Okay, let's put this a different way, In American today 50,000,000 experience chronic hunger and over 35,000,000 suffer significant malnutrition as a result. Most of these people are single Mothers and their children, and the damage done to developing bodies will have a profound impact on the nations economy for the next 40-60 years. So whether there are food deserts or not, is absolutely moot, there is a real mess brewing with the poor in this country and the clowns in D.C. fiddle why the nation burns.
Yes, but even Adam Smith warned that for Capitalism to work you needed to have a large and healthy middle class and that it was essential to prevent the concentration of wealth, because it would lead to the ultimate collapse of the system. Of course there will be rich and poor in a working capitalism, you just need a couple millions of shades of both to create a working economy or what you have is not capitalism but ultimately totalitarianism.
I dunno, perhaps there are millions of people who shouldn't be having children, though in a free society I haven't a clue how you'd regulate that, I just find it frightening that our national legislature is thinking that the answer to preserving tax cuts for the wealthy (and I mean the ridiculously wealthy), is to remove millions of men, women and children from the most basic resources for living. I keep hearing the Scrooge quote about the surplus population getting on with the business of dying.
There's another quote in that book, "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" You think if we made the houses read "A Christmas Carol" they'd get the idea that what they are doing is both unChristian and immoral, or do you think they'd just take notes from the preTransformation Scrooge?
Perhaps you didn't notice the fact that the Oatmeal logo and link had been surgically removed from the reposted material on FunnyJunk? I dunno, call me suspicious, but that just doesn't sound like the work of people who likes Oatmeal reposting work. It sounds like someone trying to hide the fact that he's ripping off other site for content and that my friends is copyright infringement in all its splendor.
I'm sorry, as the facts keep coming out, he should just sue this clown into bowels of the perdition.
I think he's talking about old folks, those entitled bastards... why don't all you old boomer just die already, drinking our water, breathing our air... Oh crap... I'm a boomer! Personally I would suggest that when the top 400 richest people in the this country have the same wealth as the bottom 165,000,000, that I can pretty easily put my finger on the selfish, shortsighted, petulant thugs being described in the prior post, but thanks for your opinion.
Interesting, not accurate but interesting. There are societies that are significantly socialist, and also democratic, with strong constitutions protecting civil liberties and you would argue that you are less free there than here? LAWS by definition limit your freedom. They control human interaction to ensure healthy human endeavor while punishing violent or antisocial behavior. Corporations are wired different, but if you think there is greater freedom in a capitalistic system, you may want to look at the way corporations in the United States are changing the very nature of IP and the citizen's rights to buy and sell it.
The Supreme court is about to here a case which will determine whether or not a person can own anything trademarked outside the United States. What's at stake is that you won't be able to sell an iPad or iPod, or anything else with materials manufactured outside the U.S. without first getting the consent of all parties for whom there are logos in your product. Selling your home? Not so fast, what about the Italian marble in the bathrooms with the logo? What about the Canadian wood beams with a logo? How about the electronics in the heater from Thailand? Want to sell your car? Good luck, there isn't a car on the road today that doesn't have parts from half a dozen countries outside the United States. Kiss Craigslist, garage sales, and reselling anything you own today goodbye. That's capitalism at work. Explain to me again how this make me more free?
And what about subtracting precisely the amount as Thoreau did, that was being used for the war he disagreed on in principle. If I say my dignity and morality are more important than my physical freedom, and that I will not allow my government to take that which is being used for a perverse and immoral purpose, then am I wrong? Clearly I've committed a crime, because you best believe that the government has made its ability to collect funding a STRONG LEGAL ISSUE with painful incentive to make you comply.
In fact Germany had been crippled by a hyper-inflationary blowout after the reparations levied upon them by the Allies of WWI, and the Russians were in an economic nightmare under the insanity of Stalin (I still don't understand how he isn't considered the greatest monster of the 20th century having killed 50,000,000 people... I guess as long as you're killing mostly your own people its not as bad.) Both countries were far less interested in training, than there were in seizing the land and wealth of neighboring countries.
