillary Clinton can disparage Ghandi using ethnic stereotypes. They do not appologizie for being racists, they only aknowledge impropriaty of their racist public statements. Same thing here. To some Democrats in the Senate, the only crime here is revelation of their own racial discrimiation, not the act of discrimation itself.
What was found on that hard drive proves that some members of the U.S. Senate had unethical and criminal motives in blocking confirmation of judges to federal courts. If that is going on, I want to know about it. Any patriotic citizen would. I think the guy deservers an award for whisteblowing, not prosecution.
The real story here is not the leak itself, but the content of the leaked documents. They contradict reasons some Senators gave publicly for filibustering judicial nominees. Some powerfull people got caught in a great big lie. Even worse, what was found on the hard drive reveals the true motives for blocking judicial appointees to be unethical and even illegal.
In particular, the leaks reveal that Senators 1) tried to manipulate the outcome of court cases by delaying appointments, which is a federal crime. 2) used racist criteria in deciding which appointees to block. They blocked confirmation of a judge, Miguel Estrada because he was Latino. Shit. The Senate Judiciary Commitee actually wrote that down as reason to block someone from becoming a judge, "because... he is Latino."
Well, the secret is out and you go read about the U.S. Senate's racist and criminal motives, in their own words. The Wall Street Journal has some of the juicy parts from the leaked documents.
This is nice of Novell but I don't understand how they profit from this.
Suse users benefit because they have a larger menu of applications from which to choose. Suse benefits because they will be able to attract users who depend on some of these applications which will be ported. Application vendors will benefit because it makes their product available to Suse Linux users. But Novell? What's in it form them?
"There's nothing wrong with using objective testing criteria, even arbitrary objective testing criteria"
From accounts I have read on the subject, it is my understanding that arbitrary testing criteria, if they have differential impact by race, legally constitute discriminitory hiring practices. If a member of a racial minority group applies for a job, and you do not hire and you have used an arbitrary testing criterion as part of the interview process, then you will lose that in court. Skills testing will win if you can show that the skills tested directly relate to the work.
It would be interseting to see a figure releating 1)real-world sample density and 2)computer power in flops and 3)choice of algorithm to 4) prediction accuracy.
"What? There's nothing illegal about testing candidates. You can't discriminate on sex or race, but testing skills is totally ok."
It is illegal to give job candidates intelligence tests. So if you want smart employees, you need to find a way around the law.
Legally, the determination of whether you are engaged in discrimitory hiring practices is not based only on your intent. It also includes discrepant impact; If any any test which you administer as part of you job selection process favors a particlar race, then you are guilty of discrimimation. Courts have ruled that tests which measure intelligence are an illegal test for purposes selecting job candidates.
The only exception is that if you can show that that the test specifically measures the skill required for the job. For example, you could give driving tests to drivers. I doubt that if these same math riddles were posed on a written exam that they would pass that legal test for job-relatedness. Google would have to show in court that searching for prime numbers was part of the work that these employees would be expected to do on the job. They ony way employers can get away with this is to pose the same questions informally.
I have heard rumors that Microsoft does something similar, pose math riddles during job interviews.
I suspect these are just ways around the legal prohibitions on testing job candidates. Employers want to identify the smartest job applicants, and these informal riddles allow them to do that legally.
"Apple and Apple made an agreement -- Jobs'n'Woz could keep their corporate name if they agreed not to get in the music business. And now they've broken that contract."
Wrong. RTFA. The second sentence of the article:
"The Beatles' company, Apple Corps., is involved in a legal battle with Jobs' Apple Computer, claiming the hardware manufacturer is in breach of a 1991 agreement that that forbids it from using the trademark for any application 'whose principle content is music.' "
So the agreement was not that Apple computer would stay out of the music business, as you incorrectly state. The agreements was that Apple Computer would not use "Apple" trademark for a music application. Apple Computer has abided by that agreement, their application is named "iTunes".
"You all forget one simple fact: the law in some 48 states requires corporations (publicly-held ones, at least) to act solely in the interests of the Company and the Shareholder. Even if an unusually-enlightened CEO were to end up in charge of a major corporation, he would soon be removed from office when his sense of responsibility and duty to the community lowered the profit margin a fraction of a percent."
"Anyone or anything that reduces those dividend checks, even if it is something to the public good, will likely not be tolerated."
As the receipient of a college scholarship sponsored by a corporation, Westinghouse, I am skeptical of those remarks. Winners of other corporate-sponsored scholarships, such as the Intel Science Talent search, might also have cause to doubt you.
I have a close relative who is a consultant for corporate giving. She tells me that corporations do give money away to charitible causes. A lot of money: Nationwide, 60% of University budgets come from corporate or foundation giving. These are gifts and do not include paid research.
