Unless we know what his role in this startup is, it's hard to give really good advice. I'm pretty sure that he wasn't hired for his coding skills though, so any approach that spends a lot of time learning to program probably isn't a good use of his time. The question is, exactly what knowledge does he need to do his job? Maybe reading about some concepts like the "Mythical man-month" would be more useful than trying to grok introductory computer science?
Two things, the reason that the US spends twice as much on healthcare as other countries isn't because we don't do preventative care and other countries do. It's because we are wealthier (more disposable income after food and shelter), we subsidize it, and other coutries ration it. We don't have a healthcare problem (generally better treatement outcomes compared to other countries), what we have is a healthcare financing problem. In the US, the average person actually pays less out of pocket than in countries with "Universal" coverage. It's because the goverment is already paying half our bill (Medicare, medicaid, and veterans) Then you have the "insurance" industry which is heavily subsidized (tax free premiums, only if it's employer paid of course!) When the incentive is to "get what you already paid for" and you can't ration care as effectively as in a socialized system, this is the outcome you get!
Yes, because people really want the government to have access to their DNA information?? You know, I can't understand how a lot of the slashdot crowd can be zealous privacy advocates on one hand, and on the other hand think nothing of having a health care system where we make the government accumulates all the power that insurance companies have now. For all the problems with insurance companies, we at least have some very minimal competition and government oversight. Whent the government is running the enterprise, who's the watchdog?
So you're fine with the idea of being randomly stopped on the street and searched by the police, right?
NO, and if you'd have read my whole post instead of launching with a knee-jerk response, you'd know that. I don't think they can search me without cause, but if I'm having a conversation in a public place (ie outside of my house or car or other private property) or do something illegal that can be clearly observed from a public place, then that's clearly different. I'm arguing that a phone call is transmitted over a public space. If you want privacy, then you have to use an envelope instead of a postcard, fold your letter up and put it in your pocket instead of carrying it unfolded in your hand, or encrypt your call instead of sending it in the clear. If you take steps to keep your message/property concealed, then the authorities need a warrant and they need cause to search. I even think that sobriety check points are illegal because you are asked to test without cause that you cannot refuse. This fundamentally violates the right against both self incrimination (compelling testimony against ones self) and an illegal search. Heck, I think the TSA search should be illegal too (though I think the airlines have every right to require it) excepting flights that are entering or leaving the country. The fundamental disagreement is that I think that phone conversations are akin to a conversation in a public place, I'll be it one that is usually remove. It's security through obscurity, not reality. Just because you are unlikely to be overhead doesn't mean you have an expectation of privacy.
The phone network used to be entirely switched, but the reality is that much of the backbone is/will become packet based. Given this, and the fact that a conversation is taking place traveling over equipment that you do not control; it would be reasonable to conclude that you do not have a right to expect the contents of that conversation to be private. OTOH, I'm not sure the government should be allowed to record everything that happens in public, just that I don't think it's unconstitutional on its face.
From my limited understanding, far more of the government is centralized in the UK than in the US. While local spending is probably quite similar, the US has far greater state spending than the UK. Most of British government, from what I've heard anyway, is either local or national. Feel free to correct me.
We actually haven't lost export capacity. In fact we haven't lost manufacturing capacity. We manufacture more total stuff (measured in terms of prices adjusted for inflation) than ever before. Despite all the talk of manufacturing jobs moving over seas, we have more manufacturing jobs here than 20 years ago. Of course they aren't all in the same cities or industries. Manufacturing is still growing in the US, just not as fast as other parts of the economy. Manufacturing employment grows even more slowly than manufacturing output because the productivity gains in manufacturing have been much greater that other industries due to technology. So while more people (in terms of absolute numbers) work in manufacturing today, it hasn't kept pace with the growth of the population. It's shrunk relative to everything else, not in absolute terms.
Actually, I'd say anything that takes place in public, or over a public network, the governement has a right to observe. I'd even say that wiretapping shouldn't have been given 4th ammendment protection. Now keystroke loggers and spyware constitue an intrusion on your effects, your computer, just like searching your car. These things aren't in plain sight. I'd say anything encrypted or sealed to the outside should require a warrant for parties inside the US, but the internet/phone network are really a public network and frankly no one should expect privacy for things that are done in public. The illusion of privacy on the phone is due to automation, not the lack of the public nature of the medium. Just because no one is likely to look (like in a dark alley in a small town at 4am) doesn't mean you have a legal expectation of privacy. Unlikely to see isn't the same as private.