So the observation though interesting holds little water. The conversation is regarding friendly trade and partners in economic collaboration. That also doesn't mean that if things get really dicey that you good old trading partner won't stick you on a spit and try to render you down for tallow.
I'm sorry but the wall fell in 1980. While Reagan was yelling for Mr. Gorbachev to tear down his wall, American business was ripping down ours so they could take their collective shows on the road and exploit all that cheap labor, resource and markets in the developing world. Over the next 30 years the American Corporations became truly global, no longer owing allegiance or even interest to the well being of the U.S. and as such have since been sucking off the overflow as the American economy implodes in a global economic free fall.
There has perhaps been some recent back peddling trying to reestablish some barrier to preserve what little is left, but its too little too late, and at this point its probably just as well the American worker is now economically on a par with those in the third world. It means soon work will be coming back to the United States (in fact its already begun.) So the walled garden of which you speak only exists in a couple specific technologies, and pretty much the rest of it is a distant historical condition enjoyed by Americans who are long retired or dead.
This is another fascinating process. Over population is a reaction to high mortality rates among newborns and a population that has a
The race is at a very interesting place, balanced on a knifes edge, loaded down with all kinds of primitive primate behavior, self obsessed, greedy, tribal, Machiavellian behavior and something else is emerging. Global, collaborative, inclusive, given by collective community, fundamentally transformational. What a fascinating time to be alive. I'm not certain we're going to make it, but I hope we do. We are amazing monkeys and if we don't screw the planet up too bad there are some other really fascinating critters that may eventually join us among the stars (super intelligent animals include, birds, pigs, primates, cephalopods, possibly canines.)
There is tons of medical and biological heavy lifting with computers that would prevent animal testing and perhaps prevent the need for double blind medical trials (meaning we wouldn't have to give placebos to critically ill people, and potentially save twice as many people.) Everything from advances in protein modeling and dramatic breakthroughs in analyzing DNA to DNA/RNA origami (designed and implemented first in computers) that will almost certain provide exciting new cures to everything from cancer to autoimmune diseases.
I agree big Pharma is a nasty business, but there are plenty of places where you can make a meaningful contribution to the human condition and at the same time exercise your frontal lobes.
I'm sorry but there are a whole raft of jobs that pay incredibly well and are utterly unthinkable. A master plumber can honestly earn a small mint. I refuse to bail sewage (both literal and figurative.) I've seen a person whose job it was to get kicked in the slats twice weekly by a company President. He made a shocking amount of money, and his life couldn't suck harder inside a Hoover vacuum. So, though I agree in principle, in practice, there are many jobs, or places I wouldn't work at gun point.
Ooooh, Ooooh, Ooooh! Don't forget making endless XSL Templates for e-commerce sites... because all the interesting web stuff happened over a decade ago, and now most folks spend their waking hour polishing turds. Actually there's a ton of interesting stuff, going on, you just need to hunt down someone who's doing it and sit at their front door until the let you in or call the police. Worked for a lot of people I know.
Oh and someone will be happy to pay really good money to polish turds, problem is they forget to tell you it'll cost a piece of your soul. Pick the thing that lights you up, and if you only make 70% as much count yourself lucky, and who knows, perhaps you get stupid wealthy in an IPO (avoid anything that looks like Facebook.)
Friend you forget that the 99% envy the 1% and now folks who were living subsistence lives 20 years ago all looking more and more like those Americans. The problem is that even accounting for the idiocy of the 1%, we need to bring a higher quality of life, starting with education to the developing world so they can begin to mitigate their own birth rates with longer life spans, higher quality of life, and more stable governments.
We need to energize that one percent to invest in its own future by creating an explosion of sustainable technologies and new industries that serve life and living as opposed to undermining life for billions while enriching dozens. Its time to turn things on their heads. Its time to kill the sacred cows, and shatter the broken paradigms that have been shaping this slow motion catastrophe for the last 30 years. Its time to put an end to business as usual, and making the kinds of changes that will ultimately serve the future.
This is a call for sanity. We need to appreciate, accept, and design for the best and the worst that human beings are prone to and for. The genius of the American form of Government was checks and balances (before greedy self serving people removed them.) We need to understand that there are conflicting interests, belief systems and human enterprises and we need to account for them all.
