If you can do your work from home, it's probable that someone else can do the work from the other side of the planet. For less. So be careful what you wish for.
It means manufacturing based on the geographic location desired by a politician instead of where it would make the most sense from an engineering standpoint. i.e. - You can't put all the high tech space jobs in the same place as each politician wants some of the money to create jobs in their own district.
If you need a problem solved quickly, and better than what all your competitors can do, he's your man.
You have provided one criteria (quickly) but you still haven't defined what "better" is.
Here's an analogy. If you need to perform an amputation, or other rapid operation to keep someone alive (like on a battlefield), is the doctor who can perform that amputation the fastest "the best"? What about if their operation to keep the person alive causes problems with follow-on surgeries or other body functionality? Are they still "the best"?
What drives me insane is that people forget that the vast majority of source code ends up being a living thing. Features are added (or removed), bugs are fixed and it is used in ways not envisioned in the original development. That means someone has to go in and make changes. If it isn't easily understood then (a) it takes longer to make those changes, (b) it is more likely new bugs are introduced and (c) it may be used in a manner that is unexpected (large-scale instead of small scale, and the code is inefficient). What this means in the long run is your code is more expensive to modify and maintain, and it probably won't be as good. How is that a win for the customers, the company, the new developer who has to make changes and our profession in general?
We need to stop glorifying the "gods" of programming, but the average guy who just gets shit done on a regular basis. More analogies: A fighter pilot gets the glory, but the poor guy changing the fluids is just as important - and works on a dozen planes. Same with a quarterback - if an offensive lineman doesn't keep up their end of the work, the entire offense will crumble. It's supposed to be about being a team, and accepting that you have to provide support for the average guy - it is extremely unlikely you will always have a team that is 100% superstar material, so don't act like you do.
Yes, it is slow. When I have used it, it gave me slightly better than dial-up speeds and, on occasion, I would lose connectivity for a few minutes. Basically, good enough for email and light surfing. I also downloaded a few PDFs.
On the other hand, I am sitting 7 miles in the air, moving at several hundred miles an hour and able to access the Internet! Sure, it isn't a great connection, but I'm 7 miles in the air - so I think it's pretty sweet.
Huh? Where is this happening? Maybe private sector teachers, but deficiently not public sector ones.
Here is a link that has real numbers for layoffs. It says there have been 150,000 public teacher layoffs due to the recession. It also mentions Bureau of Labor Statistics which says 33,500 teachers were hit by layoffs since September. (Article was written in June.)
So, you may not have noticed it happening - but it is. Also, and this is a guess, it is affecting lower income schools since higher income schools generally have parents that are able to complain, hire lawyers, call their city/state/federal representatives, etc. So, if your kids go to a "good school" they might have kept their teacher numbers by shifting the burdens to schools that aren't performing.
Also, talking to teachers that I know, finding a teaching job is next to impossible right now. So, it might be less about layoffs than not filling positions as people retire/leave the field/whatever.
Sorry - I didn't realize you assumed a reality where corruption and mismanagement were unheard of in a giant project. The reason I called it $100+ billion is we are dealing with transforming miles of coastline. And not just the coastline - but 1-2 miles inland for the infrastructure. Have you even looked at the scale of the port facilities in and around New Orleans? The project would be an order of magnitude bigger than the Big Dig and I scaled appropriately - from real-world numbers.
Yes - all at the same time. Bare - not much grows there so it's a lot of surface rock. However, it isn't perfectly smooth, so you get large areas of shallow march in the depressions. I also like the hand-waving "we'll drain it!" Draining thousands of square miles and making it ready for farming may be beyond our ability. Look how hard it was to dig the Panama Canal. Or, watch a documentary on building the oil industry in Alaska. Making a single road to the fields was a nightmare and you want to transform the entire landscape.
You are also off by orders of magnitude for your migration stats. Moving within a city, or even the next city over is not a migration. According to this article 2 million left California over 10 years. That's 200k/year and California has 12% of the US population. So we get 1.8 million as a rough estimate - far below your tens of millions.
Urban decay has not been successfully ignored. It is being ignored - and forcing cities to consider bankruptcy. I'm sure all the people who will lose their jobs or get pay cuts won't successfully ignore the problem.