The canard that walmart "puts mom and pop stores out of business" is only partly true. It's true that many retail stores that directly compete with walmart, especially smaller retailers with much higher prices, do loose business and many go out of business. But communities with Walmarts tend to see those replaced by other small businesses. So the effect of a walmart is actually to increse, on average, the total number of small employers. Of course they put some stores out of business, but that's not a phenomenon limited to walmart stores, that's true in any competitive environment.
You know what really irks me though is your statement that "when you're smart enough to the point where you have a college degree (and can comprehend the majority of the stuff on/.), you don't realize that a lot of these people in these situations aren't as fortunate or as capable as you are." I feel sorry for you if you think that people who don't have a college degree (like YOU) are all a bunch of mindless drones. Most people are far more capable than you give them credit for. There's a difference between ignorance and stupidity. We are all ignorant, we are just ignorant about different things. Just because they haven't read the Bard, understand discreete cosine tranforms, or solve simultaneous equations doesn't mean they are dumb. It just means you have differing areas and degrees of ignorance. I'll never understand the desire to pitty someone while looking down your nose at them. Frankly, the people that work at walmart know a lot more about than you do, dispite your college degree and their lack thereof. Does that make you a dunce. I don't think so.
I know some people that work at walmart and I don't see them employing "most people" part-time. They do have more part-time employees that the average business, but that is true generally of most large retail/fast food type establishments. They employ a lot of younger people and others that work odd hours and/or people that can only work part-time, unlike a bank for example. I'm not making walmart out to be some kind of nirvana either, they certainly have their share sleezy managers and other assorted work place complaints that you hear about every workplace. I just don't think that they are somehow significantly worse than most other large employers that employ lots of relatively low skill labor.
This isn't an unopened DVD still in the shrinkwrap, this is a PBX system that they had already purchased but hadn't actually rolled out yet. You can't just return something like this unless it is for a reason covered in the contract or warranty. Now you certainly CAN make the case that Fonality should have graciously accepted the gear back. MOST OF THE TIME, it's good policy to bend over backwards for your customers, but there are some people that will screw you if you let them. The value of the contract is probably worth more than the PR of letting them return the system, and I'm pretty sure it's not a warranty return of any kind; Fonality is well within their rights here.
I think I've put my finger on why this is so umseemly. Board members are supposed to oversee top management and not be involved in the day to day operations of a company. They aren't the management. They can replace the management if they'd like, but they aren't supposed to be managers themselves. They are supposed to be the watchdogs for the stockholders, making sure that managment is managing with the shareholders interests in mind instead of their own. So the Blade board member shouldn't have been involved in this level of decision making to begin with.
Secondly, even though Nortel is a minority share holder in Blade, Blade board members have a legal obligation to look out for the best interests of all Blade shareholders, not in the best interest of other companies that they are associated with. This screams for SEC investigation or a shareholder revolt from other Blade shareholders. In this case the Blade board member was acting on Nortel's best interest, not Blade's. This is a serious conflict of interest and an ethical violation. The fact that Nortel still has a partial stake muddies the waters a bit, but as they are not wholly owned by Nortel, Board members have an obligation to server the other shareholders as well.
Falling real wages, an unemployment rate that's only dropping because people have been out of work so long they're considered to have left the workforce, a steadily rising poverty rate and a negative personal savings rate are also indications
Real wages haven't been falling. They've been flat for the poor, at worst. And that is assuming no increase in the quality of the goods that the CPI measures. Actually the recent concern is that wages may be rising to fast and that the productivity boom may be slowing, leading to future inflation worries among some people. The bit about people leaving the workforce isn't true either, same for the poverty rate. It certianly was early on in 2002-2003. Many people did leave the workforce in 2000-2001. Labor force participation has risen again since then and the total number of jobs has risen by millons past the previous high before the last recession in 2001. So a stream of people leaving the workforce hasn't been the case for years, although the beginning of early retirement for baby boomers will continue to have an increasing impact on participation in the workforce. The so-called "negative personal savings" rate is a croc. It doesn't count most of the modern financial instraments that we use to save for college or retirement. It's basically savings accounts and CDs. As the deposits shrink in relative terms to income, this is hardly surprising. It also doesn't take into account the appreciation of existing assets. I'm not arguing that there isn't any room for economic improvement, but the gloom you are spouting isn't current or consistent with the facts.
well, the excuse im hearing is CO2 has a logarithmic effect, and (i can assume from so many other posts) it's just the sun.. if thats the case a planet exposed to vaccuum should be hotter than a planet with an atomsphere with clouds that block the sun out.
