There's a difference between prudence (voluntarily having a pilot and following vehicle with flashing lights), and legal requirement. To my knowledge, only Arizona has a state-wide statute on minimum speeds, which is the same as maximum speed: "reasonable & prudent". I'm unaware of any that actually require additional reflective strips or the like (for, say, Amish carts), but most people will apply them on their own. I certainly always have my own flashing lights and reflectors on my bicycle when I'm out - but it's self-preservation I'm acting on in tryign to increase my visibility, not legal requirement.
Many highways and interstates have explicit minimums, but also generally explicitly don't allow pedestrian or bicycle traffic. Local-access roads (which is generally where you'd see cyclists) do not have explicit or implicit minimums, and cannot since they need to be public access and available to people using, say, slower farm vehicles, bicycles, various motorized scooters, and so on.
It's dangerous for the same reason that not signalling a turn is dangerous. If you signal a turn, I (going the opposite direction) may start my turn ahead of you if there is a lane available for that action and the traffic controls don't otherwise prohibit it. You have signaled your intent and ceded right-of-way to cross the intersection. When you go straight instead of turning, that causes a hazard, and may result in an accident.
Tailgating, which is nearly constant on every highway I've ever been on during any high volume traffic situation, is exceedingly dangerous, and nearly every single motorist does it without a thought. You see it so often, you don't even think about it anymore. How many "X car pile-ups" happen on your local roads... all of the people over 2 on that list had to have been tailgating, speeding, or otherwise violating moving laws. I believe most states require a "reasonable and prudent" gap between you and the vehicle ahead of you - on average that's at least 2 to 3 seconds between you and the car ahead, meaning it's larger as you get to higher speeds. Count it out next time you're on the highway in a rush hour that isn't stop-and-go traffic and see if anyone is actually following that. If the guy ahead of you slammed on his brakes while you were sneezing (reducing your reaction time), could you stop in time? Would you have already hit him before you can even open your eyes post-sneeze? If you're like 95% of the drivers I see daily, you'd have hit him, and the next 5 cars (at least) would have hit you, or scattered into adjacent lanes and had glancing accidents there.
At most stop signs, I see vehicles come to a "rolling stop" where they slow to a reasonable point where they could stop if necessary, scan all directions, then proceed without stopping. Are the cyclists you see blowing through at top speed without looking, or are the coasting through and checking for opposing traffic? Are the red lights they ignore controlled by pressure plate switches? Are there pedestrian crossings available they could use to cause a light change? You haven't necessarily cited traffic violations. It's possible they are behaving recklessly, some cyclists aren't terribly bright when it comes to their own safety -- but I maintain you see far more motorists driving dangerously and illegally, and I mean that per capita.
You see over 50% of cyclists violate traffic laws in potentially dangerous ways. I see over 99% of motorists violating traffic laws in potentially dangerous ways.
I get to where I'm supposed to be on time just fine on my bike. I can't help it if you aren't allotting enough time for local traffic conditions. Move closer to work and walk or ride yourself and you won't need to worry about it.
These days...roads ARE meant for motorized vehicles....I mean, you rarely see horse's and carriages on paved road ways these days....they just aren't good for todays modern traffic needs, and neither are bicycles.
Depends on where you live. I saw horse-drawn carriages all the time in Pennsylvania and irregularly in Upstate New York, and even around New York City (along with other non-standard motorized vehicles that wouldn't be able to maintain the speeds you're looking for). Those methods of transportation are perfectly fine for those individuals' needs, and public roadways are meant for public usage. The people using those methods (along with cyclists) have equal rights to road use that you do.
Personally, I haven't needed a car daily in 10 years. I've rented one on the 3 occasions when I did want one. I have lived in Boston, Washington D.C., Albany, Los Angeles, and Austin. If you feel that you need one, that's nice, but they are by no means a requirement to living a modern life.
If you can pedal > than 30mph consistantly, you really should have no right to be on a modern roadway with motorized vehicles.
The difference in speed is a killer.
If you can't adjust to cyclists, you have no right to be on a modern local-access roadway, and your license should be revoked. If they really bother you that much, petition your local government to add appropriate bike lanes and bike trails to get them out of your way.
