The college system did a great job convincing HR managers that they should require college degrees when many times it isn't needed.
Wasn't the college system that did this.
Once upon a time, you apply for a job, you get handed an aptitude test which they use to decide if you can learn the job well enough to be worth the bother.
Then, someone decides aptitude tests are discriminatory (note that many of them probably were), so it became illegal/immoral to use them for the purposes intended.
So...we switched to using the high school diploma as an indicator that you could learn well enough to be worth the bother.
Segue forward a few decades, high school diplomas became meaningless when "social promotion" became the norm (note that it isn't universally used even yet), so they upgraded to college diplomas as an indicator that you can learn.
Now, with more and more remedial (what should have been high-school/middle-school) courses to be found in college, we're drifting slowly toward "you need an MS/MA to be considered for this entry-level job"....
Yes, it would have been much more humane to kill twice as many by invading, or the whole lot of them by blockade.
We would probably have killed far more than twice as many invading. We were, after all, expecting more US casualties from invading than we inflicted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And we'd already established that we could inflict ten casualties for every one we suffered - air supremacy and armour, that sort of thing, are serious force multipliers....
Flash forward to late 2002 and the chicken hawks are on the march again, there attempts to silence the opposition was to shout "we support the troops" and basically insinuate that if you are against the war, you want all American soldiers to die.
Note more history - many people think this, because it was a fairly common theme during the latter part of the Vietnam era, when soldiers were being spit on by the civilians at home (literally, in some cases, when they came home).
Hate the politicians for playing war, don't hate the soldiers who are required to fight them....
This notion of building a giant ship to go to another solar system is extraordinarily impractical.
The point of the operation, I think, is to consider the changes required for human society to implement plans requiring decades/centuries/millenia to complete.
Right now, we have a hard time holding our focus for one Congressional Election cycle, much less a decade. Much less a century.
So some fundamental changes will have to go down to even make an interstellar trip possible to plan, much less implement.
"A journey from the sun to the galactic core at 1G constant acceleration takes 340 years as experienced by the ship crew and 30,000 years as experienced by Earth observers." cite
Hmm, my calculations show ~30400 years as seen from Earth, but only 20 years foe the crew.
Of course, noone is interested in going to the center of the Galaxy. I think we'd settle for Alpha Centauri first. 3.5 years for the crew, 6 years from our PoV on Earth.
I've noticed that Republicans have been states' rights proponents until some states start doing things that they don't like. Then they're quite happy to use federal law to trump state law.
Examples, please?
Not that I really doubt you, since not all Republicans are for States Rights, just as not all Democrats are opposed to States Rights (just look at the Dem's positions on gun laws - every State should be able to make its own, even when the Supremes say otherwise)....
Also you don't cut costs when it comes to education.
Why not?
Are you trying to suggest that all money spent on education is wisely spent, producing useful results and better educations? If not, then it's just possible that some of the money is spent foolishly, and could be cut without doing damage to the education delivered.
Note that many western countries spend less on education than we do, for better results. If they can do it on less, why is it impossible to cut costs on our education system?
Does your mom understand SOPA as well as you do? The point of the article is that (a) our moms and dads don't understand current technology, and (b) their generation are the ones creating and passing legislation.
Having read the text of the proposed law, I expect that I understand it as well as anyone.
And being about the age of the average Congresscritter, I'm aware that MY generation is the one creating and passing legislation.
So, no, it's not about ignorant people passing bad legislation. It's about people whose objectives are different than YOUR objectives passing legislation.
You want free speech, they want money (and the votes that money can buy).
When your desire for free speech translates to money/votes, they'll care. Until then, they will ignore you.
I have far greater concerns about people who might be swept up in the NDAA clause. We know it's unconstitutional.
Of course, Thomas.gov has the entire text of the NDAA up (including the version the President signed). Oddly enough, the version the President signed has a specific exclusion for US Citizens, Resident Aliens, and ANYONE actually present in the USA at the time of arrest/capture.
Could you please explain how the American NDAA would be used to arrest UK Occupy protesters?
Well, since it can't be used to arrest USA Occupy protesters (the relevant section is 1021 (e) - look it up on thomas.gov), it might as well be used to arrest UK Occupy protesters.
Of course, it is very specifically aimed at the guys who did the September 11 attacks, the Taliban, and Al-Queda (section 1021 (b)), so it would be pretty hard to use against the UK Occupy types, even if we were so inclined.
but we are talking about a government that has managed to introduce a one-child policy and enforce it with much success.
Not all that much success. If it were successful, China's population would be undergoing a drastic decline.
Instead, population is growing at about 0.5% per year. Which is low, but consistent with 2+ children per family, not one. Note that breakeven - the classic ZPG - requires ~2.1 children per family....
This inspired by a recent XKCD implying that christmas music has been "hostage" to boomer childhood sensibilities for some decades now, and a radio christmas music playlist transition in the near future appears inevitable
I'm curious - what do you think the new Christmas playlist will include that the old one didn't?
Other than some TSO pieces, I can't think of anything much that's new in Christmas music since before I was born....
