There is decreasing amounts of doubt that the world is warming up. The disconnect occurs in the automatic assumption that
1. humans are causing it
Indeed. The problem most skeptics see isn't in the argument itself for global warming--it's in the argument, nay assumption, that it MUST be manmade. Because recent warming trends coincide with the Industrial Revolution, greens cry "It's obvious the two are connected!" and climate scientists, who have an overwhelmingly self-selected green bias (after all, the field attracts certain kinds of people), have a vested interest in minimizing the Little Ice Age and Mediaeval Warm Period and making the recent warming seem more intense and unprecedented than it actually is. If we pull back and look at a 100,000-year cycle (thanks to ice core data) instead of just the past 1,000 or 2,000 years, we see that current temperatures aren't unsurprising at all and that indeed we're overdue for warmer temperatures (overdue, because for reasonse which we still can't explain temperatures in the Holocene were relatively steady for about 10,000 years at a time when, according to the cyclical ice core temperature graph, they should have risen as they're finally doing now):
There's just no logical reason to ascribe a majority of current climate change to anthropogenic causes.
2. we MUST do something DRASTIC AND IMMEDIATE to stop it
That's the one that loses most people, even those willing to assume that current warming is anthropogenic. How can we assume these changes will be bad for mankind--so bad, in fact, that possibly destroying all industrialized civilizations and dragging them back into stagnation through oppressive resource taxes is preferable to using technology to adapt? When larger timescales show such temperatures aren't unusual, where's the justification? While undeniably bad for small island nations which will be submerged, and for some poor and unstable nations which may see more instability as a result of climate change, the already-industrialized world could easily adapt, survive, and prosper. Given that, why should anyone in the already-industrialized world risk economic meltdown and chaos to avert something they can probably adapt to easily?
For some nations, global warming may even be a big plus. While the southwestern U.S. will probably suffer, the farming belt will just shift north and the country at large will continue to prosper. Canada will benefit greatly from more usable farmland. Europe is a toss-up because ocean and air currents which currently heat it are unpredictable, so anything could happen; but no matter what does, they have the economic and industrial power to cope. Wealthy island nations like Japan will find ways to cope and build sea walls and other defenses or adaptations. China will probably see desert shifting, but increased desertification isn't a foregone conclusion especially with their rapidly-expanding industrialization and huge workforce. Russia would probably benefit.
Indeed, it's only the third world--Africa, parts of Latin America, small island areas like Micronesia--which will certainly be negatively impacted. And while the humanitarian in me says, "It would be nice to help them," the realist in me says "Our civilizations got to the next level first. If the unadvanced civilizations wither away so that the advanced can prosper, that's how it should be."
We are never going to get off this rock and expand into space, safeguarding our civ
Since a majority of Americans self-identify as Christian, but not as belonging to a particular sect which disbelieves in organ donation, I think including religion in the mix argues in favor of opt-out organ donation. After all, mainline Christians believe that the soul exits the body upon death, leaving it an empty shell. The body is therefore meaningless and unimportant after death. Christian burial practices developed for the sake of the deceased's living relatives and friends, as a form of remembrance and respect, not out of any religious belief that the body should be kept whole--a purely social, not religious, artifact.
Some species are. Most of the 70+ extant species are not. Some like the grey whales were endangered, but have bounced back. The whales most commonly hunted by Japan and Norway, minkes, number nearly 1 million worldwide but are still listed as a threatened species by some groups thanks to environmentalist obstructionism and dishonesty.
There's no logical reason many species of whales shouldn't be hunted within a sustainable fishing framework, just environmentalist appeal to emotions.
> And they're smarter than you are.
But they taste good (well, to some people) and render excellent industrial oils (even useful for space applications, as used by NASA, thanks to their freeze resistance) and cosmetic bases.
30 years ago the situation for some whale species was dire and a moratorium seemed the only solution. Today whale population numbers for many species make them ideal candidates for sustainable whaling, and the whaling ban is an anachronism held in place by hateful environmental extremists who would gladly forbid you from killing and eating any animal, even cows and chickens.
People like you really piss me off. You go from Nazi Germany to Muslim extremism to immigration law, all the while avoiding the actual topic on hand (manned space exploration, overpopulation as a reason to expand off the planet).
Bullshit. Everything I said has direct bearing on why we will never get off this rock and colonize the rest of the solar system--at least if by "we" we mean the U.S., since we're talking about the American space program and that's what the parent article is about. The reasons I detailed above are why the U.S. is never going to get beyond low-earth orbit with manned vehicles again--instead we're going to have a succession of "new directions" with each new president which continually push manned space travel beyond LEO back into the distant future.
China will definitely get manned vehicles beyond LEO before the U.S. does since their space program (and their entire civilization) is making progress while ours is contracting. And, it's doubtful there'll ever be U.S. manned missions beyond LEO--at least in the lifetime of anyone who's an adult today--since in the coming decades our social and economic problems will get ever worse and we all know the money needed to address them will squeeze areas of the budget like NASA.
Come on, even if you don't believe our civilization will be in decline and too poor and focused elsewhere for innovative manned spaceflight in coming decades, surely you see that our manned space initiatives have been in decline for 30+ years and show no signs of progress. The last truly innovative manned project we undertook was Skylab--and that was 1973, ferchrissakes! The Shuttles were beautiful technology, but they were just glorified planes to LEO and a distraction from the real game of getting beyond it--and they helped trap manned flight in the LEO sinkhole all this time.
I won't take your bait, but I will have you know that you're a real douchebag fearmonger, and your statements are misguided at best.
It ain't fearmongering if it's true, my friend, and I haven't said one word about the past that isn't true or about the future which isn't plausible. Just read the news and you'll realize my scenarios aren't just plausible, they're likely--our whole society is fracturing around cultural and political faultlines. We've got people boycotting Arizona for trying to find a sensible way to deal with HALF A MILLION illegal immigrant state residents plus countless numbers who illegally pass through it; we've got Republican politicians getting more conservative and rediculigous while Democrat politicians get more liberal and apologist; we've got segregated public school classes (yep it's a real thing, Google it) for Latinos, Blacks, and Asians to study their own ethnic histories instead of an inclusive American history; we've got Texas ordering new textbooks which downplay evolution and Enlightenment thinkers like Thomas Jefferson; we've got American muslim extremists advocating violence against South Park's creators, planning the assassination of European cartoonists, and trying to plant car bombs in Times Square--and these and a whole lot more are all different faces of one thing: tribalism. America is no longer a nation where people of diverse backgrounds find common ground and work towards the center to create a strong nation capable of saving the Old World--twice--and getting to the moon and back. America is now in a post-national phase, an increasingly fractured civilization where tribalism and "ethnic nationalism" and the self-interest of smaller groups will rule. We simply will not be able to coordinate or override the priorities of various "tribes" within our system long enough to sustain a manned spaceflight initiative to Mars or the like. Our time on the stage as leaders in spaceflight (as in other areas) is over.
In my opinion, overpopulation is a myth
We're not overpopulated in the strict sense and won't be anytime soon--but there
It's my personal belief that we have to fix the problems now, discuss them, and introduce population controls that cut down on resource damage until we can determine the nature of the problems we face (without glib one-liners).
We will never do this. Western civilization has basically reached a tipping point, an existential crisis, in which it finds itself unwilling to protect and preserve itself--much less advance--thanks to the adoption of a radical cultural and moral relativism which promotes protecting freedom from being offended and group rights over freedom of expression and individual rights. The legacy of the Third Reich in Europe and of slavery in the New World is this existential crisis, in which the West has vowed not to oppress again--even if it means allowing others to oppress our entire civilization out of existence.
