My concept is that a giant turtle named George barfed up the universe last Tuesday (including all your memories of stuff existing before that).
I demand my concept be discussed in elementary schools, so we can have a healthy debate and students can make up their own minds. You won't dare suggest I be censored, will you?
DDT isn't banned for Malaria control in Africa. It is banned outright in the US. And it is banned for agricultural uses worldwide under the Stockholm Convention, but there is no limitation on African nations using it for Malaria control. Also we didn't ban DDT because it got on our apples. We banned it because it killed off fish and bird populations. South Africa uses DDT although the environmental effects make it controversial.
firefighters make more than the median income in any locale, and certainly more than any school teacher - which is a shame because they're overpaid and contribute less to society than school teachers. Actually that isn't true in NYC, where firefighters start at $32,000 and the median income is close to $39,000. Second of all it is totally irrelevant. All I said was that as a firefighter he was not a "millionaires." You know a lot of rich firefighters? I don't remember saying anything about the relative merits of various professions and their pay scales.
As for "shop" classes - the high school where I learned to solder over 25 years ago shut down the "Industrial Arts" department over 15 years ago. I think I made that point.
Radio Shack is not a very good source for the serious electronics "jobber". Since the advent of "disposable" and cheap IC-based electronics, there hasn't really been a good brick-n-mortar source for the serious hobbyist, or jobber. And learning to solder from online sources would be like learning to be a symphony conductor from online sources. Bullshit. I taught myself to play several instruments at a high level, I know many other people who have done the same. You can teach yourself to solder. Nonetheless my whole point was that she was brought up right, so her father taught her to solder.
Building amplifiers. In high school. Not all parents are millionaires, and few kids have this sort of opportunity. Where exactly do you expect a kid to learn how to solder electronics? Do they not have Radio Shack where you live? Millionaires? Her father is a firefighter. It was a one watt mono amp. A school project. She also built a telephone. How rich does that make her. In a perfect world I would expect kids to learn to solder from their shop teacher. Here, well I guess their parents should teach them. Or they can look it up on the internet and practice.
It all about upbringing. My niece is an ME/AE Junior and is appalled at the soldiering abilities, and general electronic ineptitude, of her classmates, including EEs. She wonders what these kids were doing in high school when she was building amplifiers. Of course, her dad used to make her solder with a torch half the time. One time a neighbor knocked on the door to say, "Do you know your daughter is in the driveway taking a torch to a disassembled car door?" her dad was like, "Yeah, she got new speakers, what's your point?" That girl was brought up right.:-)
Heh. Around here the cruiser riders don't wear helmets, because apparently the laws of physics don't apply when your feet are in front of your hands. OK, I admit it, NOBODY wears a helmet around here. It is insane. Especially in New Hampshire wear they really take the "or die" part of "live free OR DIE!" seriously. Massachusetts has a helmet law, and interestingly, most sport bike riders seem to wear useful full face helmets. The cruiser riders mostly fake it.
My experience is that the original poster is right, 90% of motorcyclists are morons and jerks, regardless of what they ride. But not so moronic and jerky as 90% o SUV drivers. I haven't been riding for a couple of years, because I made the mistake of buying an old European bike and got sick of constantly working on it. I have too much else to do.
Yes CA lets you split lanes. Most of us do so because getting hit by a car who can't stop makes for a very bad day. I would never consider splitting lanes at speed. Of course I ride a cruiser and not a race bike, two different mentalities of rider usually. IDK, sounds like a similar mentality to me: safety first. This crowd were not wanna be boy racer types with "Bad Boys Club" stickers in the rear window of Toyota trucks. One guy won national championships in two classes. Another was a factory rider who recently set a world speed record at Bonneville. At least one guy
was so safety conscious he didn't ride on the street at all because he thought it too dangerous (he eventually gave in).