Open up their area for more phone companies. Let other companies run telephone lines if they want in parallel. See if Verizon treats their customers poorly then... they'll be too terrified of losing them.
Umm, Verizon is a CELLPHONE company. They have basically the same competition everywhere in the USA - AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile....
TFA clearly says they're doing this on December 29, not January 1.
I know that the editors don't have time to fact-check the articles, but can't the submitter (who presumably read the article before he posted it) at least remember what he read long enough to summarize it kinda-sorta accurately?
The only way to solve this problem and much of the problem with Washington is to thoughtfully and radically remove money from politics. Until that is done the politicians will just keep on promising the people and delivering to the corporations with the fattest wallet.
If that were done, the politicians would just keep on promising to the people and delivering to the corporations that own the most TV stations and newspapers.
Or did you really think that "the media" is unbiased, in spite of them being owned by the same people you spend most of your time excoriating?
while metric is obviously mathematically easier since you can easily think "100cm is a meter and 1000 meters is a kilometer and therefore 100,000 cm is a kilometer"
So, when was the last time it mattered to you that there were 100,000 cm in a km?
Or 1760 yards in a mile, for that matter?
For the most part, this sort of thing is an issue for people in third grade, maybe. In the real world, the things we measure in miles (or km) aren't things we're interested in measuring in inches (or cm).
Ditto tons/megagrams (and why don't the metric people use megagrams? why call them "metric tons" when the Mg is a perfectly valid metric unit?) vs. ounces/grams...
New York City is home to 8,175,133 people as of 2011. It uses 64,500 gigawatt-hours of energy per year. Using a standard industrial solar panel (ex Trina Solar 230) which produces 5750 watts (assuming constant supply 5.75 kWh) with a base area of 17.6 sq feet and costs $360. To power NYC it would take 11.2 trillion panels taking up an area of 7081 square miles of solar panels, at a cost that of $500,000,000 per NYC resident.
You made some math errors in there. Should only require 1.2 BILLION (not trillion) panels, taking up just over 22 square miles, at a cost of $500,000 per person.
Would cars have catalysts now to clean the exhaust, if there was no legislation demanding it? Would car engines need a quarter fo the fuel they used to need, if there was no legislation demanding it?
Note that laws requiring certain things are not the same as subsidies for certain things.
Catalytic converters raised the price of automobiles by a few hundred dollars per. And were worth every penny of it. Though they did cause some people to delay replacing their older cars for a year or two.
Ditto higher mileage cars.
What they're doing for solar is a bit different - they're offering you some of your neighbor's money to install solar.
Which works fine as long as not many people take them up on their offer.
If EVERYONE say "that's a great deal, let's do it!", then you have to pay the subisdy to everyone, and tax everyone extra to pay the subsidies - so, your neighbor pays for your solar installation, you pay for your neighbor's solar installation, and effectively noone gets a subsidy.
We need better education on over population, financial rewards for not producing, and some sort of punishment to stem offenders, preferably in the form of fines and taxes. One child policy?
Why do we need any of those things?
In the civilized parts of the world, population is already declining, once you ignore immigration. Yes, even the USA is in a slight population decline, ignoring immigration and the children of immigrants (legal and otherwise). Europe is heading for a moderately massive population implosion at current rates....
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And let us never forget that sterling writer who snatched the Prize from Tolkien's grasp - Ivo Andric.
Yes, that Ivo Andric, that basically noone has ever heard of, 50 years after the fact....
Wasn't the college system that did this.
Once upon a time, you apply for a job, you get handed an aptitude test which they use to decide if you can learn the job well enough to be worth the bother.
Then, someone decides aptitude tests are discriminatory (note that many of them probably were), so it became illegal/immoral to use them for the purposes intended.
So...we switched to using the high school diploma as an indicator that you could learn well enough to be worth the bother.
Segue forward a few decades, high school diplomas became meaningless when "social promotion" became the norm (note that it isn't universally used even yet), so they upgraded to college diplomas as an indicator that you can learn.
Now, with more and more remedial (what should have been high-school/middle-school) courses to be found in college, we're drifting slowly toward "you need an MS/MA to be considered for this entry-level job"....
We would probably have killed far more than twice as many invading. We were, after all, expecting more US casualties from invading than we inflicted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And we'd already established that we could inflict ten casualties for every one we suffered - air supremacy and armour, that sort of thing, are serious force multipliers....
Nope. ten years subjective to accelerate 15,000 light years, another ten to decelerate the other 15,000 light years.
And yes, I did recheck my math. 10.0234 years acceleration and the same deceleration, rounded to 10 for lack of signifcant digits in the distance....
Note more history - many people think this, because it was a fairly common theme during the latter part of the Vietnam era, when soldiers were being spit on by the civilians at home (literally, in some cases, when they came home).
Hate the politicians for playing war, don't hate the soldiers who are required to fight them....
The point of the operation, I think, is to consider the changes required for human society to implement plans requiring decades/centuries/millenia to complete.
Right now, we have a hard time holding our focus for one Congressional Election cycle, much less a decade. Much less a century.
So some fundamental changes will have to go down to even make an interstellar trip possible to plan, much less implement.