We refuse to even control our own borders and limit immigration, so we could never "introduce population controls that cut down on resource damage"; the result is that established Western democracies like the U.S. and those of Europe are being flooded by immigrants with no experience of true democracy or common effort beyond tribalism, who seek to remake their host countries to serve their particular interests according to their own selfish and undereducated desires. In the old days, immigrants were expected to acculturate and assimilate into their new country and be educated in and adopt its history and norms; today, immigrants expect their new country to acculturate and adjust to them, and to be educated in and adopt their history and norms. The natural result of this is to fracture the host country, and make it immolate its own values, culture, and norms wherever they come in conflict with the immigrants'. The debacle over South Park's recent Muhammad-in-a-bear-suit-who-was-actually-just-Santa episodes, and the liberal furor over Arizona's new sensible immigration enforcement law (while immigrants carrying Mexican flags protest it with violent rhetoric, people are being murdered or raped or kidnapped by illegal immigrants weekly if not daily, and Mexican drug cartels and Federales make armed incursions on our border with no reprisals), are just two recent American manifestations. And the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which had no problem displaying "Piss Christ" over the finger-wagging objections of politicians, has pulled even reverent depictions of Mohammad from its collection of Islamic art.
In Europe it's even worse; when artist Lars Vilks gave a presentation at one of Europe's oldest and most hallowed universities, this was the result:
many European commentators had a less admirable reaction. Stockholm News wrote "By deliberately insulting Muslims in this already-charged climate the artist placed himself in danger. Insulting people's deep-felt religious beliefs is not free speech it's hate speech." While the artist said he'd like to come back to the university and finish his talk, the university says it's not likely he'll be invited back because of the incident--so much for intellectual honesty in academe. The video linked above is the future of the American university as well, though it remains to be seen whether the violent protesters will be shouting "Allahu Akhbar" or "Por La Raza."
Meanwhile, totalitarian collectivist countries like China have been able to "introduce population controls that cut down on resource damage" and protect their own interests; while they're currently big polluters as they're still modernizing and industrializing, they face a future far brighter than the West's. Their population controls will ensure a manageable future population with adequate per-capita resources, and their efforts to maintain the
You can't say it's always "mindless" to "bash the whole H1B program, all Indian techies and Indian call centers"--there are a few who do it out of prejudice, but most Americans complain about these things for perfectly rational reasons.
"Buy American and Americans work." That was the well-advertised slogan of the 80s, and yet NAFTA and outsourcing empowered a transnational corporate world in opposition to the very values of localism and national pride which most Americans grew up embracing. Importing foreign workers and exporting American jobs are some of the most visible violations of these values.
The oft-repeated mantra is, "We don't have enough skilled workers, so we need H1B!" Then why does almost anyone in the tech sector know many skilled but unemployed Americans? And if there were a real shortage, introductory salaries and incentives would let the "free market" attract more Americans to become qualified for tech jobs in the near future--but instead, H1B keeps introductory salaries and incentives artificially low and _creates_ the very shortage tech employers complain about!
"Call center work (or 7-11 clerking, or construction, or industrial farm work, or any 'unskilled labor') is drudgery no Americans are willing to do!" Bullshit. Maybe they won't do it for minimum-wage-or-less like immigrants or outsourced labor, but if not unfairly undercut by immigrants or outsourcing there are millions of Americans who would gladly work any and every job. Just look at the damned unemployment rate, especially among minorities--it is patently unjust and unreasonable to support immigration and job outsourcing when so many Americans are left jobless. If a job is vital and needs to get done, employer and employee will find the right pay each is willing to live with--the market will set fair pay in a fair, largely closed system. But in an open system filled with endless hordes of immigrants and outsourced labor willing to work for wages no American can live on--unless he's willing to live in a closet and eat the cheapest processed foodcrap imaginable and never even dream of supporting a family and kids--employees become a disposable commodity and employers will exploit the unjust and unnatural imbalance.
So, while what happened to this H1B guy is inherently unfair, criminal, and wrong--it is the foreseeable result of the H1B program, which along with outsourcing and uncontrolled immigration is creating an imbalanced market where workers both skilled and unskilled are disposable commodities instead of people.
And that doesn't even begin to touch on the cultural issues. The Western world, and especially the U.S., is currently committing cultural suicide by not limiting immigration to rational levels. We are a nation built on immigration, that's true--but it has never neared this uncontrolled torrent before: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5871651411393887069#
Yes, and [what would become] Germany and France had been invading each other back and forth, with some British support on the Continent thrown in, since the middle of the 19th century with no major bloodshed or escalation. Small wars over border areas were so common they were pretty much considered a rite of passage and an opportunity for adventure and national pride. People on both sides _looked forward_ to another chance to swipe some territory from rivals, and had no idea that technology and tactics would render WWI into something very different from the "glorious wars" their fathers and grandfathers told stories about.
I always wonder if I have a problem somewhat opposite to yours. I can see the 3D effects in movies just fine; but, real life doesn't appear anything like them, so I've never understood the appeal of 3D movies. 2D movies much more resemble my day-to-day visual perception of the world.
I certainly have good depth perception in the real world, but to me that seems to result from the sort of mental model I have of the space around me rather than actively changing visual 3D depth cues. Staring at the real world to me is like staring at a 2D movie screen, but one that continues past my field-of-view and gives me depth cues as I or my head movies. But it "looks flat," not at all like a 3D movie which looks very unnatural to me. And since the 3D in 3D films doesn't appear like anything I experience in the real world, it has no appeal to me and detracts from the film.
It certainly is NOT a troll to mention paedophilia with regard to Lewis Carroll. There's a subsection about his purported paedophilia in his Wikipedia entry:
Moreover, most of his 20th century biographers have at least hinted at the possibility, and many discussed it outright--any biography of the man would be sorely incomplete without mentioning that the theory of Carroll as repressed paedophile permeated much 20th century analysis of the man and his work. The fact that one of his major hobbies was photographing nude female children (including Alice Liddell), and another was spending hours regaling female children with stories, together with his complete lack of a known sexual or romantic life with any adults, an unexplained sudden break with Alice Liddell's family for reasons unknown, and the destruction of some of his photos and papers, certainly all play into that notion.
That isn't to say that it's true, and recent scholarship vigorously debates the claim that Carroll was a paedophile. However, it's safe to say that the traditional scholarly conception of Lewis Carroll is as a celibate paedophile, while newer scholarship challenges this older presumption. For example, his photography of nude girl children and extensive time spent in their company can be explained by odd Victorian cultural fascinations that aren't necessarily sexual--the innocence of childhood and nudity as an expression of innocence (before the Biblical fall) were common Victorian memes which often came together. The missing papers are still missing and could have confirmed or refuted paedophilia as a factor in the break with Alice's family, but a document penned by his family found in 1996 suggests they removed or destroyed the papers because their content suggested an affair with a governess or adult member of the Liddell family. Unless they're found, we'll never know for sure whether Carroll was romantically interested in adult Liddell women or 11-year-old Alice; scholars will continue to debate, and the theory that Carroll was a paedophile will remain viable (although I think it's safe to say that scholarship since the 1996 discovery is largely contrarian toward the traditional "paedophile camp").
>Because every time that happens the safety protocols fail, and Echostar don't want to be held liable for people getting shot by gangsters.
Don't worry, Wesley Crusher always finds a way to fix everything that the adults were too bull-headed to think of--usually involving tachyon fields and repulsor beams. That's why Wesley Crusher gets all the space chicks wet.
I for one would never support any religion capable of such an atrocity, much less one which would conspire at all levels to cover it up instead of seeking forgiveness and making reparations. The world would be a much better place if primitive religions were treated as the bunkum they are. Why tax fuels, carbon, tobacco, or alcohol, when the real danger is the superstition and intolerance emanating from the pulpit? We should be taxing churches instead of making them tax-exempt.