Bikers would engender quite a bit more sympathy if they would decrease the stupidity. If it were just a small minority of bikers not wearing helmets, riding two-per, weaving through traffic (driving down the dividing line at times), and annoying other drivers (straight pipe assholes), then they wouldn't be perceived as irrational psychopaths. As a motorcyclist I more or less agree. However you are making a some rational assumptions about motorcycle safety which may not be empirically valid. To a car driver it may seem that weaving through traffic and splitting lanes is dangerous. However, most motorcyclists will tell you that they lane split partially to protect themselves in traffic. Bikes are extremely vulnerable when standing still. After being hit by a car making a left turn, being rear ended at a stop is the second most common multi-vehicle motorcycle accident. The last place I want to be is in the middle of the road behind a stopped car. I always slide up beside it where another car is unlikely to slam into me. I learned this the hard way, as did several friends. If there are a bunch of
stopped cars, the safest place to be is in front of them where you can make a quick exit. The state of California agrees and lets you lane split at speeds of up to 15 MPH, IIRC. You have to know what you are doing, and keep an eye on the car drivers. But for the most part I think you are safer between two cars stopped or moving slowly in different lanes than in a lane next to a car. If you take up a whole lane you have to be very careful of drivers changing lanes into you, as well as the aforementioned rear ending.
My motorcycling background was very safety conscious. We were all mechanics and racers with lots of real world experience and training. One one was a professional motorcycle journalist for a well know race journal and another was a test rider for a race engineering firm. I didn't know a single person who would dream of riding without a helmet, or NOT lane splitting.
That said, there is no statistical evidence one way or the other. There hasn't been a comprehensive motorcycle safety study since the Hurt Report in the 70s and there likely never will be again. Harry Hurt did not publish any findings on lane splitting.
Last I checked the FSF considered the US Mail a reasonable source distribution method, so there is nothing wrong with their answer. So long as they send you CD upon request they are in compliance. Still common courtesy dictates they should put it online.
I am compelled to point out that whereas a president might propose a given set of laws, budgets, and what not, it is Congress which actually approves such. Giving any president credit for such things seems a bit silly. Furthermore, if one wants to look at it this way... Who was in charge in Congress for the second half of Clinton's reign? Neither party gets a get out of jail free card. However, Tax and Spend was a democrat creation of the 80's. Actually the White House has a lot of influence over discretionary spending. The Clinton administration cut 426,200 civilian jobs, including 78,000 managerial positions government wide. They simply eliminated them by executive fiat. They also deleted 640,000 pages of federal agency rules and closed 2,000 field offices and 250 complete government agencies. The aggregate savings was over $136 billion, simply by improving the day to day efficiency of government operations (including zany measures like issuing credit cards for small purchases). There has never been a small government administration like Clinton/Gore and there probably never will be again. Certainly not the Reagan administration, which sent ever more bloated budgets to congress each year. Whether that is a good thing is absolutely open to debate. But it is incorrect to credit congress with the administration's frugality.
You misread my post. I didn't say Reagan/Dole created the AMT. I said they created the corporate AMT. They merely widely expanded the personal AMT.
You should read that discussion between Galbraith and Krugman before making claims like "we reduced taxes in the 20s and revenue went up." Correlation does not imply causation. And as I mentioned revenues in the 80s went way down when we cut taxes and everybody agreed to responsible tax increases to solve the problem.
1. It has been proven over and over again that reduced tax rates equal greater tax revenue. Less shackles equals more work.
No it hasn't. The Laffer Curve was thoroughly discredited by the mid eighties. There was never any empirical support for it. It was classic Ricardian Vice. That is why the Reagan administration gave up on it and backed Bob Dole's Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax in 1982. The 1981 cuts created huge deficits. The Republican leadership was revolting. Dole wanted a $105 billion increase and Reagan pushed a $31.7 billion increase. However increased military spending meant still greater deficits, so in 1984 Reagan and Dole both backed another $49.3 billion tax package, the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984. This still didn't cover the rampant spending of the mid eighties, so GHW Bush put the final nail in the deficit's coffin with the
a whopping $500 billion five year tax increase package.
One thing that has always bugged me is that Dole/Reagan's AMT increase did not include inflation indexing. That was the one really good thing Reagan did, end bracket creep by indexing the income tax. Because they excluded the AMT from that we now face the current AMT crisis.
There is empirical evidence that decreasing capital gains taxes can increase revenue shot term, because people hold off sales until after the new rate takes effect, increasing activity and hence revenue short term. OTOH, I haven't seen numbers on it, but I expect raising the capital gains rate would do the same thing, since there would be a rush to sell before the rate changes. Long term neither should make a difference.
My wife and I have had quite the opposite experience. IM allows us to calmly discuss the most sensitive topics. Writing down your response forces a moments reflection and the medium strips any unwanted or imagined inflection. However, unlike email, there is no long delay allowing you to map your own broken subtext onto the message and stew over it. Misunderstandings are easy to resolve with a simple question.
