The fact is, in a democracy, if the citizens don't pay enough, the people who are paying more will get what they want.
Fixed that for you. What you're essentially saying is that the solution to corporate interests influencing government is to out-bribe them. That the people need to pay the government to represent them, where that should be the government's whole purpose.
And while it wouldn't be too hard for a small-ish gathering of workers to raise $17,000, raising the half a million that SAIC donated in total to all the candidates it was bribing in 2010 would require $50,000 each - more than their total annual income, I'd guess.
Here in Australia, every bank I've been with offer similar services. You can setup automatic deposits into any other Aussie bank account, or to any service provider that provides billing through a system called BPay (all relatively-large companies do). These payments can be once-off, or recurring, and do not incur transaction fees.
Granted, I can't do it via cron with a shell-script, but I can do it. I generally don't give direct debit access to any company; I either automatically pay via this system (majority), or use a direct debit card (which uses the VISA network, and is identical to a credit card in its disputation rights, but uses actual cash rather than credit).
25 year-old grandma? Given that the OP said his kids friends were asking a question, they're probably at least 5. For their grandma to be 25, there has to be a 20-year period between Grandma's birth, and the kid's birth. That would mean both parent and grandparent would have had to have given birth at age 10 (or another pair of numbers that sum to 20). I sincerely doubt that is common.
Poker at IRL casino's is generally offered as a service to the players, with the house taking a cut of the total pool; the casino doesn't care who wins, it gets its money anyway. So there's no reason for them to influence the outcome one way or another. With pretty much every other game, though, you're right - the rules are setup in such a way as to favour the house. No cheating needed when you write the rules.
Not a biologist, but that sounds more like chemistry to me - or biochemistry. I imagine that, essentially being an overlap between disciplines, it would share a lot of features between the two - and chemistry is high-maths.
On the other hand, every time you have some inclement weather, you get GW proponents telling us how hurricanes/hailstorms/droughts are evidence of GW (just google "global warming katrina"). There are morons on both sides who'll take a single data point and count that as proof.
We're nowhere near the carrying capacity of the earth. Western nations in parcticular greatly overproduce food - to the point where we need subsidies or to dump food in order to keep the prices artificially high.
No, he's claiming that the question is based on unproven assumptions, namely, that proposed legislative techniques are going to increase efficiency and reduce pollution.
While it is profoundly stupid to talk on the phone while navigating through a school zone crowded with students just released from school and their parents picking them up, I am not sure one can make a case that it is a net safety hazard to use a cell phone (hands-free or otherwise) driving down he freeway in the middle of nowhere.
I actually find the reverse. Here in Aus, the speed limits near schools are 40k/h (25mph). When driving near schools, I'm going so slowly that stuff like instant awareness and reaction speed isn't as necessary as when I'm belting down the highway at 110.
Every statistic I see for condom effectiveness (1 23) lists their prevention rate assuming correct and consistent useage. The default assumption when discussing every birth control method apart from abstinence seems to be, you measure it assuming it is used correctly.
I'm not American. And I think the number of vociferous replies, including yours, I've gotten to these posts shows the tendancy of Americans to polarize on almost any issue, frequently down political/religious lines (which seems to be synonmous there).
The right pushes abstinence as the best way to control pregnancy/STDs among teenagers (which I agree is stupid). The other side then can't see any reference to abstinence as birth control without immediately jumping on it as if it were an endorsement of the right's policies. That leads to people like you who take my post, which says "if you're abstinent, you won't get pregnant", and trying to argue that abstinence is a poor educational method (which I agree with, but which my post says nothing about).
You could probably just read the other posts I responded to, which pretty much raise the same points. Abstinence is the most effective measure for birth control. It's just that people don't use it. Just like condoms - they're good, but if people don't wear them, you don't say condoms are ineffective.
The problem's not with abstinence, it's with people who say they're using abstinence as birth control, and then have sex. If you're going to go abstinent to say safe, then do it. If you're going to have sex, use an alternative method. But don't say "abstinence doesn't work because I don't use it".
Cows are climate neutral. All the carbon they produce is from the grass they eat, which, as it grows back, absorbs it ready for the next munch.
The only sort of carbon emission that matters is stuff that takes sequestered carbon and releases it into the atmosphere - everything else is just maintaining the status quo. That's basically deforestation, and burning fossil fuels. Everything else is part of the current carbon cycle.
Subsistence farmers generally don't use much in the way of petroleum-fuled heavy machinery, or petroleum-based fertiliser - which is why China has about four times as many farmers per capita as western industrialised nations.
People may emit CO2 - but they also absorb it through the food they eat. Industrialisation is the driver of problematic
Population increases don't seem to have resulted in more deforestation - that's generally for more commercial reasons. Instead, they've crammed more and more into cities and urban centres.
I'm not particularly worried about CO2/climate change. The world's had that much carbon free before, it's no drama for the planet as a whole. It'll inconvenienve humanity for a bit, but that's about it. I'm more worried about peak oil, and what we'll do for energy once we've used up all that cheap petroleum.