It's not entirely unreasonable. I've noticed that cyclists seem to regularly ignore the laws when convenient. I'm not sure who gave them the idea that they can ride in the street just because they want to. But, they're only provisionally allowed to if they're going to follow the normal traffic laws. Which means that if they can't keep up with traffic that they can't be in the street.
It's just too much of a hazard to drivers to be stuck behind a cyclist that's going well under the speed limit. Worse is trying to get around them safely.
The speed limit is an upper bound, not a lower bound. All vehicles on the road are permitted to travel under that limit, unless there is also a posted minimum. It's no different than a person driving an old Model T in the street, or someone with a Horse-Drawn Carriage. Public Roadways are for public use.
If you're so upset about their presence, here's a great idea that will make everyone happy: lobby your local city council to add bike lanes and commute bike trails so they can get out of your way. It would make them happy to be out of the street and the exhaust, and you happy since they can't slow you down.
Or maybe get a bike rack for your car so you don't have to ride in the middle of a lane of traffic during rush hour to get to the miles of nice bike trails that exist for you to ride on.
And what if they are commuting to and from work by bike, not heading out to trails?
If I ever see a car drive on a sidewalk in order to get around traffic and blow a red light, I'm pretty sure I'll remember it. I see bicycles do this at least once a week.
And I see cars violate the speed limit, blow red lights, accelerate into yellow lights, ignore lane markings, fail to signal turns, signal turns they never make, signal turns or lane changes they just made, tailgate, and otherwise drive recklessly hundreds of times a day. I can look out my window here at work and [i]see it right now[/i]. If you only see a cyclist violating the law once a week, they're doing far better than the average motorist.
Now imagine you exercised your options, then discovered that the gains you thought you made are now worth $0, since the company can buy back at the option-sell-price -- you know, the price you bough at. There's no gain on the stock via the option. It's a completely neutral transaction. You buy stock at option price, company buys back stock at option price, not current market value. That's not how stock options are intended to work. Yes, you need to exercise them, but the idea is supposed to be that you buy at option-price, and the company buys back (if that's included, which it usually is to prevent public ownership) at current market valuation, giving you an instant capital gain.
If you format nicely, sure, that's true enough, and while I'm a fan of teaching proper indentation, your examples are technically incorrect (the best kind of incorrect!).
Your code in BASIC:
' Basic If a == b Then
do_something() EndIf
Functions identically if you do this:
' Basic If a == b Then do_something() EndIf
Or even this:
' Basic
If a == b Then do_something()
EndIf
However, in Python, I believe this:
# Python if a==b:
do_something()
is not identical to this:
# Python
if a==b: do_something()
or more specifically, not identical to this:
# Python if a==b: do_something()
And even if that is functionally identical (due to the brevity of the snippet), a larger structure which requires varying levels of indentation would not be. This would, admittedly, be painful to look at from an experienced programmer's point of view, but having no indentation is how I remember learning to write in BASIC the first time (since line numbers and explicit structure end syntax controlled flow anyway).
That all said, from what I know of it (and I've only briefly used it several years back, so my knowledge may be out of date or mis-remembered), I'm in favor of Python as a learning language (and a language in general), but I can see the potential concerns for teaching if one doesn't expect the student to be able to maintain perfect (or even good) indentation formatting for some reason. Having explicit non-whitespace characters control program flow might be slightly easier for a new programmer to understand -- and using an editor that automatically indents code based on those characters would help them understand good formatting (along with helping them see the code structure form as they write), and enable them to transition quickly to Python later, where you're essentially just dropping the explicit curly braces in favor of implicit ones using indentation.
Firefox and Chrome both have options to "Save Your Session" when you log out. Most people tend to have these on, because they're remarkably convenient. However, it means Session-Only cookies are not deleted on browser close (or even a computer reboot). If you open Firefox and all your old tabs open right back up with where you were last time you were on, you probably have this enabled. So even if you haven't logged in to a given website in a couple weeks, you may still be "logged in" as the previous login session cookie has persisted.
Even if I get home and it won't run at all, I can't return it.