>Feel free to compare them to Islam if you like (and there's >some interesting comparisons there)... but drawing on the >Taliban? Come on!
Hmm, Mormons and the Taliban... They both hate gays, check. They each treat women as subordinate to men, check. They each have a history of violent intolerance of outsiders, check. They both have a bizarre fixation on facial hair, check. They both use religious schools to indoctrinate the young, check. They both dictate special clothing (burqas, sacred underwear), check.
Yep, Mormons (and other intolerant fundamentalist sects) are the American Taliban.
Not to mention the fact that slum cities in South America--and I presume in Southeast Asia, though I haven't looked into that specifically--expand by destroying neighboring forest. When city authorities put up boundary walls in places like slums around Rio de Janeiro, the slumdwellers bitch about it.
Well, stop cutting down rainforest to build shacks, and you won't have to be walled in.
Seriously, promoting slumdwelling? Why not write articles about the real problems--like the population explosion these slums help cause by concentrating people, and hence increasing reproduction beyond sustainable rates? Seriously, most third-world slums are criminal havens which produce no useful arts and sciences, contribute nothing to mankind and the progress of Civilization, and export their criminality and overpopulation back to the developed world.
> We don't need humans in space for other than > entertainment reasons at this point in time.
I disagree entirely. We're never going to answer the big questions by manipulating tiny little payload-limited rovers from millions of miles away on a speed-of-light-imposed time delay. As an example, if there really is microbial life on Mars, we've probably been accomplishing nothing but cooking it with the primitive methods we've been trying to use to find its traces. If instead we'd had either a manned landing or a presumably cheaper and/or safer manned spacecraft in Mars orbit directly manipulating large rovers, with far more extensive scientific testing capabilities, in realtime--we'd have found any traces of past or present life if they exist near the surface, without question.
That to me is a world-changing event waiting to happen--finding irrefutable traces of life on another planet would broaden more minds all across the globe than any other event in human history. Most people are still very tribal and local and narrow-minded folks who put themselves, their inherited beliefs, and their limited view of the universe at the center of everything they do. Proof that life is so common as to exist right next door elsewhere in our solar system, and that Earth isn't a special and privileged ball placed by God at the center of the universe with everything out there just to support us, would remake the way many or most people view...everything.
If that isn't worth tens of billions of dollars, nothing is. We can't retard the progress and evolution of all of mankind to make the poorest few percent a little less poor. We don't let the slowest learner in the class dictate the speed and level of education for everyone else. It's sad, but by necessity some few people will always fall behind; we can try to help them as well as we can without dragging everyone else down, but ultimately we must compromise with a few to advance the many.
Manned exploration of our solar system is expensive, but it's the only way to definitively answer the big questions and so must be undertaken sooner rather than later. We put men on the Moon within less than a decade after committing to it, nearly 50 years ago. Today's goal should be putting people either on Mars or within Mars orbit with large scientific capabilities within 20 years. It can and should be done, and if when there they find definitive traces of past or present Martian life...the world will change, evolve, and broaden almost overnight.
I'm all for switching from fossil fuels to renewables as quickly as is practicable. I can hardly wait for the day when I can go into a dealership and buy an affordable electric car, and can charge it on a nuclear-fed electric grid instead of the coal-based grid I'm on now. I want solar panels on every roof where they'd do any good and wind turbines wherever they'd be useful. BUT, we don't have to risk our economy to get there. We don't have to be taken in by lies and exaggerations to get there.
Climate change is a fact. How much of it is anthropogenic is far from certain. What we should do about it is, basically, the same thing we should do regardless--cleaner, renewable energy is the logical future in any event. But the AGW alarmists would have us cripple our economies with carbon taxes and gas taxes and all sorts of boondoggles to try to make the change quicker, whereas the reality is, as is pointed out in the video discussion linked above, we should be slow and steady and reasonable about changing our economy to rely less on fossil fuels. Being too hasty and redirecting too many resources will end up killing millions more through aid cuts than will be killed by climate change.
>Superman is not a man. He is an alien from the planet Krypton. So >this is NOT "the first time a man flew without mechanical aid."
And hence my favorite Tarantino fanboyism, courtesy of Kill Bill Vol. 2:
Bill: "As you know, l'm quite keen on comic books. Especially the ones about superheroes. I find the whole mythology surrounding superheroes fascinating. Take my favorite superhero, Superman. Not a great comic book. Not particularly well-drawn. But the mythology... The mythology is not only great, it's unique.... Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there's the superhero and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears - the glasses, the business suit - that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent. He's weak... he's unsure of himself... he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race."
>Most European and Asian countries already have gas >prices more than twice as high as ours. Just >imagine the massive shift in capital to innovative >startups that would have occurred over the last >two decades had the US taxed gasoline appropriately.
I see this argument frequently, but it ignores the simple reality that unlike in Europe and Asia, the American economy is based on a highly mobile workforce able to commute great distances by automobile. The middle class, in particular, is enabled by and enriched by the automobile and cheap gasoline--the wealthier can live in expensive neighborhoods close to work, and the poor live wherever they can while commuting as little as possible; but, the middle class often work in areas where they could either not afford nearby housing which caters to the more affluent, or where nearby housing caters to the poor.
That's not always the case, of course, but it often is and the middle class has thrived on the ability to live in cheaper yet comfortable neighborhoods further from job centers--i.e., living in the suburbs while commuting to the city, or living in the country and commuting to the burbs. There's also a greater mobility and variety of jobs available to the middle class thanks to cheap gas: where I live, many commute to Washington, D.C., many others to Richmond, and a few to Charlottesville--meaning the job markets of 2.5 major cities are effectively local. Tax gas at a high rate, and people will have less employment mobility, fewer competitive opportunities, and lower overall wages due to the lowered competition among employers in formerly-neighboring employment centers. Additionally, with permanently expensive gas making long commutes cost-prohibitive for the middle class, there would be a huge migration out of the burbs and into more urban areas--where are all the urban poor going to move when whole cities are gentrified almost overnight? Into deserted suburbs with few native local job opportunities?
Tax gas at a high rate, and the mobile workforce and all the competitive advantages it bestows evaporates; the middle class would be eviscerated, and the poor would be displaced. Like it or not, there is no viable public and/or mass transit in most of the U.S.--we haven't needed it thanks to cheap gas, nor has it been as practical as in Europe thanks to our sprawling landmass.
So, do we heavily invest in public/mass transit now in a crash program, to the tune of trillions of dollars almost all at once, so we can end our reliance on cheap gas? No, that's impractical, too expensive, and no one has either the political will or political capital. Do we just levy those high gas taxes, and see if the dire predictions are false? No, because even if it wouldn't destroy the middle class, it would destroy so many political careers that no one is dumb enough to try it--remember that when oil stayed above $100/barrel for a record number of weeks not long ago and U.S. gas prices stayed at record levels, populist anger boiled so hot that Congress was subpoenaing oil executives and threatening to tax their profits and repeal gas taxes and doing ANYTHING to keep a lid on popular sentiments that threatened to derail every incumbent in their wake.
So no, there will not be high gas taxes in this country, nor should there be. What there should be is a plan to phase out gasoline, not through punitive taxes aimed at the working classes but through taxes and legislative pressures on automakers to phase in certain percentages of electric or hybrid vehicles by target dates. We mandate automakers to include lots of once-expensive tech which has since come down in manufacturing cost; why not, in the name of national security as well as the environment, mandate targeted percentages of electric offerings? If prices of new cars do rise in the short term while early adopters bear the brunt, so be it--the more financially challenged can stick with their old cars for a few years more until costs come down. It may seem unrealistic to exp
>Most of us have watched the fatty squeezing >down the aisle and dreaded the idea of them sitting next to us. Why should I have to put >up with someone like him taking up my space >on an already cramped airline seat?