Good luck with your hand-waving away of big problems - I hope you live somewhere away from the coast and pack heat to protect what's yours from those who don't have anything and are starving. (Also: Read up on the Dust Bowl - it caused hundreds of thousands of people to move and was one of the most horrible times in our nation's history.)
I imagine we could do it for tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. You vastly overstate the cost.
The planned expansion of the port is going to cost over $1 billion - and that's after $500 million in expansion less than 10 years ago. The only thing I can think of that might approach the scope of a new port is the Big Dig project - and that cost $14 billion. However, it didn't involve transforming several miles of coastline. I recommend you do some research on the cost of huge projects (highways are a good start) - you seem to be orders of magnitude off in your estimate.
The tundra is bare, rocky and marshy - not exactly great farming. As for the forest - that's the same strategy as Brazil is using: Cut down a bunch of forest. Farm it. Use up the land. Repeat. It doesn't work because the soil is crap, and you have to keep destroying forest - kind of like army ants on the move - destroy everything and move on.
A person changing location is called moving. A 100,000 people moving is a migration. Even 100,000 people moving around isn't a big deal as long as it evens out somewhat. i.e. - 20k move to NY and 20k move from NY, etc. However, when they move in one direction it is a problem - check out the social conflicts Houston had/has with the Katrina refugees.
And hollow centers are a huge problem that are causing cities to go broke. Abandoned neighborhoods still need their sewers and water pipes maintained because they connect to other sewers and water pipes. However, there are no tax revenues to help pay for it. That's why Detroit is buying these areas and demolishing them. So, while the population gets to ignore the problem - city officials can't. The problem hasn't magically been solved - it's been ignored.
The problem is we are talking a time period of decades - not centuries. That's the core of the problem. If it were taking centuries, we probably wouldn't have noticed. Also, while the land is worth less it is hardly worthless. How much is the Port of New Orleans worth? It is the largest in the country based on volume. Now, how do we move that? We can't just create a good port without hundreds of billions in investment and maintenance (dredging and the like).
Even if you were correct here - I can tell you know nothing about farming because this is basic agronomy. You need a balance between temperature, hours of sunlight and solar intensity to get optimal growing and without the right mix, some plants won't grow at all. That's why greenhouses need to use artificial light to grow crops out of season.
Keep track of your grocery bill - we are experiencing a drought this year and can expect food prices to jump 20-30%. How do you think sustained lower production is going to affect prices?
Buy land? What land are you going to find? The best land is already being cultivated and won't be for sale - prices are already ridiculously high. (Farmers generally farm because they want to - not because they'll get rich. With prices in Iowa right now, even a small farmer can cash out for $2+ million.) The "newly available" land won't have the rich soil necessary to produce good crops - there hasn't been the centuries of biomass to build up the soil.
In practice, we have done those things. It generally involved large numbers of people dying in the migration. (You have died of dysentry.) Oh - and people killing whoever they found who was already there. Except in today's world the natives are armed with the same weapons.
Honestly - I wish humanity would deal with the problem smoothly like you are predicting. However, given how people are treating refugees and immigrants around the world seem to indicate it won't go smoothly. Do you want a refugee camp for people from the coast in your town? Even if you do - how much are you willing to pay to support it?
If a home breaks (or gets submerged) we'll build another one. Okay - how much is Miami worth? Or New Orleans? Let's say we need 1 million new homes - at $150k each that will be $150 billion. Now we also need the infrastructure - roads, schools, power lines, gas lines, highways, etc. Let's call that another $150 billion. Now we'll need the factories, buildings, strip malls and all the other places for these people to work. Call it another $150 billion. So, to ballpark it, we need $500 billion to create a new city of 4-5 million people. (4 million is the estimate for number of people displaced from rising sea levels.)
As for farming, you really don't understand the specifics of food production. Plants need certain amounts of heat and sunlight. Unfortunately, as places further north warm up, it doesn't mean we can suddenly grow "southern" crops - the length of day isn't right. Sure - they will probably grow, but the yield will be much lower for a decade or two until seed companies can hammer out the right genetics. (If they can.) Which means - lower food production. This also ignores the differences in soil and everything else that have established where we grow certain plants.
