I'm commeting because I just moded you Overrated and it went up to 5... I was trying to demote your post...
That's a borderline abusive moderation - there is no "-1 Wrong" for a reason: The correct response to a post that is flat wrong is to reply to it (as you've now done) explaining exactly why the parent poster is wrong, not to try to suppress the incorrect comment. Among other things, this reduces the chance that another moderator comes along and thinks your -1 Overrated was simply unfair and votes up the wrong comment.
Asimov's sideburns weren't a fault. As somebody described him in the introduction to The Hugo Winners: "The person qualifying as editor for such an anthology would naturally have to be someone who had not himself received a Hugo*, so that he could approach the job with the proper detachment. At the same time, he would have to be a person of note, sane and rational, fearless and intrepid, witty and forceful, and, above all, devilishly handsome." * At the time he wrote it, Asimov had not actually won a Hugo.
So there you have it: Sideburns = devilishly handsome. Of course, some might dispute my source as being somewhat biased in his evaluation.
- Unions in 1952 represented about 25-30% of all workers and were the primary source of funding for a major political party. Unions in 2012 represent about 12% of all workers and no longer are the primary source of funding for any political party. In 1952, the right to collectively bargain wasn't even a serious political question, while in 2011 in at least 2 states governors have acted to remove those rights for public sector workers. - On the point of federal spending, you're right, it's gone from 20% GDP in 1952 to 27% GDP in 2012. 5% of that increase was in pension programs created in the 1950's but paid for decades later. The remaining 2% is mostly unemployment insurance and food stamps in response to the recent mess. That's probably not where you thought the money was going. - On taxation, notice that the figure you cited, 40%, is still almost 3 times the 14% Mitt Romney recently announced he paid. - We give the largest absolute number, $12 billion or so, which amounts to 0.19% of GDP and barely a drop in the bucket of federal spending. European nations give about 2.5 times as much - if you combine the just big 3 of the EU (Germany, France, UK), you get more than the US gives.
As far as leaders swinging to the right, pick an issue and I can pretty much guarantee you that you'll read what Dwight Eisenhower or Richard Nixon (the Republican presidential candidates in 1952) were saying and doing and you would think they were left-wing nutjobs compared to Barack Obama or Joe Biden.
Why is the search for oil so important, that we will risk destroying parts of this fragile ecosystem just to get more?
When there was a really really large amount of money to be made obtaining it, that can conveniently be partially distributed to the people responsible for deciding whether we should risk destroying parts of this fragile ecosystem.
The US government has demonstrated on several occasions that it's perfectly willing to fight wars for oil as well (regardless of what you think of the latest Iraq War, the earlier Gulf War was without serious question over oil).
My basic rule of thumb: When choosing between major providers that seem to offer roughly equal services at roughly equal prices, go with the third- or fourth-largest competitor.
The reason is that the smaller competitor is in a position where it really has to entice customers to switch to them and stay there. The larger competitor, on the other hand, is mostly in the position of milking its advantage for as long as it can. In the case of really small players, you can also take advantage of the fact that you're more important to their business than their business is to you.
If the formerly smaller player becomes the dominant player at the expense of one of its competitors, that's your sign to switch again.
weren't you the same guy who said that Bill Clinton and Al Gore were great for the internet?
Clinton not so much, but Al Gore absolutely was. But don't believe me, believe Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn:
Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.
No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.
You're seriously suggesting that AT&T, with their $4.5 million in contributions (20th largest) this election cycle and $31 million in lobbying (5th largest) in the last 2 years alone, doesn't know how to lobby effectively?
Also note that Republicans and Democrats always are very capable of 'putting their differences aside' when attacking a third party candidate, especially as it was the case with Ron Paul.
Ron Paul isn't a third-party candidate, and hasn't been since 1988. One way of looking at it is that Ron Paul is as marginalized by his party's machinery as Dennis Kucinich has been marginalized by his party: both have been basically ignored in debates for decades, and both have had their districts gerrymandered into non-existence with what appears to be support from their party.
You're right that there should be more discussion of the other candidates. I was chatting with a local Libertarian congressional candidate at a protest, and he discussed a fantastic debate he'd had with his Green counterpart - that nobody really noticed, because no reporters covered it.
There are virtually no government ministries that are effective, why would this one be different?
I'm focusing on US agencies (I'm guessing you're from a country with a parliamentary system from your use of the term "ministry") since that's what's in question here.