Because you didn't pay for a First Class ticket, plebe, so suck it.;) Seriously, when you fly on a budget ticket or on a budget airline you have to expect getting crammed in next to...whoever. That's what makes it cheap. You never hear about anyone getting ejected from First Class for being too fat, because they don't pack you in like you're on the Middle Passage.
You seem to want First Class elbow room at steerage prices. For that you can't blame fat folks, you can blame your cheapness or poorness. Pony up the cash for guaranteed elbow room, or shut it; don't blame other people for YOUR problems.
Seriously, Kevin Smith isn't even very overweight. He's actually lost weight relative to how he looked in his earlier films, so I doubt he even qualifies as "obese" just "overweight". To kick him off a flight for his weight is a sign that the anti-fat hatred and discrimination we see among some in society has gone way too far. It's bad enough that we bombard people with unrealistic body images constantly on nearly every TV show, film, and magazine, which makes people (esp. women and young people) of "normal" body weight self-conscious; but, to promote outright discrimination and therefore hate of overweight people, even the slightly overweight like Kevin Smith, is unacceptable. We're not talking about the rare 500-lb. person who really does need to buy an extra seat to have adequate room, just an average overweight (and therefore, studies show, longer-lived relative to the underweight or even "normal") person.
I for one am glad the average weight in the U.S. is ballooning. Not only does it make me look more attractive relative to others, it makes discriminatory folks like you uncomfortable, and part of an endangered group of bigots. Fat people are one of the few minorities it's still "okay" to bully--but it's not right to bully anyone, least of all based on appearance, socially awkward behavior, or other shallow criteria. You'd think folks on Slashdot, especially, would be past the bullying stage, but I guess some people in any group will always hold social progress back...
>School lunches and SSI Disability... so you want >kids who's parents are too poor to get food for >lunch to suffer more in school than they are due >to their social problems, increasing the number >of poor in teh country due to lack of education >and you want people that are disabled to not be >able to survive?
Oh please, cut the tiny violins--this is just not even remotely true. I'm sure there are many kids in this country who benefit from subsidized school lunches, but raising the family income qualification threshold wouldn't leave those truly needy kids starving. When I was in school around 4th or 5th grade my sister and I got notifications that we qualified for reduced-price lunches, but naturally our parents never filled out the paperwork to receive them because we were a solidly middle-class, though certainly through hard work with little savings, family. All the way through high school we qualified for school lunch subsidies, but never used them because in no way did we need them. And yet, I'm sure many others in similar situations just thought "Hey, free money is free money!" and took the subsidies. I would never want to eliminate subsidies for truly needy kids, but I know for an absolute fact that many non-needy kids qualify due to some arbitrary income or other qualifications and that trimming the fat from the (20 BILLION $$$? WTF?) program is reasonable.
As for SSI disability, my mother gets around $850/month in disability payments. She used to work and be a very productive person, but in her early 30s had a psychotic break with the onset of schizophrenia. She's unable to work and I'm very glad the system is there to help her. HOWEVER, my father makes $58,000 a year, my retired grandfather gets around $50,000 a year in retirement pension + social security, and my mother lives with them. So effectively, their household makes over $100,000 a year to support 3 people, not including her disability payments. In that situation, my mother's payments are effectively unnecessary to supporting her, though they end up as a necessary part of the budget since my parents spend over $10,000/year on cigarettes and a few thousand a year on alcohol. One way of looking at that is, my mother's disability payments are in effect spent to enable tobacco and alcohol addictions. Do we really want federally funded SSI benefits going to $100,000+/year households, to be spent on cigarettes and alcohol? Granted, that's not the norm, but if my parents are doing it how many other solidly middle class households are getting unnecessary SSI? There should be much more stringent oversight. At $150 BILLION yearly, surely there's enough money to be trimmed to get us to Mars sooner rather than later.
No one wants to take support away from the neediest. But right now, many who don't truly need it qualify and exploit the system.
I'm NOT talking about a convertible swivel-tablet. The TC1100 and some other early Tablet PCs were fully slate form factor models, with a detachable keyboard as an option. When attached, it was just like a laptop; when detached, it was a slate. They were slightly thicker than the Lenovo of course, but that has less to do with using an x86 processor in the slate section instead of ARM, than with the technology of 5+ years ago. You could easily stick a ULV Core 2 in a slate today and get a form factor identical to the Lenovo or iPad, with the battery life being the only casualty. Is circa 10 hours battery life instead of 5 or so worth the inconvenience of changing OSes in the middle of use and so much added expense that I could've bought an iPad AND a laptop? Not many people will think so.
If it were within $100 of the iPad, the Lenovo would be a cool alternative for techies--but still an alternative, not "the real thing" most end users will want. At an estimated $999, it's an expensive miss. Again, for that much I could have a decent laptop and an iPad, or an iPad and a touchscreen netbook, or an iPad a desktop and a netbook, or an iPad an eReader and a netbook, or an iPad a 32" flatscreen and a desktop, or...you get the point. iPad's pricing is a game-changer here.
Dockable keyboard to switch from slate to laptop has been done long before, cf. the venerable Compaq TC1100, so that clearly isn't a killer feature (although I, and most long-term tablet enthusiasts, loved it and missed it when it was dropped from newer-gen Tablet PCs). Very nice, but no iPad killer, especially at the higher price.
The two OSes thing I also don't see as a killer feature. I realize the idea was probably, "Hey, an ARM CPU is needed to extend the battery life in slate mode, but anyone using a full-size laptop wants a full-size Windows 7--let's combine 'em for the best of both worlds!" Sorry Hannah fucking Montana, but you can't have the best of both worlds without getting the worst of both worlds, too, plus an even higher cost to include all that extra hardware. If I wanted a Win 7 machine, I'd want it to run the same Win 7 apps in slate mode too. If I wanted an ARM slate, I'd have made the decision to be satisfied with available apps and wouldn't want the OS changing every time I docked the keyboard. And if I really wanted the features of both, for the price (another article states "Lenovo said they're hoping to get the IdeaPad U1's price under $1000 for a May or June release") I could buy both an iPad and a full laptop, and have two fully functional devices each better suited to its purpose than one hybrid.
Sorry, there's still no mythical iPad killer. If this chimera were priced within $100 of the iPad it might be a contender, but not a sure thing. At somewhere just south of $1000 it's not even an also-ran compared with the iPad, it's a never-ran.
>Having read TFA, we know that we're >not talking about downloaded >digital photos/videos, we're talking >about physical media that was ordered >and shipped through the mail.
Max Hardcore's obscenity convictions are due to items shipped through the mail AND *video streamed from his website*, including preview trailers for movies shipped through the mail.
Why is anything on a website subject to "local jurisdiction" and "community standards" of the place where the end user is located? Isn't the website actually located wherever the web server is located, and didn't the end user basically do the virtual equivalent of traveling to that locality and bringing the content back with him?
I think that's a much better way to look at it, and doesn't create the problem of essentially, as you suggest, having to apply the strictest local standard to all content anywhere on the net. In my model, if the content is acceptable wherever the web server is located, then it's safe. Anyone wanting to enforce local community standards of other areas would then have to try to prosecute the end users, their own residents, for transporting obscenity across state lines in commerce, or somesuch.