This is, generally speaking, not true. Every single EULA I've read (and I read most of them) has included instructions for getting a full refund on a title which does not run properly, or in a case where you disagree with the EULA post-purchase. In particular, they are meant for cases where the store refuses to refund directly (which is most of the time now).
In the case of most smokers and most fat people with whom I have had contact, "they stink" is an accurate description of their olfactory presence, not a generic or unqualified slur upon their person or the group.
Astroturfing with a 6-digit UID? Unlikely, Mr. Coward. There are a lot of similar votes where some member of congress votes for or against a bill not because of what it says, but because of a similar bill that they prefer which would be mutually exclusive to the one under consideration. This is one of those obvious cases where several drafts of similar legislation are appearing and people are voting not only on what the current one says, but on whether they would prefer to shoot this one down in hopes that their prferred version passes.
HDD installs on 360 are disallowed explicitly by Microsoft's requirements. Caching is allowed but generally works as post-caching (so going back to a previous area loads more quickly) rather than pre-caching. Not all games actually bother to cache, since they still need to reduce their load times to a fixed time value even without the HDD present.
Seeing as Sierra titles haven't supported Macs despite Vivendi owning both, I doubt Blizzard's Mac support will spread to the other developers under the new label.
Western economies in the early 21st century are more socialist than the USSR ever was in terms of wealth redistribution and state support of industry.
Excuse me? I thought the USSR had two levels of wealth: none or all. For the US, we have a large continuum from zero to massive....
To compare the US to the USSR is unfathomable. Although I will grant you that Obama would definitely like to move us towards a much more communistic economy with nationalization of another 30% of the GDP...
There's an entire continent of Western Economies you didn't mention. Most of Europe is currently Socialist to some extent (mostly with government provided universal education and health care, though some other aspects are also sometimes included), and doing quite well with it. They are far more socialist than the USSR, though they are not more communist. In blending the socialist ideals with the free-market mobility, they've raised the quality of life for the entire population and enhanced that mobility for those born in bad circumstances to allow them to move along the continuum far more freely than is possible in the U.S.
Who knows whether Leninism could work today - probably not without some radical rethinking - but green issues are making this kind of discussion more urgent, as capitalism is inherently wasteful of resources.
Completely false. The gains we've made in productivity - meaning more output for less input - are entirely from the capitalist economies. The USSR (now Russia) and China are ecological nightmares because of communism, not because of capitalism.
Look no further than your local farmer's market. Clearly the farmer wants to make a dollar, right? Why does the food he sells cost 2-3X as much as the produce you can buy at your local grocery store? Even when you have to ship grapes from Chile, or lettuce from California.
And look no further than the decline of pollinators to see where mono-cultures generated through capitalism will get you. Or the wonders of the Ford Pinto, made for profit by salesmen, rather than for people to use safely by engineers.
The new production method will kill everyone in the world in 20 years? Under corporate capitalism, that's fine if it means you can manufacture at 10% less cost and be the one on top when the world ends. Or even if it only kills the consumers of the product, like cigarettes. Or if it destroys the means of production, like mono-culture farming without land replenishment.
Capitalism seeks to control the means of production and then to artificially inflate prices to derive additional profit. It is not, in any way, inherently seeking the most efficient means of production, or the best final product. If it were, they'd chop out advertising (does nothing for either the efficiency of production or the quality of the final product -- exists purely to increase sales) and the overall compensation packages of the corporate boards wouldn't be one thousand times higher than that of the ones actually producing the product.
Green economics isn't inherently against a large company, it's inherently against the modern, amoral, sociopathic, multi-national corporation. A corporation's sole goal is profit, and the pursuit of profit. All possible costs that can be delayed or pushed onto someone else will be -- for example, pollution. Green economics seeks to make those costs direct and apparent to the entities which generate them, forcing them to utilize more sustainable methods of production.
I believe the concept of the "healthy tan" is that it is healthier to acquire a tan through limited exposure in preparation for longer exposure to the sun (for example, before going on vacation to a latitude and climate with more direct sunlight) than to avoid it prior and then burn. So it isn't "getting a tan is healthy" as much as "if you're going to be in the sun for extended periods either way, developing a tan first is healthy."
