Plato spells out a fairly legitimate argument in Republic: The state needs to ensure that there are a surplus of children of smart and capable people, so that they can select from that smart and capable people to lead the state in future generations. His solution, though, is... shall we say... creative: Annually, all the men and women in the ruling class of the appropriate age would be assigned a new partner, all of them were obligated to attempt to have children with that partner, and any children would be raised in communal nurseries.
However, in modern times, when there are more than enough people running around, many of them quite capable, this kind of thinking is simply silly. When you really think about it, most marriages are primarily a social arrangement: Bob and Alice are (presumed to be) banging, living together, and emotionally closest to each other, and not as close to their friends Carol and Dave, so if Bob bangs Carol or Alice bangs Dave there may be problems. And in fact infidelity is the leading cause of divorce, which far outweighs the divorces due to religious differences.
Most of those people showed up again in prominent roles during the Reagan administration.
Which would mean that Iran-Contra was the repeat of the same crime: There's evidence that Reagan's campaign undermined Jimmy Carter's efforts to negotiate a settlement in 1980, because as soon as Reagan was inaugurated the US hostages were released, and shortly afterwords the Iranians got a sweet sweet (illegal) deal for buying weapons from the US.
My favorite illustrative example of racism in action during elections is in the neighboring Ohio: 2006 election for governor: Ken Blackwell (Republican, black) versus Ted Strickland (Democrat, white). Blackwell gets 1.47 million votes and loses 36%-60%. 2008 election for president: John McCain (Republican, white) versus Barack Obama (Democrat, black). McCain gets 2.68 million votes and loses 48%-51%. 2010 election for governor: John Kasich (Republican, white) versus Ted Strickland (Democrat, white). Kasich gets 1.89 million votes and wins 49%-47%. 2012 election for president: Mitt Romney (Republican, white) versus Barack Obama (Democrat, black). Romney gets 2.66 million votes and loses 48%-51%.
Question: In 2006, what accounts for the sharply lower Republican vote? Yes, different years and the circumstances were a bit different. Yes, presidential politics is different than governor's races. Yes, the turnout was different. But the primary difference between Blackwell and Kasich, McCain, and Romney was race, not policies or political style or party, and that alone appears to have convinced something like 1/5 of Ohio's Republican-leaning voters to not vote.
Also of interest: In 2006, black voters in Ohio overwhelmingly supported the white Democrat over the black Republican. This seems like a strong indication that the loyalty among black voters to the Democratic Party (mostly a legacy of Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson) is greater than the loyalty to other black people. That's also why you didn't see huge numbers of black people voting for Herman Cain in Republican primaries.
We even know, from the historical record, when the "It wasn't about slavery" revisionism started: late 1865. The major figure in starting that effort was Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, but several other prominent Confederates also were heavily involved in creating the Lost Cause mythology, which included that "not about slavery" lie. By 1890, "The War Between the States" or even "The War of Northern Aggression" was basically the standard version of the Civil War history in many areas of the country, despite the fact that nobody had used those terms during the war. It took until after the Civil Rights Movement for high school history textbooks to make it clear that African-Americans were in any way a significant factor in the war!
The real story is this: A lot of people in the South took up arms to defend slavery. The slaveholder's motivations were obvious - they wanted to keep what they saw as their property, although their class didn't do all that much of the fighting. For some non-slaveholders, they were motivated by racism and the desire to maintain white supremacy (basically, thinking "I'm broke, my life's miserable, I'll never be like those plantation owners, but at least I'm not a n*****"). Some non-slaveholders were told lies and convinced that the Union was going to take all their property, not just the slaveholder's "property" (i.e. slaves). And some non-slaveholders fought for the Confederacy because they were drafted into the army by force. And some Southerners refused to serve in the Confederate Army and dodged the draft.
Yes, West Virginia's actions were good in the American Civil War (unless you are pro-slavery, which some staunch modern Republicans apparently are if CPAC is any indication).