Hmm, my calculations show ~30400 years as seen from Earth, but only 20 years foe the crew.
Of course, noone is interested in going to the center of the Galaxy. I think we'd settle for Alpha Centauri first. 3.5 years for the crew, 6 years from our PoV on Earth.
Examples, please?
Not that I really doubt you, since not all Republicans are for States Rights, just as not all Democrats are opposed to States Rights (just look at the Dem's positions on gun laws - every State should be able to make its own, even when the Supremes say otherwise)....
Why not?
Are you trying to suggest that all money spent on education is wisely spent, producing useful results and better educations? If not, then it's just possible that some of the money is spent foolishly, and could be cut without doing damage to the education delivered.
Note that many western countries spend less on education than we do, for better results. If they can do it on less, why is it impossible to cut costs on our education system?
Having read the text of the proposed law, I expect that I understand it as well as anyone.
And being about the age of the average Congresscritter, I'm aware that MY generation is the one creating and passing legislation.
So, no, it's not about ignorant people passing bad legislation. It's about people whose objectives are different than YOUR objectives passing legislation.
You want free speech, they want money (and the votes that money can buy).
When your desire for free speech translates to money/votes, they'll care. Until then, they will ignore you.
Of course, Thomas.gov has the entire text of the NDAA up (including the version the President signed). Oddly enough, the version the President signed has a specific exclusion for US Citizens, Resident Aliens, and ANYONE actually present in the USA at the time of arrest/capture.
So, I fail to see where the problem lies....
It should also be noted that the Arabs hate the Persians, and the Persians aren't exactly fond of the Arabs.
So it's less likely than you might think that the Arabs would join in to help Iran in a war...
Well, since it can't be used to arrest USA Occupy protesters (the relevant section is 1021 (e) - look it up on thomas.gov), it might as well be used to arrest UK Occupy protesters.
Of course, it is very specifically aimed at the guys who did the September 11 attacks, the Taliban, and Al-Queda (section 1021 (b)), so it would be pretty hard to use against the UK Occupy types, even if we were so inclined.
Not all that much success. If it were successful, China's population would be undergoing a drastic decline.
Instead, population is growing at about 0.5% per year. Which is low, but consistent with 2+ children per family, not one. Note that breakeven - the classic ZPG - requires ~2.1 children per family....
Hmm, mostly it seems to be the same old songs, done by different artists....
I'm curious - what do you think the new Christmas playlist will include that the old one didn't?
Other than some TSO pieces, I can't think of anything much that's new in Christmas music since before I was born....
Umm, Verizon is a CELLPHONE company. They have basically the same competition everywhere in the USA - AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile....
TFA clearly says they're doing this on December 29, not January 1.
I know that the editors don't have time to fact-check the articles, but can't the submitter (who presumably read the article before he posted it) at least remember what he read long enough to summarize it kinda-sorta accurately?
And this would be bad how?
Option 1: take government money, results (that the public paid for with their tax dollars) are public domain.
Option 2: refuse government money, develop privately, results are privately owned, government saves money.
Looks like a win-win to me.
If that were done, the politicians would just keep on promising to the people and delivering to the corporations that own the most TV stations and newspapers.
Or did you really think that "the media" is unbiased, in spite of them being owned by the same people you spend most of your time excoriating?
So, when was the last time it mattered to you that there were 100,000 cm in a km?
Or 1760 yards in a mile, for that matter?
For the most part, this sort of thing is an issue for people in third grade, maybe. In the real world, the things we measure in miles (or km) aren't things we're interested in measuring in inches (or cm).
Ditto tons/megagrams (and why don't the metric people use megagrams? why call them "metric tons" when the Mg is a perfectly valid metric unit?) vs. ounces/grams...
You made some math errors in there. Should only require 1.2 BILLION (not trillion) panels, taking up just over 22 square miles, at a cost of $500,000 per person.
Note that laws requiring certain things are not the same as subsidies for certain things.
Catalytic converters raised the price of automobiles by a few hundred dollars per. And were worth every penny of it. Though they did cause some people to delay replacing their older cars for a year or two.
Ditto higher mileage cars.
What they're doing for solar is a bit different - they're offering you some of your neighbor's money to install solar.
Which works fine as long as not many people take them up on their offer.
If EVERYONE say "that's a great deal, let's do it!", then you have to pay the subisdy to everyone, and tax everyone extra to pay the subsidies - so, your neighbor pays for your solar installation, you pay for your neighbor's solar installation, and effectively noone gets a subsidy.
Well, a quick Google shows that Canadian Solar sells panels for $1.04 per watt, so long as you buy at least 28 230W panels.
That jumps to $1.14 per watt if you want fewer panels.
Which should allow you to do 2.5KW or so for $3K.
Note that those prices are pre-tax, of course.
Note also that that's not including installation....
Why do we need any of those things?
In the civilized parts of the world, population is already declining, once you ignore immigration. Yes, even the USA is in a slight population decline, ignoring immigration and the children of immigrants (legal and otherwise). Europe is heading for a moderately massive population implosion at current rates....