Apparently you don't watch PBS either, because they name their sponses on the air, like "this program was paid by generous gifts from x,y, and z" and sometimes those sponsors are corporations.
One of my own favorite charities, spritofamerica.org, which donates sewing machines, carpenter tools, school equipment and toys for children in Iraq and Afghanistan receives free shipping from Fed Ex.
Its true that , as a stock holder, I don't want the board of directors to give away my share of the company. But if the value of my stock is increasing fast, then I am not going to bitch about it they want to donate a cut of the profits to cure cancer or save the environment.
Here are few reasons why corporate boards might be so generous in giving away profits:
1. Corporate board members are humans. Some of them grew up poor and it was a strugle to earn an education. They have friends and relatives who get debilitating diseases for which there is no cure, who die of cancer. They enjoy the outdoors and want to protect nature. For the most part, they are socially successful people who, to make their way up in the world, have had to demonstrate normal human traits such as compassion.
2. Tax deduction.
3. Advertising. Giving money to a chartible cause can send a far more compelling message than another TV add. I can't stand that stupid bunny, but if Energizer, say, donated to Carmack's Armidallo Aerospace, that would change my attitude about their batteries right away.
4. Corporations benefit from operating in a peaceful, healthy and educated society. Employess who are not going postal, who can read and write, and not dropping dead on you, those are some good employees. Corporations help themsleves by promoting a healthy socieity.
"The invention of 0 is a usually considered a >pretty big step in western culture and one arabs >like to claim as their contribution to the world.
I'm sorry but that statement is misleading. The 0 is generally accepted to have been invented in the Dravido-Indic cultures, what is currently Southern India."
Some people claim that western cultures took the zero from India, but I say that we took nothing from them.
"It doesn't matter what base you use."
All your base are belong to us.
The president has barred the funding of promising biological research using embryonic stem cells...
President Bush is the only president ever to authorize federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research.
Under Bush, NIH has increased spending on embyonic on human ebryonic stem cell research from $0.00 in 2001 to $24.8 million in 2003. In the same period NIH spending for all types of stem cell research, human and non-human, embryonic and non-embryonic has increased from $306.0 millon to $521.1 million.
Look here for a detailed breakdown. (Link could require free registration.)
"Fusion reactors don't explode. The fusion reaction itself is extremely delicate. If anything goes wrong, it simply stops."
Actually, there is a small likelihood that the fusion reactor goes out of control and creates a growing magnetic vortex which becomes powerful enough to consume an entire city. However, I expect it would be possible to prevent the reaction from going out of control by using an eight-armed non-ferrous mechanical exoskeleton.
It seems to me that fusion research in the US is never going to get decent levels of funding all the time that the Whitehouse is full of people with millions of dollars invested in oil companies.
Vice President Dick Cheney, head of the presidential task force studying our energy needs, favors building new nuclear power plants..
So much for your theory that cutting back on fusion research is part of a secret righ-wing plot to protect oil profits.
It took me 12 seconds (I timed it) to google that up. New tab, "Bush Nuclear Power", first link, first sentence, here.
Is is too much to ask that moderators spend 12 seconds before modding up crackpot propaganda such as the parent post? Of course it is. It's an election year, so you need to use your moderation points to advance your political prejudice that George Bush is public enemy number one. That's justified, because we have the proof: If he backs nuclear power, then that is proof that he is environmentally reckless. If he does not back nuclear power, then that is proof that he is conspiring to protect oil profits.
wikipeida on opponents of "market fundamentalism":
"...They argue that where the market works for the public interest, it should be allowed to do so, and where markets work against the public interest, state regulation should step in."
Note that "public interest" is synonymous with "self interest." (Which is distinct from selfish intererest.) Each person interprets "public interest" to mean what he, himself believes is best, which are his self interests. Free pizza or free beer?, linux, OS X or windows or BeOS? Vanilla or chocolate, space exploration or cancer research or golf? The mixture which you believe constitues the ideal describes your self interests. Some people are not content to make these decisions for themselves but want to impose their own self interests on others. When they do this, they term their own self interests the "public interest". (With respect to any decision the interests of the public consist of a diversity of individual interests and the notion of a unitary "public interest" is absurd.) By substitution:
"...They argue that where the market works for their self interest, it should be allowed to do so, and where markets work against their self interest, state regulation should step in."
Note also that "market" is synonomous with "freedom". A free market is a system by which each individual is free negotiate transactions on his own behalf. Market forces are the cumulative outcome of multiple free choices about buying and selling. By subsitituion:
"...They argue that where freedom works for their self interest, it should be allowed to do so, and where freedom works against their self interest, state regulation should step in."
Opponents of market fundamentalism are efficient fascists. They do not claim absolute authorty. The claim authority only when you will not voluntary fall into line with their dictates.