Here are some reasons why I think we can legitimately hate West Virginia now: - Large areas of it are run by the feudal lords known as "coal executives". - Many of the residents today are quite racist. - It's an area of the country that tolerates and even applauds ignorance. - It's an area that has been, by all appearances, deliberately held back in its progress by the aforementioned feudal lords.
But if he does, hiding out in the UK was a pretty odd strategy.
He's not hiding out in the UK, he's hiding out in the sovereign territory of Ecuador, namely their embassy. The reason that he's still there is that the UK has made it clear that if he tries to leave the embassy and go to Ecuador they will violate whatever diplomatic rights Ecuador's embassy vehicles have in order to capture Assange.
So you're right, hiding in the UK was a bad strategy.
You're right, it is. And the Constitution lays out exactly what you're supposed to do with someone like that: Indict, arrest, and give them a jury trial, with free access to a lawyer to advise them on the best possible defense. And the only evidence allowed in that jury trial is stuff legally obtained, and the presumed traitor has the right to confront all the evidence against him.
What actually happened was a combination of a propaganda campaign, secret evidence, and an illegal kill order. The propaganda campaign is what makes people like you think the kill order was in any way OK.
That's also why the authorities don't really mind when decorated war veterans are killed by police at political protests (as happened in Oakland a couple of years ago). They tend to be cheering when cops beat and pepper-spray and arrest people who's sole crime is standing on a sidewalk holding a sign.
You should also mention Julian Assange, who has never stepped foot in the United States and has never been subject to its laws. The reason that Assange isn't going to Sweden to face the "sex-by-surprise" charges is that he could not get a guarantee that the Swedes would not immediately turn him over to the US, and he also couldn't get a guarantee from the US that he would receive anything remotely similar to a fair trial.
And I should mention that roman_mir and I have very different political leanings. But we can both agree that this kind of thing is wrong and illegal.
Really, that's all ideas like this are. Same with "startup incubators" and the like: They want the next Mark Zuckerberg to come to them with a great idea, work their butt off thinking they're going to become really rich, and instead make the investors really rich.
And in this case, because it's a loan, the would-be Mark Zuckerberg takes on all the risk, too. Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.
It's all about who the victim and the perpetrator of the crime is: In the Steubenville case, the victim is a powerless teenage girl, and the perps are a couple of somewhat powerful (at least locally, where the high school football team is a privileged class) teenage boys. In this case, the victim is AT&T (the largest campaign donor in the US), and the perp is a relatively powerless computer geek.
This is just a subset of the more extreme differences: Rob $2000 from a bank, and if you're lucky you won't be shot by the police. Rob $2 billion from a bank, and the SEC or OCC will settle with you for $500 M (25% of your take) and no admission of wrongdoing.
And no, that's not the way it's supposed to work, but it's the way it's actually working.
The kid may have higher velocity, but will definitely also have significantly lower mass, which matters a great deal when calculating force. For example, if your 20 kg child hits at 40 m/s, and we assume that he reaches 0 m/s in 0.1 s, then F=20 kg * (40 m/s / 0.1 s) = 20 kg * 400 m/s^2 = 8000 N. By comparison, if your 60 kg adult hits at 36 m/s, then F=60 kg * (36 m/s / 0.1 s) = 60 kg * 360 m/s^2 = 21600 N.
This calculation brought to you by the "overthinking the joke" department.
Prohibitions on any sort of math amounts to thought crime. They want to make it illegal to figure things out.
Of course they want to make it illegal to figure things out. Smart people are always a danger to those in power. Almost every time some power-hungry bastard takes over a country by force, some of the first people they get rid of is the intelligentsia.
And I'm willing to bet that people will find ways to entertain themselves anyway.
Also something they want to prevent. The idea is to keep people miserable and thinking that the only way they can sooth their misery is to buy stuff, ideally going deeply into debt at 26% interest to do so. Otherwise, the masses might start having wealth, and they could direct that wealth towards things that undermine the power of those currently owning most of the stocks in the US.