As common a belief as it is that government doesn't do anything useful, it's simply not true: * The VA demonstrably provides more health care bang for the buck than any other system in the US. * The EPA has been quite effective at ensuring that we no longer have burning rivers, choking smog, serious levels of acid rain, and safe tap water. * The FDA has been effective at ensuring that we can buy pharmaceuticals and know that we're getting what we think we're getting instead of quack remedies, and in ensuring that there's very very little chance of getting food poisoning from what you buy in a grocery store. * The FCC does an excellent job of preventing one radio or TV station from interfering with the broadcasts of another. * The NLRB has helped resolve lots of labor disputes before they turned into serious strikes or lockouts. * The NHTSA does a good job of ensuring that you can drive down an Interstate Highway and be close to certain you won't hit a giant pothole or something and wreck just because of road conditions. * State-level building codes do a pretty good job of ensuring that you aren't sold a new house where the roof is about to collapse, the wiring is about to catch on fire, or the plumbing about to leak sewage all over your floor. * The FDIC ensures that if your bank collapses through no fault of your own, you won't lose your money, making bank runs a thing of the past (many folks who lived through the Depression can tell you stories about their dad coming home and announcing that their life savings were gone.)
I could go on, but the point is that most government agencies do a pretty good job of serving their original purpose. The problem is that they've done those things for so long that you take them for granted and stop thinking about them, and focus more on what they don't do than what they do do.
Now, in this case, I'm going to fault these agencies for being frauds, not for being ineffective.
Constitutional monarchy can look like a strong executive - NOT legislative - office carrying out the function of seeing the law as written implemented correctly, and acting in the interest of national security in case of invasion.
If the monarch has the guns, the monarch is ultimately the one who decides what power the legislative body has and can ignore the laws whenever he pleases. If the legislative body has the guns, then they decide what power the monarch has, if any.
This is hardly the first time that a low-level employee has unfairly taken the rap for the mistakes / sleaze of upper management.
Consider, for instance, Richard Jewell, who discovered a pipe bomb at the Atlanta Olympics, saved the lives of a couple hundred people, and then had his name dragged through the mud by journalists who'd decided that he'd planted the bomb himself (he hadn't).
Those opinions are wrong(and yes, opinions can be wrong).
Those aren't opinions, those are facts. They're the kind of facts that qualified people (in this case, historians) have researched repeatedly and come to the same conclusions over and over again. Saying "Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man." is opening up something to question that isn't really a question. There's a significant minority that think that evolution is a lie, a much smaller minority that believe that the Holocaust never happened, and they don't just have a differing opinion, they're flat wrong on a point of fact. Matters of opinion are limited to those areas where we don't have or don't need a clear factual basis for deciding, like "Do I want a cup of coffee?", "Which sports team might win this week?", or "Should we give some kind of public assistance to people who can't buy food?".
By contrast, if somebody throws a football into the air at a particular angle and velocity and wind conditions, my opinion on where I'd like its trajectory to be has no bearing on where it actually goes.
Those people aren't out to get you.
Those people aren't out to get me personally. They are definitely out to impose their viewpoint on those who disagree with them, and the more extreme folks among them have shown a willingness to use force to achieve that goal. I've got nothing but compassion for people who believe idiocy out of a lack of exposure to other ideas, but at the same time I'm going to treat people who kill Sikhs in Wisconsin and burn down mosques in Toledo Ohio as potentially dangerous.
The reality is that once a hyper-partisan group manages to attain any amount of power, they use it to enforce their position onto others. They become convinced that their position is the absolute and correct one. They view those disagreeing as being in denial of reality and sometimes dangerous.
What if those who are disagreeing are in fact in denial of reality and somewhat dangerous?
Case in point: Right now, approximately 10% of Americans firmly believe that the people who wrote and ratified the US Constitution intended to give Christianity a privileged place in government. Not only is that very obviously factually wrong, but that's a somewhat dangerous proposition for the 20-25% of Americans who don't identify as Christians.
Not a whoosh: I'm saying that Chinese people have the political freedoms of the Soviets, the environmental protections of India (take a look at the Ganges), and the economic options of sweatshop labor vs subsistence farming.
Slashdot Mirror
No it won't: Astronomers changed the name to Urrectum to end that stupid joke once and for all.
I'm commeting because I just moded you Overrated and it went up to 5... I was trying to demote your post...
That's a borderline abusive moderation - there is no "-1 Wrong" for a reason: The correct response to a post that is flat wrong is to reply to it (as you've now done) explaining exactly why the parent poster is wrong, not to try to suppress the incorrect comment. Among other things, this reduces the chance that another moderator comes along and thinks your -1 Overrated was simply unfair and votes up the wrong comment.