Slashdot Mirror
There is decreasing amounts of doubt that the world is warming up. The disconnect occurs in the automatic assumption that
1. humans are causing it
Indeed. The problem most skeptics see isn't in the argument itself for global warming--it's in the argument, nay assumption, that it MUST be manmade. Because recent warming trends coincide with the Industrial Revolution, greens cry "It's obvious the two are connected!" and climate scientists, who have an overwhelmingly self-selected green bias (after all, the field attracts certain kinds of people), have a vested interest in minimizing the Little Ice Age and Mediaeval Warm Period and making the recent warming seem more intense and unprecedented than it actually is. If we pull back and look at a 100,000-year cycle (thanks to ice core data) instead of just the past 1,000 or 2,000 years, we see that current temperatures aren't unsurprising at all and that indeed we're overdue for warmer temperatures (overdue, because for reasonse which we still can't explain temperatures in the Holocene were relatively steady for about 10,000 years at a time when, according to the cyclical ice core temperature graph, they should have risen as they're finally doing now):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Ice_Age_Temperature.png
And heck, if we look back even further with million-year timescales, we see that the Earth was significantly warmer for long geologic periods of time:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png
There's just no logical reason to ascribe a majority of current climate change to anthropogenic causes.
2. we MUST do something DRASTIC AND IMMEDIATE to stop it
That's the one that loses most people, even those willing to assume that current warming is anthropogenic. How can we assume these changes will be bad for mankind--so bad, in fact, that possibly destroying all industrialized civilizations and dragging them back into stagnation through oppressive resource taxes is preferable to using technology to adapt? When larger timescales show such temperatures aren't unusual, where's the justification? While undeniably bad for small island nations which will be submerged, and for some poor and unstable nations which may see more instability as a result of climate change, the already-industrialized world could easily adapt, survive, and prosper. Given that, why should anyone in the already-industrialized world risk economic meltdown and chaos to avert something they can probably adapt to easily?
For some nations, global warming may even be a big plus. While the southwestern U.S. will probably suffer, the farming belt will just shift north and the country at large will continue to prosper. Canada will benefit greatly from more usable farmland. Europe is a toss-up because ocean and air currents which currently heat it are unpredictable, so anything could happen; but no matter what does, they have the economic and industrial power to cope. Wealthy island nations like Japan will find ways to cope and build sea walls and other defenses or adaptations. China will probably see desert shifting, but increased desertification isn't a foregone conclusion especially with their rapidly-expanding industrialization and huge workforce. Russia would probably benefit.
Indeed, it's only the third world--Africa, parts of Latin America, small island areas like Micronesia--which will certainly be negatively impacted. And while the humanitarian in me says, "It would be nice to help them," the realist in me says "Our civilizations got to the next level first. If the unadvanced civilizations wither away so that the advanced can prosper, that's how it should be."
We are never going to get off this rock and expand into space, safeguarding our civ
Since a majority of Americans self-identify as Christian, but not as belonging to a particular sect which disbelieves in organ donation, I think including religion in the mix argues in favor of opt-out organ donation. After all, mainline Christians believe that the soul exits the body upon death, leaving it an empty shell. The body is therefore meaningless and unimportant after death. Christian burial practices developed for the sake of the deceased's living relatives and friends, as a form of remembrance and respect, not out of any religious belief that the body should be kept whole--a purely social, not religious, artifact.
>They're endangered.
Some species are. Most of the 70+ extant species are not. Some like the grey whales were endangered, but have bounced back. The whales most commonly hunted by Japan and Norway, minkes, number nearly 1 million worldwide but are still listed as a threatened species by some groups thanks to environmentalist obstructionism and dishonesty.
There's no logical reason many species of whales shouldn't be hunted within a sustainable fishing framework, just environmentalist appeal to emotions.
> And they're smarter than you are.
But they taste good (well, to some people) and render excellent industrial oils (even useful for space applications, as used by NASA, thanks to their freeze resistance) and cosmetic bases.
30 years ago the situation for some whale species was dire and a moratorium seemed the only solution. Today whale population numbers for many species make them ideal candidates for sustainable whaling, and the whaling ban is an anachronism held in place by hateful environmental extremists who would gladly forbid you from killing and eating any animal, even cows and chickens.
People like you really piss me off. You go from Nazi Germany to Muslim extremism to immigration law, all the while avoiding the actual topic on hand (manned space exploration, overpopulation as a reason to expand off the planet).
Bullshit. Everything I said has direct bearing on why we will never get off this rock and colonize the rest of the solar system--at least if by "we" we mean the U.S., since we're talking about the American space program and that's what the parent article is about. The reasons I detailed above are why the U.S. is never going to get beyond low-earth orbit with manned vehicles again--instead we're going to have a succession of "new directions" with each new president which continually push manned space travel beyond LEO back into the distant future.
China will definitely get manned vehicles beyond LEO before the U.S. does since their space program (and their entire civilization) is making progress while ours is contracting. And, it's doubtful there'll ever be U.S. manned missions beyond LEO--at least in the lifetime of anyone who's an adult today--since in the coming decades our social and economic problems will get ever worse and we all know the money needed to address them will squeeze areas of the budget like NASA.
Come on, even if you don't believe our civilization will be in decline and too poor and focused elsewhere for innovative manned spaceflight in coming decades, surely you see that our manned space initiatives have been in decline for 30+ years and show no signs of progress. The last truly innovative manned project we undertook was Skylab--and that was 1973, ferchrissakes! The Shuttles were beautiful technology, but they were just glorified planes to LEO and a distraction from the real game of getting beyond it--and they helped trap manned flight in the LEO sinkhole all this time.
I won't take your bait, but I will have you know that you're a real douchebag fearmonger, and your statements are misguided at best.
It ain't fearmongering if it's true, my friend, and I haven't said one word about the past that isn't true or about the future which isn't plausible. Just read the news and you'll realize my scenarios aren't just plausible, they're likely--our whole society is fracturing around cultural and political faultlines. We've got people boycotting Arizona for trying to find a sensible way to deal with HALF A MILLION illegal immigrant state residents plus countless numbers who illegally pass through it; we've got Republican politicians getting more conservative and rediculigous while Democrat politicians get more liberal and apologist; we've got segregated public school classes (yep it's a real thing, Google it) for Latinos, Blacks, and Asians to study their own ethnic histories instead of an inclusive American history; we've got Texas ordering new textbooks which downplay evolution and Enlightenment thinkers like Thomas Jefferson; we've got American muslim extremists advocating violence against South Park's creators, planning the assassination of European cartoonists, and trying to plant car bombs in Times Square--and these and a whole lot more are all different faces of one thing: tribalism. America is no longer a nation where people of diverse backgrounds find common ground and work towards the center to create a strong nation capable of saving the Old World--twice--and getting to the moon and back. America is now in a post-national phase, an increasingly fractured civilization where tribalism and "ethnic nationalism" and the self-interest of smaller groups will rule. We simply will not be able to coordinate or override the priorities of various "tribes" within our system long enough to sustain a manned spaceflight initiative to Mars or the like. Our time on the stage as leaders in spaceflight (as in other areas) is over.
In my opinion, overpopulation is a myth
We're not overpopulated in the strict sense and won't be anytime soon--but there
It's my personal belief that we have to fix the problems now, discuss them, and introduce population controls that cut down on resource damage until we can determine the nature of the problems we face (without glib one-liners).
We will never do this. Western civilization has basically reached a tipping point, an existential crisis, in which it finds itself unwilling to protect and preserve itself--much less advance--thanks to the adoption of a radical cultural and moral relativism which promotes protecting freedom from being offended and group rights over freedom of expression and individual rights. The legacy of the Third Reich in Europe and of slavery in the New World is this existential crisis, in which the West has vowed not to oppress again--even if it means allowing others to oppress our entire civilization out of existence.