There must be a sane position between human desire and human need. We need to find and develop that position. We need to evaluate our behavior and our beliefs against hard physical reality and abandon philosophies which are fundamentally bankrupt and ideologies which are inherently self destructive. We can't react our way out of this problem. We need to come together embracing our differences and honoring our distinctiveness. Together we must pick a target, an inspiring and achievable future that serves both the human condition, and the future condition for life on the planet. The problem is not and has never been about life. Life can't be stopped. Its about a world capable of sustaining complex higher lifeforms capable of intelligence. We are an apex species. Destroy the habitat and our numbers will collapse (its happened before, at one time the human population dwindled to less than 5,000.)
That said, we must not let the Plutarchs push the vast majority of humanity off the edge. There is clear indication that education is transformative. Bring knowledge to superstition, starvation, plague and famine, and life improves instantly. Where there is education the natural environment is seen as a value outside of its ability to be burned or eaten. Where there is education, there is social change, contraception, medicine, increased health and lifespan and decreased reproduction rate. We need to educate the developing world and we have amazing new tools to accomplish this. We need to remove the false gods and dangerous superstitions from our midst. Starting with Profit and Endless Material want. Its time to discover what is good for us as human beings and pursue that with passion and joy. It is time for us to honor the miracle of our world and protect it, because until we can leave it, it is the only home we know and we are unfit for any place else. It is time for us to appreciate the miracle of being human and put an end to strife and hatred, fear and war, xenophobia and discrimination.
I'm just tired of Fry's customer abuse. I just bought a video tuner/DVR card are FRY's a couple weeks ago. I opened it up. I should have noticed the thing wasn't originally shrink-wrapped, and stuff is missing starting with the software CD. I took it back to the Store, literally the next day. Here was the conversation;
I said "The box had been previously opened and was not properly marked, most important it's missing at least the CD."
They said "Have you got the receipt?"
I said "Not on me."
They said "Then you're boned because we don't know which store you bought it from."
I said "I bought it from this one."
They said "Yes, but we don't know that."
I said "So you're saying I'm either unable to remember where I purchased this last night or I'm lying to you. Look you have my home address right there on the screen and here's by business card. There is only one FRY's between these two places, this isn't rocket science."
They said "Sorry, its store policy, just download the software from the Vendor online."
I said "So, I spend a $100, discover the box has already been opened in your store, is missing things, and its my problem, because I can't prove to you which store I bought it from, All I asked for was a direct trade with a complete unopened product, I only want what I paid for."
They said "Sorry, that's the policy, come back with a receipt or download the software."
A couple days later of rooting around, I found the receipt. I went back, got the replacement, and found not only the CD was missing, but a bunch of cables and mounting hardware. I mean I don't have to have people kiss me and call me sweat-heart when I arrive at a store, but I would appreciate not getting a kick in the head by someone for whom English was almost a third language. When did abusing customers become an acceptable business practice?
A corporation exists to make money, specifically profit. It wants to control all things that impact that result. Controlling information about employees, from employees, gives them an edge in the making of profit. Some of the thing a corporation might want to do, or assumes it can do to or with employees, is in fact illegal and they can't actually do those things. However, most large corporations also know that they can induce their employees to tow their corporate line with sanctions that while are perhaps illegal, would be either difficult to prosecute, or nearly impossible to prove. This leaves most employees in the situation that they can either put up with the "problem" or they can seek legal remedy, knowing full well they may lose, or simply be waited out until their funds run out.
This isn't to say that people haven't won substantial settlements from large corporations, it is to say pick your battles carefully, you have a lot at stake and the deck has been stacked against you.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, let's put this a different way, In American today 50,000,000 experience chronic hunger and over 35,000,000 suffer significant malnutrition as a result. Most of these people are single Mothers and their children, and the damage done to developing bodies will have a profound impact on the nations economy for the next 40-60 years. So whether there are food deserts or not, is absolutely moot, there is a real mess brewing with the poor in this country and the clowns in D.C. fiddle why the nation burns.