It's true there are other things that make up society - and those won't go away. Unfortunately, no one is going to want to share their rich, fertile land with people who were displaced by rising sea levels which means eminent domain claims will be tied up in the courts for years. Plus, most towns don't like large numbers of "outsiders", so look for increased enforcement of laws regarding homeless people. No one is out to get the homeless - until they are in your neighborhood.
Oh - to answer your original question: Where is the proof that infrastructure is brittle? Take a look at rolling blackouts, gridlock during rush hour, failing railroad lines and the volatility of gas prices. That's your proof. With good infrastructure those would be eliminated. (Gas prices spike every year when refineries have to perform maintenance or switch what they produce.)
The real problem with your argument can be traced to the basic principle: In theory, theory and practice are the same thing. In practice - they aren't. In this case - in theory we could just rebuild everything but, in practice, there are a million things that will go wrong.
Unless, of course, you get the safe that's rated for computer media.
This is an area where you really need to RTFTS (tech specs) as it will tell you EXACTLY what kind of fire, temperature and duration it will protect a specific kind of media for.
Now, repeat your experiment using salt water in your measuring cup, instead of fresh water, and float fresh water ice cubes in it. That will more accurately model reality and that's REAL science, my friend.
Note: What do you think will happen when the fresh water melting lowers the density of the liquid (fresh water is less dense than salt water) but the overall mass remains constant?
This already exists. These votes are scheduled every few years to keep the scheduling simple.
Stop acting like a politician and calling for a new law/amendment when we just have to use the tools we have. Want them out? Vote them out and don't reelect them.
Personally, I prefer using a little bit of it for both.
In case you haven't noticed, the world is a messed up place. If we, as a country, don't have the ability to kill people efficiently, and in large numbers, we likely wouldn't exist as a country. Someone else, willing to spend money on killing people, would come in and take over.
As for welfare - I like the sig for "shutdown -p now" - "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization." I'm not saying that we should support a professional welfare class, but we should make sure everyone has BASIC needs so they don't decide to start mugging people and robbing houses to avoid starvation..
Half a billion dollars? Are you fucking kidding me?!
That only sounds like a lot. If a university with 50,000 faculty, staff and students announces a $1 million dollar upgrade it wouldn't seem too bad. Now multiply that by 6,000 to account for a US population of 300 million people and you would get to $6 billion. So, half a billion is pretty reasonable.
Also, since you mentioned iPads - there is a world of difference between enterprise equipment and commercial equipment. You might not care if your system dies due to a failed power supply, but these servers can't go down. Which means redundant power supplies that are hot swappable. Plus you are going to have multiple drives with hardware RAID that are also hot swappable. You might think enterprise equipment isn't needed or is too expensive - until you have to tell your boss 50,000 people aren't going to get their checks on time since a server went down.
So if we are using (expensive) TOW missiles to clear entire buildings, how does an AT4 cause too much damage in urban fighting? Not to mention the CS variant is specifically designed for use in an urban environment.
Also, one important purpose of the attack helicopter is to get around (over) all those OTHER pesky buildings that ruin the line-of-sight to the target. Plus, the TOW is guided, (unlike the AT4 - but not the new XM25), greatly reducing the chance of missing the target and hitting the window beside it where a family is cowering on the floor. However, the TOW range is far greater than the XM25 (4500 meters), and the explosive payload is also far greater.
Even with the new weapon system, I don't see the TOW going away any time soon.
Re:Wow there are a lot of asterisks!
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· Score: 3, Funny
Now, I am not a lawyer, but it seems that all of your points are flawed due to one fact: You are allowed to represent yourself.
No religious exemption needed. If you don't want a lawyer, do it yourself.
You can hire anyone you want to testify or be your administrative assistant. They can't act in the courtroom as a lawyer or associate, but they can hand you notes on what to do/say if needed.
No association required if you represent yourself.
Assuming you aren't a lawyer, you have a non-lawyer representing you.
Also, as a side note, don't try turning a courtroom into a political statement. If you annoy the judge, they can fine you or imprison you for contempt of court.
Your cars are a lot nicer than the cars back in the early 70s. They probably have power locks, power windows, air conditioning, surround sound, far more safety features (air bags are expensive) and maybe some nice features like heated seats.
You, and your kids, probably have a bigger/nicer TV, DVD player, satellite/premium cable, and a game console.
You have at least one computer at home - unless you post to Slashdot from work.
