The 16th Amendment (which btw wasn't properly ratified, the Secretary of State simply declared it ratified)
Whatever gave you this idea??
Thirty-six States ratified the 16th Amendment before the Secretary of State announced that it had been ratified. Since there were only 48 States at the time, 36 States meets the Constitutional requirement for 3/4 of the States to ratify an Amendment.
With this new phone, I'd have to leave it laying around during the daytime instead of letting it spend the day in my pocket. Which lowers the convenience of a cellphone considerably - normally mine is in my pocket until bedtime.
In other words, not a terribly useful modification to the basic cellphone.
Which would be why every Democratic Senator voted FOR the stimulus bill?
Because maybe they don't want Great Depression 2.0?
And the evidence that voting in favour of this bill will prevent Great Depression 2.0?
For that matter, where's the evidence that voting against it will allow/cause Great Depression 2.0?
HINT: while it might make some people feel warm and fuzzy, there's not that much reason to hurry this legislation. Other than the possibility that if they take their time, things will work out fine without it. Because the money that it will pour into the economy won't be appearing any sooner, really, whether it's passed this week, or in May. Hell, most of the money won't appear till 2010 or later, last time I read the bill. So, what's the hurry?
If people do complain because their token electors go to someone who their state didn't vote for they need to grow up.
HINT: the only reason people are complaining about the EC now is because it didn't give them the result they wanted. If they changed the system, and the NEW system gave them results they didn't want, they'd scream and cry that the new system was screwed up.
By and large, the EC works. There's not really a good reason to change things, whatever people think. And this change will NOT produce the Paradise On Earth that its backers think it will. It'll just change the conditions under which people whinge about the elections - now they whinge when their candidate loses the Electoral Vote. If they change it, they'll whinge when they realize their losing candidate would have won the Electoral Vote under the old system.
I'm trying to imagine why the election going to the person who got the most votes would elicit howls or laughter.
OTOH, if you really want to see people pissed about an elections outcome, see Bush v. Gore.
You're only having problems because the likely result of this change is that it will be adopted by a bunch of non-battleground states, probably safe states for ONE Party, not split between the two parties equally.
Which would mean that in certain conditions, the States that usually go Dem (or Rep) would be forced to vote Rep (or Dem)....
And the most interesting thing about the Bush-Gore election is that if Gore had lost the popular vote and won the election, the howling would have been just as loud. But not from the same people, of course.
We sure can, and the bottom line is that for 5% of the cost of a $20K car, you can get 10% better fuel economy. [2.5% of a $40K car, 1% of a $100K car, 0.1% of one of these [wikipedia.org]] This "spend 5%, get 10%" thing should already be a clue but here is a back-of-the-envelope calculation anyway: over 150,000 miles, a 25mpg car will use 6,000 gallons of fuel. 10% of that is 600 gallons. At today's price, that is about $1,200, FTW. 5 or 10 years from now it will be higher.
So, for an extra $1000 in cost of our car, we can save $1200 (netting $200 savings), assuming our car gets comparatively poor gas mileage (I didn't even make gas mileage a factor in choosing my last three cars, and none of them get as little as 25 mpg).
Note that we'll actually spend a bit more than $1000 dollars for that extra cost, since our car loan will likely be larger by pretty much that amount.
If we assume a more realistic figure of 30mpg, your 150,000 miles uses 5000 gallons of gas, saving you the cost of 500 gallons of gas ($1.70 per where I live), so we spend an extra $1000 in order to save $850?
If, as seems reasonable, hybrids are the first place this is used, we're talking even higher mileage, and even lower returns on the investment.
f I live in a state that goes 49% for party X, and 51% for party Y, you can't even argue that giving 100% of our states votes to party Y makes the least bit of sense.
Picture this:
The right fifteen States adopt this measure, and it becomes law in those 15 states.
Then, the next election, those fifteen States vote for one candidate by a slim margin (51-49, say), and the rest of the country votes for the other candidate by a larger margin (53-47, let us say).
Then the 15 States that voted for the one candidate watch their (majority!) electoral college votes go for the other guy.
Try to imagine the howling to be heard in those States, and the laughter to be heard in the other States.
Note that this particular technique has some interesting problems. Namely, the Census. It is possible that enough States to total 270 EC votes could approve this, causing it to become law in all those States. Then, next Census, for the reallocation of Representatives to cause the States wherein this is law to have less than 270 EC votes. What then?