Yes, but even Adam Smith warned that for Capitalism to work you needed to have a large and healthy middle class and that it was essential to prevent the concentration of wealth, because it would lead to the ultimate collapse of the system. Of course there will be rich and poor in a working capitalism, you just need a couple millions of shades of both to create a working economy or what you have is not capitalism but ultimately totalitarianism.
I dunno, perhaps there are millions of people who shouldn't be having children, though in a free society I haven't a clue how you'd regulate that, I just find it frightening that our national legislature is thinking that the answer to preserving tax cuts for the wealthy (and I mean the ridiculously wealthy), is to remove millions of men, women and children from the most basic resources for living. I keep hearing the Scrooge quote about the surplus population getting on with the business of dying.
There's another quote in that book, "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" You think if we made the houses read "A Christmas Carol" they'd get the idea that what they are doing is both unChristian and immoral, or do you think they'd just take notes from the preTransformation Scrooge?
Because he was able to block the Cialis ads...
You're losing the thread, it wasn't the FJ's lawyer, it was his mother. I have no desire to find out what the babies look like!
Not if FunnyJunk has surgically removed the link and logo from the artwork... that's my friend is a no no by any measure.
Perhaps you didn't notice the fact that the Oatmeal logo and link had been surgically removed from the reposted material on FunnyJunk? I dunno, call me suspicious, but that just doesn't sound like the work of people who likes Oatmeal reposting work. It sounds like someone trying to hide the fact that he's ripping off other site for content and that my friends is copyright infringement in all its splendor.
I'm sorry, as the facts keep coming out, he should just sue this clown into bowels of the perdition.
But Hitler is such an excellent example of what happens when a child doesn't get a full art education! ;-)
I think he's talking about old folks, those entitled bastards... why don't all you old boomer just die already, drinking our water, breathing our air... Oh crap... I'm a boomer! Personally I would suggest that when the top 400 richest people in the this country have the same wealth as the bottom 165,000,000, that I can pretty easily put my finger on the selfish, shortsighted, petulant thugs being described in the prior post, but thanks for your opinion.
There's no money left to feed the poor kids after you've bought the stealth fighters that'll never fly, and oil companies get their billions.
Interesting, not accurate but interesting. There are societies that are significantly socialist, and also democratic, with strong constitutions protecting civil liberties and you would argue that you are less free there than here? LAWS by definition limit your freedom. They control human interaction to ensure healthy human endeavor while punishing violent or antisocial behavior. Corporations are wired different, but if you think there is greater freedom in a capitalistic system, you may want to look at the way corporations in the United States are changing the very nature of IP and the citizen's rights to buy and sell it.
The Supreme court is about to here a case which will determine whether or not a person can own anything trademarked outside the United States. What's at stake is that you won't be able to sell an iPad or iPod, or anything else with materials manufactured outside the U.S. without first getting the consent of all parties for whom there are logos in your product. Selling your home? Not so fast, what about the Italian marble in the bathrooms with the logo? What about the Canadian wood beams with a logo? How about the electronics in the heater from Thailand? Want to sell your car? Good luck, there isn't a car on the road today that doesn't have parts from half a dozen countries outside the United States. Kiss Craigslist, garage sales, and reselling anything you own today goodbye. That's capitalism at work. Explain to me again how this make me more free?
And what about subtracting precisely the amount as Thoreau did, that was being used for the war he disagreed on in principle. If I say my dignity and morality are more important than my physical freedom, and that I will not allow my government to take that which is being used for a perverse and immoral purpose, then am I wrong? Clearly I've committed a crime, because you best believe that the government has made its ability to collect funding a STRONG LEGAL ISSUE with painful incentive to make you comply.
In fact Germany had been crippled by a hyper-inflationary blowout after the reparations levied upon them by the Allies of WWI, and the Russians were in an economic nightmare under the insanity of Stalin (I still don't understand how he isn't considered the greatest monster of the 20th century having killed 50,000,000 people... I guess as long as you're killing mostly your own people its not as bad.) Both countries were far less interested in training, than there were in seizing the land and wealth of neighboring countries.
