I'm guessing "Naturally Suicidal" is the condition of having a profound sensitivity in the presence of an overwhelming affront to that sense. For example... having an preternaturally developed sense of smell and being forced to function for extended periods on the floor of the Congress... the unfathomable stench of our laws being made (or unmade as some suggest) would almost certainly induce the state of being "Naturally Suicidal".
Having Angelina Jolie and Cameron Diaz fembots teaching Computer Science to the boyz, and Chris Evans and Jason Momoa mandroids for the gurl geeks. You just have to hit teenagers squarely in the hormones!
Again by not keeping all you "Humans" in one basket, you ensure that the acts of a single loon are at worst limited to a specific human population and not all people anywhere in the universe.
The flu in question is highly responsive to modern flu anti-virals as well as "MODERN MEDICAL TREATMENTS". What made this flu so devastating in the first place was its ability to cause a life threatening immune responses in young healthy adults, ultimately damaging the lungs so badly that victims drowned in their own body fluids. That's why this particular flu devastated healthy 20-somethings when it first spread as a global pandemic.
An outbreak today could easily be mitigated and seeing as the people most at risk would have viable medical treatments to prevent both spread and lethal complications this flu would be unable to produce the catastrophic effects it created in its first run through the human population.
The real threat would be an outbreak in a place like Africa, where a large infected population could become a huge bio-reactor evolving the virus into a real monster that was both lethal and untreatable. So our best bet for world pandemics in general are to place special focus on developing nations and make certain they have the resources needed to stop outbreaks of both old and new diseases.
And you would be wrong. There are a number of robotic surgical systems now being deployed in Africa and other parts of the third world, allowing top surgeons the ability to provide much needed medical expertise in places that people would normally never have access. Its a great way to refine/perfect surgical robotics, and serve the poor and hard to reach people of the world at the same time.
On the plus side, there will be a Darwinian pressure involving superstitious orthodox patients selecting orthodox superstitious medical practitioners. Since the quality of medicine (particularly medicine that involves utilizing a full grasp of MEDICAL SCIENCE) will lead to a significant increase in the percentage of people with poor medical outcomes.
On the minus side, there will be a Darwinian pressure to breed bigger, stronger, healthier Muslims. Perhaps they'll also breed the stupid out... and orthodox churches just be abandoned and intellectually and morally bankrupt.
Of representatives who've sworn to uphold the Constitution, then promptly try to wipe the grubby asses with it. A new law needs to be passed that if ANY person in a position to make, pass or decide on a laws attempts to remove, diminish or expunge any right guaranteed by the Constitution, will immediately receive a full cavity search by a trained low land gorilla sans lubrication.
I propose this on the obvious presumption that these people are trying to hide something foul by misdirecting the publics attention by making an unholy ruckus elsewhere.
Piracy is a natural response to people who want to "CONTROL". The issue is not about IP, its not about getting something for nothing. Time and time again research, the research generated by the very vendors of IP, says people are happy to pay for something of value. That they simply want what they want the way the want it. It is the unbridled need, addiction to, the control of something that has become the crux of the piracy debate.
The irony is, that by punishing consumers for the fear of being robbed, precipitates the actual robbery. People just ask to get their music, movie or game, simply, easily, and accessibly from any technology they possess. It is the draconian measures which now threaten to destroy
(SOPA) the very conduit our collective futures rely on (the Internet), that is a clear extension of the avarice and need to control. These people have enjoyed decades of complete control, allowing an infrastructure of suppliers and middlemen to rape artists at one end and consumers at the other. With the advent of growing technology, old paradigms fail. For these people, the answer is not to learn how to leverage the amazing power of the new technology, but strangle it so they can bring back the bad old days. We need to make it clear to our representatives in no uncertain terms, that the future demands that the internet be free, broad and democratic.