No, that's not the case. What it means is that each additional unit of CO2 increases temperatures by less than the previous unit. It's classing diminishing returns. The GP isn't saying that the return to additional CO2 is negative, just logarithmic. The return to CO2 and atmospheres in general is positive, just diminishing. Thus your statement above doesn't follow from what the GP said.
He's saying that the model's predictive power regarding human CO2 emissions overstates the damage from future CO2 emissons. That may not mean much to you, but it means that climate models consequently will overestimate the impact of reducing future CO2 emissions. This should radically affect the policy options we choose. It means that CO2 reductions will be far less effective than we anticipate in slowing or reversing climate change. Why should we accept predictions from any models that continue to predict results that are a poor match for the data? The fact is that climate IS an incredibly complex mechanism that includes primary variables, feedback mechanisms, time lags and all sorts of other statistical minefields. Because even the most minimal efforts to alter climate change are going to extract an incredible cost, we have a responsibillty to have at least a plausible model to test the pros and cons of any abatement effort. What if the earth would continue to warm at half the current speed by eliminating human CO2 emissions? That would also have an implication on the kind of policies that we choose. There are currently a lot of things that may be of some benefit in reducing global warming but need not be sold to the public on the basis. They have other far more tangible and predicable benefits. (Like conservation efforts and nuclear power for example.) Let's pick the low hanging environmental fruit first. There's no point in leading with the most dubious part of the science.
You realize that by 2075 global population is expected to start shrinking, right. Most of the developed world would be shrinking right now if not for immigration. Eastern Europe and Russia are actually shrinking. Some of them are expected to lose a fifth of their current population in only one or two generations.
I think many "schools of education", and certification bodies in general, don't sufficiently distinguish between teaching at the primary level and teaching highschool. Most people with a college degree, any degree, will have sufficient subject matter knowledge to teach at the primary level. The level of time spent on child psycology and other "education as a profession" classes are very important here because young kid's minds and social conventions are not generally understood or remembered by adults. Most of us understand and remember the mindset of highschool and college much better. For secondary teachers, subject matter experience and enthusiasm is much more imporant than another three credits of child psycology. I think the requirements for math or science majors to teach their subject matter expertise are much to high. It really shouldn't take more than an additional year of credits (4-5 classes in the fall plus a full semester of student teaching) to become a highschool teacher, assuming you have sufficient subject matter background. Primary and secondary education are far more different than secondary education and college. Our teaching requirements don't reflect that fact. As long as subject matter experts don't expect to just be able to waltz into the classroom and start teaching without some cursory classes and hands on practice, I can agree with you.
On to pay. I don't think that most teachers have it any worse than most other salaried employees. Yes, almost all put in more than 40 hrs/week during a full school week, that's not unusual in the real world. On the flip side, they do have a lot fewer total working days due to the summer break, winter break, and the numerous government holidays that private sector employees don't get to take. Most of us don't have Martin Luther King day off. They also have relatively stable employment and generally better than average benefits like retirement and healthcare, compared to others with a similar salary in the private sector. Of course, like any union controlled profession, the best are underpaid and the worst are overpaid. But I don't think that teachers, as a whole, are dramatically undercompensated. Especially based on the grades of incoming students into colleges of education. They tend to have some of the lower entering GPAs of any of the colleges on a University campus. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and slightly below average students may, in fact, make better teachers than highly intelligent people, since they can relate to the average student much better; but it does mean that they don't have the same options as other college students in EE or ME or Microbiology, Premed, etc. When you take that all into account, teaching looks pretty good. I'd argue that compensation is far less important to the average teacher than the lack of autonomy. The weight of bureaucracy and on teaching in a public school is positively smothering, even comparted to some of the worst of corporate america I'd wager.