You're right! Which is exactly why Fahrenheit is precisely the best measure to use in a Winter/Freezing climate -- Rather than using the foolish point of freezing distilled water, the 0 point on Fahrenheit is calibrated for where salt no longer causes any further freezing point depression in water -- or more plainly, the point where ice will form on the roads regardless of the use of dissoluble chemicals.
Disco isn't dead? You have nightly waltzes playing in all the hottest clubs near you? The break-dancers are no longer trying to push the limit and do something new? The dance clubs play all their music for free and you don't need to pay every time you go? They aren't trying to make money off your entertainment?
My ability to lead a raid translates to the next expansion, or the next game. The club I used to dance at no longer plays music I like. I guess my dancing skills have gone obsolete, as there is no place to utilize them since the art has moved on, but my gaming skills have not, as there is still a place where I can put them to use.
I disagree with the premise that all time spent watching TV is not productive. Even when watching shows which are not directly educational, it is time spent generating a common framework for discussion and discourse, it enables consideration of various hypothetical situations, and enhances the ability of people to consider various possibilities. Unless you consider all art appreciation and cultural achievement, along with most of philosophy, to be not productive in any sense.
You could as easily say "time spent reading is time spent *not* being productive" or "time spent talking about whether an Artificial Intelligence deserves rights and 'personhood' is time spent *not* being productive" -- which could be strictly speaking true (nothing is directly produced) but the indirect effects of those thoughts and discussions and things read, and shows watched can lead to very productive efforts.
Actually, you do. Free Will must be a conscious act for it to matter in all the senses that philosophy cares about -- if agency is to exist, it must exist in a conscious form. If some subconscious process is "making" your decisions prior to your "self" (where "self" is your conscious and self-conscious awareness), you don't really have Free Will, since conscious deliberation on possible actions has no effect on the resulting action you take.
If you haven't, I suggest looking into some Philosophy of Self and Philosophy of Mind books and essays, since I certainly don't have the time right now to get into it as deeply as a subject like this deserves.
Slashdot Mirror
[citation needed]
No problem.
There's a difference between prudence (voluntarily having a pilot and following vehicle with flashing lights), and legal requirement. To my knowledge, only Arizona has a state-wide statute on minimum speeds, which is the same as maximum speed: "reasonable & prudent". I'm unaware of any that actually require additional reflective strips or the like (for, say, Amish carts), but most people will apply them on their own. I certainly always have my own flashing lights and reflectors on my bicycle when I'm out - but it's self-preservation I'm acting on in tryign to increase my visibility, not legal requirement.
Many highways and interstates have explicit minimums, but also generally explicitly don't allow pedestrian or bicycle traffic. Local-access roads (which is generally where you'd see cyclists) do not have explicit or implicit minimums, and cannot since they need to be public access and available to people using, say, slower farm vehicles, bicycles, various motorized scooters, and so on.
It's dangerous for the same reason that not signalling a turn is dangerous. If you signal a turn, I (going the opposite direction) may start my turn ahead of you if there is a lane available for that action and the traffic controls don't otherwise prohibit it. You have signaled your intent and ceded right-of-way to cross the intersection. When you go straight instead of turning, that causes a hazard, and may result in an accident.
Tailgating, which is nearly constant on every highway I've ever been on during any high volume traffic situation, is exceedingly dangerous, and nearly every single motorist does it without a thought. You see it so often, you don't even think about it anymore. How many "X car pile-ups" happen on your local roads... all of the people over 2 on that list had to have been tailgating, speeding, or otherwise violating moving laws. I believe most states require a "reasonable and prudent" gap between you and the vehicle ahead of you - on average that's at least 2 to 3 seconds between you and the car ahead, meaning it's larger as you get to higher speeds. Count it out next time you're on the highway in a rush hour that isn't stop-and-go traffic and see if anyone is actually following that. If the guy ahead of you slammed on his brakes while you were sneezing (reducing your reaction time), could you stop in time? Would you have already hit him before you can even open your eyes post-sneeze? If you're like 95% of the drivers I see daily, you'd have hit him, and the next 5 cars (at least) would have hit you, or scattered into adjacent lanes and had glancing accidents there.
