I think this brings up some fairly debatable points. For example, if we have to force environmental laws on a state-to-state scale, then what's to stop one state from allowing free reign on pollution? It could have a generally poor impact on the entire environment, yet other states would be powerless to stop them.
It's a sketchy line to draw, definitely. It must have been difficult for the founding fathers to foresee how each state could so heavily affect other states.
It was a poor way to bring up the point that the Bush administration has done a lot to hurt the environment. It was pretty surprising to see that someone they tried to do to benefit the environment got shot down.
Actually, getting the money back in one year makes you a lot more money than getting the money back over five. If you take that money and put it into investments (or pay off debts), you make more back due to interest.
I'm not really saying if this is a good or bad thing from an economic perspective. It's definitely good for the business owner. But, I don't know enough about the tax breaks to say if it helps or hurts the economy.
Small business owners such as this are a good thing. This is the type of situation where tax breaks really help the economy.
The problem is that LARGE business owners, multi-national corporations, etc. benefit much much more than the small business owner. And, the money tends to consolidate into their pockets, or out of the country, instead of going back into the country.
The tax cuts need to end at a point where it stops helping local and national economics. It's just designed so that you get a decent tax break as well, so you don't get pissed off that those above you get a huge one.
If they hadn't, Dodd or Sanders or the like would have probably let a filibuster.
Hillary HAD to vote everything she had against the issue. Shes from the most liberal state in the nation, after all. Her vote on the Iraq war came back to bite her in the ass, so she couldn't risk it again. She had to vote with her state's population in mind.
I'd still like to see what people's opinions are of this being a defensive move by Obama. Had he voted against it, and we had another terrorist attack -- even a small one -- what would have been his chances of winning the election?
And the congressional approval rating has always been a joke. It is almost always below the presidents, and most people rate their own congressional representatives highly while rating the congress low. Most people don't even know how congress works -- I've explained cloture and supermajorities and vetos to more people I can count. (Not to say there's anything wrong with not knowing the specifics of congress. It's just that people shouldn't approve or disapprove of things they don't take the time to understand. It would be like a non-linux user talking about which distro is the best...)
That "majority" in the Senate is 51-49, with both the Independents caucusing with the Democrats. This includes the Blue Dog Democrats, and Joe Liberman, who very often sides with Republicans on votes. The only reason that they have been given the title of majority without dispute in the media is so that when things go wrong in the country, they can be blamed... despite the ability of the president to veto everything they pass, and the ability of the Republicans to filibuster damn near everything. (They set a 2-year record in only 10 months.)
If you don't like your current leaders, don't just vote them out of there: start supporting the good candidates at the local level, so they can go on to do better things. Town treasurers turn into mayors, who turn into senators, who turn into presidents.;)
I'm glad somebody finally pointed out the politics in this.
This is NOT a "moving towards the center" move. This was a purely defensive move. Can you imagine if Obama had voted against this, and there had been another terrorist attack? The Bush administration would have said it would have been all prevented if only they could have been able to listen in on those terrorists. It would have immediately lost Obama the election.
And, call me paranoid, but I don't doubt for a minute that the Bush administration would have let something happen. We are talking about the same administration that is responsible for putting a Democratic governor in jail, among other things.
Anyways, why is this topping the news? Didn't Bush and McCain heavily oppose the GI bill, then take credit for it once it passed?
Actually, it takes 41 Senators to filibuster. If 60% of the Senate is willing to vote on something called cloture, they can end a filibuster.
Can you imagine if it only took one Senator to filibuster something, though? Absolutely nothing would ever get done. (though some think that's what happens now, anyways.)
Are IVF clinics then committing worse mass murder than abortion clinics?
No, because if nothing was ever done to these embryos, they would never survive. They have to be implanted into a womb for anything greater than a 0% chance of survival. You can't draw this parallel in an abortion debate because abortion is an active choice destroy something (either an embryo or a clump of cells, depending on your outlook), whereas what you describe is an active choice NOT to do something.
This is something of a flawed argument. The people against abortion aren't arguing against a woman's right to do whatever she wants with her body. They are arguing for the unborn child's right to life. (choice vs. life, in a nutshell.) If a woman had the right to do as she wished with her body, then abortions would be legal through the entire 9-month process. The argument then is, where do you draw that line? When does a life become a life?
What you said does bring up some interesting ethical questions, though. Should a woman be obligated to hold a child if it puts her at health risks? If it simply puts her at great discomfort, instead of any health risks. Should any of us be obligated to prevent someone from dying, because it may put us at great discomfort?