We refuse to even control our own borders and limit immigration, so we could never "introduce population controls that cut down on resource damage"; the result is that established Western democracies like the U.S. and those of Europe are being flooded by immigrants with no experience of true democracy or common effort beyond tribalism, who seek to remake their host countries to serve their particular interests according to their own selfish and undereducated desires. In the old days, immigrants were expected to acculturate and assimilate into their new country and be educated in and adopt its history and norms; today, immigrants expect their new country to acculturate and adjust to them, and to be educated in and adopt their history and norms. The natural result of this is to fracture the host country, and make it immolate its own values, culture, and norms wherever they come in conflict with the immigrants'. The debacle over South Park's recent Muhammad-in-a-bear-suit-who-was-actually-just-Santa episodes, and the liberal furor over Arizona's new sensible immigration enforcement law (while immigrants carrying Mexican flags protest it with violent rhetoric, people are being murdered or raped or kidnapped by illegal immigrants weekly if not daily, and Mexican drug cartels and Federales make armed incursions on our border with no reprisals), are just two recent American manifestations. And the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which had no problem displaying "Piss Christ" over the finger-wagging objections of politicians, has pulled even reverent depictions of Mohammad from its collection of Islamic art.
In Europe it's even worse; when artist Lars Vilks gave a presentation at one of Europe's oldest and most hallowed universities, this was the result:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zjZRLOdMgk
And while most Americans react with sentiments like these:
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20100513.html
many European commentators had a less admirable reaction. Stockholm News wrote "By deliberately insulting Muslims in this already-charged climate the artist placed himself in danger. Insulting people's deep-felt religious beliefs is not free speech it's hate speech." While the artist said he'd like to come back to the university and finish his talk, the university says it's not likely he'll be invited back because of the incident--so much for intellectual honesty in academe. The video linked above is the future of the American university as well, though it remains to be seen whether the violent protesters will be shouting "Allahu Akhbar" or "Por La Raza."
Meanwhile, totalitarian collectivist countries like China have been able to "introduce population controls that cut down on resource damage" and protect their own interests; while they're currently big polluters as they're still modernizing and industrializing, they face a future far brighter than the West's. Their population controls will ensure a manageable future population with adequate per-capita resources, and their efforts to maintain the
> What's a phone booth?
It's like a Police Box, but without the time travel...
You can't say it's always "mindless" to "bash the whole H1B program, all Indian techies and Indian call centers"--there are a few who do it out of prejudice, but most Americans complain about these things for perfectly rational reasons.
"Buy American and Americans work." That was the well-advertised slogan of the 80s, and yet NAFTA and outsourcing empowered a transnational corporate world in opposition to the very values of localism and national pride which most Americans grew up embracing. Importing foreign workers and exporting American jobs are some of the most visible violations of these values.
The oft-repeated mantra is, "We don't have enough skilled workers, so we need H1B!" Then why does almost anyone in the tech sector know many skilled but unemployed Americans? And if there were a real shortage, introductory salaries and incentives would let the "free market" attract more Americans to become qualified for tech jobs in the near future--but instead, H1B keeps introductory salaries and incentives artificially low and _creates_ the very shortage tech employers complain about!
"Call center work (or 7-11 clerking, or construction, or industrial farm work, or any 'unskilled labor') is drudgery no Americans are willing to do!" Bullshit. Maybe they won't do it for minimum-wage-or-less like immigrants or outsourced labor, but if not unfairly undercut by immigrants or outsourcing there are millions of Americans who would gladly work any and every job. Just look at the damned unemployment rate, especially among minorities--it is patently unjust and unreasonable to support immigration and job outsourcing when so many Americans are left jobless. If a job is vital and needs to get done, employer and employee will find the right pay each is willing to live with--the market will set fair pay in a fair, largely closed system. But in an open system filled with endless hordes of immigrants and outsourced labor willing to work for wages no American can live on--unless he's willing to live in a closet and eat the cheapest processed foodcrap imaginable and never even dream of supporting a family and kids--employees become a disposable commodity and employers will exploit the unjust and unnatural imbalance.
So, while what happened to this H1B guy is inherently unfair, criminal, and wrong--it is the foreseeable result of the H1B program, which along with outsourcing and uncontrolled immigration is creating an imbalanced market where workers both skilled and unskilled are disposable commodities instead of people.
And that doesn't even begin to touch on the cultural issues. The Western world, and especially the U.S., is currently committing cultural suicide by not limiting immigration to rational levels. We are a nation built on immigration, that's true--but it has never neared this uncontrolled torrent before: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5871651411393887069#
Yes, and [what would become] Germany and France had been invading each other back and forth, with some British support on the Continent thrown in, since the middle of the 19th century with no major bloodshed or escalation. Small wars over border areas were so common they were pretty much considered a rite of passage and an opportunity for adventure and national pride. People on both sides _looked forward_ to another chance to swipe some territory from rivals, and had no idea that technology and tactics would render WWI into something very different from the "glorious wars" their fathers and grandfathers told stories about.
I always wonder if I have a problem somewhat opposite to yours. I can see the 3D effects in movies just fine; but, real life doesn't appear anything like them, so I've never understood the appeal of 3D movies. 2D movies much more resemble my day-to-day visual perception of the world.
I certainly have good depth perception in the real world, but to me that seems to result from the sort of mental model I have of the space around me rather than actively changing visual 3D depth cues. Staring at the real world to me is like staring at a 2D movie screen, but one that continues past my field-of-view and gives me depth cues as I or my head movies. But it "looks flat," not at all like a 3D movie which looks very unnatural to me. And since the 3D in 3D films doesn't appear like anything I experience in the real world, it has no appeal to me and detracts from the film.
It certainly is NOT a troll to mention paedophilia with regard to Lewis Carroll. There's a subsection about his purported paedophilia in his Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll#Suggestions_of_paedophilia
Moreover, most of his 20th century biographers have at least hinted at the possibility, and many discussed it outright--any biography of the man would be sorely incomplete without mentioning that the theory of Carroll as repressed paedophile permeated much 20th century analysis of the man and his work. The fact that one of his major hobbies was photographing nude female children (including Alice Liddell), and another was spending hours regaling female children with stories, together with his complete lack of a known sexual or romantic life with any adults, an unexplained sudden break with Alice Liddell's family for reasons unknown, and the destruction of some of his photos and papers, certainly all play into that notion.
That isn't to say that it's true, and recent scholarship vigorously debates the claim that Carroll was a paedophile. However, it's safe to say that the traditional scholarly conception of Lewis Carroll is as a celibate paedophile, while newer scholarship challenges this older presumption. For example, his photography of nude girl children and extensive time spent in their company can be explained by odd Victorian cultural fascinations that aren't necessarily sexual--the innocence of childhood and nudity as an expression of innocence (before the Biblical fall) were common Victorian memes which often came together. The missing papers are still missing and could have confirmed or refuted paedophilia as a factor in the break with Alice's family, but a document penned by his family found in 1996 suggests they removed or destroyed the papers because their content suggested an affair with a governess or adult member of the Liddell family. Unless they're found, we'll never know for sure whether Carroll was romantically interested in adult Liddell women or 11-year-old Alice; scholars will continue to debate, and the theory that Carroll was a paedophile will remain viable (although I think it's safe to say that scholarship since the 1996 discovery is largely contrarian toward the traditional "paedophile camp").
>Too bad Playboy & other men's magazines never developed the pop-up
You must be using them wrong...
>Because every time that happens the safety protocols fail, and Echostar don't want to be held liable for people getting shot by gangsters.
Don't worry, Wesley Crusher always finds a way to fix everything that the adults were too bull-headed to think of--usually involving tachyon fields and repulsor beams. That's why Wesley Crusher gets all the space chicks wet.
>And they certainly don't advocate killing others to enforce
>what they believe.
Really? They did comparatively recently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre
I for one would never support any religion capable of such an atrocity, much less one which would conspire at all levels to cover it up instead of seeking forgiveness and making reparations. The world would be a much better place if primitive religions were treated as the bunkum they are. Why tax fuels, carbon, tobacco, or alcohol, when the real danger is the superstition and intolerance emanating from the pulpit? We should be taxing churches instead of making them tax-exempt.