1. CAFE is the ultimate Washinton boondoggle. Rather than simply raise fuel taxes by 300% and offset that by eliminating or reducing other taxes to achieve the desired result, politicians elect to create a fuel economy mandate that requires endless hidden costs, and a maze of rules and regulations that only serve to employ lawyers that produce nothing of value for society. Don't get me wrong, lawyers and laws are a necessary part of civilized society because we need to protect individuals from the dangerous and predatory behavior of others, but why invoke the complex and expensive legal system when a far simpler carrot and stick will do. (You can boil this whole paragraph down to Occams Razor for fuel economy.)
2. The clean skies act analysis at Wikipedia isn't entirely wrong, it's just misleading. The comparisions aren't to present law. They are to even stricter rules that the EPA was proposing. It's all about frame of reference. The bottom line is that the levels of NOx and SO2 were reduced, just not by as much as some groups were lobbying for.
3. The "New Source Review" was written to allow much stricter rules for new plants by allowing old plants to be grandfathered in. Thus the rules for new contruction were much tougher than the rules for old plants. The EPA was interpreting "New Source" so strictly that it was considering things that were routine maintenence of existing structures to be things that fell under the much stricter standards for "new sources" of pollution. This lead to a court challenge in which the EPA was rebuked IIRC. The language for new source review in the clean skies act was ment to give the EPA much less administrative lattitude by codifying the more reasonable interpretation directly into the law. The result is that the intent of the "New Source" provision was never changed from the lawmakers point of view, but the EPA's behavior was changed because of how the EPA chose to interpret the law more and more strictly, until they exceeded the original intent of the law. The result of the previous enforcement regime acually resulted in incentives to avoid making incremental upgrades that would be cleaner than the existing structure for fear that they would trigger a review that would result in mandates that would be orders of magnitude more expensive. Of course this kind of perverse incentive actually resulted in more, not less, pollution.
You know that word population is expected to peak by 2050 and start declining right? Almost all industrialized countries as well as China are at or below the replacement rate. The US is one of two exceptions to this and it can be almost entirely attrubuted to immigration.
Considering all the problems the US has with its healthcare system, it still amazes me that the US spends the most per capita on health care. Where is the money going, and who is benefiting?
I'd really suggest you take a look at a book called "Crisis of Abundance" by Arnold Kling. It talks about why Americans spend so much on healthcare, what we do and don't get for it, whether our higher level of spending is necessarily a bad thing, and some possible reform type ideas. It's one of the better books I've seen on the subject. It's a truely TANSTAAFL look at healthcare.
The real solution isn't to raise CAFE standards, it's to eliminate them and double or triple the federal gas tax. Let's let the people decide how they want to reduce fuel consumption, assuming of course that we agree on that as the goal. Incidentally, I was also puzzled about your remark about Bush and R&D spending. If anything, he's probably thrown too much money at too many projects in this area. Just raise the gas tax and watch the private sector firms come out of the woodwork with alternatives. This has the side benefit of avoiding the corporate welfare and bloat that usually accompanies government spending.
There are two simple arguments against the examples you cite. In reading the 4th ammendment, it is most reasonable to assume the "rights of the people" is refering to the rights of US citizens/residents on US soil, not just anyone in particular.The language construction is important here. Why "The people" and not "all people"?? I think it is obvious from the language and historical record that this right was never ment to protect the privacy of a pirate ship captain's quarters from the US Navy, unless they obtained a warrant first of course!! There are some guarantees in the constitution that are not phrased this way, and Congress can certainly create (admitted less authoritative than a constitutional guarantee) additional protections, but I don't see the 4th ammendment as applying to foreigners on foreign soil.
In the case of the 6th ammendment, we aren't dealing with a domestic criminal trial. They aren't being chared with a crime under domenstic law. So the 6th Ammendment is moot here. You could make an argument that operatives like Richard Reed (shoe bomber), who was caught on US soil, ought to be entited to more protection than those captured on a battlefield, but precident isn't in your favor here. German saboteurs during WWII weren't treated as criminals either, they were treated as combatants and dealt with in military tribunals. The only time I believe civilian courts ought enter the picture is to determine if combatant caught on US soil is, in fact, an operative of a foreign power at war with the US. If they determine he is, then the facts of the case are tried in a tribunal setting, like all other combatants. If he is not, then he would be tried as a civilian.