For the record, I'm still personally out on this one. I'm not exactly for abortion at any time, if it were my decision to make. However, I don't feel I have the justification right now to push that decision on anyone else. I *do* know, however, that adoption is far, far too often seen as "not an option", which is sad.
The point was brought up earlier that if you destroy fingernail your fingernail clippings, you continue to live on. However, if you destroy an embryo, you destroy someone's entire DNA. (or something, depending on how you see it.)
I have to point out the flaws in that one. Part of the reason we don't make nearly as much stuff anymore is because of the lack of tariffs, which have been taken away in the last few decades. A return to higher tariffs would be just fine in my book, because it would mean that more of our stuff would be produced *here*, in the US. Which would mean more jobs.
The idea of a "service" economy is a joke. Betty pays John for fixing her car, John pays Betty for his dental work... until someone buys an item, and the money goes out of the country, and doesn't come back. We have to *produce* things here, and tariffs help "protect" that, and have done so for the last couple centuries. It's what helped bring us into superpower status.
Add to the equation the fact that the dollar is dropping. Everything that comes from outside the US is going to go up in price. And right now, pretty much everything we buy comes from outside the US.
(Of course, a falling dollar does have its benefits. It makes the US more "protectionist" in that it makes the products we do make, seem cheaper in the world economy.
I never said I was entitled to be thin. I simply pointed out that genetics ARE a factor, and have to be overcome to a higher degree by some than by others. What you stated before simply wasn't true, or at least not in full. I was just showing others the rest of the issue.
I have an IQ around 170-180. I learn things much, much faster than those around me. However, when those around me are struggling, I try to help them; I don't just tell them how unfair life is. Try to see life through the eyes of those around you. It will improve you as a person.:)
Product placement doesn't belong in a lot of games. I might get mildly annoyed if I were to get a quest in World of Warcraft to pick someone up a delicious Whopper at Burger King.
As with many medical conditions, the calorific imbalance that results in obesity is probably the result of a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Polymorphisms in various genes controlling appetite, metabolism, and adipokine release predispose to obesity, but the condition requires availability of sufficient calories, and possibly other factors, to develop fully. Various genetic conditions that feature obesity have been identified (such as Prader-Willi syndrome, Bardet-Biedl syndrome, MOMO syndrome, leptin receptor mutations and melanocortin receptor mutations), but known single-locus mutations have been found in only about 7% of obese individuals; these people tend to be very obese from a very young age. It is thought that a large proportion of the causative genes are still to be identified. Studies in over 5000 identical twins demonstrated that childhood obesity has a strong (77%) inherited component.
A 2007 study identified fairly common mutations in the FTO gene; heterozygotes had a 30% increased risk of obesity, while homozygotes faced a 70% increased risk.
I wouldn't say such a blanket statement. It's true that many people are fat because they are just lazy, but there are also people that have to work much, much harder than you to maintain a weight.
It always astounds me when "naturally" skinny people think fat people are just lazy. A lot of those people will eat twice as much as me in a day, and just sit on their ass. Maybe their body is less efficient than mine, but I have to work my ass off to lose weight.
Although mostly of historical and traditional value, the oath is considered a rite of passage for practitioners of medicine, although it is not obligatory and no longer taken up by all physicians. I don't think that violating the actual oath means you can no longer practice medicine. However, there are some parts of it that may put your legal status at risk, as well as some things outside of it (like doctor-patient confidentiality).
I work with coax all day, and I know that problems in the cable can cause micro-reflections and other such things, where the signal actually bounces back towards the source and causes interference. So you could technically create a cable that blocks any signal sent back along the same wire. I don't think it's currently possible, though, because that usually involves filters that are a lot bigger than the cable itself. I don't even know how you'd do that on ethernet, since you have bi-directional communication.
You pay a gazillion dollars for high-end HDMI cables because of the flaws of HDMI itself: unshielded twisted-pair over possibly long distances with no error control. Maybe in the audio world, cat-5 doesn't use error correction. Regardless, i thought optical connections were the standard for high-end audio connections.
Unfortunately, they all are designed with different voltages in mind. Designing them to all run on the same voltage and amperage would probably add to the cost of each device.