At most stop signs, I see vehicles come to a "rolling stop" where they slow to a reasonable point where they could stop if necessary, scan all directions, then proceed without stopping. Are the cyclists you see blowing through at top speed without looking, or are the coasting through and checking for opposing traffic? Are the red lights they ignore controlled by pressure plate switches? Are there pedestrian crossings available they could use to cause a light change? You haven't necessarily cited traffic violations. It's possible they are behaving recklessly, some cyclists aren't terribly bright when it comes to their own safety -- but I maintain you see far more motorists driving dangerously and illegally, and I mean that per capita.
You see over 50% of cyclists violate traffic laws in potentially dangerous ways. I see over 99% of motorists violating traffic laws in potentially dangerous ways.
I get to where I'm supposed to be on time just fine on my bike. I can't help it if you aren't allotting enough time for local traffic conditions. Move closer to work and walk or ride yourself and you won't need to worry about it.
These days...roads ARE meant for motorized vehicles....I mean, you rarely see horse's and carriages on paved road ways these days....they just aren't good for todays modern traffic needs, and neither are bicycles.
Depends on where you live. I saw horse-drawn carriages all the time in Pennsylvania and irregularly in Upstate New York, and even around New York City (along with other non-standard motorized vehicles that wouldn't be able to maintain the speeds you're looking for). Those methods of transportation are perfectly fine for those individuals' needs, and public roadways are meant for public usage. The people using those methods (along with cyclists) have equal rights to road use that you do.
Personally, I haven't needed a car daily in 10 years. I've rented one on the 3 occasions when I did want one. I have lived in Boston, Washington D.C., Albany, Los Angeles, and Austin. If you feel that you need one, that's nice, but they are by no means a requirement to living a modern life.
If you can pedal > than 30mph consistantly, you really should have no right to be on a modern roadway with motorized vehicles.
The difference in speed is a killer.
If you can't adjust to cyclists, you have no right to be on a modern local-access roadway, and your license should be revoked. If they really bother you that much, petition your local government to add appropriate bike lanes and bike trails to get them out of your way.
It's not entirely unreasonable. I've noticed that cyclists seem to regularly ignore the laws when convenient. I'm not sure who gave them the idea that they can ride in the street just because they want to. But, they're only provisionally allowed to if they're going to follow the normal traffic laws. Which means that if they can't keep up with traffic that they can't be in the street.
It's just too much of a hazard to drivers to be stuck behind a cyclist that's going well under the speed limit. Worse is trying to get around them safely.
The speed limit is an upper bound, not a lower bound. All vehicles on the road are permitted to travel under that limit, unless there is also a posted minimum. It's no different than a person driving an old Model T in the street, or someone with a Horse-Drawn Carriage. Public Roadways are for public use.
If you're so upset about their presence, here's a great idea that will make everyone happy: lobby your local city council to add bike lanes and commute bike trails so they can get out of your way. It would make them happy to be out of the street and the exhaust, and you happy since they can't slow you down.
Or maybe get a bike rack for your car so you don't have to ride in the middle of a lane of traffic during rush hour to get to the miles of nice bike trails that exist for you to ride on.
And what if they are commuting to and from work by bike, not heading out to trails?
If I ever see a car drive on a sidewalk in order to get around traffic and blow a red light, I'm pretty sure I'll remember it. I see bicycles do this at least once a week.
And I see cars violate the speed limit, blow red lights, accelerate into yellow lights, ignore lane markings, fail to signal turns, signal turns they never make, signal turns or lane changes they just made, tailgate, and otherwise drive recklessly hundreds of times a day. I can look out my window here at work and [i]see it right now[/i]. If you only see a cyclist violating the law once a week, they're doing far better than the average motorist.
Get off my lawn!
Now imagine you exercised your options, then discovered that the gains you thought you made are now worth $0, since the company can buy back at the option-sell-price -- you know, the price you bough at. There's no gain on the stock via the option. It's a completely neutral transaction. You buy stock at option price, company buys back stock at option price, not current market value. That's not how stock options are intended to work. Yes, you need to exercise them, but the idea is supposed to be that you buy at option-price, and the company buys back (if that's included, which it usually is to prevent public ownership) at current market valuation, giving you an instant capital gain.