Military tribunals ARE due process. They aren't a civilian court, but they would satisfy due process requirements. Our own military personel are subject to a different standard than a civilian. I don't see why that standard isn't good enough for a suspected "non-uniformed" combatant. What the GGP was saying is the "The People" are US citizens and/or legal residents. As opposed to just "people" or "persons". I know that's probably parsing the language somewhat, but given historical practices and our understanding of the intentions of the constitution as written, it's probably the most accurate way to read it. Of course I'm open to evidence to the contrary.
"The problem is that allowing the government to invent new classifications lets it avoid all of the devices we've put in place to keep it from abusing its power. Alleged criminals have a set of legal protections under the Constitution, POWs have rights under the Geneva Convention and other treaties, but alleged "enemy combatants" (in the current administration's view) have no rights at all."
Actually thats not right either. The Geneva conventions do apply certain protections to all people, but those are far less generous than the specific protections afforded to civilians and POWS. It basically splits enemies into three groups, civilains, uniformed enemy solders, and nonuniformed combatants. Civilians are provided the most protection for obvious reasons. Uniformed solders, as combatants, don't have the same rights as civilians but are still given certain addition protections for following the rules of war. This is done to encourage nations to follow those rules. This doesn't mean that "enemy combatants" have not rights at all, but they certainly DON'T have the rights that POWs have.
The whole purpose of the convention is to create civilize rules for war that encourage warring nations to follow the proscribed conventions or risk losing the protections that their civilians and solders enjoy. Thats the carrot and stick of the treaty. Those following the rules get better treatment than those who do not.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless we know what his role in this startup is, it's hard to give really good advice. I'm pretty sure that he wasn't hired for his coding skills though, so any approach that spends a lot of time learning to program probably isn't a good use of his time. The question is, exactly what knowledge does he need to do his job? Maybe reading about some concepts like the "Mythical man-month" would be more useful than trying to grok introductory computer science?
Since Brussels is the headquarters of the EU, maybe you could DC it. An independent city under the jurisdiction of the EU.
Actually, more acres of North America are forested today than 300 years ago.
Two things, the reason that the US spends twice as much on healthcare as other countries isn't because we don't do preventative care and other countries do. It's because we are wealthier (more disposable income after food and shelter), we subsidize it, and other coutries ration it. We don't have a healthcare problem (generally better treatement outcomes compared to other countries), what we have is a healthcare financing problem. In the US, the average person actually pays less out of pocket than in countries with "Universal" coverage. It's because the goverment is already paying half our bill (Medicare, medicaid, and veterans) Then you have the "insurance" industry which is heavily subsidized (tax free premiums, only if it's employer paid of course!) When the incentive is to "get what you already paid for" and you can't ration care as effectively as in a socialized system, this is the outcome you get!
Yes, because people really want the government to have access to their DNA information?? You know, I can't understand how a lot of the slashdot crowd can be zealous privacy advocates on one hand, and on the other hand think nothing of having a health care system where we make the government accumulates all the power that insurance companies have now. For all the problems with insurance companies, we at least have some very minimal competition and government oversight. Whent the government is running the enterprise, who's the watchdog?
NO, and if you'd have read my whole post instead of launching with a knee-jerk response, you'd know that. I don't think they can search me without cause, but if I'm having a conversation in a public place (ie outside of my house or car or other private property) or do something illegal that can be clearly observed from a public place, then that's clearly different. I'm arguing that a phone call is transmitted over a public space. If you want privacy, then you have to use an envelope instead of a postcard, fold your letter up and put it in your pocket instead of carrying it unfolded in your hand, or encrypt your call instead of sending it in the clear. If you take steps to keep your message/property concealed, then the authorities need a warrant and they need cause to search. I even think that sobriety check points are illegal because you are asked to test without cause that you cannot refuse. This fundamentally violates the right against both self incrimination (compelling testimony against ones self) and an illegal search. Heck, I think the TSA search should be illegal too (though I think the airlines have every right to require it) excepting flights that are entering or leaving the country. The fundamental disagreement is that I think that phone conversations are akin to a conversation in a public place, I'll be it one that is usually remove. It's security through obscurity, not reality. Just because you are unlikely to be overhead doesn't mean you have an expectation of privacy.