Actually, it did happen, but not in the way you think. Remember how there was a massive US cotton export industry up until the American Civil War, while at the same time the Industrial Revolution was going on in the Britain centered around the textile industry? Those two things are not unrelated. And yes, the American South was very much like a modern Third World country in a lot of ways.
You can also look at agricultural products that can't be produced in the US because the climate is all wrong: bananas, sugar, etc.
You're intentionally missing the point, which is that you can and should crunch the numbers with whatever your actual car options are in order to figure out what the financial cost / benefit of a hybrid is or isn't. Actually, this calculation isn't even specific to hybrids, and you could use it just as easily to compare your economy car versus a V8 cop car if you like.
Everybody knows hybrids aren't 'worth it' from a present value _or_ environmentalist POV.
Whether they're "worth it" or not depends on 5 factors: 1. Difference in initial cost. 2. The average price of gasoline. 3. Distance driven over the lifetime of the car. 4. Difference in efficiency between the hybrid and non-hybrid. 5. Potential investment income on the difference in initial cost over the lifetime of the car.
An example (using the ignorant American measurements I'm unfortunately used to): A. Hybrid sedan - $25K, gets 44 miles per gallon. B. Standard sedan - $13K, gets 22 miles per gallon Price of gasoline at $4.25 per gallon, expected total driving 220,000 miles over 10 years, expected investment return of 5% annually.
1. The standard sedan uses up 10,000 gallons of fuel for a total fuel cost of $42,500. The hybrid uses up half that, 5,000 gallons of fuel for a total fuel cost of $21,250, leaving a difference in fuel costs of $21,250 in favor of the hybrid. 2. The hybrid costs $12K more initially, which over those 10 years can earn an additional $7700 in investment returns, for a total of $19,700 in favor of the standard engine. 3. That means that for the buyer in this situation, the hybrid will save him $1550 total.
So what "everybody knows" may or may not be true, and the best way to answer the question is to look at the numbers for the vehicles you're considering and your own driving habits, and do the math. The general formula looks like this, where Ch is the cost of the hybrid, Cs the cost of the standard, IR is the investment return, Y is the lifetime in years, M is the lifetime in mileage, Eh is the hybrid's miles per gallon, Es is the standard's miles per gallon, and G is the cost of gasoline: Total extra cost of a hybrid = (Ch - Cs)*(1 + IR)^Y + (Ch - Cs) - M / (Eh - Es) * G
Of course, all this doesn't work if the numbers you plug into the formula are wrong.
Oh come on, you think the government is paying any attention to that old piece of paper? For reference, here's the status of the Bill of Rights:
First Amendment - Completely gone. Protesters are beaten and maced by police, people are investigated and harassed for what they say on the Internet, political organizations are routinely infiltrated by government agents, people have been spied on and rounded up solely for practicing a particular religion, some religions receive special government funding,
Second Amendment - Severely restricted.
Third Amendment - Well, they haven't tried to quarter troops in people's homes in a long time. It's kinda quaint anyways: Why bother doing that when you can spy or blow up people's homes from far away.
Fourth Amendment - Gone. This latest article is just publicizing what they're already doing, namely electronically spying on everyone in the United States (Hello, NSA, by the way). And you can toss in the TSA searches, the border searches, the searches of people less than 100 miles from a border, and the recent complaints from police in Oregon and Colorado that they can no longer pull someone over on a slight pretext and search the vehicle by claiming to smell pot.
Fifth Amendment - Gone. Anwar al-Awlaki being the most obvious example, but you can also look at the routine harassment and even criminal prosecution of lawyers who defend certain people in court.
Seventh Amendment - Gone. In contracts between corporations and individuals, the courts have repeatedly ruled that the corporations can insist upon binding arbitration, with the arbitrator determined by the corporation. In other words, there's a second parallel legal system for anything important where one side gets to pick the judge.
Eighth Amendment - Gone. In addition to the aforementioned Bradley Manning, you can also look at Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, both US citizens thrown into Gitmo for many years without trial, where they were apparently tortured.