Yeah, my family owned a few wells down there at the time. My step-grandfather drilled them in the 40s, IIRC. When my grandmother died in 1974 she thought she was leaving us well off. They threw off $80,000 a year income at the time. That is about $370,000 in 2007 constant dollars. Oil was $12 a barrel at the time ($55.50 in 2007 constant dollars). My dad didn't have the heart to tell her they had just been been nationalized. Easy come easy go. I just wish the Venezuelan government had a better track record of managing the income to the benefit of the populace.
My boss's main work computer is a D420 running Gutsy. I built it for him and I have to say it is the best non-Apple laptop I have used. However, he has been waiting for one of these, and now that it is out, he is switching.
My guess is this is a result of the privatization of collection. Back when she was paying the BBC collected its own fee (IIRC it was door to door too, at least in this instance, so her being a beautiful young woman didn't hurt either). I agree with you. There is no reason to line a third party's pocket to collect what now amounts to a tax. BBC funding should come out of the general budget. However, that has its own risks. If the BBC doesn't pay for itself (75% self funded at this point IIRC) it is likely to lose funding. It should probably be a surcharge on the income tax with a trust fund.
Hey, I just noticed, but current sig is a quote from Yes, Minister. Ironic.
The current system is punitive to households on low incomes. The current revenue collection service is unable to accept any household lives without a TV set and seems will only be satisfied when every household has a TV license.
I thought there was a de facto graduation where the poor simply bought the monochrome license for 1/3 the price and the service turned a blind eye. Maybe my info is outdated. I remember under Thatcher the collector asked my friend if she was absolutely sure she had color TV when she neglected to lie to him. I can't find stats on how many monochrome licenses the BBC distributes, but really, are their ANY black and white TVs in the UK these days?
...even altering Wikipedia's entry on Cuban President Fidel Castro to describe him as 'an admitted transsexual' (misspelling the word 'transsexual')
You're telling me that they have first hand knowledge of this?
Well, I have no first hand knowledge of Fidel's sexuality, but I do have second hand knowledge of it. I knew a woman who apparently slept with him. In reference to similar propaganda regarding his sexuality she once said, "believe me, he was ALL MAN!" Then she whispered something to a female friend and they both giggled. So if he is a transexual, he is apparently a lesbian one.
Slashdot Mirror
My concept is that a giant turtle named George barfed up the universe last Tuesday (including all your memories of stuff existing before that). I demand my concept be discussed in elementary schools, so we can have a healthy debate and students can make up their own minds. You won't dare suggest I be censored, will you?
Don't be obtuse. The turtle's name is Winnifred.
But there are three sides to this debate.
Because you don't want incentives for sources to create stories (or forgeries).
Right. That is what the White House is for.
DDT isn't banned for Malaria control in Africa. It is banned outright in the US. And it is banned for agricultural uses worldwide under the Stockholm Convention, but there is no limitation on African nations using it for Malaria control. Also we didn't ban DDT because it got on our apples. We banned it because it killed off fish and bird populations. South Africa uses DDT although the environmental effects make it controversial.
At least as it is currently practiced.
It all about upbringing. My niece is an ME/AE Junior and is appalled at the soldiering abilities, and general electronic ineptitude, of her classmates, including EEs. She wonders what these kids were doing in high school when she was building amplifiers. Of course, her dad used to make her solder with a torch half the time. One time a neighbor knocked on the door to say, "Do you know your daughter is in the driveway taking a torch to a disassembled car door?" her dad was like, "Yeah, she got new speakers, what's your point?" That girl was brought up right. :-)
Heh. Around here the cruiser riders don't wear helmets, because apparently the laws of physics don't apply when your feet are in front of your hands. OK, I admit it, NOBODY wears a helmet around here. It is insane. Especially in New Hampshire wear they really take the "or die" part of "live free OR DIE!" seriously. Massachusetts has a helmet law, and interestingly, most sport bike riders seem to wear useful full face helmets. The cruiser riders mostly fake it.
My experience is that the original poster is right, 90% of motorcyclists are morons and jerks, regardless of what they ride. But not so moronic and jerky as 90% o SUV drivers. I haven't been riding for a couple of years, because I made the mistake of buying an old European bike and got sick of constantly working on it. I have too much else to do.