The Sun-Earth Lagrange points are, however, pretty much completely worthless, and always will be. By the time we can make convenient use of them, we'd be better served by using the Sun-Jupiter Lagrange points.
Because the Constitution places no limits on bill sizes. And it's easier to hide the payoffs to your political allies into a big bill. Face it, "A Bill to Grant $100 Million to Senator XXX's Largest Contributor" wouldn't go over well in the press.
Unlike the republicans, the democratic party has a lot of people with their own views.
Which would be why every Democratic Senator voted FOR the stimulus bill? Also, you might check voting records over the last century or two. The Democratic Party people vote the Party line just about as much as the Republican Party people do.
Going there just because it is easier is nothing but a crock. The ONLY criterion for a visit should be: which is judged to be a more likely candidate for life?
Perhaps. However, one of the main criteria that WILL be used is "how much does it cost?". And "easier" costs less.
Unfortunately getting to L4 or L5 is a bit of a bitch. NASA is having problems getting people back to the the moon, L4 and L5 are several times further.
Umm, no. L4 and L5 are in the same orbit as the moon, and therefore at the same distance.
Not that distance is a significant factor, mind you. DeltaV requirements are the limiting factors on our ability to go places in space. DeltaV requirement to put something on the moon are about 5600 m/s, to get something to L4/5 about 4000 m/s.
Riddle me this... WHY WOULD YOU WANT to be "conservative"? Why would you be resistant to change? Why would you choose not to be open-minded to the fact that your way may not be the best?
This presupposes that "liberals" are open-minded to the fact that theur way may not be the best. An intriguing idea, but not supported by history.
Fact is, BOTH sides are close-minded that way - neither believes that the other guy's position could POSSIBLY be better than his own.
As to why people might be conservative. Let's see.
Perhaps they believe that fixing something that isn't broken is a bad idea.
Perhaps they're old and set in their ways. Perhaps they're YOUNG and set in their ways.
Perhaps they've read enough history to know that change is not always for the best, even (especially) when the change is proposed for the best of reasons.
Myself, I tend to fall in both first and last categories.
Yes, I'm a rather odd engineer, since I don't believe that the best thing to do with a machine that works is to tinker with it till it doesn't work anymore (replace "machine" with "social institution", and the sentence is just as valid, mind you).
I also know enough about history to know that change isn't always for the better. Examples abound, but two obvious ones are the Democratic reforms in Germany and Russia circa 1917-1919. Both got rid of monarchs, both were done with the best of intentions, both left us with some of the nastiest tyrannies in world history to deal with....
Depends on the price of ebooks. If I pay $15 for an ebook for my Kindle (as opposed to $25 for the same thing in hardback), I'd pay for the Kindle in less than a year.
Which doesn't even take into account the convenience factor.
I'd like to see them down to $250 (easier to justify to the wife spending 250 than 350), but even as is, I'm putting a couple of these on my wishlist for the year.
since non-politicians do not have the time nor access to information needed to develop a clear picture of what's going on.
Umm, no. Non-politicians have access to the most crucial piece of information of them all - the text of the law. Doesn't matter terribly WHY a pol does what he does. What matters is what he does. And that's all in the text of the law. If the law favours one party over another, this can be discerned with a small amount of light reading (well, it's light reading if you enjoy reading the texts of laws, anyway).
The key to reading laws, of course, is to have some understanding of the language of lawyers. When a lawyers uses a word, it doesn't necessarily mean the same as when you or I use the word. But that's what Google is for.
All I'm saying that politicians are the only ones who have even a chance of understanding it, both because they have the time to put into it and because they have connections and thus access to unofficial information sources and back-room deals.
Backroom deals do not imply understanding of cause and effect. Sorry.
And it's unlikely that unofficial information sources do either.
In other words, you place a great deal more trust in politicians than I do. The Law of Unintended Consequences seems to rule almost all that ALL politicians do. They're like a Dilbert-esque CEO - they do something, hope like hell things change for the better, then claim that what they did caused the improvement. Or if things change for the worse, they blame the other Party for "gutting their Bill" which was intended to improve things.
Someone who is not a politician by trade simply doesn't have the expertise to figure out the cause and effect
This implies that politicians DO have the expertise to figure out the cause and effect. Do you have some evidence to support this? Frankly, I'm not sure I can think of a politician who even believes in cause and effect, much less understands it.
Picking up a power meter is likely to have a good return on investment.
Well, only if you can use it to test new appliance BEFORE you buy them. Otherwise, you're going to be spending a lot of time buying things and returning them.