Obama administration - making sure you're broke and enforcing it in every way possible!
The Obama administration isn't making sure you're broke: Obama and Romney's pals in the private sector are making sure you're broke, and all the Obama administration doesn't have to lift a finger. Another way of putting it: What Obama is doing here is a symptom, not the actual illness.
Slashdot Mirror
no need to steep that low.
To steep at all he'd need to have been supported by the Tea Party.
Citation provided, both with video of the most notable incident.
"Let anyone who believes that these two should not be connected via the holy symbols of <, |, and > speak now or forever hold your peace!"
Plato spells out a fairly legitimate argument in Republic: The state needs to ensure that there are a surplus of children of smart and capable people, so that they can select from that smart and capable people to lead the state in future generations. His solution, though, is ... shall we say ... creative: Annually, all the men and women in the ruling class of the appropriate age would be assigned a new partner, all of them were obligated to attempt to have children with that partner, and any children would be raised in communal nurseries.
However, in modern times, when there are more than enough people running around, many of them quite capable, this kind of thinking is simply silly. When you really think about it, most marriages are primarily a social arrangement: Bob and Alice are (presumed to be) banging, living together, and emotionally closest to each other, and not as close to their friends Carol and Dave, so if Bob bangs Carol or Alice bangs Dave there may be problems. And in fact infidelity is the leading cause of divorce, which far outweighs the divorces due to religious differences.
Most of those people showed up again in prominent roles during the Reagan administration.
Which would mean that Iran-Contra was the repeat of the same crime: There's evidence that Reagan's campaign undermined Jimmy Carter's efforts to negotiate a settlement in 1980, because as soon as Reagan was inaugurated the US hostages were released, and shortly afterwords the Iranians got a sweet sweet (illegal) deal for buying weapons from the US.
My favorite illustrative example of racism in action during elections is in the neighboring Ohio:
2006 election for governor: Ken Blackwell (Republican, black) versus Ted Strickland (Democrat, white). Blackwell gets 1.47 million votes and loses 36%-60%.
2008 election for president: John McCain (Republican, white) versus Barack Obama (Democrat, black). McCain gets 2.68 million votes and loses 48%-51%.
2010 election for governor: John Kasich (Republican, white) versus Ted Strickland (Democrat, white). Kasich gets 1.89 million votes and wins 49%-47%.
2012 election for president: Mitt Romney (Republican, white) versus Barack Obama (Democrat, black). Romney gets 2.66 million votes and loses 48%-51%.
Question: In 2006, what accounts for the sharply lower Republican vote? Yes, different years and the circumstances were a bit different. Yes, presidential politics is different than governor's races. Yes, the turnout was different. But the primary difference between Blackwell and Kasich, McCain, and Romney was race, not policies or political style or party, and that alone appears to have convinced something like 1/5 of Ohio's Republican-leaning voters to not vote.
Also of interest: In 2006, black voters in Ohio overwhelmingly supported the white Democrat over the black Republican. This seems like a strong indication that the loyalty among black voters to the Democratic Party (mostly a legacy of Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson) is greater than the loyalty to other black people. That's also why you didn't see huge numbers of black people voting for Herman Cain in Republican primaries.
Thank you!
We even know, from the historical record, when the "It wasn't about slavery" revisionism started: late 1865. The major figure in starting that effort was Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, but several other prominent Confederates also were heavily involved in creating the Lost Cause mythology, which included that "not about slavery" lie. By 1890, "The War Between the States" or even "The War of Northern Aggression" was basically the standard version of the Civil War history in many areas of the country, despite the fact that nobody had used those terms during the war. It took until after the Civil Rights Movement for high school history textbooks to make it clear that African-Americans were in any way a significant factor in the war!