Is any of this surprising??? A caribou in Alaska passes gas and ALL gas prices jump forty cents in the US (of course there's no price fixing or collusion going on.) In 2000 Enron screwed with the supply of electricity to the western US, precipitating the Dot Com crash (the tech bubble sustained the collapse, but it was the rolling black outs that started massive business failures.) Enron's affiliates were able to bump prices to mind numbing levels, then got caught with internal memos laughing about how they reamed California for billions. An article comes out that oat bran reduces cholesterol and suddenly a bag of granola needs to be stored in a bank deposit box.
We are haunted daily by "Whatever the market will bear...", which is just code for "The piggies are at the trough and if I don't gouge out a piece for myself I'll miss out on the feeding frenzy." Sadly it has become the norm. Our society has put profit ahead of everything, ahead of dignity, compassion, even sanity. We've been caught in a terrible race to the bottom. This is why we debate about the sane limits to gutting economies and ecosystems. Because somebody, somewhere isn't yet done raping what remains of some vital resource.
Perhaps its time we acknowledged the darker aspects of primate behavior and started designing our society to limit the damage they can do. Checks and balances were expressly designed into our government to limit the dangers of concentrated power. Sadly we've allowed power to concentrate elsewhere and the wisdom of our founding fathers now ring louder than ever before. Corporation is the failure and its time to put things right. The price of drives is just a blip on a landscape of unbridled greed and avarice destroying the very things that make life worth living.
This is not a problem. You take a body stocking made of lycra (this serves both as a scaffolding for signal transmission and reception and with small actuators it could also serve to enhance circulation, exercise muscle groups and protect the wearer from minor scrapes and scratches.) On the skin side of the suit, you place a mesh of conductive fibers and control nodes all over the entire body creating a large network of antennas for transmitting and receiving signals anywhere on the body. The outside of the body suit has a tight mesh attached to a device that converts ambient RF energy into useable electricity. It also serves as a highly effective barrier between signals inside and outside of the suit. By ensuring that the signals inside the suit are at least a couple orders of magnitude larger than the signals from outside the suit, the problem of unwanted control of the users limbs is rendered moot.
One other idea might be to make the suit opaque and use an optical network with light fibers and choose IR frequencies that pass readily through human flesh to the neural interfaces. This produces no external signals if the suit is in fact optically opaque, and the isolation from the external environment would be absolute (save the flash from something like a thermonuclear device and then the crosstalk with the bionics is probably the least of one's concerns:-)
The Police should have sophisticated communication including on person audio and video transmission to ensure crimes are recorded accurately and that the testimony of the officer comes with wide screen video proof of the perpetrator performing acts of daring don't. This also ensures that the officer can't thump people like ripe melons and not face some serious scrutiny. Said communication system should be part of a comprehensive communication fabric for a wide variety of service providers ensuring that police are able to receive any and all emergency resources any officer might need under any given circumstance.
All communication should be able to be monitored by "Authorized Access" which any citizen should be allowed to attain through a simple licensing process, closed to felons and known gang members. If a person uses communications access to facilitate a felony, it should be considered an enhancement with serious punitive conditions (a year of hard labor working on city infrastructure for example.)
A volunteer organization comprised of interested citizens should be keepers of a police communications archive, in the event of a questionable arrest or police action. This would allow the group to ensure that vital recording don't disappear, that unfounded complaints against the police are dismissed with velocity and that officers who perpetrate crimes are dealt with, keeping the integrity of law enforcement at its highest possible level. Such transparency would weed the cowboys out of police work pretty quick. Ultimately leaving the remaining hard working dedicated people, who for the most part take "Serve and Protect" deadly serious, able and empowered to do their jobs without constraint or concern (their backs are covered on multiple levels.)
I think this is a win-win for everybody except possibly the turkeys, and with Thanks Giving just around the corner, we all know what to do with Turkeys...
That's exactly what I'm talking about, you have just described the "VERY BEST" possible outcome, and the UC system is looking at increasing its tuition over the next 5 years by between 20-30%. So a young man or woman from a financially challenged environment, unable to find work that isn't minimum wage, is supposed to figure out a way to go to school full time for 4 years and cover what will very soon be a $70-100K debt fresh out of school in an environment that will at least for the first couple years be just as hard finding work that isn't flipping burgers, as before going to school.