Frankly, my time is worth enough that spending more than three or four hours shopping for a new TV (or any other appliance) is a bad idea. Which means that buying something, then wasting time analyzing the power usage, returning it, buying another one, repeat endlessly is a complete waste of time and money.
Scientists are actually pretty used to new ideas which are contrary to the norm. (remember plate tectonics, sun-centric-solar-systems, evolution, general relativity, quantum mechanics?)
Yes, I remember those. How long did each idea take to reach general acceptance? Plate tectonics took 50 years or so, correct? That seems to be on the order of the time required for a new idea to be generally accepted in science - when the guys wedded to the (previously held) incorrect view have died out.
It's not like they turn off the windmills when there is no wind.
Perhaps having a reasonably accurate three to five day forecast will make it easier to schedule maintenance so as to maximize power output of the farm.
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever gave you this idea??
Thirty-six States ratified the 16th Amendment before the Secretary of State announced that it had been ratified. Since there were only 48 States at the time, 36 States meets the Constitutional requirement for 3/4 of the States to ratify an Amendment.
With this new phone, I'd have to leave it laying around during the daytime instead of letting it spend the day in my pocket. Which lowers the convenience of a cellphone considerably - normally mine is in my pocket until bedtime.
In other words, not a terribly useful modification to the basic cellphone.
Give them a piece of the action, and they'll fall all over themselves to come up with good ideas.
One percent of the gross ought to do nicely.
Or one percent of net, if you don't do Hollywood accounting.
And the evidence that voting in favour of this bill will prevent Great Depression 2.0?
For that matter, where's the evidence that voting against it will allow/cause Great Depression 2.0?
HINT: while it might make some people feel warm and fuzzy, there's not that much reason to hurry this legislation. Other than the possibility that if they take their time, things will work out fine without it. Because the money that it will pour into the economy won't be appearing any sooner, really, whether it's passed this week, or in May. Hell, most of the money won't appear till 2010 or later, last time I read the bill. So, what's the hurry?
HINT: the only reason people are complaining about the EC now is because it didn't give them the result they wanted. If they changed the system, and the NEW system gave them results they didn't want, they'd scream and cry that the new system was screwed up.
By and large, the EC works. There's not really a good reason to change things, whatever people think. And this change will NOT produce the Paradise On Earth that its backers think it will. It'll just change the conditions under which people whinge about the elections - now they whinge when their candidate loses the Electoral Vote. If they change it, they'll whinge when they realize their losing candidate would have won the Electoral Vote under the old system.
You're only having problems because the likely result of this change is that it will be adopted by a bunch of non-battleground states, probably safe states for ONE Party, not split between the two parties equally.
Which would mean that in certain conditions, the States that usually go Dem (or Rep) would be forced to vote Rep (or Dem)....
And the most interesting thing about the Bush-Gore election is that if Gore had lost the popular vote and won the election, the howling would have been just as loud. But not from the same people, of course.
So, for an extra $1000 in cost of our car, we can save $1200 (netting $200 savings), assuming our car gets comparatively poor gas mileage (I didn't even make gas mileage a factor in choosing my last three cars, and none of them get as little as 25 mpg).
Note that we'll actually spend a bit more than $1000 dollars for that extra cost, since our car loan will likely be larger by pretty much that amount.
If we assume a more realistic figure of 30mpg, your 150,000 miles uses 5000 gallons of gas, saving you the cost of 500 gallons of gas ($1.70 per where I live), so we spend an extra $1000 in order to save $850?
If, as seems reasonable, hybrids are the first place this is used, we're talking even higher mileage, and even lower returns on the investment.
Picture this:
The right fifteen States adopt this measure, and it becomes law in those 15 states.
Then, the next election, those fifteen States vote for one candidate by a slim margin (51-49, say), and the rest of the country votes for the other candidate by a larger margin (53-47, let us say).
Then the 15 States that voted for the one candidate watch their (majority!) electoral college votes go for the other guy.
Try to imagine the howling to be heard in those States, and the laughter to be heard in the other States.
Note that this particular technique has some interesting problems. Namely, the Census. It is possible that enough States to total 270 EC votes could approve this, causing it to become law in all those States. Then, next Census, for the reallocation of Representatives to cause the States wherein this is law to have less than 270 EC votes. What then?
Quite true.
The Sun-Earth Lagrange points are, however, pretty much completely worthless, and always will be. By the time we can make convenient use of them, we'd be better served by using the Sun-Jupiter Lagrange points.
How does the old song go?