The real story is this: A lot of people in the South took up arms to defend slavery. The slaveholder's motivations were obvious - they wanted to keep what they saw as their property, although their class didn't do all that much of the fighting. For some non-slaveholders, they were motivated by racism and the desire to maintain white supremacy (basically, thinking "I'm broke, my life's miserable, I'll never be like those plantation owners, but at least I'm not a n*****"). Some non-slaveholders were told lies and convinced that the Union was going to take all their property, not just the slaveholder's "property" (i.e. slaves). And some non-slaveholders fought for the Confederacy because they were drafted into the army by force. And some Southerners refused to serve in the Confederate Army and dodged the draft.
Yes, West Virginia's actions were good in the American Civil War (unless you are pro-slavery, which some staunch modern Republicans apparently are if CPAC is any indication).
Here are some reasons why I think we can legitimately hate West Virginia now:
- Large areas of it are run by the feudal lords known as "coal executives".
- Many of the residents today are quite racist.
- It's an area of the country that tolerates and even applauds ignorance.
- It's an area that has been, by all appearances, deliberately held back in its progress by the aforementioned feudal lords.
But if he does, hiding out in the UK was a pretty odd strategy.
He's not hiding out in the UK, he's hiding out in the sovereign territory of Ecuador, namely their embassy. The reason that he's still there is that the UK has made it clear that if he tries to leave the embassy and go to Ecuador they will violate whatever diplomatic rights Ecuador's embassy vehicles have in order to capture Assange.
So you're right, hiding in the UK was a bad strategy.
You're right, it is. And the Constitution lays out exactly what you're supposed to do with someone like that: Indict, arrest, and give them a jury trial, with free access to a lawyer to advise them on the best possible defense. And the only evidence allowed in that jury trial is stuff legally obtained, and the presumed traitor has the right to confront all the evidence against him.
What actually happened was a combination of a propaganda campaign, secret evidence, and an illegal kill order. The propaganda campaign is what makes people like you think the kill order was in any way OK.
"There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't." - Robert Benchley
That's also why the authorities don't really mind when decorated war veterans are killed by police at political protests (as happened in Oakland a couple of years ago). They tend to be cheering when cops beat and pepper-spray and arrest people who's sole crime is standing on a sidewalk holding a sign.
You should also mention Julian Assange, who has never stepped foot in the United States and has never been subject to its laws. The reason that Assange isn't going to Sweden to face the "sex-by-surprise" charges is that he could not get a guarantee that the Swedes would not immediately turn him over to the US, and he also couldn't get a guarantee from the US that he would receive anything remotely similar to a fair trial.
And I should mention that roman_mir and I have very different political leanings. But we can both agree that this kind of thing is wrong and illegal.
Yes you can: Just use a catapult.
Really, that's all ideas like this are. Same with "startup incubators" and the like: They want the next Mark Zuckerberg to come to them with a great idea, work their butt off thinking they're going to become really rich, and instead make the investors really rich.
And in this case, because it's a loan, the would-be Mark Zuckerberg takes on all the risk, too. Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.
It's all about who the victim and the perpetrator of the crime is: In the Steubenville case, the victim is a powerless teenage girl, and the perps are a couple of somewhat powerful (at least locally, where the high school football team is a privileged class) teenage boys. In this case, the victim is AT&T (the largest campaign donor in the US), and the perp is a relatively powerless computer geek.
This is just a subset of the more extreme differences: Rob $2000 from a bank, and if you're lucky you won't be shot by the police. Rob $2 billion from a bank, and the SEC or OCC will settle with you for $500 M (25% of your take) and no admission of wrongdoing.
And no, that's not the way it's supposed to work, but it's the way it's actually working.
The kid may have higher velocity, but will definitely also have significantly lower mass, which matters a great deal when calculating force. For example, if your 20 kg child hits at 40 m/s, and we assume that he reaches 0 m/s in 0.1 s, then F=20 kg * (40 m/s / 0.1 s) = 20 kg * 400 m/s^2 = 8000 N. By comparison, if your 60 kg adult hits at 36 m/s, then F=60 kg * (36 m/s / 0.1 s) = 60 kg * 360 m/s^2 = 21600 N.