The phone network used to be entirely switched, but the reality is that much of the backbone is/will become packet based. Given this, and the fact that a conversation is taking place traveling over equipment that you do not control; it would be reasonable to conclude that you do not have a right to expect the contents of that conversation to be private. OTOH, I'm not sure the government should be allowed to record everything that happens in public, just that I don't think it's unconstitutional on its face.
From my limited understanding, far more of the government is centralized in the UK than in the US. While local spending is probably quite similar, the US has far greater state spending than the UK. Most of British government, from what I've heard anyway, is either local or national. Feel free to correct me.
We actually haven't lost export capacity. In fact we haven't lost manufacturing capacity. We manufacture more total stuff (measured in terms of prices adjusted for inflation) than ever before. Despite all the talk of manufacturing jobs moving over seas, we have more manufacturing jobs here than 20 years ago. Of course they aren't all in the same cities or industries. Manufacturing is still growing in the US, just not as fast as other parts of the economy. Manufacturing employment grows even more slowly than manufacturing output because the productivity gains in manufacturing have been much greater that other industries due to technology. So while more people (in terms of absolute numbers) work in manufacturing today, it hasn't kept pace with the growth of the population. It's shrunk relative to everything else, not in absolute terms.
Actually, I'd say anything that takes place in public, or over a public network, the governement has a right to observe. I'd even say that wiretapping shouldn't have been given 4th ammendment protection. Now keystroke loggers and spyware constitue an intrusion on your effects, your computer, just like searching your car. These things aren't in plain sight. I'd say anything encrypted or sealed to the outside should require a warrant for parties inside the US, but the internet/phone network are really a public network and frankly no one should expect privacy for things that are done in public. The illusion of privacy on the phone is due to automation, not the lack of the public nature of the medium. Just because no one is likely to look (like in a dark alley in a small town at 4am) doesn't mean you have a legal expectation of privacy. Unlikely to see isn't the same as private.
You know what really irks me though is your statement that "when you're smart enough to the point where you have a college degree (and can comprehend the majority of the stuff on /.), you don't realize that a lot of these people in these situations aren't as fortunate or as capable as you are." I feel sorry for you if you think that people who don't have a college degree (like YOU) are all a bunch of mindless drones. Most people are far more capable than you give them credit for. There's a difference between ignorance and stupidity. We are all ignorant, we are just ignorant about different things. Just because they haven't read the Bard, understand discreete cosine tranforms, or solve simultaneous equations doesn't mean they are dumb. It just means you have differing areas and degrees of ignorance. I'll never understand the desire to pitty someone while looking down your nose at them. Frankly, the people that work at walmart know a lot more about than you do, dispite your college degree and their lack thereof. Does that make you a dunce. I don't think so.
I know some people that work at walmart and I don't see them employing "most people" part-time. They do have more part-time employees that the average business, but that is true generally of most large retail/fast food type establishments. They employ a lot of younger people and others that work odd hours and/or people that can only work part-time, unlike a bank for example. I'm not making walmart out to be some kind of nirvana either, they certainly have their share sleezy managers and other assorted work place complaints that you hear about every workplace. I just don't think that they are somehow significantly worse than most other large employers that employ lots of relatively low skill labor.
I think I've put my finger on why this is so umseemly. Board members are supposed to oversee top management and not be involved in the day to day operations of a company. They aren't the management. They can replace the management if they'd like, but they aren't supposed to be managers themselves. They are supposed to be the watchdogs for the stockholders, making sure that managment is managing with the shareholders interests in mind instead of their own. So the Blade board member shouldn't have been involved in this level of decision making to begin with.
Secondly, even though Nortel is a minority share holder in Blade, Blade board members have a legal obligation to look out for the best interests of all Blade shareholders, not in the best interest of other companies that they are associated with. This screams for SEC investigation or a shareholder revolt from other Blade shareholders. In this case the Blade board member was acting on Nortel's best interest, not Blade's. This is a serious conflict of interest and an ethical violation. The fact that Nortel still has a partial stake muddies the waters a bit, but as they are not wholly owned by Nortel, Board members have an obligation to server the other shareholders as well.