>Feel free to compare them to Islam if you like (and there's
>some interesting comparisons there)... but drawing on the
>Taliban? Come on!
Hmm, Mormons and the Taliban... They both hate gays, check. They each treat women as subordinate to men, check. They each have a history of violent intolerance of outsiders, check. They both have a bizarre fixation on facial hair, check. They both use religious schools to indoctrinate the young, check. They both dictate special clothing (burqas, sacred underwear), check.
Yep, Mormons (and other intolerant fundamentalist sects) are the American Taliban.
Not to mention the fact that slum cities in South America--and I presume in Southeast Asia, though I haven't looked into that specifically--expand by destroying neighboring forest. When city authorities put up boundary walls in places like slums around Rio de Janeiro, the slumdwellers bitch about it.
http://www.globalenvision.org/2009/06/25/rio-de-janeiro-deforestation-plan
Well, stop cutting down rainforest to build shacks, and you won't have to be walled in.
Seriously, promoting slumdwelling? Why not write articles about the real problems--like the population explosion these slums help cause by concentrating people, and hence increasing reproduction beyond sustainable rates? Seriously, most third-world slums are criminal havens which produce no useful arts and sciences, contribute nothing to mankind and the progress of Civilization, and export their criminality and overpopulation back to the developed world.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5871651411393887069&ei=2d-KS_GVIoyFlgej9_W6CA&q=immigration+gumballs&hl=en
> We don't need humans in space for other than
> entertainment reasons at this point in time.
I disagree entirely. We're never going to answer the big questions by manipulating tiny little payload-limited rovers from millions of miles away on a speed-of-light-imposed time delay. As an example, if there really is microbial life on Mars, we've probably been accomplishing nothing but cooking it with the primitive methods we've been trying to use to find its traces. If instead we'd had either a manned landing or a presumably cheaper and/or safer manned spacecraft in Mars orbit directly manipulating large rovers, with far more extensive scientific testing capabilities, in realtime--we'd have found any traces of past or present life if they exist near the surface, without question.
That to me is a world-changing event waiting to happen--finding irrefutable traces of life on another planet would broaden more minds all across the globe than any other event in human history. Most people are still very tribal and local and narrow-minded folks who put themselves, their inherited beliefs, and their limited view of the universe at the center of everything they do. Proof that life is so common as to exist right next door elsewhere in our solar system, and that Earth isn't a special and privileged ball placed by God at the center of the universe with everything out there just to support us, would remake the way many or most people view...everything.
If that isn't worth tens of billions of dollars, nothing is. We can't retard the progress and evolution of all of mankind to make the poorest few percent a little less poor. We don't let the slowest learner in the class dictate the speed and level of education for everyone else. It's sad, but by necessity some few people will always fall behind; we can try to help them as well as we can without dragging everyone else down, but ultimately we must compromise with a few to advance the many.
Manned exploration of our solar system is expensive, but it's the only way to definitively answer the big questions and so must be undertaken sooner rather than later. We put men on the Moon within less than a decade after committing to it, nearly 50 years ago. Today's goal should be putting people either on Mars or within Mars orbit with large scientific capabilities within 20 years. It can and should be done, and if when there they find definitive traces of past or present Martian life...the world will change, evolve, and broaden almost overnight.
> Does it really matter if we are warming the planet or not?
No, no it doesn't:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/123218/stossel-thu-dec-10-2009
I'm all for switching from fossil fuels to renewables as quickly as is practicable. I can hardly wait for the day when I can go into a dealership and buy an affordable electric car, and can charge it on a nuclear-fed electric grid instead of the coal-based grid I'm on now. I want solar panels on every roof where they'd do any good and wind turbines wherever they'd be useful. BUT, we don't have to risk our economy to get there. We don't have to be taken in by lies and exaggerations to get there.
Climate change is a fact. How much of it is anthropogenic is far from certain. What we should do about it is, basically, the same thing we should do regardless--cleaner, renewable energy is the logical future in any event. But the AGW alarmists would have us cripple our economies with carbon taxes and gas taxes and all sorts of boondoggles to try to make the change quicker, whereas the reality is, as is pointed out in the video discussion linked above, we should be slow and steady and reasonable about changing our economy to rely less on fossil fuels. Being too hasty and redirecting too many resources will end up killing millions more through aid cuts than will be killed by climate change.
>Superman is not a man. He is an alien from the planet Krypton. So
>this is NOT "the first time a man flew without mechanical aid."
And hence my favorite Tarantino fanboyism, courtesy of Kill Bill Vol. 2:
Bill: "As you know, l'm quite keen on comic books. Especially the ones about superheroes. I find the whole mythology surrounding superheroes fascinating. Take my favorite superhero, Superman. Not a great comic book. Not particularly well-drawn. But the mythology... The mythology is not only great, it's unique.... Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there's the superhero and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears - the glasses, the business suit - that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent. He's weak... he's unsure of himself... he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race."
>Most European and Asian countries already have gas
>prices more than twice as high as ours. Just
>imagine the massive shift in capital to innovative
>startups that would have occurred over the last
>two decades had the US taxed gasoline appropriately.
I see this argument frequently, but it ignores the simple reality that unlike in Europe and Asia, the American economy is based on a highly mobile workforce able to commute great distances by automobile. The middle class, in particular, is enabled by and enriched by the automobile and cheap gasoline--the wealthier can live in expensive neighborhoods close to work, and the poor live wherever they can while commuting as little as possible; but, the middle class often work in areas where they could either not afford nearby housing which caters to the more affluent, or where nearby housing caters to the poor.
That's not always the case, of course, but it often is and the middle class has thrived on the ability to live in cheaper yet comfortable neighborhoods further from job centers--i.e., living in the suburbs while commuting to the city, or living in the country and commuting to the burbs. There's also a greater mobility and variety of jobs available to the middle class thanks to cheap gas: where I live, many commute to Washington, D.C., many others to Richmond, and a few to Charlottesville--meaning the job markets of 2.5 major cities are effectively local. Tax gas at a high rate, and people will have less employment mobility, fewer competitive opportunities, and lower overall wages due to the lowered competition among employers in formerly-neighboring employment centers. Additionally, with permanently expensive gas making long commutes cost-prohibitive for the middle class, there would be a huge migration out of the burbs and into more urban areas--where are all the urban poor going to move when whole cities are gentrified almost overnight? Into deserted suburbs with few native local job opportunities?
Tax gas at a high rate, and the mobile workforce and all the competitive advantages it bestows evaporates; the middle class would be eviscerated, and the poor would be displaced. Like it or not, there is no viable public and/or mass transit in most of the U.S.--we haven't needed it thanks to cheap gas, nor has it been as practical as in Europe thanks to our sprawling landmass.
So, do we heavily invest in public/mass transit now in a crash program, to the tune of trillions of dollars almost all at once, so we can end our reliance on cheap gas? No, that's impractical, too expensive, and no one has either the political will or political capital. Do we just levy those high gas taxes, and see if the dire predictions are false? No, because even if it wouldn't destroy the middle class, it would destroy so many political careers that no one is dumb enough to try it--remember that when oil stayed above $100/barrel for a record number of weeks not long ago and U.S. gas prices stayed at record levels, populist anger boiled so hot that Congress was subpoenaing oil executives and threatening to tax their profits and repeal gas taxes and doing ANYTHING to keep a lid on popular sentiments that threatened to derail every incumbent in their wake.
So no, there will not be high gas taxes in this country, nor should there be. What there should be is a plan to phase out gasoline, not through punitive taxes aimed at the working classes but through taxes and legislative pressures on automakers to phase in certain percentages of electric or hybrid vehicles by target dates. We mandate automakers to include lots of once-expensive tech which has since come down in manufacturing cost; why not, in the name of national security as well as the environment, mandate targeted percentages of electric offerings? If prices of new cars do rise in the short term while early adopters bear the brunt, so be it--the more financially challenged can stick with their old cars for a few years more until costs come down. It may seem unrealistic to exp
>Most of us have watched the fatty squeezing
>down the aisle and dreaded the idea of them
sitting next to us. Why should I have to put
>up with someone like him taking up my space
>on an already cramped airline seat?