Plus, you are paying tuition/housing for two kids in college - and college tuition increases have exceeded inflation for decades.
Really, if you wanted to be in that comfortable middle class like your dad, you would probably have to give up a lot of comforts they just didn't have back then - and it's a lot nicer to have air conditioning instead of a fan.
Also, you might want to recheck your definitions. I'm guessing that you are spending a lot of money that you don't have to if you are only living a "boring" middle-class life. Or, you might not realize what a middle-class life actually is. The middle class doesn't have everything they want, but they do have everything they need - plus a little left over for nice things on occasion.
Middle-class vacations back in the 70s was loading the family in the car and driving to visit relatives and staying with them to save costs. (Although camping was a good alternative.) Flying somewhere and staying in a hotel was definitely a sign of being upper-middle-class at the very least. Plus, do you buy designer clothes or buy "regular" brands? Middle-class is picking up your day-to-day clothes at Target or Walmart, not Macy's or a specialty store. Plus, the middle class does things like clip coupons, wait for sales or other things to stretch their dollar.
My first line of defense is that I try to keep things to a minimum. If I have more than 3 things going on, I will delay most of them and do a mediocre job on the others because I'm not focused.
However, to answer your question, the best strategy I've ever used was a single notebook to track everything. Every item gets a bullet and every day gets a new page. If something didn't get done, it gets rewritten on the page for the next day. That means everything is in one place and having to rewrite the items every day is annoying, so items I don't really care about will be dropped from the list. If necessary, the bullets can reference outside information like, "Implement request in John's email 'Need a favor' received on 10/24/2010."
If you decide to resurrect an old project, you can flip through the notebook to find the bullet items regarding that project to help get yourself back up to speed.
If that statement were true, we'd be starving (needing 1.5 earths to survive).
Clearly the fellow has no idea what he's talking about.
What he means is that we need 1.5 Earths to survive in the long-term.
Think of the Earth like a retirement fund. You can take out more than the interest earned each year, but that means at some point in the future the account will be at zero. In this case, we are doing things like cutting down old-growth forests to make more farmland, overfishing, and doing other things that the Earth cannot replenish or repair on a human time scale. Unfortunately, when the Earth account balance hits zero, losing our home has a much broader meaning than having to move into a nursing home.
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If you can do your work from home, it's probable that someone else can do the work from the other side of the planet. For less. So be careful what you wish for.
It's called a part-time job, and a cupboard is all you will be able to afford.
It means manufacturing based on the geographic location desired by a politician instead of where it would make the most sense from an engineering standpoint. i.e. - You can't put all the high tech space jobs in the same place as each politician wants some of the money to create jobs in their own district.
If you need a problem solved quickly, and better than what all your competitors can do, he's your man.
You have provided one criteria (quickly) but you still haven't defined what "better" is.
Here's an analogy. If you need to perform an amputation, or other rapid operation to keep someone alive (like on a battlefield), is the doctor who can perform that amputation the fastest "the best"? What about if their operation to keep the person alive causes problems with follow-on surgeries or other body functionality? Are they still "the best"?
What drives me insane is that people forget that the vast majority of source code ends up being a living thing. Features are added (or removed), bugs are fixed and it is used in ways not envisioned in the original development. That means someone has to go in and make changes. If it isn't easily understood then (a) it takes longer to make those changes, (b) it is more likely new bugs are introduced and (c) it may be used in a manner that is unexpected (large-scale instead of small scale, and the code is inefficient). What this means in the long run is your code is more expensive to modify and maintain, and it probably won't be as good. How is that a win for the customers, the company, the new developer who has to make changes and our profession in general?
We need to stop glorifying the "gods" of programming, but the average guy who just gets shit done on a regular basis. More analogies: A fighter pilot gets the glory, but the poor guy changing the fluids is just as important - and works on a dozen planes. Same with a quarterback - if an offensive lineman doesn't keep up their end of the work, the entire offense will crumble. It's supposed to be about being a team, and accepting that you have to provide support for the average guy - it is extremely unlikely you will always have a team that is 100% superstar material, so don't act like you do.
Yes, it is slow. When I have used it, it gave me slightly better than dial-up speeds and, on occasion, I would lose connectivity for a few minutes. Basically, good enough for email and light surfing. I also downloaded a few PDFs.