My main point was to counter the OP's assertion that it's overpopulation driving carbon emission. It's not - at least, not the sort of carbon emission people are worrying about. Industrialisation is the thing that's releasing sequestered carbon, not more population, although if that increasing populations becomes more industrialised, yes, it will.
Firstly, that was generally only the fairly wealth (who could afford a mistress). Even then, it was still pretty much monogamy (just with your mistress rather than your wife), and what I said still holds true.
The number of sexual partners a person is likely to have had has increased hugely in the last century or so, largely because of the sexual revolution, and the increasing average age of marriage, as well as the increased opportunity (more people living in urban centres and faster, easier travel). This has coincided with a rapid spread of STDs.
Narcissism is a personality trait. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a psychological condition. The person who took the last coke out of the fridge would be narcissistic - to a degree. There is an element of narcissism in all of us. The OPs use of the term indicates he thought that there is an excess of narcissism in our society, not that he thought everyone was pathologically narcissistic.
This idea that we somehow have more sex now then in the past is the biggest load of bullcrap. guess what? people fuck, your grandma had he same urges in the 1920's as you have now. the biological drive is exactly the same, it's just socially we are less afraid to express it, so you hear about it more.
Yeah, it just used to be that people married early, and their impulses tended to be directed more towards a single person (not exclusively, of course, but more so than today). Monogomy tends to retard the spread of STD. It's no coincidence that the rapid spread of STDs coincided with the sexual revolution (and with rapid, affordable intercontinental travel).
Yeah, yeah, psychological hedonism. Long differentiated from ethical hedonism, as the OP was clearly talking about. Interesting if you're a psychologist, a useless distinction for actually conducting an argument.
And as the researcher himself says, his research has been restricted to research on adolescent raised in the US, that there is a long-standing debate on the influence of culture on adolescent brain development, and that he wants to do more research on the subject.
That is my contention entirely. We raise our children in an environment that does not foster the development of self-control, then use that as an excuse for them when they don't demonstrate any.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact is, in a democracy, if the citizens don't pay enough, the people who are paying more will get what they want.
Fixed that for you. What you're essentially saying is that the solution to corporate interests influencing government is to out-bribe them. That the people need to pay the government to represent them, where that should be the government's whole purpose.
And while it wouldn't be too hard for a small-ish gathering of workers to raise $17,000, raising the half a million that SAIC donated in total to all the candidates it was bribing in 2010 would require $50,000 each - more than their total annual income, I'd guess.
Here in Australia, every bank I've been with offer similar services. You can setup automatic deposits into any other Aussie bank account, or to any service provider that provides billing through a system called BPay (all relatively-large companies do). These payments can be once-off, or recurring, and do not incur transaction fees.
Granted, I can't do it via cron with a shell-script, but I can do it. I generally don't give direct debit access to any company; I either automatically pay via this system (majority), or use a direct debit card (which uses the VISA network, and is identical to a credit card in its disputation rights, but uses actual cash rather than credit).
25 year-old grandma? Given that the OP said his kids friends were asking a question, they're probably at least 5. For their grandma to be 25, there has to be a 20-year period between Grandma's birth, and the kid's birth. That would mean both parent and grandparent would have had to have given birth at age 10 (or another pair of numbers that sum to 20). I sincerely doubt that is common.
Child Protective Services report reproduced here
Poker at IRL casino's is generally offered as a service to the players, with the house taking a cut of the total pool; the casino doesn't care who wins, it gets its money anyway. So there's no reason for them to influence the outcome one way or another. With pretty much every other game, though, you're right - the rules are setup in such a way as to favour the house. No cheating needed when you write the rules.
No more Snow Crash for you
Not a biologist, but that sounds more like chemistry to me - or biochemistry. I imagine that, essentially being an overlap between disciplines, it would share a lot of features between the two - and chemistry is high-maths.
Fine, better to say that cows are not intrinsically related to climate change. It depends on what they eat.
Either way, my point still stands. Industrialisation, not population, drives the release of sequestered carbon.
On the other hand, every time you have some inclement weather, you get GW proponents telling us how hurricanes/hailstorms/droughts are evidence of GW (just google "global warming katrina"). There are morons on both sides who'll take a single data point and count that as proof.
Most people who say they don't believe in GW mean to say they don't believe in anthropogenic GW. It's generally a short-hand.
We're nowhere near the carrying capacity of the earth. Western nations in parcticular greatly overproduce food - to the point where we need subsidies or to dump food in order to keep the prices artificially high.
No, he's claiming that the question is based on unproven assumptions, namely, that proposed legislative techniques are going to increase efficiency and reduce pollution.
While it is profoundly stupid to talk on the phone while navigating through a school zone crowded with students just released from school and their parents picking them up, I am not sure one can make a case that it is a net safety hazard to use a cell phone (hands-free or otherwise) driving down he freeway in the middle of nowhere.