Of course you may have chosen a field that is in screaming demand or have a family business you can slide into once you get out of school, I don't know you and can can't speak for you. Most people however will have a very hard time finding work after school even with degrees in the right field. So hard as going to school is, if you can get summer internships, you best take them. The idea of forcing kids to start their lives with that kind of financial burden already on their backs just strikes me as insane. They got the education, it will take 3-6 years for them to get sufficient experience to get the kind of job experience they need to pull down really good paying jobs and all the while, they'll be scraping by, maybe paying the interest on their loans.
I feel for LimeCat, I'm certain you'll do fine, I just wish that you didn't have to swim the English channel with an anchor on your back. When my Dad got his degree he did it on a VA Loan while taking care of a wife and two children and working two jobs. He wouldn't be able to do that today. Not the school he went to with today's tuition rates. I'm terrified that the ones coming after you won't be able to make it at all. We need to get very clear what our priorities as a society are. If we are interested in serving our future we should perhaps look at taking the necessary actions for creating that. Instead of finding new and more interesting ways to abuse our elderly and children.
I'm going to step over the profound ignorance of not providing even the "Po Folk" a grounding in the humanities, sciences, or enlightened discourse because this single point probably deserves an entire response of its own but I'll leave it to someone else.
Students around the country are being priced out of an education because an education is antithetical to an informed and responsible citizenry. It is inherently easier to manage a population of people who know only what you see fit to tell them. The cost of going to even the best of schools in the 50s and 60s was well within the grasp of anyone with a Veteran's Loan. Sadly, as young people started getting enlightened in the 60s (and began to comprehend the intent of our founding Fathers) they began to see the duplicity and hypocrisy of their government leaders and how the war on communism was as often as not a war on the Bill of Rights and the right of choice. So, the government decided to dramatically cut funding to colleges en-masse, and more and more colleges became self serving for profit institutions.
This is all above and beyond the fact that education in the United States is for all intents and purposes a monopoly. I've looked around, a person couldn't get the education you describe if they wanted to. Look high and look low, there is no "Billy Bob's College of Professional Knowledge". Part of that has to do with accreditation, and that's probably a good thing, but it also forces students to deal with the fact that all colleges even the Community Colleges are quickly becoming too expensive for the growing number of young people in serious poverty and unable to find work. Education has just become one more way that the class mobility Americans have always assumed as a personal right is quick vanishing. A recent study clearly indicates that its significantly easier for people in France and any number of other places in Europe to rise out of there current class than it is in America.
Franklin Roosevelt spoke of a "Second Bill of Rights" based on ensuring a healthy and vibrant middle class and a dynamic and productive democracy. Instead over the last 30 years we've watched the near total dismantling of the original "Bill of Rights" and an inequality of wealth greater than that preceding the Great Depression. The problem isn't and has never been poor college choice. It is a growing appreciation of just how seriously things have gotten out of hand in our country and how desperately we must act to put things right.
It took over a billion dollars for Obama to become president and you're absolutely right, he clearly went to the highest bidder.
The answer is to redesign our political process from the ground up. Starting with education. It should be taught in every school that it is a citizens highest responsibility to serve both by voting and doing his/her civic duties, and by running for office if there is something important they see that needs to be addressed for the greater good of the people.
The next thing that should exist is a online central information repository for candidates maintained and managed by a nonpartisan organization whose members are changed regularly and frequently. The repository should contain comprehensive biographies on each person running for office, a grade for their performance if they are incumbents and the particulars behind every proposition showing up on the ballet. We should know who a candidate is affiliated with (if anyone.) Who his largest supporters are. When monied interests go all over the country and try to get laws passed that feather their nest (as several oil companies in Texas recently tried to do in California) the public should be informed so they can see just who's benefiting and who if anyone is getting the browner end of the proverbial stick.