My motorcycling background was very safety conscious. We were all mechanics and racers with lots of real world experience and training. One one was a professional motorcycle journalist for a well know race journal and another was a test rider for a race engineering firm. I didn't know a single person who would dream of riding without a helmet, or NOT lane splitting.
That said, there is no statistical evidence one way or the other. There hasn't been a comprehensive motorcycle safety study since the Hurt Report in the 70s and there likely never will be again. Harry Hurt did not publish any findings on lane splitting.
Last I checked the FSF considered the US Mail a reasonable source distribution method, so there is nothing wrong with their answer. So long as they send you CD upon request they are in compliance. Still common courtesy dictates they should put it online.
You misread my post. I didn't say Reagan/Dole created the AMT. I said they created the corporate AMT. They merely widely expanded the personal AMT.
You should read that discussion between Galbraith and Krugman before making claims like "we reduced taxes in the 20s and revenue went up." Correlation does not imply causation. And as I mentioned revenues in the 80s went way down when we cut taxes and everybody agreed to responsible tax increases to solve the problem.
1. It has been proven over and over again that reduced tax rates equal greater tax revenue. Less shackles equals more work.
No it hasn't. The Laffer Curve was thoroughly discredited by the mid eighties. There was never any empirical support for it. It was classic Ricardian Vice. That is why the Reagan administration gave up on it and backed Bob Dole's Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax in 1982. The 1981 cuts created huge deficits. The Republican leadership was revolting. Dole wanted a $105 billion increase and Reagan pushed a $31.7 billion increase. However increased military spending meant still greater deficits, so in 1984 Reagan and Dole both backed another $49.3 billion tax package, the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984. This still didn't cover the rampant spending of the mid eighties, so GHW Bush put the final nail in the deficit's coffin with the a whopping $500 billion five year tax increase package.One thing that has always bugged me is that Dole/Reagan's AMT increase did not include inflation indexing. That was the one really good thing Reagan did, end bracket creep by indexing the income tax. Because they excluded the AMT from that we now face the current AMT crisis.
There is empirical evidence that decreasing capital gains taxes can increase revenue shot term, because people hold off sales until after the new rate takes effect, increasing activity and hence revenue short term. OTOH, I haven't seen numbers on it, but I expect raising the capital gains rate would do the same thing, since there would be a rush to sell before the rate changes. Long term neither should make a difference.
You ate Lord Running Clam!
My wife and I have had quite the opposite experience. IM allows us to calmly discuss the most sensitive topics. Writing down your response forces a moments reflection and the medium strips any unwanted or imagined inflection. However, unlike email, there is no long delay allowing you to map your own broken subtext onto the message and stew over it. Misunderstandings are easy to resolve with a simple question.
And as any Czech knows, beer drinking makes for superior writers and soldiers.
Its no surprise that Gibson is patent trolling. They haven't done anything innovative since the Patent Applied For humbucker in 1956.
Yeah, my family owned a few wells down there at the time. My step-grandfather drilled them in the 40s, IIRC. When my grandmother died in 1974 she thought she was leaving us well off. They threw off $80,000 a year income at the time. That is about $370,000 in 2007 constant dollars. Oil was $12 a barrel at the time ($55.50 in 2007 constant dollars). My dad didn't have the heart to tell her they had just been been nationalized. Easy come easy go. I just wish the Venezuelan government had a better track record of managing the income to the benefit of the populace.
My boss's main work computer is a D420 running Gutsy. I built it for him and I have to say it is the best non-Apple laptop I have used. However, he has been waiting for one of these, and now that it is out, he is switching.
Damn, if I had know I would get mod points today I would not have replied to this thread yesterday. Consider yourself modded +1 insightful in spirit.
My guess is this is a result of the privatization of collection. Back when she was paying the BBC collected its own fee (IIRC it was door to door too, at least in this instance, so her being a beautiful young woman didn't hurt either). I agree with you. There is no reason to line a third party's pocket to collect what now amounts to a tax. BBC funding should come out of the general budget. However, that has its own risks. If the BBC doesn't pay for itself (75% self funded at this point IIRC) it is likely to lose funding. It should probably be a surcharge on the income tax with a trust fund.
Hey, I just noticed, but current sig is a quote from Yes, Minister. Ironic.