This is a great idea, but it's just not cost-effective yet. A good power strip can still be had for under $20, and for a lot less than that if you want to go the cheap route. The power bricks that come with most devices will still have to come with them by default for a long time, so that cost is still going to be incorporated into the final price of the product. Until these things cost under $30 and come with a 120V power strip built in, I'm just not that impressed. I'm sure it has its target market, though.
I don't think everyone has to stop driving gas guzzlers, just that a lot of people who drive them as a status symbol should reconsider. If you have a need for it, then get an SUV. Or a truck. Or a bike. Or whatever.
The article is right, though, in that we should work to make cars lighter in general. We should probably try to move off oil in general, or at least to a degree where gas engines are more of the exception than the norm. I'm more of a fan of converting cars to run off E-85 and getting it from switchgrass, but everyone has their own opinion.
Except that the numbers for US Manufacturing, Profit, and Revenue for the years of 1966, 1976, 1986, 1996, and 2006 were never given. This is a lot of information to look up that the OP should have given. However, it's more dramatic to say "all-time highs!" than to let the numbers speak for themselves.
All I was saying is that in any statistic about anything being adjusted by inflation, it's worth noting that the reported inflation has been lass than the actual inflation rate for a while now. The numbers are somewhat hard to find, but it seems to be generally about 50% more. I'm not about to go do the math any further, especially since I at least linked a source in my reply.
You're numbers are off. Inflation has been mis-reported for a couple decades now, no longer taking into account many cost-of-living expenses because they are "too unpredictable and fluctuating." Things like gas and food, to name a few.
This is one of the reasons why our inflation numbers seem so low compared to other countries, yet the value of our dollar is dropping. There are other reasons, of course.
You also have to look at the numbers in a per-person perspective. (per capita?) I'm curious if the numbers look similar, when you factor in population growth.
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I think this brings up some fairly debatable points. For example, if we have to force environmental laws on a state-to-state scale, then what's to stop one state from allowing free reign on pollution? It could have a generally poor impact on the entire environment, yet other states would be powerless to stop them.
It's a sketchy line to draw, definitely. It must have been difficult for the founding fathers to foresee how each state could so heavily affect other states.
It was a poor way to bring up the point that the Bush administration has done a lot to hurt the environment. It was pretty surprising to see that someone they tried to do to benefit the environment got shot down.
For a (somewhat-biased) record: http://www.nrdc.org/BushRecord/
I so badly wish you could be modded higher than +5.
Actually, getting the money back in one year makes you a lot more money than getting the money back over five. If you take that money and put it into investments (or pay off debts), you make more back due to interest.
I'm not really saying if this is a good or bad thing from an economic perspective. It's definitely good for the business owner. But, I don't know enough about the tax breaks to say if it helps or hurts the economy.
Small business owners such as this are a good thing. This is the type of situation where tax breaks really help the economy.
The problem is that LARGE business owners, multi-national corporations, etc. benefit much much more than the small business owner. And, the money tends to consolidate into their pockets, or out of the country, instead of going back into the country.
The tax cuts need to end at a point where it stops helping local and national economics. It's just designed so that you get a decent tax break as well, so you don't get pissed off that those above you get a huge one.
They DID vote cloture. It passed, 72-26. Check it out:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00167#position
If they hadn't, Dodd or Sanders or the like would have probably let a filibuster.
Hillary HAD to vote everything she had against the issue. Shes from the most liberal state in the nation, after all. Her vote on the Iraq war came back to bite her in the ass, so she couldn't risk it again. She had to vote with her state's population in mind.
I'd still like to see what people's opinions are of this being a defensive move by Obama. Had he voted against it, and we had another terrorist attack -- even a small one -- what would have been his chances of winning the election?
And the congressional approval rating has always been a joke. It is almost always below the presidents, and most people rate their own congressional representatives highly while rating the congress low. Most people don't even know how congress works -- I've explained cloture and supermajorities and vetos to more people I can count. (Not to say there's anything wrong with not knowing the specifics of congress. It's just that people shouldn't approve or disapprove of things they don't take the time to understand. It would be like a non-linux user talking about which distro is the best...)
That "majority" in the Senate is 51-49, with both the Independents caucusing with the Democrats. This includes the Blue Dog Democrats, and Joe Liberman, who very often sides with Republicans on votes. The only reason that they have been given the title of majority without dispute in the media is so that when things go wrong in the country, they can be blamed... despite the ability of the president to veto everything they pass, and the ability of the Republicans to filibuster damn near everything. (They set a 2-year record in only 10 months.)