If you format nicely, sure, that's true enough, and while I'm a fan of teaching proper indentation, your examples are technically incorrect (the best kind of incorrect!).
Your code in BASIC:
' Basic
If a == b Then
do_something()
EndIf
Functions identically if you do this:
' Basic
If a == b Then
do_something()
EndIf
Or even this:
' Basic
If a == b Then
do_something()
EndIf
However, in Python, I believe this:
# Python
if a==b:
do_something()
is not identical to this:
# Python
if a==b:
do_something()
or more specifically, not identical to this:
# Python
if a==b:
do_something()
And even if that is functionally identical (due to the brevity of the snippet), a larger structure which requires varying levels of indentation would not be. This would, admittedly, be painful to look at from an experienced programmer's point of view, but having no indentation is how I remember learning to write in BASIC the first time (since line numbers and explicit structure end syntax controlled flow anyway).
That all said, from what I know of it (and I've only briefly used it several years back, so my knowledge may be out of date or mis-remembered), I'm in favor of Python as a learning language (and a language in general), but I can see the potential concerns for teaching if one doesn't expect the student to be able to maintain perfect (or even good) indentation formatting for some reason. Having explicit non-whitespace characters control program flow might be slightly easier for a new programmer to understand -- and using an editor that automatically indents code based on those characters would help them understand good formatting (along with helping them see the code structure form as they write), and enable them to transition quickly to Python later, where you're essentially just dropping the explicit curly braces in favor of implicit ones using indentation.
Firefox and Chrome both have options to "Save Your Session" when you log out. Most people tend to have these on, because they're remarkably convenient. However, it means Session-Only cookies are not deleted on browser close (or even a computer reboot). If you open Firefox and all your old tabs open right back up with where you were last time you were on, you probably have this enabled. So even if you haven't logged in to a given website in a couple weeks, you may still be "logged in" as the previous login session cookie has persisted.
Even if I get home and it won't run at all, I can't return it.
This is, generally speaking, not true. Every single EULA I've read (and I read most of them) has included instructions for getting a full refund on a title which does not run properly, or in a case where you disagree with the EULA post-purchase. In particular, they are meant for cases where the store refuses to refund directly (which is most of the time now).
In the case of most smokers and most fat people with whom I have had contact, "they stink" is an accurate description of their olfactory presence, not a generic or unqualified slur upon their person or the group.
Truth is a three-edged sword.
Astroturfing with a 6-digit UID? Unlikely, Mr. Coward. There are a lot of similar votes where some member of congress votes for or against a bill not because of what it says, but because of a similar bill that they prefer which would be mutually exclusive to the one under consideration. This is one of those obvious cases where several drafts of similar legislation are appearing and people are voting not only on what the current one says, but on whether they would prefer to shoot this one down in hopes that their prferred version passes.
HDD installs on 360 are disallowed explicitly by Microsoft's requirements. Caching is allowed but generally works as post-caching (so going back to a previous area loads more quickly) rather than pre-caching. Not all games actually bother to cache, since they still need to reduce their load times to a fixed time value even without the HDD present.
Seeing as Sierra titles haven't supported Macs despite Vivendi owning both, I doubt Blizzard's Mac support will spread to the other developers under the new label.
Western economies in the early 21st century are more socialist than the USSR ever was in terms of wealth redistribution and state support of industry.
Excuse me? I thought the USSR had two levels of wealth: none or all. For the US, we have a large continuum from zero to massive. ...
To compare the US to the USSR is unfathomable. Although I will grant you that Obama would definitely like to move us towards a much more communistic economy with nationalization of another 30% of the GDP...
There's an entire continent of Western Economies you didn't mention. Most of Europe is currently Socialist to some extent (mostly with government provided universal education and health care, though some other aspects are also sometimes included), and doing quite well with it. They are far more socialist than the USSR, though they are not more communist. In blending the socialist ideals with the free-market mobility, they've raised the quality of life for the entire population and enhanced that mobility for those born in bad circumstances to allow them to move along the continuum far more freely than is possible in the U.S.