Campaigning should cost little or nothing so a wide range of candidates can participate, and none have to answer to contributors later. The cost of campaigns should initially be covered by a tax on those who don't vote. Ultimately, once more than 80% of the population get's into the habit, we can set up a tax on lobbyists to make certain the good they do exceeds the bad. The same folks who manage the Central Information Clearing House on each candidate should have a team to report to the news media how the candidates are acquitting themselves as future representatives. Of course this should be a nonpartison appraisal, and there could even be an appraisal from a conservative perspective and a more liberal to give folks several views of the candidates. The point is that there should be an abundance of information available upon which to base an informed selection.
Finally, we remove all the special exemptions that allow representative to get rich or live like the wealthy while in office. The current exemption that members of Congress can practice insider trading without criminal repercussions even if that trading puts the representative in direct conflict with the best interests of the American people would be my first target. That members of Congress should enjoy the same health benefits as all Americans (as opposed to the very best and among the most expensive health programs in the world.) There are so many double standards and duplicitous exemptions that our representatives have seen fit to vote themselves, its time to expunge them all from our body of law. Also, we need to make it illegal for ex-representatives to become lobbyist and/or work for powerful monied interests in or around their old stomping ground, its just another way our legislators are being bought by the wealthy and the powerful. Instead we should provide resources for ex-representatives to share what they learn and what they believe in to young up and coming students of politics so that wisdom and acquired information can propagate and be used to serve all our best interests.
Thank you... there are tons of ham nerds out there and the they are rightfully proud of their work. Learning about the fundaments of a tank circuit or how superhet functions is just way cool. Getting the finer points of propagation nailed down and creating cool antennas rocks! Building your own equipment is just the best, once you've got the smell of burning rosin flux in your nose and your blood you're hooked for life.
There's just something romantic about DXing and whoopie with the Solar Max coming the 10 meter band should be hopping like jumping beans in a skillet!!!
I'm a Ham I am and I like green eggs and spam!!! Whoohoooo!!!!
You have to put this into context... Students around the country are being priced out of an education, while banks are getting filthy rich enslaving entire generations of young people with crushing debt attempting to chase the American Dream. All this happening while School Chancellors are retiring on multimillion dollar pensions and salaries that are growing astronomically every year. When such a vanishingly few seem to grow wealthy on the backs of those they should be serving how can you honestly say students shouldn't exercise their fair and legal right to protest publicly.
Simply blasting children with pepper spray not only did not solve the problem, but the video of the event so inflamed public opinion that all involved will either lose their jobs or face criminal prosecution. The use of force in this circumstance is completely unwarranted, and people will do hard time for using it. By your logic, we could start macing j-walkers and parking violators. I'm certain you'd only need to be maced once to forever find committing that crime unpalatable. How about children being unruly in the classroom, forget the Ritalin, let's just mace the little buggers, that'll make them behave. Have you ever been pepper sprayed? Do you actually think that is an appropriate response to people quietly sitting down?
I understand your question. The sad truth is that the world is a strange and chaotic place. How many millions have been slaughtered in the name of the "Prince of Peace". That doesn't make the conversation "Love thy Enemy" any less profound or moving. Gandhi freed nearly a billion people from the oppression of foreign rule. More important he is the father of peaceful revolution. The American civil rights movement owes almost everything to Gandhi. Since then the best of the work of Mandela, Tienanmen Square, and a hundred other peaceful revolution small and large owe their power, dignity and humanity to the road paved by Gandhi.
He literally invented a new way for human beings to determine the future with complete responsibility and complete compassion. I can't remember a larger contribution to the species and it will certainly play a large part in what it about to happen to our government and our collective futures.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm guessing "Naturally Suicidal" is the condition of having a profound sensitivity in the presence of an overwhelming affront to that sense. For example... having an preternaturally developed sense of smell and being forced to function for extended periods on the floor of the Congress... the unfathomable stench of our laws being made (or unmade as some suggest) would almost certainly induce the state of being "Naturally Suicidal".
Having Angelina Jolie and Cameron Diaz fembots teaching Computer Science to the boyz, and Chris Evans and Jason Momoa mandroids for the gurl geeks. You just have to hit teenagers squarely in the hormones!