Because you didn't pay for a First Class ticket, plebe, so suck it. ;) Seriously, when you fly on a budget ticket or on a budget airline you have to expect getting crammed in next to...whoever. That's what makes it cheap. You never hear about anyone getting ejected from First Class for being too fat, because they don't pack you in like you're on the Middle Passage.
You seem to want First Class elbow room at steerage prices. For that you can't blame fat folks, you can blame your cheapness or poorness. Pony up the cash for guaranteed elbow room, or shut it; don't blame other people for YOUR problems.
Seriously, Kevin Smith isn't even very overweight. He's actually lost weight relative to how he looked in his earlier films, so I doubt he even qualifies as "obese" just "overweight". To kick him off a flight for his weight is a sign that the anti-fat hatred and discrimination we see among some in society has gone way too far. It's bad enough that we bombard people with unrealistic body images constantly on nearly every TV show, film, and magazine, which makes people (esp. women and young people) of "normal" body weight self-conscious; but, to promote outright discrimination and therefore hate of overweight people, even the slightly overweight like Kevin Smith, is unacceptable. We're not talking about the rare 500-lb. person who really does need to buy an extra seat to have adequate room, just an average overweight (and therefore, studies show, longer-lived relative to the underweight or even "normal") person.
I for one am glad the average weight in the U.S. is ballooning. Not only does it make me look more attractive relative to others, it makes discriminatory folks like you uncomfortable, and part of an endangered group of bigots. Fat people are one of the few minorities it's still "okay" to bully--but it's not right to bully anyone, least of all based on appearance, socially awkward behavior, or other shallow criteria. You'd think folks on Slashdot, especially, would be past the bullying stage, but I guess some people in any group will always hold social progress back...
>Or, end the war tourism programs that are actually
>draining the treasury, and have been for fifty years.
But then, where would we send all our young low-income minorities, now that the jails are full? ;-)
>School lunches and SSI Disability... so you want
>kids who's parents are too poor to get food for
>lunch to suffer more in school than they are due
>to their social problems, increasing the number
>of poor in teh country due to lack of education
>and you want people that are disabled to not be
>able to survive?
Oh please, cut the tiny violins--this is just not even remotely true. I'm sure there are many kids in this country who benefit from subsidized school lunches, but raising the family income qualification threshold wouldn't leave those truly needy kids starving. When I was in school around 4th or 5th grade my sister and I got notifications that we qualified for reduced-price lunches, but naturally our parents never filled out the paperwork to receive them because we were a solidly middle-class, though certainly through hard work with little savings, family. All the way through high school we qualified for school lunch subsidies, but never used them because in no way did we need them. And yet, I'm sure many others in similar situations just thought "Hey, free money is free money!" and took the subsidies. I would never want to eliminate subsidies for truly needy kids, but I know for an absolute fact that many non-needy kids qualify due to some arbitrary income or other qualifications and that trimming the fat from the (20 BILLION $$$? WTF?) program is reasonable.
As for SSI disability, my mother gets around $850/month in disability payments. She used to work and be a very productive person, but in her early 30s had a psychotic break with the onset of schizophrenia. She's unable to work and I'm very glad the system is there to help her. HOWEVER, my father makes $58,000 a year, my retired grandfather gets around $50,000 a year in retirement pension + social security, and my mother lives with them. So effectively, their household makes over $100,000 a year to support 3 people, not including her disability payments. In that situation, my mother's payments are effectively unnecessary to supporting her, though they end up as a necessary part of the budget since my parents spend over $10,000/year on cigarettes and a few thousand a year on alcohol. One way of looking at that is, my mother's disability payments are in effect spent to enable tobacco and alcohol addictions. Do we really want federally funded SSI benefits going to $100,000+/year households, to be spent on cigarettes and alcohol? Granted, that's not the norm, but if my parents are doing it how many other solidly middle class households are getting unnecessary SSI? There should be much more stringent oversight. At $150 BILLION yearly, surely there's enough money to be trimmed to get us to Mars sooner rather than later.
No one wants to take support away from the neediest. But right now, many who don't truly need it qualify and exploit the system.
I'm NOT talking about a convertible swivel-tablet. The TC1100 and some other early Tablet PCs were fully slate form factor models, with a detachable keyboard as an option. When attached, it was just like a laptop; when detached, it was a slate. They were slightly thicker than the Lenovo of course, but that has less to do with using an x86 processor in the slate section instead of ARM, than with the technology of 5+ years ago. You could easily stick a ULV Core 2 in a slate today and get a form factor identical to the Lenovo or iPad, with the battery life being the only casualty. Is circa 10 hours battery life instead of 5 or so worth the inconvenience of changing OSes in the middle of use and so much added expense that I could've bought an iPad AND a laptop? Not many people will think so.
If it were within $100 of the iPad, the Lenovo would be a cool alternative for techies--but still an alternative, not "the real thing" most end users will want. At an estimated $999, it's an expensive miss. Again, for that much I could have a decent laptop and an iPad, or an iPad and a touchscreen netbook, or an iPad a desktop and a netbook, or an iPad an eReader and a netbook, or an iPad a 32" flatscreen and a desktop, or...you get the point. iPad's pricing is a game-changer here.
Dockable keyboard to switch from slate to laptop has been done long before, cf. the venerable Compaq TC1100, so that clearly isn't a killer feature (although I, and most long-term tablet enthusiasts, loved it and missed it when it was dropped from newer-gen Tablet PCs). Very nice, but no iPad killer, especially at the higher price.
The two OSes thing I also don't see as a killer feature. I realize the idea was probably, "Hey, an ARM CPU is needed to extend the battery life in slate mode, but anyone using a full-size laptop wants a full-size Windows 7--let's combine 'em for the best of both worlds!" Sorry Hannah fucking Montana, but you can't have the best of both worlds without getting the worst of both worlds, too, plus an even higher cost to include all that extra hardware. If I wanted a Win 7 machine, I'd want it to run the same Win 7 apps in slate mode too. If I wanted an ARM slate, I'd have made the decision to be satisfied with available apps and wouldn't want the OS changing every time I docked the keyboard. And if I really wanted the features of both, for the price (another article states "Lenovo said they're hoping to get the IdeaPad U1's price under $1000 for a May or June release") I could buy both an iPad and a full laptop, and have two fully functional devices each better suited to its purpose than one hybrid.
Sorry, there's still no mythical iPad killer. If this chimera were priced within $100 of the iPad it might be a contender, but not a sure thing. At somewhere just south of $1000 it's not even an also-ran compared with the iPad, it's a never-ran.
>Having read TFA, we know that we're
>not talking about downloaded
>digital photos/videos, we're talking
>about physical media that was ordered
>and shipped through the mail.
Max Hardcore's obscenity convictions are due to items shipped through the mail AND *video streamed from his website*, including preview trailers for movies shipped through the mail.
I look at it this way, though:
Why is anything on a website subject to "local jurisdiction" and "community standards" of the place where the end user is located? Isn't the website actually located wherever the web server is located, and didn't the end user basically do the virtual equivalent of traveling to that locality and bringing the content back with him?
I think that's a much better way to look at it, and doesn't create the problem of essentially, as you suggest, having to apply the strictest local standard to all content anywhere on the net. In my model, if the content is acceptable wherever the web server is located, then it's safe. Anyone wanting to enforce local community standards of other areas would then have to try to prosecute the end users, their own residents, for transporting obscenity across state lines in commerce, or somesuch.