So the observation though interesting holds little water. The conversation is regarding friendly trade and partners in economic collaboration. That also doesn't mean that if things get really dicey that you good old trading partner won't stick you on a spit and try to render you down for tallow.
How do you describe in one sentence an agnostic, insomniac, dyslexic?
Its someone who stays up late at night wondering if there is a Dog!!!
I'm sorry but the wall fell in 1980. While Reagan was yelling for Mr. Gorbachev to tear down his wall, American business was ripping down ours so they could take their collective shows on the road and exploit all that cheap labor, resource and markets in the developing world. Over the next 30 years the American Corporations became truly global, no longer owing allegiance or even interest to the well being of the U.S. and as such have since been sucking off the overflow as the American economy implodes in a global economic free fall.
There has perhaps been some recent back peddling trying to reestablish some barrier to preserve what little is left, but its too little too late, and at this point its probably just as well the American worker is now economically on a par with those in the third world. It means soon work will be coming back to the United States (in fact its already begun.) So the walled garden of which you speak only exists in a couple specific technologies, and pretty much the rest of it is a distant historical condition enjoyed by Americans who are long retired or dead.
This is another fascinating process. Over population is a reaction to high mortality rates among newborns and a population that has a
The race is at a very interesting place, balanced on a knifes edge, loaded down with all kinds of primitive primate behavior, self obsessed, greedy, tribal, Machiavellian behavior and something else is emerging. Global, collaborative, inclusive, given by collective community, fundamentally transformational. What a fascinating time to be alive. I'm not certain we're going to make it, but I hope we do. We are amazing monkeys and if we don't screw the planet up too bad there are some other really fascinating critters that may eventually join us among the stars (super intelligent animals include, birds, pigs, primates, cephalopods, possibly canines.)
Wow... I would'a thought you'd be too busy running your Presidential campaign... thanks for giving a little of your time Governor Romney.
There is tons of medical and biological heavy lifting with computers that would prevent animal testing and perhaps prevent the need for double blind medical trials (meaning we wouldn't have to give placebos to critically ill people, and potentially save twice as many people.) Everything from advances in protein modeling and dramatic breakthroughs in analyzing DNA to DNA/RNA origami (designed and implemented first in computers) that will almost certain provide exciting new cures to everything from cancer to autoimmune diseases.
I agree big Pharma is a nasty business, but there are plenty of places where you can make a meaningful contribution to the human condition and at the same time exercise your frontal lobes.
I'm sorry but there are a whole raft of jobs that pay incredibly well and are utterly unthinkable. A master plumber can honestly earn a small mint. I refuse to bail sewage (both literal and figurative.) I've seen a person whose job it was to get kicked in the slats twice weekly by a company President. He made a shocking amount of money, and his life couldn't suck harder inside a Hoover vacuum. So, though I agree in principle, in practice, there are many jobs, or places I wouldn't work at gun point.
Thank you for that insight Wally, and by the way, How's Dilbert?
Ooooh, Ooooh, Ooooh! Don't forget making endless XSL Templates for e-commerce sites... because all the interesting web stuff happened over a decade ago, and now most folks spend their waking hour polishing turds. Actually there's a ton of interesting stuff, going on, you just need to hunt down someone who's doing it and sit at their front door until the let you in or call the police. Worked for a lot of people I know.
Oh and someone will be happy to pay really good money to polish turds, problem is they forget to tell you it'll cost a piece of your soul. Pick the thing that lights you up, and if you only make 70% as much count yourself lucky, and who knows, perhaps you get stupid wealthy in an IPO (avoid anything that looks like Facebook.)
Friend you forget that the 99% envy the 1% and now folks who were living subsistence lives 20 years ago all looking more and more like those Americans. The problem is that even accounting for the idiocy of the 1%, we need to bring a higher quality of life, starting with education to the developing world so they can begin to mitigate their own birth rates with longer life spans, higher quality of life, and more stable governments.