Again by not keeping all you "Humans" in one basket, you ensure that the acts of a single loon are at worst limited to a specific human population and not all people anywhere in the universe.
The flu in question is highly responsive to modern flu anti-virals as well as "MODERN MEDICAL TREATMENTS". What made this flu so devastating in the first place was its ability to cause a life threatening immune responses in young healthy adults, ultimately damaging the lungs so badly that victims drowned in their own body fluids. That's why this particular flu devastated healthy 20-somethings when it first spread as a global pandemic.
An outbreak today could easily be mitigated and seeing as the people most at risk would have viable medical treatments to prevent both spread and lethal complications this flu would be unable to produce the catastrophic effects it created in its first run through the human population.
The real threat would be an outbreak in a place like Africa, where a large infected population could become a huge bio-reactor evolving the virus into a real monster that was both lethal and untreatable. So our best bet for world pandemics in general are to place special focus on developing nations and make certain they have the resources needed to stop outbreaks of both old and new diseases.
And you would be wrong. There are a number of robotic surgical systems now being deployed in Africa and other parts of the third world, allowing top surgeons the ability to provide much needed medical expertise in places that people would normally never have access. Its a great way to refine/perfect surgical robotics, and serve the poor and hard to reach people of the world at the same time.
There are plus and minus sided to this.
On the plus side, there will be a Darwinian pressure involving superstitious orthodox patients selecting orthodox superstitious medical practitioners. Since the quality of medicine (particularly medicine that involves utilizing a full grasp of MEDICAL SCIENCE) will lead to a significant increase in the percentage of people with poor medical outcomes.
On the minus side, there will be a Darwinian pressure to breed bigger, stronger, healthier Muslims. Perhaps they'll also breed the stupid out... and orthodox churches just be abandoned and intellectually and morally bankrupt.
And while we're at it we should be able to "Idiot Labels" on Senators.
Of representatives who've sworn to uphold the Constitution, then promptly try to wipe the grubby asses with it. A new law needs to be passed that if ANY person in a position to make, pass or decide on a laws attempts to remove, diminish or expunge any right guaranteed by the Constitution, will immediately receive a full cavity search by a trained low land gorilla sans lubrication.
I propose this on the obvious presumption that these people are trying to hide something foul by misdirecting the publics attention by making an unholy ruckus elsewhere.
Piracy is a natural response to people who want to "CONTROL". The issue is not about IP, its not about getting something for nothing. Time and time again research, the research generated by the very vendors of IP, says people are happy to pay for something of value. That they simply want what they want the way the want it. It is the unbridled need, addiction to, the control of something that has become the crux of the piracy debate.
The irony is, that by punishing consumers for the fear of being robbed, precipitates the actual robbery. People just ask to get their music, movie or game, simply, easily, and accessibly from any technology they possess. It is the draconian measures which now threaten to destroy (SOPA) the very conduit our collective futures rely on (the Internet), that is a clear extension of the avarice and need to control. These people have enjoyed decades of complete control, allowing an infrastructure of suppliers and middlemen to rape artists at one end and consumers at the other. With the advent of growing technology, old paradigms fail. For these people, the answer is not to learn how to leverage the amazing power of the new technology, but strangle it so they can bring back the bad old days. We need to make it clear to our representatives in no uncertain terms, that the future demands that the internet be free, broad and democratic.
Is any of this surprising??? A caribou in Alaska passes gas and ALL gas prices jump forty cents in the US (of course there's no price fixing or collusion going on.) In 2000 Enron screwed with the supply of electricity to the western US, precipitating the Dot Com crash (the tech bubble sustained the collapse, but it was the rolling black outs that started massive business failures.) Enron's affiliates were able to bump prices to mind numbing levels, then got caught with internal memos laughing about how they reamed California for billions. An article comes out that oat bran reduces cholesterol and suddenly a bag of granola needs to be stored in a bank deposit box.