I actually find the reverse. Here in Aus, the speed limits near schools are 40k/h (25mph). When driving near schools, I'm going so slowly that stuff like instant awareness and reaction speed isn't as necessary as when I'm belting down the highway at 110.
Every statistic I see for condom effectiveness (1 2 3) lists their prevention rate assuming correct and consistent useage. The default assumption when discussing every birth control method apart from abstinence seems to be, you measure it assuming it is used correctly.
I'm not American. And I think the number of vociferous replies, including yours, I've gotten to these posts shows the tendancy of Americans to polarize on almost any issue, frequently down political/religious lines (which seems to be synonmous there).
The right pushes abstinence as the best way to control pregnancy/STDs among teenagers (which I agree is stupid). The other side then can't see any reference to abstinence as birth control without immediately jumping on it as if it were an endorsement of the right's policies. That leads to people like you who take my post, which says "if you're abstinent, you won't get pregnant", and trying to argue that abstinence is a poor educational method (which I agree with, but which my post says nothing about).
Then it really wouldn't be a sexually transmitted disease then, would it?
Quote one post of mine where I said sex is bad.
You're putting it the wrong way around. Having sex doesn't make you a hedonist; being a hedonist makes you more likely to be having more sex.
Doing stuff without thinking of the consequences for others is narcissistic, should have made that point clearer.
You could probably just read the other posts I responded to, which pretty much raise the same points. Abstinence is the most effective measure for birth control. It's just that people don't use it. Just like condoms - they're good, but if people don't wear them, you don't say condoms are ineffective.
The problem's not with abstinence, it's with people who say they're using abstinence as birth control, and then have sex. If you're going to go abstinent to say safe, then do it. If you're going to have sex, use an alternative method. But don't say "abstinence doesn't work because I don't use it".
Cows are climate neutral. All the carbon they produce is from the grass they eat, which, as it grows back, absorbs it ready for the next munch.
The only sort of carbon emission that matters is stuff that takes sequestered carbon and releases it into the atmosphere - everything else is just maintaining the status quo. That's basically deforestation, and burning fossil fuels. Everything else is part of the current carbon cycle.
Subsistence farmers generally don't use much in the way of petroleum-fuled heavy machinery, or petroleum-based fertiliser - which is why China has about four times as many farmers per capita as western industrialised nations.
People may emit CO2 - but they also absorb it through the food they eat. Industrialisation is the driver of problematic
Population increases don't seem to have resulted in more deforestation - that's generally for more commercial reasons. Instead, they've crammed more and more into cities and urban centres.
I'm not particularly worried about CO2/climate change. The world's had that much carbon free before, it's no drama for the planet as a whole. It'll inconvenienve humanity for a bit, but that's about it. I'm more worried about peak oil, and what we'll do for energy once we've used up all that cheap petroleum.
My main point was to counter the OP's assertion that it's overpopulation driving carbon emission. It's not - at least, not the sort of carbon emission people are worrying about. Industrialisation is the thing that's releasing sequestered carbon, not more population, although if that increasing populations becomes more industrialised, yes, it will.
Ahh, a determinist. How cute.
Firstly, that was generally only the fairly wealth (who could afford a mistress). Even then, it was still pretty much monogamy (just with your mistress rather than your wife), and what I said still holds true.
The number of sexual partners a person is likely to have had has increased hugely in the last century or so, largely because of the sexual revolution, and the increasing average age of marriage, as well as the increased opportunity (more people living in urban centres and faster, easier travel). This has coincided with a rapid spread of STDs.
To a degree. Although you got that the wrong way around - the more hedonistic a person is, the more likely they are to have lots of sex.
Fail, fail, fail.
Hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure. Where you got your definition from, I don't know.
Fail, fail, fail.
Narcissism is a personality trait. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a psychological condition. The person who took the last coke out of the fridge would be narcissistic - to a degree. There is an element of narcissism in all of us. The OPs use of the term indicates he thought that there is an excess of narcissism in our society, not that he thought everyone was pathologically narcissistic.
This idea that we somehow have more sex now then in the past is the biggest load of bullcrap. guess what? people fuck, your grandma had he same urges in the 1920's as you have now. the biological drive is exactly the same, it's just socially we are less afraid to express it, so you hear about it more.
Yeah, it just used to be that people married early, and their impulses tended to be directed more towards a single person (not exclusively, of course, but more so than today). Monogomy tends to retard the spread of STD. It's no coincidence that the rapid spread of STDs coincided with the sexual revolution (and with rapid, affordable intercontinental travel).
Yeah, yeah, psychological hedonism. Long differentiated from ethical hedonism, as the OP was clearly talking about. Interesting if you're a psychologist, a useless distinction for actually conducting an argument.
And as the researcher himself says, his research has been restricted to research on adolescent raised in the US, that there is a long-standing debate on the influence of culture on adolescent brain development, and that he wants to do more research on the subject.
That is my contention entirely. We raise our children in an environment that does not foster the development of self-control, then use that as an excuse for them when they don't demonstrate any.