This calculation brought to you by the "overthinking the joke" department.
Prohibitions on any sort of math amounts to thought crime. They want to make it illegal to figure things out.
Of course they want to make it illegal to figure things out. Smart people are always a danger to those in power. Almost every time some power-hungry bastard takes over a country by force, some of the first people they get rid of is the intelligentsia.
And I'm willing to bet that people will find ways to entertain themselves anyway.
Also something they want to prevent. The idea is to keep people miserable and thinking that the only way they can sooth their misery is to buy stuff, ideally going deeply into debt at 26% interest to do so. Otherwise, the masses might start having wealth, and they could direct that wealth towards things that undermine the power of those currently owning most of the stocks in the US.
Actually, it did happen, but not in the way you think. Remember how there was a massive US cotton export industry up until the American Civil War, while at the same time the Industrial Revolution was going on in the Britain centered around the textile industry? Those two things are not unrelated. And yes, the American South was very much like a modern Third World country in a lot of ways.
You can also look at agricultural products that can't be produced in the US because the climate is all wrong: bananas, sugar, etc.
Don't forget, Women and Children Hit Hardest
That's preposterous: There's no way a 6-year-old can hit harder than a grown man.
Have you ever seen a Neanderthal hiding in a tree? See how well it works!
Just want to add: Your analysis doesn't include: 'value of hippie chicks puddling'.
I valued that at 0: The hippie chicks will be puddling over the hybrid, but then take one look at the geek driving it and change their minds.
You're intentionally missing the point, which is that you can and should crunch the numbers with whatever your actual car options are in order to figure out what the financial cost / benefit of a hybrid is or isn't. Actually, this calculation isn't even specific to hybrids, and you could use it just as easily to compare your economy car versus a V8 cop car if you like.
Everybody knows hybrids aren't 'worth it' from a present value _or_ environmentalist POV.
Whether they're "worth it" or not depends on 5 factors:
1. Difference in initial cost.
2. The average price of gasoline.
3. Distance driven over the lifetime of the car.
4. Difference in efficiency between the hybrid and non-hybrid.
5. Potential investment income on the difference in initial cost over the lifetime of the car.
An example (using the ignorant American measurements I'm unfortunately used to):
A. Hybrid sedan - $25K, gets 44 miles per gallon.
B. Standard sedan - $13K, gets 22 miles per gallon
Price of gasoline at $4.25 per gallon, expected total driving 220,000 miles over 10 years, expected investment return of 5% annually.
1. The standard sedan uses up 10,000 gallons of fuel for a total fuel cost of $42,500. The hybrid uses up half that, 5,000 gallons of fuel for a total fuel cost of $21,250, leaving a difference in fuel costs of $21,250 in favor of the hybrid.
2. The hybrid costs $12K more initially, which over those 10 years can earn an additional $7700 in investment returns, for a total of $19,700 in favor of the standard engine.
3. That means that for the buyer in this situation, the hybrid will save him $1550 total.
So what "everybody knows" may or may not be true, and the best way to answer the question is to look at the numbers for the vehicles you're considering and your own driving habits, and do the math. The general formula looks like this, where Ch is the cost of the hybrid, Cs the cost of the standard, IR is the investment return, Y is the lifetime in years, M is the lifetime in mileage, Eh is the hybrid's miles per gallon, Es is the standard's miles per gallon, and G is the cost of gasoline:
Total extra cost of a hybrid = (Ch - Cs)*(1 + IR)^Y + (Ch - Cs) - M / (Eh - Es) * G
Of course, all this doesn't work if the numbers you plug into the formula are wrong.
Oh come on, you think the government is paying any attention to that old piece of paper? For reference, here's the status of the Bill of Rights:
Obama administration - making sure you're broke and enforcing it in every way possible!
The Obama administration isn't making sure you're broke: Obama and Romney's pals in the private sector are making sure you're broke, and all the Obama administration doesn't have to lift a finger. Another way of putting it: What Obama is doing here is a symptom, not the actual illness.