We are haunted daily by "Whatever the market will bear...", which is just code for "The piggies are at the trough and if I don't gouge out a piece for myself I'll miss out on the feeding frenzy." Sadly it has become the norm. Our society has put profit ahead of everything, ahead of dignity, compassion, even sanity. We've been caught in a terrible race to the bottom. This is why we debate about the sane limits to gutting economies and ecosystems. Because somebody, somewhere isn't yet done raping what remains of some vital resource.
Perhaps its time we acknowledged the darker aspects of primate behavior and started designing our society to limit the damage they can do. Checks and balances were expressly designed into our government to limit the dangers of concentrated power. Sadly we've allowed power to concentrate elsewhere and the wisdom of our founding fathers now ring louder than ever before. Corporation is the failure and its time to put things right. The price of drives is just a blip on a landscape of unbridled greed and avarice destroying the very things that make life worth living.
Yeah, those silly Dutch just don't have a clue... By the way, is the United States still using Windows to control their nuclear power plants???
Yeah, but the Victoria Secret's grass catchers would cost a fortune!
If I have a smart meter I could come home to my dog roasting away under the smoldering remains of his electric dog collar???
Or Grampa break dancing because his pacemaker is trying to tap out the digits of the last hours power consumption???
Eeeeewwwww!
Jumbo Shrimp
Military Intelligence
and Friendly Fire
Words that have no business being said next to one another for 800 Alex!
This is not a problem. You take a body stocking made of lycra (this serves both as a scaffolding for signal transmission and reception and with small actuators it could also serve to enhance circulation, exercise muscle groups and protect the wearer from minor scrapes and scratches.) On the skin side of the suit, you place a mesh of conductive fibers and control nodes all over the entire body creating a large network of antennas for transmitting and receiving signals anywhere on the body. The outside of the body suit has a tight mesh attached to a device that converts ambient RF energy into useable electricity. It also serves as a highly effective barrier between signals inside and outside of the suit. By ensuring that the signals inside the suit are at least a couple orders of magnitude larger than the signals from outside the suit, the problem of unwanted control of the users limbs is rendered moot.
One other idea might be to make the suit opaque and use an optical network with light fibers and choose IR frequencies that pass readily through human flesh to the neural interfaces. This produces no external signals if the suit is in fact optically opaque, and the isolation from the external environment would be absolute (save the flash from something like a thermonuclear device and then the crosstalk with the bionics is probably the least of one's concerns :-)
The Police should have sophisticated communication including on person audio and video transmission to ensure crimes are recorded accurately and that the testimony of the officer comes with wide screen video proof of the perpetrator performing acts of daring don't. This also ensures that the officer can't thump people like ripe melons and not face some serious scrutiny. Said communication system should be part of a comprehensive communication fabric for a wide variety of service providers ensuring that police are able to receive any and all emergency resources any officer might need under any given circumstance.
All communication should be able to be monitored by "Authorized Access" which any citizen should be allowed to attain through a simple licensing process, closed to felons and known gang members. If a person uses communications access to facilitate a felony, it should be considered an enhancement with serious punitive conditions (a year of hard labor working on city infrastructure for example.)
A volunteer organization comprised of interested citizens should be keepers of a police communications archive, in the event of a questionable arrest or police action. This would allow the group to ensure that vital recording don't disappear, that unfounded complaints against the police are dismissed with velocity and that officers who perpetrate crimes are dealt with, keeping the integrity of law enforcement at its highest possible level. Such transparency would weed the cowboys out of police work pretty quick. Ultimately leaving the remaining hard working dedicated people, who for the most part take "Serve and Protect" deadly serious, able and empowered to do their jobs without constraint or concern (their backs are covered on multiple levels.)
I think this is a win-win for everybody except possibly the turkeys, and with Thanks Giving just around the corner, we all know what to do with Turkeys...