We need to energize that one percent to invest in its own future by creating an explosion of sustainable technologies and new industries that serve life and living as opposed to undermining life for billions while enriching dozens. Its time to turn things on their heads. Its time to kill the sacred cows, and shatter the broken paradigms that have been shaping this slow motion catastrophe for the last 30 years. Its time to put an end to business as usual, and making the kinds of changes that will ultimately serve the future.
This is a call for sanity. We need to appreciate, accept, and design for the best and the worst that human beings are prone to and for. The genius of the American form of Government was checks and balances (before greedy self serving people removed them.) We need to understand that there are conflicting interests, belief systems and human enterprises and we need to account for them all.
There must be a sane position between human desire and human need. We need to find and develop that position. We need to evaluate our behavior and our beliefs against hard physical reality and abandon philosophies which are fundamentally bankrupt and ideologies which are inherently self destructive. We can't react our way out of this problem. We need to come together embracing our differences and honoring our distinctiveness. Together we must pick a target, an inspiring and achievable future that serves both the human condition, and the future condition for life on the planet. The problem is not and has never been about life. Life can't be stopped. Its about a world capable of sustaining complex higher lifeforms capable of intelligence. We are an apex species. Destroy the habitat and our numbers will collapse (its happened before, at one time the human population dwindled to less than 5,000.)
That said, we must not let the Plutarchs push the vast majority of humanity off the edge. There is clear indication that education is transformative. Bring knowledge to superstition, starvation, plague and famine, and life improves instantly. Where there is education the natural environment is seen as a value outside of its ability to be burned or eaten. Where there is education, there is social change, contraception, medicine, increased health and lifespan and decreased reproduction rate. We need to educate the developing world and we have amazing new tools to accomplish this. We need to remove the false gods and dangerous superstitions from our midst. Starting with Profit and Endless Material want. Its time to discover what is good for us as human beings and pursue that with passion and joy. It is time for us to honor the miracle of our world and protect it, because until we can leave it, it is the only home we know and we are unfit for any place else. It is time for us to appreciate the miracle of being human and put an end to strife and hatred, fear and war, xenophobia and discrimination.
This is a call for sanity.
I'm just tired of Fry's customer abuse. I just bought a video tuner/DVR card are FRY's a couple weeks ago. I opened it up. I should have noticed the thing wasn't originally shrink-wrapped, and stuff is missing starting with the software CD. I took it back to the Store, literally the next day. Here was the conversation;
I said "The box had been previously opened and was not properly marked, most important it's missing at least the CD."
They said "Have you got the receipt?"
I said "Not on me."
They said "Then you're boned because we don't know which store you bought it from."
I said "I bought it from this one."
They said "Yes, but we don't know that."
I said "So you're saying I'm either unable to remember where I purchased this last night or I'm lying to you. Look you have my home address right there on the screen and here's by business card. There is only one FRY's between these two places, this isn't rocket science."
They said "Sorry, its store policy, just download the software from the Vendor online."
I said "So, I spend a $100, discover the box has already been opened in your store, is missing things, and its my problem, because I can't prove to you which store I bought it from, All I asked for was a direct trade with a complete unopened product, I only want what I paid for."
They said "Sorry, that's the policy, come back with a receipt or download the software."
A couple days later of rooting around, I found the receipt. I went back, got the replacement, and found not only the CD was missing, but a bunch of cables and mounting hardware. I mean I don't have to have people kiss me and call me sweat-heart when I arrive at a store, but I would appreciate not getting a kick in the head by someone for whom English was almost a third language. When did abusing customers become an acceptable business practice?
A corporation exists to make money, specifically profit. It wants to control all things that impact that result. Controlling information about employees, from employees, gives them an edge in the making of profit. Some of the thing a corporation might want to do, or assumes it can do to or with employees, is in fact illegal and they can't actually do those things. However, most large corporations also know that they can induce their employees to tow their corporate line with sanctions that while are perhaps illegal, would be either difficult to prosecute, or nearly impossible to prove. This leaves most employees in the situation that they can either put up with the "problem" or they can seek legal remedy, knowing full well they may lose, or simply be waited out until their funds run out.
This isn't to say that people haven't won substantial settlements from large corporations, it is to say pick your battles carefully, you have a lot at stake and the deck has been stacked against you.