Who knows whether Leninism could work today - probably not without some radical rethinking - but green issues are making this kind of discussion more urgent, as capitalism is inherently wasteful of resources.
Completely false. The gains we've made in productivity - meaning more output for less input - are entirely from the capitalist economies. The USSR (now Russia) and China are ecological nightmares because of communism, not because of capitalism.
Look no further than your local farmer's market. Clearly the farmer wants to make a dollar, right? Why does the food he sells cost 2-3X as much as the produce you can buy at your local grocery store? Even when you have to ship grapes from Chile, or lettuce from California.
And look no further than the decline of pollinators to see where mono-cultures generated through capitalism will get you. Or the wonders of the Ford Pinto, made for profit by salesmen, rather than for people to use safely by engineers.
The new production method will kill everyone in the world in 20 years? Under corporate capitalism, that's fine if it means you can manufacture at 10% less cost and be the one on top when the world ends. Or even if it only kills the consumers of the product, like cigarettes. Or if it destroys the means of production, like mono-culture farming without land replenishment.
Capitalism seeks to control the means of production and then to artificially inflate prices to derive additional profit. It is not, in any way, inherently seeking the most efficient means of production, or the best final product. If it were, they'd chop out advertising (does nothing for either the efficiency of production or the quality of the final product -- exists purely to increase sales) and the overall compensation packages of the corporate boards wouldn't be one thousand times higher than that of the ones actually producing the product.
Green economics isn't inherently against a large company, it's inherently against the modern, amoral, sociopathic, multi-national corporation. A corporation's sole goal is profit, and the pursuit of profit. All possible costs that can be delayed or pushed onto someone else will be -- for example, pollution. Green economics seeks to make those costs direct and apparent to the entities which generate them, forcing them to utilize more sustainable methods of production.
$6.50 in the US
I believe the concept of the "healthy tan" is that it is healthier to acquire a tan through limited exposure in preparation for longer exposure to the sun (for example, before going on vacation to a latitude and climate with more direct sunlight) than to avoid it prior and then burn. So it isn't "getting a tan is healthy" as much as "if you're going to be in the sun for extended periods either way, developing a tan first is healthy."
You're right! Which is exactly why Fahrenheit is precisely the best measure to use in a Winter/Freezing climate -- Rather than using the foolish point of freezing distilled water, the 0 point on Fahrenheit is calibrated for where salt no longer causes any further freezing point depression in water -- or more plainly, the point where ice will form on the roads regardless of the use of dissoluble chemicals.
Disco isn't dead? You have nightly waltzes playing in all the hottest clubs near you? The break-dancers are no longer trying to push the limit and do something new? The dance clubs play all their music for free and you don't need to pay every time you go? They aren't trying to make money off your entertainment?
My ability to lead a raid translates to the next expansion, or the next game. The club I used to dance at no longer plays music I like. I guess my dancing skills have gone obsolete, as there is no place to utilize them since the art has moved on, but my gaming skills have not, as there is still a place where I can put them to use.
I disagree with the premise that all time spent watching TV is not productive. Even when watching shows which are not directly educational, it is time spent generating a common framework for discussion and discourse, it enables consideration of various hypothetical situations, and enhances the ability of people to consider various possibilities. Unless you consider all art appreciation and cultural achievement, along with most of philosophy, to be not productive in any sense.
You could as easily say "time spent reading is time spent *not* being productive" or "time spent talking about whether an Artificial Intelligence deserves rights and 'personhood' is time spent *not* being productive" -- which could be strictly speaking true (nothing is directly produced) but the indirect effects of those thoughts and discussions and things read, and shows watched can lead to very productive efforts.
Actually, you do. Free Will must be a conscious act for it to matter in all the senses that philosophy cares about -- if agency is to exist, it must exist in a conscious form. If some subconscious process is "making" your decisions prior to your "self" (where "self" is your conscious and self-conscious awareness), you don't really have Free Will, since conscious deliberation on possible actions has no effect on the resulting action you take.
If you haven't, I suggest looking into some Philosophy of Self and Philosophy of Mind books and essays, since I certainly don't have the time right now to get into it as deeply as a subject like this deserves.