That's exactly what I'm talking about, you have just described the "VERY BEST" possible outcome, and the UC system is looking at increasing its tuition over the next 5 years by between 20-30%. So a young man or woman from a financially challenged environment, unable to find work that isn't minimum wage, is supposed to figure out a way to go to school full time for 4 years and cover what will very soon be a $70-100K debt fresh out of school in an environment that will at least for the first couple years be just as hard finding work that isn't flipping burgers, as before going to school.
Of course you may have chosen a field that is in screaming demand or have a family business you can slide into once you get out of school, I don't know you and can can't speak for you. Most people however will have a very hard time finding work after school even with degrees in the right field. So hard as going to school is, if you can get summer internships, you best take them. The idea of forcing kids to start their lives with that kind of financial burden already on their backs just strikes me as insane. They got the education, it will take 3-6 years for them to get sufficient experience to get the kind of job experience they need to pull down really good paying jobs and all the while, they'll be scraping by, maybe paying the interest on their loans.
I feel for LimeCat, I'm certain you'll do fine, I just wish that you didn't have to swim the English channel with an anchor on your back. When my Dad got his degree he did it on a VA Loan while taking care of a wife and two children and working two jobs. He wouldn't be able to do that today. Not the school he went to with today's tuition rates. I'm terrified that the ones coming after you won't be able to make it at all. We need to get very clear what our priorities as a society are. If we are interested in serving our future we should perhaps look at taking the necessary actions for creating that. Instead of finding new and more interesting ways to abuse our elderly and children.
I'm going to step over the profound ignorance of not providing even the "Po Folk" a grounding in the humanities, sciences, or enlightened discourse because this single point probably deserves an entire response of its own but I'll leave it to someone else.
Students around the country are being priced out of an education because an education is antithetical to an informed and responsible citizenry. It is inherently easier to manage a population of people who know only what you see fit to tell them. The cost of going to even the best of schools in the 50s and 60s was well within the grasp of anyone with a Veteran's Loan. Sadly, as young people started getting enlightened in the 60s (and began to comprehend the intent of our founding Fathers) they began to see the duplicity and hypocrisy of their government leaders and how the war on communism was as often as not a war on the Bill of Rights and the right of choice. So, the government decided to dramatically cut funding to colleges en-masse, and more and more colleges became self serving for profit institutions.
This is all above and beyond the fact that education in the United States is for all intents and purposes a monopoly. I've looked around, a person couldn't get the education you describe if they wanted to. Look high and look low, there is no "Billy Bob's College of Professional Knowledge". Part of that has to do with accreditation, and that's probably a good thing, but it also forces students to deal with the fact that all colleges even the Community Colleges are quickly becoming too expensive for the growing number of young people in serious poverty and unable to find work. Education has just become one more way that the class mobility Americans have always assumed as a personal right is quick vanishing. A recent study clearly indicates that its significantly easier for people in France and any number of other places in Europe to rise out of there current class than it is in America.
Franklin Roosevelt spoke of a "Second Bill of Rights" based on ensuring a healthy and vibrant middle class and a dynamic and productive democracy. Instead over the last 30 years we've watched the near total dismantling of the original "Bill of Rights" and an inequality of wealth greater than that preceding the Great Depression. The problem isn't and has never been poor college choice. It is a growing appreciation of just how seriously things have gotten out of hand in our country and how desperately we must act to put things right.
It took over a billion dollars for Obama to become president and you're absolutely right, he clearly went to the highest bidder.
The answer is to redesign our political process from the ground up. Starting with education. It should be taught in every school that it is a citizens highest responsibility to serve both by voting and doing his/her civic duties, and by running for office if there is something important they see that needs to be addressed for the greater good of the people.
The next thing that should exist is a online central information repository for candidates maintained and managed by a nonpartisan organization whose members are changed regularly and frequently. The repository should contain comprehensive biographies on each person running for office, a grade for their performance if they are incumbents and the particulars behind every proposition showing up on the ballet. We should know who a candidate is affiliated with (if anyone.) Who his largest supporters are. When monied interests go all over the country and try to get laws passed that feather their nest (as several oil companies in Texas recently tried to do in California) the public should be informed so they can see just who's benefiting and who if anyone is getting the browner end of the proverbial stick.