If you don't like your current leaders, don't just vote them out of there: start supporting the good candidates at the local level, so they can go on to do better things. Town treasurers turn into mayors, who turn into senators, who turn into presidents. ;)
I'm glad somebody finally pointed out the politics in this.
This is NOT a "moving towards the center" move. This was a purely defensive move. Can you imagine if Obama had voted against this, and there had been another terrorist attack? The Bush administration would have said it would have been all prevented if only they could have been able to listen in on those terrorists. It would have immediately lost Obama the election.
And, call me paranoid, but I don't doubt for a minute that the Bush administration would have let something happen. We are talking about the same administration that is responsible for putting a Democratic governor in jail, among other things.
Anyways, why is this topping the news? Didn't Bush and McCain heavily oppose the GI bill, then take credit for it once it passed?
Actually, it takes 41 Senators to filibuster. If 60% of the Senate is willing to vote on something called cloture, they can end a filibuster.
Can you imagine if it only took one Senator to filibuster something, though? Absolutely nothing would ever get done. (though some think that's what happens now, anyways.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster#20th_century_and_the_emergence_of_cloture
I screwed up my quote tags on that one. Meant to hit the preview button. ^_^
Are IVF clinics then committing worse mass murder than abortion clinics?
No, because if nothing was ever done to these embryos, they would never survive. They have to be implanted into a womb for anything greater than a 0% chance of survival. You can't draw this parallel in an abortion debate because abortion is an active choice destroy something (either an embryo or a clump of cells, depending on your outlook), whereas what you describe is an active choice NOT to do something.
This is something of a flawed argument. The people against abortion aren't arguing against a woman's right to do whatever she wants with her body. They are arguing for the unborn child's right to life. (choice vs. life, in a nutshell.) If a woman had the right to do as she wished with her body, then abortions would be legal through the entire 9-month process. The argument then is, where do you draw that line? When does a life become a life?
What you said does bring up some interesting ethical questions, though. Should a woman be obligated to hold a child if it puts her at health risks? If it simply puts her at great discomfort, instead of any health risks. Should any of us be obligated to prevent someone from dying, because it may put us at great discomfort?
For the record, I'm still personally out on this one. I'm not exactly for abortion at any time, if it were my decision to make. However, I don't feel I have the justification right now to push that decision on anyone else. I *do* know, however, that adoption is far, far too often seen as "not an option", which is sad.
The point was brought up earlier that if you destroy fingernail your fingernail clippings, you continue to live on. However, if you destroy an embryo, you destroy someone's entire DNA. (or something, depending on how you see it.)
I have to point out the flaws in that one. Part of the reason we don't make nearly as much stuff anymore is because of the lack of tariffs, which have been taken away in the last few decades. A return to higher tariffs would be just fine in my book, because it would mean that more of our stuff would be produced *here*, in the US. Which would mean more jobs.
The idea of a "service" economy is a joke. Betty pays John for fixing her car, John pays Betty for his dental work... until someone buys an item, and the money goes out of the country, and doesn't come back. We have to *produce* things here, and tariffs help "protect" that, and have done so for the last couple centuries. It's what helped bring us into superpower status.
Add to the equation the fact that the dollar is dropping. Everything that comes from outside the US is going to go up in price. And right now, pretty much everything we buy comes from outside the US.
Read more.
(Of course, a falling dollar does have its benefits. It makes the US more "protectionist" in that it makes the products we do make, seem cheaper in the world economy.
I never said I was entitled to be thin. I simply pointed out that genetics ARE a factor, and have to be overcome to a higher degree by some than by others. What you stated before simply wasn't true, or at least not in full. I was just showing others the rest of the issue.
I have an IQ around 170-180. I learn things much, much faster than those around me. However, when those around me are struggling, I try to help them; I don't just tell them how unfair life is. Try to see life through the eyes of those around you. It will improve you as a person. :)
I can already imagine it now.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/09/18/
Product placement doesn't belong in a lot of games. I might get mildly annoyed if I were to get a quest in World of Warcraft to pick someone up a delicious Whopper at Burger King.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity#Genetics
As with many medical conditions, the calorific imbalance that results in obesity is probably the result of a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Polymorphisms in various genes controlling appetite, metabolism, and adipokine release predispose to obesity, but the condition requires availability of sufficient calories, and possibly other factors, to develop fully. Various genetic conditions that feature obesity have been identified (such as Prader-Willi syndrome, Bardet-Biedl syndrome, MOMO syndrome, leptin receptor mutations and melanocortin receptor mutations), but known single-locus mutations have been found in only about 7% of obese individuals; these people tend to be very obese from a very young age. It is thought that a large proportion of the causative genes are still to be identified. Studies in over 5000 identical twins demonstrated that childhood obesity has a strong (77%) inherited component.A 2007 study identified fairly common mutations in the FTO gene; heterozygotes had a 30% increased risk of obesity, while homozygotes faced a 70% increased risk.