Today's logo is best explained by Leonard Nimoy, quoting the device depicted:
"Beep beep beep beep"
Also, if you read the title text, it will give you a hint to check what major events happened on Oct 4 1957.
Asimov's sideburns weren't a fault. As somebody described him in the introduction to The Hugo Winners:
"The person qualifying as editor for such an anthology would naturally have to be someone who had not himself received a Hugo*, so that he could approach the job with the proper detachment. At the same time, he would have to be a person of note, sane and rational, fearless and intrepid, witty and forceful, and, above all, devilishly handsome."
* At the time he wrote it, Asimov had not actually won a Hugo.
So there you have it: Sideburns = devilishly handsome. Of course, some might dispute my source as being somewhat biased in his evaluation.
Alas, there are only 2 Y's in a Scrabble set.
- Unions in 1952 represented about 25-30% of all workers and were the primary source of funding for a major political party. Unions in 2012 represent about 12% of all workers and no longer are the primary source of funding for any political party. In 1952, the right to collectively bargain wasn't even a serious political question, while in 2011 in at least 2 states governors have acted to remove those rights for public sector workers.
- On the point of federal spending, you're right, it's gone from 20% GDP in 1952 to 27% GDP in 2012. 5% of that increase was in pension programs created in the 1950's but paid for decades later. The remaining 2% is mostly unemployment insurance and food stamps in response to the recent mess. That's probably not where you thought the money was going.
- On taxation, notice that the figure you cited, 40%, is still almost 3 times the 14% Mitt Romney recently announced he paid.
- We give the largest absolute number, $12 billion or so, which amounts to 0.19% of GDP and barely a drop in the bucket of federal spending. European nations give about 2.5 times as much - if you combine the just big 3 of the EU (Germany, France, UK), you get more than the US gives.
As far as leaders swinging to the right, pick an issue and I can pretty much guarantee you that you'll read what Dwight Eisenhower or Richard Nixon (the Republican presidential candidates in 1952) were saying and doing and you would think they were left-wing nutjobs compared to Barack Obama or Joe Biden.
If it quakes like a duck
I've never met a duck who was capable of even playing Quake, much less having an identifiable style!
Why is the search for oil so important, that we will risk destroying parts of this fragile ecosystem just to get more?
When there was a really really large amount of money to be made obtaining it, that can conveniently be partially distributed to the people responsible for deciding whether we should risk destroying parts of this fragile ecosystem.
The US government has demonstrated on several occasions that it's perfectly willing to fight wars for oil as well (regardless of what you think of the latest Iraq War, the earlier Gulf War was without serious question over oil).
My basic rule of thumb: When choosing between major providers that seem to offer roughly equal services at roughly equal prices, go with the third- or fourth-largest competitor.
The reason is that the smaller competitor is in a position where it really has to entice customers to switch to them and stay there. The larger competitor, on the other hand, is mostly in the position of milking its advantage for as long as it can. In the case of really small players, you can also take advantage of the fact that you're more important to their business than their business is to you.
If the formerly smaller player becomes the dominant player at the expense of one of its competitors, that's your sign to switch again.
Because beating Obama is EASY for Ron Paul, that's the crazy part.
Probably not (that's not to say it couldn't happen, but it's not "easy")
weren't you the same guy who said that Bill Clinton and Al Gore were great for the internet?
Clinton not so much, but Al Gore absolutely was. But don't believe me, believe Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn:
Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.
No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.
You're seriously suggesting that AT&T, with their $4.5 million in contributions (20th largest) this election cycle and $31 million in lobbying (5th largest) in the last 2 years alone, doesn't know how to lobby effectively?
And I have several veteran friends for whom the VA was a life saver. Small sample sizes distort all sorts of things.
Also note that Republicans and Democrats always are very capable of 'putting their differences aside' when attacking a third party candidate, especially as it was the case with Ron Paul.
Ron Paul isn't a third-party candidate, and hasn't been since 1988. One way of looking at it is that Ron Paul is as marginalized by his party's machinery as Dennis Kucinich has been marginalized by his party: both have been basically ignored in debates for decades, and both have had their districts gerrymandered into non-existence with what appears to be support from their party.
You're right that there should be more discussion of the other candidates. I was chatting with a local Libertarian congressional candidate at a protest, and he discussed a fantastic debate he'd had with his Green counterpart - that nobody really noticed, because no reporters covered it.
There are virtually no government ministries that are effective, why would this one be different?
I'm focusing on US agencies (I'm guessing you're from a country with a parliamentary system from your use of the term "ministry") since that's what's in question here.
As common a belief as it is that government doesn't do anything useful, it's simply not true:
* The VA demonstrably provides more health care bang for the buck than any other system in the US.