Campaigning should cost little or nothing so a wide range of candidates can participate, and none have to answer to contributors later. The cost of campaigns should initially be covered by a tax on those who don't vote. Ultimately, once more than 80% of the population get's into the habit, we can set up a tax on lobbyists to make certain the good they do exceeds the bad. The same folks who manage the Central Information Clearing House on each candidate should have a team to report to the news media how the candidates are acquitting themselves as future representatives. Of course this should be a nonpartison appraisal, and there could even be an appraisal from a conservative perspective and a more liberal to give folks several views of the candidates. The point is that there should be an abundance of information available upon which to base an informed selection.
Finally, we remove all the special exemptions that allow representative to get rich or live like the wealthy while in office. The current exemption that members of Congress can practice insider trading without criminal repercussions even if that trading puts the representative in direct conflict with the best interests of the American people would be my first target. That members of Congress should enjoy the same health benefits as all Americans (as opposed to the very best and among the most expensive health programs in the world.) There are so many double standards and duplicitous exemptions that our representatives have seen fit to vote themselves, its time to expunge them all from our body of law. Also, we need to make it illegal for ex-representatives to become lobbyist and/or work for powerful monied interests in or around their old stomping ground, its just another way our legislators are being bought by the wealthy and the powerful. Instead we should provide resources for ex-representatives to share what they learn and what they believe in to young up and coming students of politics so that wisdom and acquired information can propagate and be used to serve all our best interests.
No you silly git... its pink he's a farging weasel...
I would much prefer to run my business on an OS named AF 6.9 , than be AFed by my OS 6.9 times thank you!
Oh! Oh! Oh! I want one... gimmeeeee the pink farting Weasel!!!!! Oh please gimme the weasel!
Thank you... there are tons of ham nerds out there and the they are rightfully proud of their work. Learning about the fundaments of a tank circuit or how superhet functions is just way cool. Getting the finer points of propagation nailed down and creating cool antennas rocks! Building your own equipment is just the best, once you've got the smell of burning rosin flux in your nose and your blood you're hooked for life.
There's just something romantic about DXing and whoopie with the Solar Max coming the 10 meter band should be hopping like jumping beans in a skillet!!!
I'm a Ham I am and I like green eggs and spam!!! Whoohoooo!!!!
You have to put this into context... Students around the country are being priced out of an education, while banks are getting filthy rich enslaving entire generations of young people with crushing debt attempting to chase the American Dream. All this happening while School Chancellors are retiring on multimillion dollar pensions and salaries that are growing astronomically every year. When such a vanishingly few seem to grow wealthy on the backs of those they should be serving how can you honestly say students shouldn't exercise their fair and legal right to protest publicly.
Simply blasting children with pepper spray not only did not solve the problem, but the video of the event so inflamed public opinion that all involved will either lose their jobs or face criminal prosecution. The use of force in this circumstance is completely unwarranted, and people will do hard time for using it. By your logic, we could start macing j-walkers and parking violators. I'm certain you'd only need to be maced once to forever find committing that crime unpalatable. How about children being unruly in the classroom, forget the Ritalin, let's just mace the little buggers, that'll make them behave. Have you ever been pepper sprayed? Do you actually think that is an appropriate response to people quietly sitting down?
I understand your question. The sad truth is that the world is a strange and chaotic place. How many millions have been slaughtered in the name of the "Prince of Peace". That doesn't make the conversation "Love thy Enemy" any less profound or moving. Gandhi freed nearly a billion people from the oppression of foreign rule. More important he is the father of peaceful revolution. The American civil rights movement owes almost everything to Gandhi. Since then the best of the work of Mandela, Tienanmen Square, and a hundred other peaceful revolution small and large owe their power, dignity and humanity to the road paved by Gandhi.
He literally invented a new way for human beings to determine the future with complete responsibility and complete compassion. I can't remember a larger contribution to the species and it will certainly play a large part in what it about to happen to our government and our collective futures.