On the other hand, I am sitting 7 miles in the air, moving at several hundred miles an hour and able to access the Internet! Sure, it isn't a great connection, but I'm 7 miles in the air - so I think it's pretty sweet.
Huh? Where is this happening? Maybe private sector teachers, but deficiently not public sector ones.
Here is a link that has real numbers for layoffs. It says there have been 150,000 public teacher layoffs due to the recession. It also mentions Bureau of Labor Statistics which says 33,500 teachers were hit by layoffs since September. (Article was written in June.)
So, you may not have noticed it happening - but it is. Also, and this is a guess, it is affecting lower income schools since higher income schools generally have parents that are able to complain, hire lawyers, call their city/state/federal representatives, etc. So, if your kids go to a "good school" they might have kept their teacher numbers by shifting the burdens to schools that aren't performing.
Also, talking to teachers that I know, finding a teaching job is next to impossible right now. So, it might be less about layoffs than not filling positions as people retire/leave the field/whatever.
Sorry - I didn't realize you assumed a reality where corruption and mismanagement were unheard of in a giant project. The reason I called it $100+ billion is we are dealing with transforming miles of coastline. And not just the coastline - but 1-2 miles inland for the infrastructure. Have you even looked at the scale of the port facilities in and around New Orleans? The project would be an order of magnitude bigger than the Big Dig and I scaled appropriately - from real-world numbers.
Yes - all at the same time. Bare - not much grows there so it's a lot of surface rock. However, it isn't perfectly smooth, so you get large areas of shallow march in the depressions. I also like the hand-waving "we'll drain it!" Draining thousands of square miles and making it ready for farming may be beyond our ability. Look how hard it was to dig the Panama Canal. Or, watch a documentary on building the oil industry in Alaska. Making a single road to the fields was a nightmare and you want to transform the entire landscape.
You are also off by orders of magnitude for your migration stats. Moving within a city, or even the next city over is not a migration. According to this article 2 million left California over 10 years. That's 200k/year and California has 12% of the US population. So we get 1.8 million as a rough estimate - far below your tens of millions.
Urban decay has not been successfully ignored. It is being ignored - and forcing cities to consider bankruptcy. I'm sure all the people who will lose their jobs or get pay cuts won't successfully ignore the problem.
Good luck with your hand-waving away of big problems - I hope you live somewhere away from the coast and pack heat to protect what's yours from those who don't have anything and are starving. (Also: Read up on the Dust Bowl - it caused hundreds of thousands of people to move and was one of the most horrible times in our nation's history.)
I imagine we could do it for tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. You vastly overstate the cost.
The planned expansion of the port is going to cost over $1 billion - and that's after $500 million in expansion less than 10 years ago. The only thing I can think of that might approach the scope of a new port is the Big Dig project - and that cost $14 billion. However, it didn't involve transforming several miles of coastline. I recommend you do some research on the cost of huge projects (highways are a good start) - you seem to be orders of magnitude off in your estimate.
The tundra is bare, rocky and marshy - not exactly great farming. As for the forest - that's the same strategy as Brazil is using: Cut down a bunch of forest. Farm it. Use up the land. Repeat. It doesn't work because the soil is crap, and you have to keep destroying forest - kind of like army ants on the move - destroy everything and move on.
A person changing location is called moving. A 100,000 people moving is a migration. Even 100,000 people moving around isn't a big deal as long as it evens out somewhat. i.e. - 20k move to NY and 20k move from NY, etc. However, when they move in one direction it is a problem - check out the social conflicts Houston had/has with the Katrina refugees.
And hollow centers are a huge problem that are causing cities to go broke. Abandoned neighborhoods still need their sewers and water pipes maintained because they connect to other sewers and water pipes. However, there are no tax revenues to help pay for it. That's why Detroit is buying these areas and demolishing them. So, while the population gets to ignore the problem - city officials can't. The problem hasn't magically been solved - it's been ignored.
The problem is we are talking a time period of decades - not centuries. That's the core of the problem. If it were taking centuries, we probably wouldn't have noticed. Also, while the land is worth less it is hardly worthless. How much is the Port of New Orleans worth? It is the largest in the country based on volume. Now, how do we move that? We can't just create a good port without hundreds of billions in investment and maintenance (dredging and the like).