Falling real wages, an unemployment rate that's only dropping because people have been out of work so long they're considered to have left the workforce, a steadily rising poverty rate and a negative personal savings rate are also indications Real wages haven't been falling. They've been flat for the poor, at worst. And that is assuming no increase in the quality of the goods that the CPI measures. Actually the recent concern is that wages may be rising to fast and that the productivity boom may be slowing, leading to future inflation worries among some people. The bit about people leaving the workforce isn't true either, same for the poverty rate. It certianly was early on in 2002-2003. Many people did leave the workforce in 2000-2001. Labor force participation has risen again since then and the total number of jobs has risen by millons past the previous high before the last recession in 2001. So a stream of people leaving the workforce hasn't been the case for years, although the beginning of early retirement for baby boomers will continue to have an increasing impact on participation in the workforce. The so-called "negative personal savings" rate is a croc. It doesn't count most of the modern financial instraments that we use to save for college or retirement. It's basically savings accounts and CDs. As the deposits shrink in relative terms to income, this is hardly surprising. It also doesn't take into account the appreciation of existing assets. I'm not arguing that there isn't any room for economic improvement, but the gloom you are spouting isn't current or consistent with the facts.
No, that's not the case. What it means is that each additional unit of CO2 increases temperatures by less than the previous unit. It's classing diminishing returns. The GP isn't saying that the return to additional CO2 is negative, just logarithmic. The return to CO2 and atmospheres in general is positive, just diminishing. Thus your statement above doesn't follow from what the GP said.
He's saying that the model's predictive power regarding human CO2 emissions overstates the damage from future CO2 emissons. That may not mean much to you, but it means that climate models consequently will overestimate the impact of reducing future CO2 emissions. This should radically affect the policy options we choose. It means that CO2 reductions will be far less effective than we anticipate in slowing or reversing climate change. Why should we accept predictions from any models that continue to predict results that are a poor match for the data? The fact is that climate IS an incredibly complex mechanism that includes primary variables, feedback mechanisms, time lags and all sorts of other statistical minefields. Because even the most minimal efforts to alter climate change are going to extract an incredible cost, we have a responsibillty to have at least a plausible model to test the pros and cons of any abatement effort. What if the earth would continue to warm at half the current speed by eliminating human CO2 emissions? That would also have an implication on the kind of policies that we choose. There are currently a lot of things that may be of some benefit in reducing global warming but need not be sold to the public on the basis. They have other far more tangible and predicable benefits. (Like conservation efforts and nuclear power for example.) Let's pick the low hanging environmental fruit first. There's no point in leading with the most dubious part of the science.
You realize that by 2075 global population is expected to start shrinking, right. Most of the developed world would be shrinking right now if not for immigration. Eastern Europe and Russia are actually shrinking. Some of them are expected to lose a fifth of their current population in only one or two generations.
On to pay. I don't think that most teachers have it any worse than most other salaried employees. Yes, almost all put in more than 40 hrs/week during a full school week, that's not unusual in the real world. On the flip side, they do have a lot fewer total working days due to the summer break, winter break, and the numerous government holidays that private sector employees don't get to take. Most of us don't have Martin Luther King day off. They also have relatively stable employment and generally better than average benefits like retirement and healthcare, compared to others with a similar salary in the private sector. Of course, like any union controlled profession, the best are underpaid and the worst are overpaid. But I don't think that teachers, as a whole, are dramatically undercompensated. Especially based on the grades of incoming students into colleges of education. They tend to have some of the lower entering GPAs of any of the colleges on a University campus. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and slightly below average students may, in fact, make better teachers than highly intelligent people, since they can relate to the average student much better; but it does mean that they don't have the same options as other college students in EE or ME or Microbiology, Premed, etc. When you take that all into account, teaching looks pretty good. I'd argue that compensation is far less important to the average teacher than the lack of autonomy. The weight of bureaucracy and on teaching in a public school is positively smothering, even comparted to some of the worst of corporate america I'd wager.
1. CAFE is the ultimate Washinton boondoggle. Rather than simply raise fuel taxes by 300% and offset that by eliminating or reducing other taxes to achieve the desired result, politicians elect to create a fuel economy mandate that requires endless hidden costs, and a maze of rules and regulations that only serve to employ lawyers that produce nothing of value for society. Don't get me wrong, lawyers and laws are a necessary part of civilized society because we need to protect individuals from the dangerous and predatory behavior of others, but why invoke the complex and expensive legal system when a far simpler carrot and stick will do. (You can boil this whole paragraph down to Occams Razor for fuel economy.)