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
Because the Constitution places no limits on bill sizes. And it's easier to hide the payoffs to your political allies into a big bill. Face it, "A Bill to Grant $100 Million to Senator XXX's Largest Contributor" wouldn't go over well in the press.
Which would be why every Democratic Senator voted FOR the stimulus bill? Also, you might check voting records over the last century or two. The Democratic Party people vote the Party line just about as much as the Republican Party people do.
Yes.
And you are as well, for soliciting a criminal act. So turn yourself in to the nearest FBI office, if you please.
And take your nanny with you.
Oh, and stop by on your way and pick me up. It just occurred to me that I read a /. post out loud to my wife last night. Yes, officer, I'll go quietly.
Yes, we do.
And if there is no intelligent life in the galaxy, we own everything in the whole damn galaxy.
Perhaps. However, one of the main criteria that WILL be used is "how much does it cost?". And "easier" costs less.
Umm, no. L4 and L5 are in the same orbit as the moon, and therefore at the same distance.
Not that distance is a significant factor, mind you. DeltaV requirements are the limiting factors on our ability to go places in space. DeltaV requirement to put something on the moon are about 5600 m/s, to get something to L4/5 about 4000 m/s.
This presupposes that "liberals" are open-minded to the fact that theur way may not be the best. An intriguing idea, but not supported by history.
Fact is, BOTH sides are close-minded that way - neither believes that the other guy's position could POSSIBLY be better than his own.
As to why people might be conservative. Let's see.
Perhaps they believe that fixing something that isn't broken is a bad idea.
Perhaps they're old and set in their ways. Perhaps they're YOUNG and set in their ways.
Perhaps they've read enough history to know that change is not always for the best, even (especially) when the change is proposed for the best of reasons.
Myself, I tend to fall in both first and last categories.
Yes, I'm a rather odd engineer, since I don't believe that the best thing to do with a machine that works is to tinker with it till it doesn't work anymore (replace "machine" with "social institution", and the sentence is just as valid, mind you).
I also know enough about history to know that change isn't always for the better. Examples abound, but two obvious ones are the Democratic reforms in Germany and Russia circa 1917-1919. Both got rid of monarchs, both were done with the best of intentions, both left us with some of the nastiest tyrannies in world history to deal with....
Depends on the price of ebooks. If I pay $15 for an ebook for my Kindle (as opposed to $25 for the same thing in hardback), I'd pay for the Kindle in less than a year.
Which doesn't even take into account the convenience factor.
I'd like to see them down to $250 (easier to justify to the wife spending 250 than 350), but even as is, I'm putting a couple of these on my wishlist for the year.
Umm, no. Non-politicians have access to the most crucial piece of information of them all - the text of the law. Doesn't matter terribly WHY a pol does what he does. What matters is what he does. And that's all in the text of the law. If the law favours one party over another, this can be discerned with a small amount of light reading (well, it's light reading if you enjoy reading the texts of laws, anyway).
The key to reading laws, of course, is to have some understanding of the language of lawyers. When a lawyers uses a word, it doesn't necessarily mean the same as when you or I use the word. But that's what Google is for.
Backroom deals do not imply understanding of cause and effect. Sorry.
And it's unlikely that unofficial information sources do either.
In other words, you place a great deal more trust in politicians than I do. The Law of Unintended Consequences seems to rule almost all that ALL politicians do. They're like a Dilbert-esque CEO - they do something, hope like hell things change for the better, then claim that what they did caused the improvement. Or if things change for the worse, they blame the other Party for "gutting their Bill" which was intended to improve things.
This implies that politicians DO have the expertise to figure out the cause and effect. Do you have some evidence to support this? Frankly, I'm not sure I can think of a politician who even believes in cause and effect, much less understands it.
Well, only if you can use it to test new appliance BEFORE you buy them. Otherwise, you're going to be spending a lot of time buying things and returning them.
Frankly, my time is worth enough that spending more than three or four hours shopping for a new TV (or any other appliance) is a bad idea. Which means that buying something, then wasting time analyzing the power usage, returning it, buying another one, repeat endlessly is a complete waste of time and money.
Yes, I remember those. How long did each idea take to reach general acceptance? Plate tectonics took 50 years or so, correct? That seems to be on the order of the time required for a new idea to be generally accepted in science - when the guys wedded to the (previously held) incorrect view have died out.
Umm, no. It was lying to Judge and Jury in a sexual harassment case brought against him.
Perhaps having a reasonably accurate three to five day forecast will make it easier to schedule maintenance so as to maximize power output of the farm.