Even if you were correct here - I can tell you know nothing about farming because this is basic agronomy. You need a balance between temperature, hours of sunlight and solar intensity to get optimal growing and without the right mix, some plants won't grow at all. That's why greenhouses need to use artificial light to grow crops out of season.
Keep track of your grocery bill - we are experiencing a drought this year and can expect food prices to jump 20-30%. How do you think sustained lower production is going to affect prices?
Buy land? What land are you going to find? The best land is already being cultivated and won't be for sale - prices are already ridiculously high. (Farmers generally farm because they want to - not because they'll get rich. With prices in Iowa right now, even a small farmer can cash out for $2+ million.) The "newly available" land won't have the rich soil necessary to produce good crops - there hasn't been the centuries of biomass to build up the soil.
In practice, we have done those things. It generally involved large numbers of people dying in the migration. (You have died of dysentry.) Oh - and people killing whoever they found who was already there. Except in today's world the natives are armed with the same weapons.
Honestly - I wish humanity would deal with the problem smoothly like you are predicting. However, given how people are treating refugees and immigrants around the world seem to indicate it won't go smoothly. Do you want a refugee camp for people from the coast in your town? Even if you do - how much are you willing to pay to support it?
Let's follow your logic.
If a home breaks (or gets submerged) we'll build another one. Okay - how much is Miami worth? Or New Orleans? Let's say we need 1 million new homes - at $150k each that will be $150 billion. Now we also need the infrastructure - roads, schools, power lines, gas lines, highways, etc. Let's call that another $150 billion. Now we'll need the factories, buildings, strip malls and all the other places for these people to work. Call it another $150 billion. So, to ballpark it, we need $500 billion to create a new city of 4-5 million people. (4 million is the estimate for number of people displaced from rising sea levels.)
As for farming, you really don't understand the specifics of food production. Plants need certain amounts of heat and sunlight. Unfortunately, as places further north warm up, it doesn't mean we can suddenly grow "southern" crops - the length of day isn't right. Sure - they will probably grow, but the yield will be much lower for a decade or two until seed companies can hammer out the right genetics. (If they can.) Which means - lower food production. This also ignores the differences in soil and everything else that have established where we grow certain plants.
It's true there are other things that make up society - and those won't go away. Unfortunately, no one is going to want to share their rich, fertile land with people who were displaced by rising sea levels which means eminent domain claims will be tied up in the courts for years. Plus, most towns don't like large numbers of "outsiders", so look for increased enforcement of laws regarding homeless people. No one is out to get the homeless - until they are in your neighborhood.
Oh - to answer your original question: Where is the proof that infrastructure is brittle? Take a look at rolling blackouts, gridlock during rush hour, failing railroad lines and the volatility of gas prices. That's your proof. With good infrastructure those would be eliminated. (Gas prices spike every year when refineries have to perform maintenance or switch what they produce.)
The real problem with your argument can be traced to the basic principle: In theory, theory and practice are the same thing. In practice - they aren't. In this case - in theory we could just rebuild everything but, in practice, there are a million things that will go wrong.
Unless, of course, you get the safe that's rated for computer media.
This is an area where you really need to RTFTS (tech specs) as it will tell you EXACTLY what kind of fire, temperature and duration it will protect a specific kind of media for.
Now, repeat your experiment using salt water in your measuring cup, instead of fresh water, and float fresh water ice cubes in it. That will more accurately model reality and that's REAL science, my friend.
Note: What do you think will happen when the fresh water melting lowers the density of the liquid (fresh water is less dense than salt water) but the overall mass remains constant?
This already exists. These votes are scheduled every few years to keep the scheduling simple.
Stop acting like a politician and calling for a new law/amendment when we just have to use the tools we have. Want them out? Vote them out and don't reelect them.
Yes, when is 'Dump Your Congress(wo)man Day?'
We refer to this as "Election Day", and it happens on a regular basis.
No, the ID is too short to hide behind.
That is one of the greatest smack-talk comebacks of all time. My hat is off to you good Sir.
Personally, I prefer using a little bit of it for both.
In case you haven't noticed, the world is a messed up place. If we, as a country, don't have the ability to kill people efficiently, and in large numbers, we likely wouldn't exist as a country. Someone else, willing to spend money on killing people, would come in and take over.