* The EPA has been quite effective at ensuring that we no longer have burning rivers, choking smog, serious levels of acid rain, and safe tap water.
* The FDA has been effective at ensuring that we can buy pharmaceuticals and know that we're getting what we think we're getting instead of quack remedies, and in ensuring that there's very very little chance of getting food poisoning from what you buy in a grocery store.
* The FCC does an excellent job of preventing one radio or TV station from interfering with the broadcasts of another.
* The NLRB has helped resolve lots of labor disputes before they turned into serious strikes or lockouts.
* The NHTSA does a good job of ensuring that you can drive down an Interstate Highway and be close to certain you won't hit a giant pothole or something and wreck just because of road conditions.
* State-level building codes do a pretty good job of ensuring that you aren't sold a new house where the roof is about to collapse, the wiring is about to catch on fire, or the plumbing about to leak sewage all over your floor.
* The FDIC ensures that if your bank collapses through no fault of your own, you won't lose your money, making bank runs a thing of the past (many folks who lived through the Depression can tell you stories about their dad coming home and announcing that their life savings were gone.)
I could go on, but the point is that most government agencies do a pretty good job of serving their original purpose. The problem is that they've done those things for so long that you take them for granted and stop thinking about them, and focus more on what they don't do than what they do do.
Now, in this case, I'm going to fault these agencies for being frauds, not for being ineffective.
Constitutional monarchy can look like a strong executive - NOT legislative - office carrying out the function of seeing the law as written implemented correctly, and acting in the interest of national security in case of invasion.
If the monarch has the guns, the monarch is ultimately the one who decides what power the legislative body has and can ignore the laws whenever he pleases. If the legislative body has the guns, then they decide what power the monarch has, if any.
Dave Thomas dies. Their bacon changes taste. Oh, God, no!
Remember the hog shortage? I mean, with the price of meat what it is, when you get it, if you get it...
Also bear in mind that the flavor varies from person to person.
According to one source, time-travelling JFK.
There's also this correlation (not xkcd, but still awesome):
Global Average Temperature vs Number of Pirates
This is hardly the first time that a low-level employee has unfairly taken the rap for the mistakes / sleaze of upper management.
Consider, for instance, Richard Jewell, who discovered a pipe bomb at the Atlanta Olympics, saved the lives of a couple hundred people, and then had his name dragged through the mud by journalists who'd decided that he'd planted the bomb himself (he hadn't).
Those opinions are wrong(and yes, opinions can be wrong).
Those aren't opinions, those are facts. They're the kind of facts that qualified people (in this case, historians) have researched repeatedly and come to the same conclusions over and over again. Saying "Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man." is opening up something to question that isn't really a question. There's a significant minority that think that evolution is a lie, a much smaller minority that believe that the Holocaust never happened, and they don't just have a differing opinion, they're flat wrong on a point of fact. Matters of opinion are limited to those areas where we don't have or don't need a clear factual basis for deciding, like "Do I want a cup of coffee?", "Which sports team might win this week?", or "Should we give some kind of public assistance to people who can't buy food?".
By contrast, if somebody throws a football into the air at a particular angle and velocity and wind conditions, my opinion on where I'd like its trajectory to be has no bearing on where it actually goes.
Those people aren't out to get you.
Those people aren't out to get me personally. They are definitely out to impose their viewpoint on those who disagree with them, and the more extreme folks among them have shown a willingness to use force to achieve that goal. I've got nothing but compassion for people who believe idiocy out of a lack of exposure to other ideas, but at the same time I'm going to treat people who kill Sikhs in Wisconsin and burn down mosques in Toledo Ohio as potentially dangerous.
The reality is that once a hyper-partisan group manages to attain any amount of power, they use it to enforce their position onto others. They become convinced that their position is the absolute and correct one. They view those disagreeing as being in denial of reality and sometimes dangerous.
What if those who are disagreeing are in fact in denial of reality and somewhat dangerous?
Case in point: Right now, approximately 10% of Americans firmly believe that the people who wrote and ratified the US Constitution intended to give Christianity a privileged place in government. Not only is that very obviously factually wrong, but that's a somewhat dangerous proposition for the 20-25% of Americans who don't identify as Christians.
something wicket this way comes
And what the heck does this have to do with an ewok?
It was an anarchy
... created by those well-known anarchists at the US Department of Defense, with funding and public support from that well-known anarchist Al Gore.
Not a whoosh: I'm saying that Chinese people have the political freedoms of the Soviets, the environmental protections of India (take a look at the Ganges), and the economic options of sweatshop labor vs subsistence farming.