I wouldn't say such a blanket statement. It's true that many people are fat because they are just lazy, but there are also people that have to work much, much harder than you to maintain a weight.It always astounds me when "naturally" skinny people think fat people are just lazy. A lot of those people will eat twice as much as me in a day, and just sit on their ass. Maybe their body is less efficient than mine, but I have to work my ass off to lose weight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath
Although mostly of historical and traditional value, the oath is considered a rite of passage for practitioners of medicine, although it is not obligatory and no longer taken up by all physicians. I don't think that violating the actual oath means you can no longer practice medicine. However, there are some parts of it that may put your legal status at risk, as well as some things outside of it (like doctor-patient confidentiality).The thing is, you'll *owe* $3000. Whereas if you get a lawyer, you have to get the $30,000 up front. That's a lot harder to do.
I thought wall warts essentially were voltage regulators?
I work with coax all day, and I know that problems in the cable can cause micro-reflections and other such things, where the signal actually bounces back towards the source and causes interference. So you could technically create a cable that blocks any signal sent back along the same wire. I don't think it's currently possible, though, because that usually involves filters that are a lot bigger than the cable itself. I don't even know how you'd do that on ethernet, since you have bi-directional communication.
You pay a gazillion dollars for high-end HDMI cables because of the flaws of HDMI itself: unshielded twisted-pair over possibly long distances with no error control. Maybe in the audio world, cat-5 doesn't use error correction. Regardless, i thought optical connections were the standard for high-end audio connections.
Every self-respecting nerd has ethernet cable-prep tools! Who are you, and what are you doing at Slashdot?
Unfortunately, they all are designed with different voltages in mind. Designing them to all run on the same voltage and amperage would probably add to the cost of each device.
This is a great idea, but it's just not cost-effective yet. A good power strip can still be had for under $20, and for a lot less than that if you want to go the cheap route. The power bricks that come with most devices will still have to come with them by default for a long time, so that cost is still going to be incorporated into the final price of the product. Until these things cost under $30 and come with a 120V power strip built in, I'm just not that impressed. I'm sure it has its target market, though.
I don't think everyone has to stop driving gas guzzlers, just that a lot of people who drive them as a status symbol should reconsider. If you have a need for it, then get an SUV. Or a truck. Or a bike. Or whatever.
The article is right, though, in that we should work to make cars lighter in general. We should probably try to move off oil in general, or at least to a degree where gas engines are more of the exception than the norm. I'm more of a fan of converting cars to run off E-85 and getting it from switchgrass, but everyone has their own opinion.
Except that the numbers for US Manufacturing, Profit, and Revenue for the years of 1966, 1976, 1986, 1996, and 2006 were never given. This is a lot of information to look up that the OP should have given. However, it's more dramatic to say "all-time highs!" than to let the numbers speak for themselves.
All I was saying is that in any statistic about anything being adjusted by inflation, it's worth noting that the reported inflation has been lass than the actual inflation rate for a while now. The numbers are somewhat hard to find, but it seems to be generally about 50% more. I'm not about to go do the math any further, especially since I at least linked a source in my reply.
You're numbers are off. Inflation has been mis-reported for a couple decades now, no longer taking into account many cost-of-living expenses because they are "too unpredictable and fluctuating." Things like gas and food, to name a few.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/us-inflation-understated-due-trio/story.aspx?guid={DED8CC4C-8199-40E1-93F9-43A3C5E0F0D4}
This is one of the reasons why our inflation numbers seem so low compared to other countries, yet the value of our dollar is dropping. There are other reasons, of course.
You also have to look at the numbers in a per-person perspective. (per capita?) I'm curious if the numbers look similar, when you factor in population growth.
The fact that Obama doesn't have lobbyists in his campaign, but McCain's campaign is filled to the brim with them, is a good start.
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/05/obama_slams_mcc.html
Obama does still have some vague ties to lobbyists, unfortunately. But it's a step in the right direction.