As for welfare - I like the sig for "shutdown -p now" - "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization." I'm not saying that we should support a professional welfare class, but we should make sure everyone has BASIC needs so they don't decide to start mugging people and robbing houses to avoid starvation..
We could just keep an eye out for this guy.
It's only a matter of time until people start searching for middle earth.
Middle-earth can be found in the area we now call New Zealand.
Half a billion dollars? Are you fucking kidding me?!
That only sounds like a lot. If a university with 50,000 faculty, staff and students announces a $1 million dollar upgrade it wouldn't seem too bad. Now multiply that by 6,000 to account for a US population of 300 million people and you would get to $6 billion. So, half a billion is pretty reasonable.
Also, since you mentioned iPads - there is a world of difference between enterprise equipment and commercial equipment. You might not care if your system dies due to a failed power supply, but these servers can't go down. Which means redundant power supplies that are hot swappable. Plus you are going to have multiple drives with hardware RAID that are also hot swappable. You might think enterprise equipment isn't needed or is too expensive - until you have to tell your boss 50,000 people aren't going to get their checks on time since a server went down.
So if we are using (expensive) TOW missiles to clear entire buildings, how does an AT4 cause too much damage in urban fighting? Not to mention the CS variant is specifically designed for use in an urban environment.
Also, one important purpose of the attack helicopter is to get around (over) all those OTHER pesky buildings that ruin the line-of-sight to the target. Plus, the TOW is guided, (unlike the AT4 - but not the new XM25), greatly reducing the chance of missing the target and hitting the window beside it where a family is cowering on the floor. However, the TOW range is far greater than the XM25 (4500 meters), and the explosive payload is also far greater.
Even with the new weapon system, I don't see the TOW going away any time soon.
You missed the obvious...
Oh my God... It's full of stars.
Now, I am not a lawyer, but it seems that all of your points are flawed due to one fact: You are allowed to represent yourself.
Also, as a side note, don't try turning a courtroom into a political statement. If you annoy the judge, they can fine you or imprison you for contempt of court.
Here's some big differences:
Really, if you wanted to be in that comfortable middle class like your dad, you would probably have to give up a lot of comforts they just didn't have back then - and it's a lot nicer to have air conditioning instead of a fan.
Also, you might want to recheck your definitions. I'm guessing that you are spending a lot of money that you don't have to if you are only living a "boring" middle-class life. Or, you might not realize what a middle-class life actually is. The middle class doesn't have everything they want, but they do have everything they need - plus a little left over for nice things on occasion.
Middle-class vacations back in the 70s was loading the family in the car and driving to visit relatives and staying with them to save costs. (Although camping was a good alternative.) Flying somewhere and staying in a hotel was definitely a sign of being upper-middle-class at the very least. Plus, do you buy designer clothes or buy "regular" brands? Middle-class is picking up your day-to-day clothes at Target or Walmart, not Macy's or a specialty store. Plus, the middle class does things like clip coupons, wait for sales or other things to stretch their dollar.
My first line of defense is that I try to keep things to a minimum. If I have more than 3 things going on, I will delay most of them and do a mediocre job on the others because I'm not focused.
However, to answer your question, the best strategy I've ever used was a single notebook to track everything. Every item gets a bullet and every day gets a new page. If something didn't get done, it gets rewritten on the page for the next day. That means everything is in one place and having to rewrite the items every day is annoying, so items I don't really care about will be dropped from the list. If necessary, the bullets can reference outside information like, "Implement request in John's email 'Need a favor' received on 10/24/2010."
If you decide to resurrect an old project, you can flip through the notebook to find the bullet items regarding that project to help get yourself back up to speed.
If that statement were true, we'd be starving (needing 1.5 earths to survive). Clearly the fellow has no idea what he's talking about.
What he means is that we need 1.5 Earths to survive in the long-term.
Think of the Earth like a retirement fund. You can take out more than the interest earned each year, but that means at some point in the future the account will be at zero. In this case, we are doing things like cutting down old-growth forests to make more farmland, overfishing, and doing other things that the Earth cannot replenish or repair on a human time scale. Unfortunately, when the Earth account balance hits zero, losing our home has a much broader meaning than having to move into a nursing home.