2. The clean skies act analysis at Wikipedia isn't entirely wrong, it's just misleading. The comparisions aren't to present law. They are to even stricter rules that the EPA was proposing. It's all about frame of reference. The bottom line is that the levels of NOx and SO2 were reduced, just not by as much as some groups were lobbying for.
3. The "New Source Review" was written to allow much stricter rules for new plants by allowing old plants to be grandfathered in. Thus the rules for new contruction were much tougher than the rules for old plants. The EPA was interpreting "New Source" so strictly that it was considering things that were routine maintenence of existing structures to be things that fell under the much stricter standards for "new sources" of pollution. This lead to a court challenge in which the EPA was rebuked IIRC. The language for new source review in the clean skies act was ment to give the EPA much less administrative lattitude by codifying the more reasonable interpretation directly into the law. The result is that the intent of the "New Source" provision was never changed from the lawmakers point of view, but the EPA's behavior was changed because of how the EPA chose to interpret the law more and more strictly, until they exceeded the original intent of the law. The result of the previous enforcement regime acually resulted in incentives to avoid making incremental upgrades that would be cleaner than the existing structure for fear that they would trigger a review that would result in mandates that would be orders of magnitude more expensive. Of course this kind of perverse incentive actually resulted in more, not less, pollution.
You know that word population is expected to peak by 2050 and start declining right? Almost all industrialized countries as well as China are at or below the replacement rate. The US is one of two exceptions to this and it can be almost entirely attrubuted to immigration.
I'd really suggest you take a look at a book called "Crisis of Abundance" by Arnold Kling. It talks about why Americans spend so much on healthcare, what we do and don't get for it, whether our higher level of spending is necessarily a bad thing, and some possible reform type ideas. It's one of the better books I've seen on the subject. It's a truely TANSTAAFL look at healthcare.
The real solution isn't to raise CAFE standards, it's to eliminate them and double or triple the federal gas tax. Let's let the people decide how they want to reduce fuel consumption, assuming of course that we agree on that as the goal. Incidentally, I was also puzzled about your remark about Bush and R&D spending. If anything, he's probably thrown too much money at too many projects in this area. Just raise the gas tax and watch the private sector firms come out of the woodwork with alternatives. This has the side benefit of avoiding the corporate welfare and bloat that usually accompanies government spending.
In the case of the 6th ammendment, we aren't dealing with a domestic criminal trial. They aren't being chared with a crime under domenstic law. So the 6th Ammendment is moot here. You could make an argument that operatives like Richard Reed (shoe bomber), who was caught on US soil, ought to be entited to more protection than those captured on a battlefield, but precident isn't in your favor here. German saboteurs during WWII weren't treated as criminals either, they were treated as combatants and dealt with in military tribunals. The only time I believe civilian courts ought enter the picture is to determine if combatant caught on US soil is, in fact, an operative of a foreign power at war with the US. If they determine he is, then the facts of the case are tried in a tribunal setting, like all other combatants. If he is not, then he would be tried as a civilian.
Military tribunals ARE due process. They aren't a civilian court, but they would satisfy due process requirements. Our own military personel are subject to a different standard than a civilian. I don't see why that standard isn't good enough for a suspected "non-uniformed" combatant. What the GGP was saying is the "The People" are US citizens and/or legal residents. As opposed to just "people" or "persons". I know that's probably parsing the language somewhat, but given historical practices and our understanding of the intentions of the constitution as written, it's probably the most accurate way to read it. Of course I'm open to evidence to the contrary.
Actually thats not right either. The Geneva conventions do apply certain protections to all people, but those are far less generous than the specific protections afforded to civilians and POWS. It basically splits enemies into three groups, civilains, uniformed enemy solders, and nonuniformed combatants. Civilians are provided the most protection for obvious reasons. Uniformed solders, as combatants, don't have the same rights as civilians but are still given certain addition protections for following the rules of war. This is done to encourage nations to follow those rules. This doesn't mean that "enemy combatants" have not rights at all, but they certainly DON'T have the rights that POWs have.
The whole purpose of the convention is to create civilize rules for war that encourage warring nations to follow the proscribed conventions or risk losing the protections that their civilians and solders enjoy. Thats the carrot and stick of the treaty. Those following the rules get better treatment than those who do not.